(1) If film criticism ever becomes a duel to the death, people will say, never bet against David Gerrold when cinematic science fiction is on the line…. See his new review on Facebook.
All right, so let’s talk about SNOWPIERCER, a brilliantly produced movie that ultimately fails in the two most important ways a science fiction film can fail.
I’ll take the easy one first — the audience will suspend disbelief, they will not suspend common sense.
The idea here is that the Earth has frozen over. The only survivors are living on a train that circles the globe endlessly.
1) The Earth is frozen over because scientists have decided to put something called CW7 in the atmosphere to halt global warming. They do it with chem trails. It works too well. The planet gets too cold, everything freezes down so cold you’ll freeze to death in minutes.
Now, look — whatever that CW7 stuff is — you’re gonna have to put several million tons of it into the atmosphere to cools down the planet. That’s a lot of chem trails. It’s going to take a long time. Years. Decades perhaps. Even if you could retro-fit every jet plane in the world on its next scheduled maintenance, it would still take millions of miles. And you would think that as soon as the temperature gradients start falling too fast, not matching the projections, the scientists — or whatever agency behind it — would stop the process to evaluate the results. But no — whatever this CW7 is … bam, it freezes everything to a giant planet-sized popsicle.
2) Where did all that water come from? Even in this planet’s worst ice ages, there wasn’t enough H2o to make enough snow to cover every continent. ….
Unfortunately … even as an ALLEGORY this thing doesn’t work.
That’s the second and much bigger failure…..
(2) A killer review like that leads indirectly to the sentiment expressed in “Why Peter Capaldi Said No To Extra Doctor Who”.
It seems like eons pass in between series of Doctor Who. As with many shows which only run 10 or so episodes in a season, they’re over so quickly, and then there’s another year or more of wait before the show comes back. It turns out that the BBC would love to see more Doctor Who as much as fans would. However, the cast and crew, led by Peter Capaldi himself, have said no to requests for more episodes. The reason, according to Capaldi, is that while they could make more episodes, what they couldn’t do is make more good episodes.
(3) David Brin turns his thoughts to “Sentient animals, machines… and even plants!” at Contrary Brin.
In Brilliant Green: the Surprising History and Science of Plant Intelligence, plant neurobiologist Stefano Mancuso and journalist, Alessandra Viola, make a case not only for plant sentience, but also plant rights. Interesting, though science fiction authors have been doing thought experiments about this for a long time, e.g. in Ursula LeGuin’s novel “The Word for World is Forest” and in my own “The Uplift War.” Jack Chalker’s “Midnight at the Well of Souls” portrayed sentient plants, as did Lord of the Rings.
There is a level where I am all aboard with this. Ecosystems are webs of health that combine fiercely interdependent predation/competition with meshlike interchanges of sight/sound/chemicals that clearly manifest types of cooperation, even communication…. as I elucidated in “EARTH.”
On the other hand, I also step back to see the qualities of this book that transcend its actual contents, for it fits perfectly into the process of “horizon expansion” that I describe elsewhere. A process of vigorously, righteously, even aggressively increasing the scope of inclusion, extending the circle of protection to the next level, and then the next. See also this Smithsonian talk I gave about the never-ending search for “otherness.”
(4) And look for Brin to be in residence at Bard College in October.
David Brin, a scientist, a science fiction author and a commentator on the world’s most pressing technological trends, is in residence at the Hannah Arendt Center at Bard College from Oct. 5 to Oct. 25.
As part of Brin’s fellowship, he will mentor selected Bard students on their fiction and nonfiction writing. He will also offer a number of lectures and discussions. On Sept. 30, at 11:30 a.m., Brin will talk with Hannah Arendt Center Academic Director Roger Berkowitz and “Roundtable” host Joe Donahue on WAMC radio.
On Oct. 7 at 5 p.m. in Reem-Kayden Center 103, Brin will speak about his book, “The Transparent Society: Will Technology Force Us to Choose between Privacy and Freedom?,” with Berkowitz. On Oct. 14 at 7 p.m. in the Bertelsmann Campus Center’s Multipurpose Room, he will attend a debate on “National Security is More Important than the Individual Right to Privacy.”
Bard College is located in Annandale-on-Hudson, NY.
(5) Cheryl Morgan advises on “Writing Better Trans Characters” at Strange Horizons.
Trans people are a big thing these days in equality circles. People are asking what they can do to help the trans cause. Quite simply, the most important thing cis people can do for the trans community right now is to accept us as fully human; not as something to be gawped at and whispered over, not as a clever metaphor with which to discuss gender, but as ordinary people just like you. For cis writers, that means putting us in their stories.
I reject the idea that trans characters should only be written by trans people because cis folk are bound to get it wrong. While there are some really fine trans writers, there simply aren’t enough of us in the world to do what is needed. We have to be part of all fiction, not just fiction that we write ourselves.
(6) Kim Stanley Robinson defended his notion of future technology in Aurora as part of an article about science fiction realism for the Guardian.
Robinson makes no apology for the 21st-century tech of his 26th-century explorers, arguing that progress in science and technology will asymptotically approach “limits we can’t get past”.
“It’s always wrong to extrapolate by straightforwardly following a curve up,” he explains, “because it tends off towards infinity and physical impossibility. So it’s much better to use the logistic curve, which is basically an S curve.”
Like the adoption of mobile phones, or rabbit populations on an island, things tend to start slowly, work up a head of steam and then reach some kind of saturation point, a natural limit to the system. According to Robinson, science and technology themselves are no exception, making this gradual increase and decrease in the speed of change the “likeliest way to predict the future”.
(7) Les Johnson’s guest post about putting together a mission to Mars on According To Hoyt suits the current Mars-centric news cycle very well.
Since I work for NASA and have looked extensively at the technologies required to send people to Mars, I am often asked how close we are to being able to take such a journey. [DISCLAIMER: The very fact that I work for NASA requires me to say that “the opinions expressed herein are my own and do not reflect the views of my employer.”] Basing my opinion solely on information that is publicly available, the answer is… not straightforward. Let me break it into the three areas that Project Managers and Decision Makers (the ones with the money) use when they assess the viability of a project in an attempt to explain my answer.
(8) MARK YOUR CALENDAR: April 3, 2016 will be the next Vintage Paperback Show in Glendale, CA at the Glendale Civic Auditorium from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. STILL $5.00
(9) Editors Eugene Johnson and Charles Day have started an Indiegogo appeal to fund their Drive-In Creature Feature anthology from Evil Jester Press.
Get in line. Buy a ticket, and take a trip to the DRIVE-IN CREATURE FEATURE. Where the monsters from the classic films from the 1950’s to 1980’s shined on the large iconic sliver screens. Where the struggle between human and monsters came alive for the fate of the world. Monsters created from an experiment gone wrong, legendary beasts long asleep, now awaken by melting humans, visitors from a far off world that aren’t as friendly as they appear. Monsters like giant parasitic bugs and ancient sea beasts on the prowl. A mysterious plague turning the homeless population into Moss people. A government sponsored monster goes toe-to-toe with a monster of Celtic myth. and many more are included.
Intriguing tales by some of the best names in horror, including New York Times Best selling authors and comic book writers, Jonathan Maberry, S.G. Browne, Elizabeth Massie, Ronald Kelly, William, F. Nolan, Lisa Morton, Joe McKinney, Jason V. Brock, Weston Ochese , Yvonne Navarro, including cover art by Cortney Skinner…
(10) Alamo Drafthouse has commenced its touring food and film event honoring the 50th anniversary edition of Vincent and Mary Price’s A Treasury of Great Recipes.
During the months of September and October, Alamo Drafthouse locations nationwide will host THE ABOMINABLE DR. PHIBES Feast, featuring a screening of the Vincent Price classic paired with a delectable multi-course feast using recipes from the book. Topping each evening off, Victoria Price – daughter of Vincent and Mary – will be in person sharing memories of her father before the film with her multi-media presentation “Explore, Savor, Celebrate: Life with Vincent Price.”…
In 1965, Mary and Vincent Price published A Treasury of Great Recipes — now regarded as the one of the world’s most beloved cookbooks. The book features recipes collected by Vincent and Mary at restaurants around the world, including original menus from classic restaurants and photographs by the great William Claxton. It has come to be regarded as “one of the most important culinary events of the 20th century” (Saveur Magazine) and was recently named the eighth most popular out-of-print book of any kind by Booklist. The 50th anniversary edition incorporates the original edition, unchanged and in its entirety, along with a new Foreword from Wolfgang Puck and A Retrospective Preface from Victoria.
Here are links to the rest of the schedule — San Antonio, TX – 9/28, Austin, TX – 9/29, Richardson, TX – 9/30, Kalamazoo, MI – 10/6, Kansas City, MO – 10/7, Littleton, CO – 10/14, Ashburn, VA – 10/20, Winchester, VA – 10/22, Yonkers, NY – 10/26.
(11) Vox Popoli has posted a political cartoon by Red Meat and Vox Day about the nonrelease of 2015 Hugo nominating data, “Cabal? What Cabal?”
(12) Dave Freer has an axiom about who it’s important for a writer to please in a post at Mad Genius Club.
That is something that many authors fail to grasp – and not just new ones. I recently read a diatribe by Adam Troy Castro – who missed this completely (He was attacking John Wright, who seems to be engaging his readers… who aren’t part of his publisher’s tribe). I quote: “has been abusing his publisher in public and attacking his editors as people” which is a bad thing, according to Castro “being an asshole to the people who give you money is not a good career move.”
The latter part of that is certainly true. What Castro seems to have failed to figure out is that the money doesn’t actually come from the publisher. It comes from readers – the subset of the public who love your work. If you abuse them, you’re dead. If your publisher abuses them (which is a fair assessment)… lose your publisher. Reassure your readers that this is not your attitude.
(13) Myke Cole, in “You are not crying in the wilderness”, tells why he writes.
Here’s the thing about writing: It’s really hard. It’s a LOT of work. You do most of this work alone and then you send it away and you have absolutely no idea whether it’s reaching anyone or not, how it’s being received, whether or not it means to others what it means to you. I have said before that I am no Emily Dickenson. I write to communicate, to receive a signal back from the array I am constantly sending out in the world.
I write to not be alone.
(14) Alex Pappademas shreds the new Muppets series in “A Rainbow Rejection” at Grantland.
The most fanciful thing about ABC’s muppetational but seldom celebrational The Muppets is that the late-night talk show behind whose scenes it takes place has a female host. In this regard, I support its vision. I support nothing else about The Muppets except the pilot’s use of the great Jere Burns, drier than a silica gel packet as always, in a B-plot in which he refuses to accept his daughter’s interspecies relationship with Fozzie Bear. His issue seems to be more about Fozzie being a bear than being a Muppet — at dinner, he makes snide comments when Fozzie compliments the salmon — but in a broad-stroke sense, I am with Burns on this one. I guess I’ve found the one marriage-equality hypothetical on which I’m a fuming mossback conservative: Turns out I am opposed to the sexualization of the Muppets and therefore to the implication that humans and Muppets1 can or should miscegenate.
This puts me roughly on the same team as the fainting-couch wearer-outers at the Donald Wildmon front group One Million Moms, who took a break from their courageous war on homofascist breakfast cereal and sinfully delicious lesbian yogurt on Monday to declare a fatwa on the new Muppets as “perverted” based solely on the ads — particularly the one that promises “full frontal nudity” and features Kermit the Frog in a casual locker-room pose. A clock that stopped in 1955 and should be thrown in the garbage because it’s an insanely and attention-hungrily homophobic clock is still right twice a day: There is nothing good about this ad, and perhaps you should not be in the Muppet-selling business if you can’t sell the Muppets in 2015 without adding the implication that Kermit fucks, let alone that Miss Piggy wants to fuck Nathan Fillion.
(15) Marc Scott Zicree has posted a new Mr. Sci-Fi video about the Profiles in History room at Monsterpalooza that showed items from his collection that will be going up for auction tomorrow.
(16) The Mets, one day after clinching the National League East, had their rookies take the super hero “hazing” to another level… Or, rather, they removed another level…
[Thanks to James H. Burns, Andrew Porter, the other Mark, SF Site News, and John King Tarpinian for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Kendall.]
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Not such a great example as the RCP former members are libertarians and heavily critical of the left. Vivienne has also written for the online magazine Spiked http://www.spiked-online.com/newsite/article/10321#.VgxIzxk_7qA
Spiked was the direct ancestor of LM magazine aka Living Marxism which was closed after lising a libel action against a UK TV news company.
Now none of that is intended to say her views arent interestung ir tgat they are illigitemate or that she is an uncritical mouthpiece for others – just that people may find her difficult to place on a poltical spectrum. If we think of sugary desserts as “left” and savoury meat dishes as “right” and we imagine a spectrum between the two then the post-RCP space in that spectrum is marmite ice cream with what looks like chocolate sauce but is actually marmite sauce and the cherry on top is also marmite.
@Tintinaus:
I think I mentioned in another thread that I have many, many political/moral issues with the True Game books?
This right here is one of them. Hoo boy.
Those books propose so many implied “good” reasons for euthanizing newborns, from “we looked into their future and saw they would never develop a soul/sense of empathy” to “they were born with a severe mental handicap.” Add in a liberal helping of “Living with constant pain/deformity/disabilty causes psychopathy” and… gah, wall, meet book. These are books I would be *very* cautious to recommend to anyone without huge trigger warnings, because it’s hard to come away from them without getting the idea that Tepper considers that you or someone you love would have been better off executed at birth.
This is the short form of my rant. I have longer ones.
@Tuomas Well, you get my vote for Longest Comment Ever, at least.
She thought that a false ideology was being promoted by the Australian government. So I wondered what would be a typical “Spectator” viewpoint about this that contradicts the view shown in the film in schools, and got:
http://www.spectator.co.uk/australia/5619368/there-were-no-stolen-generations/
http://www.spectator.co.uk/australia/5813668/a-killer-myth/
The arguments include:
– the film depicts underage sexually active girls being removed from their homes, which was not racially motivated
– the number of children removed was small
– almost all were on grounds of child welfare, especially girls forced into prostitution
– similar child welfare policies were in place for white children
– “full-blood” aboriginal children were only taken into care rarely, in extreme cases of child abuse
Without knowing a lot about Australian history, it seems from reading these Spectator columns that the conservative viewpoint would be that this was done on a small scale, almost always for legitimate reasons of child welfare, and was not the result of one racial group being singled out. To whatever extent that historian is incorrect – to whatever extent it was actually done for racist reasons – it seems to me that this position would say that would be wrong. Please let me know what I’m missing. Due to my utter lack of familiarity with Australian issues, I’m obviously not arguing that I think the viewpoint put forward by Keith Windschuttle is the correct one. I’m just trying to parse the statement by the commentator that you quoted.
@Will R. (and others)
I’m not so sure the same thing is being advocated. Tintinaus’ comment doesn’t require both sides to get a chance to make their case, only that whatever message there is makes you think. Raper’s is ruminating on whether message fiction is a story which creates a clear moral ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ without allowing for the idea that the ‘wrong’ might not be wrong and may have understandable and honest motivations.
I think most could agree that a flat strawman enemy (especially one who is obviously intended to represent a contemporary political position) isn’t good writing, and will also turn off some readers, but equally I don’t think it is always appropriate to demand that there should be a sympathetic portrayal. In real life we have examples of people who are just plain bad, and it isn’t unrealistic to have those people appear in fiction.
I’ve been thinking about the subjectivity of taste.
My partner has a deep and abiding love for Alan Moore. I…do not. When faced with almost all things Alan Moore (I have some appreciation for Lost Girls), I do the equivalent of draping myself with garlic, drenching myself in holy water and holding up a crucifix. It has been the source of some conflict over the years, because when people really love something, they often want to share it and it can be painful to have something you love rejected, even more so when that rejection is emphatic.
I just typed a bunch of other stuff and erased it, because it doesn’t really matter. So long as the group environment is largely consistent in an awareness that personal likes and dislikes are not objective rankings of merit, and this one seems to be, I hope existential crises are at a minimum, because that sounds unpleasant.
@Meredith Interesting. I read it as a question of whether the character was portrayed in such a way as to make whatever choice was made more understandable–not necessarily more sympathetic.
You might think that…this is a way too difficult issue to unpack and it isn’t easy to say what the overall Au conservative position is on the ‘Stolen Generation’.
Camestros, since you clearly know more than me, could you help me sketch out the range of possible common positions?
The agreement and overlap for me was more to do with the perceived role of fiction: namely, to help us question. That was interesting to me partly because I don’t think questioning is something highly valued in some of the critical theories being proffered these days.
@Nicole J. LeBoeuf-Little
I don’t think I want to read those books. Just that description was inspiring urges to hold ritual burnings.
@Brian Z
Wikipedia’s article on Stolen Generations would be a better place to look. Notable laws passed were things like:
I trust this answers any questions about equal treatment, but if you want an overview (including the positions that deny the removal) then the wikipedia article as a whole isn’t a bad place to start.
I understand that a similar situation happened in the USA regarding Native American’s and in Canada regarding First Nation peoples, if that helps.
@Will R.
Ah, yes, I think they both support the role of fiction in influencing ideas and pushing people to question assumptions.
And do it justice? No – and I don’t mean anything personal towards you or your discussion style, just that the breadth of the issue and its significance in contemporary Australian politics is big.
Worth reading about- particularly as it is also important un Australian film (eg. Even the musical film “The Sapphires” touches on it) – and there are multiple dimensions to it including British policies towards working class white children sent to Australia (see the Hugo Weaving, David Whenam, Emily Watson movie Oranges and Sunshine), the lasting damage done to Indigenous communitues, the mustrust created and a hustirical tendency for Australian culture to make Aborginality somehow invisible .
I have read a grand total of… 9 1/4 of these books. Voting for all pairs within that set, along with anything I truly love or hate, and maybe if I think about it, making a substitution if it seems appropriate.
21ST CENTURY SCIENCE FICTION PART TWO:
ALL THESE BOOKS ARE YOURS — EXCEPT EUROPA EUROPA
1. LASTING DAMAGE, NOSTALGIA FOR INFINITY
Look to Windward, Iain M. Banks
Revelation Space, Alastair Reynolds
A hard choice, but Banks really tweaks something in me. I love almost everything I’ve read of his, in or out of The Culture. I do think Chasm City would have been a better one than Revelation Space, but I’m thinking of the series as a whole, which seemed to go on too long and started feeling repetitive. Maybe someday if my TBR pile ever clears out a bit I’ll find ebook versions and re-read the series.
6. GIRL AND BOY
Little Brother, Cory Doctorow
The Girl with All the Gifts, M. R. Carey
I’m going to vote for this, even though I only read a bit of Little Brother. I’ve bounced off everything I’ve ever read by Doctorow. Maybe it’s just the context in which I originally discovered him, but everything he writes reads like an overly long Boingboing post to me.
Huh. That’s it.
1. LASTING DAMAGE, NOSTALGIA FOR INFINITY
Look to Windward, Iain M. Banks
2. THE SPEED OF SOFTWARE
The Speed of Dark, Elizabeth Moon
3. BLOGGERS AND TECHNOPHOBES
Rainbows End, Vernor Vinge
4. THE FUTURE HANGS ON A SLENDER THREAD
Cloud Atlas, David Mitchell
5. ONE PERSON MANY BODIES
Ancillary Justice, Ann Leckie
6. GIRL AND BOY
The Girl with All the Gifts, M. R. Carey
7. HURT IN THE DARK
Embassytown, China Miéville
9. QUADDIES AND SPACE BATS
Diplomatic Immunity, Lois McMaster Bujold
11. LOOK BACK, LOOK AHEAD
Farthing, Jo Walton
12. IT’S HARD TO TALK TO IT
Annihilation, Jeff VanderMeer
15. KIND OF A LOT GOING ON
River of Gods, Ian McDonald
Meredith,
Thanks for the link to the Wikipedia article. I wondered whether the views of Keith Windschuttle would be considered significant enough for inclusion. There was this link in the Stolen Generations article:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_wars
Of a half-dozen Australian controversies listed, Stolen Generations is one heading, and the Windschuttle series of books gets its own heading.
It explains that the film the Spectator commentator criticized drew heavily from a UN report. Wikipedia says:
Wikipedia’s discussion of Windschuttle’s book on Stolen Generations is extremely long so I’ll just provide the link to the whole thing:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keith_Windschuttle#The_Fabrication_of_Aboriginal_History.2C_Volume_Three.2C_The_Stolen_Generations_1881-2008
Since I haven’t read these books or reports, I’m not in any kind of position to judge whether any criticisms of either side of what Wikipedia calls “the history wars” have merit.
But do you still think the Spectator commentator was “heavily implying” that taking children from their homes was a good idea? The amount of discussion I just uncovered by following your Wikipedia reference suggests to me that she probably meant what she said: that schools would be better off to teach children how to consider different points of view about historical controversies and ask what they themselves would have done.
@Meredith
The flat strawman enemy is what bounces me off even possibly good books. Admittedly, I like ie. Connie Willis who usually has that one really annoying bureaucrat who has to meddle in everyone’s affairs, but that character is usually there to move along the plot (bad, in my opinion) and provide comedic relief (shifting that bad over a bit into forgivable). Particularly in my reading throughout June and July I came across far too much of that.
Camestros, that’s fine, I wasn’t hoping for any grand disquisition, just wondering if you knew what another alternative conservative position on Stolen Generations is other than the one I found in Spectator.
@Brian Z —
For some glimpse of the intentions of the Australian government, take a look at the laws they passed. If they were only removing children actually neglected or abused, why did they need or want a law establishing that all half-caste children were by definition neglected? Why did they need to avoid judicial review? Why did they need to make all aboriginal children wards of the state rather than of their own parents?
You might also want to bear in mind that it’s become a common theme on the right in the US that talking about how bad slavery really was is unAmerican, and conservatives it not-small numbers unembarrasedly claim slavery was good for the slaves. Not all arguments are worthy of equal respect, and you freely admit this is an area where you are ignorant, so perhaps you should not go to the mat for “even-handed” treatment of the pro and con positions on the removal of aboriginal children from their parents.
Brian’s apparently so frustrated at being unable to troll most of the group that he’s now decided to concern-troll over the positions of random message board posters on other message boards, just to get someone, anyone, to engage.
“I don’t know anything about this but I want to defend that person no one here knows, including me, so can you explain it to me so I have enough clauses I can twist and misread so can try to tell you you’re wrong about whatever it was you said? Honest, it’ll be a thoroughly worthwhile discussion that I’m not entering into with any bias at all except that I’ve already decided you should be nicer to that internet poster none of us know. Maybe you should reach out to her to try to effect a reconciliation, or else it’s your fault that she says objectionable things that I’m pretty sure I can argue aren’t objectionable, if only someone explains to me what we’re all talking about first.”
Lis Carey, I never said Australian schools ought to “teach the controversy” by presenting “both sides” of Stolen Generations. Before having a serious opinion on that I’d have to figure out which arguments have merit – and there is clearly a lot to read. However, I don’t see how that Spectator commentator was heavily implying that taking children away from their parents is good when she proposed asking schoolchildren to think about whether it is good. While I don’t think what was described in her comment – her labeling the UN report propaganda, for example – is appropriate for a school, I do agree it is a good idea to encourage students to think for themselves and ask questions.
Meredith
That is such a perfect way to describe it.
And then there’s that awkward moment when they first express their heretical view, and all you can do is stare frozenly and eventually murmur something like, “It’s interesting that you think that….”
Hey, all. So, Kurt Busiek noticed a major discrepancy in the votes for Round 1, and pointed it out to me. I started doing a complete recount about an hour ago.
It was going along pretty much as I remember, when suddenly I started reading comment after comment after comment I had ABSOLUTELY NO MEMORY OF, on a thread I had read completely, during a long section where there are no comments from me. My current working theory is that, somehow, I skipped an entire page of comments. I don’t know if this was some kind of weird accidental double click on “newer comments”, or some kind of browser hiccup, or what. I don’t click for e-mail follow-up so I had no way of realizing this had happened.
I am going to continue to recount that entire round. If there are any books which should have moved forward but did not, I will put them in round 3.
@Kurt:
But when I disagree with your tastes, it’s grounds to curse my underwear drawer to a long agonizing zombification? Sheesh.
(…that situation in your spice rack? What makes you think it has anything to do with me? You can’t prove a thing.)
Kurt Busiek, wow, I sure did get you to engage.
@kurt – @David Goldfarb kinda has you there.
On Lis’s point “why did they need or want a law” that automatically let them avoid judicial review, which is obviously a good question, I looked up the references to Meredith’s quote which included:
Unfortunately every link in that whole section is dead.
Another Fine Pixel You’ve Gotten Us Into
Yeah…that wasn’t where I hoped that was going.
Sure. That’s brackets, man. Brackets are different.
And hey, who said it was zombification? You’ll just have to wait and see.
Don’t know if these were the dead links but the topic is covered in this very interesting article:
http://www.kooriweb.org/foley/resources/pdfs/34.pdf
Wow that is odd.
Well anyway – I actually just dropped by to say that my prototype time machine does seem to be operating. I’m only expecting small alterations in timelines at the moment. They might show up as minor glitches on web page histories or sequences of comments – stuff like that. Tiny changes in established history. So if anybody notices stuff like that it would be a big help to point it out. Haven’t noticed anything yet though.
OK, had the votes in Round 1 been tabulated correctly, the following bracket pairs would have had different result:
The Hunger Games and Ragamuffin would have tied, and both gone on to the next round. The Hunger Games will be added back to Round 3.
God’s War and Kiln People would have tied, and both gone on to the next round. God’s War will be added back to Round 3.
The Red: First Light would have beaten Little Brother rather than tying with it. As The Red: First Light still went on to Round 2, no further changes will be made. Little Brother will not be penalized for the error.
The Time Traveler’s Wife would have beaten Love Minus Eighty rather than tying with it. As The Time Traveler’s Wife still went on to Round 2, no further changes will be made. Love Minus Eighty will not be penalized for the error.
Many, many apologies, especially to Hunger Games and God’s War fans.
@Tuomas Vainio
My own distaste for Snowpiercer actually originally stemmed from the backstory for saintly – eventually revealed to have been flawed – Gilliam.
Specifically the part where we are assured of his saintliness because in a previous crisis he had cut off his leg to feed starving children.
Just no.
To begin with, the whole this-is-my-flesh Christ-like self-sacrifice was so over-the-top as to be funny, and you don’t want people snickering at that point in the narrative.
The icky cannibalism to survive because we’re being edgy part just annoyed me.
As did the whole bug-eating thing, frankly -some people eat bugs, so what?
They both just seemed to be there for gratuitous creepiness.
And finally a starving person (Gilliam) surviving such an amputation?
It seemed unlikely enough that it lost me completely.
Pull me out of a story with that much of a shock, and I will just be noting all the other improbabilities.
Enough people have already argued pro and con on the hard sciences, but the biological stuff is just as strained.
Not just the polar bear on the mountain, but the zoo/aquaculture/bug production all seemed seriously impossible in the amount of physical space involved.
But all of the scientific could have/couldn’t have is really almost beside the point, because, after all, we are talking about fiction here.
People will forgive a lot of silly science, as long as the story works, and it is on the level of story that Snowpiercer fails for me.
That is, proving there is a plausible way to cover the world with snow doesn’t fix it for me.
The story lost me because it seemed that multiple sloppy world-building decisions were made solely at the service of underlying theories, and usually for sensationalist effect.
For example, there’s no logical reason the folks at the back of the train couldn’t simply have been provided birth control, or themselves have made responsible reproductive choices in its absence.
(The population shift in most of Europe came about before the existence of reliable birth control methods.)
Instead, it suits the narrative to rely on periodic brutal decimations to keep their numbers in check, because politics and spectacle.
The killings are required because the story based on a microcosm/macrocosm model that requires the small scale to mirror the larger, regardless the logical differences provided by a smaller system.
The politics requires the creation of a particular kind of hell, so that is the world-building we get, and we get it beyond credibility.
It’s all an allegory, and its plot is constrained by a clear system of political beliefs and the need to express them clearly and unambiguously.
But, as with the Narnia books, when the reader can’t see the story for the allegory, the whole thing fails.
This site does that to me every now and then. One click (or what seems like one click) will jump two pages of comment thread. Doesn’t happen on other sites, and I thought it was just me.
But hey, if it’s something to watch out for, it’s good to know it’s an issue, and can be watched for.
@Kyra
You may have missed a page as the way it seems to work, if a new page of comments (ie, 201 onwards) is created while you’re looking at a penultimate page (ie, 100-150 of a post with 198 comments), clicking Newer Comments will take you to the page 5 with comments 201 onwards instead of page 4 with 151 onwards.
ETA: My mitigant for this is to keep an eye out on the time stamp between the penultimate page’s last post and the first post of the last page – if it suddenly jumps significantly, I’ve missed a page.
(Kurt Busiek – as to the apparent extra vote for Love Minus Eighty, there was one ambiguous vote I probably interpreted as vote for a tie rather than an abstention. I tend to be generous with that interpretation. I hope so, anyway, since it makes sense and the other possibility is that I screwed up in two different ways simultaneously. :/ )
Could be. I just ignored anything that wasn’t clearly a vote for one or the other, and with 11 votes on one side that was enough to ask about even if I missed some sort of finer issue.
Yeah, that seems less likely. Though I could manage it!
I am somewhat relieved to know that this is a Thing That Can Happen and not a sign that I am losing my mind. I’ll keep a watch for it from now on.
That being said, I’m going to start tabulating the Round 2 votes now, so voting on that will close shortly.
Drat, I was privately hoping the recount would include a bunch of new votes for Patrick Ness. 😉
Don’t worry too much about it Kyra, mistakes happen, and now you’ll now to keep an eye out for it in the future.
@Kathodus
Indeed. Strawenemies abound in the Puppy nominees.
@McJulie
Glad it worked for you. 🙂
@Brian Z
It would probably be a quicker conversation if you assumed that I’ve known about the situation in Australia for considerably longer than you have and your quick googling is unlikely to change my mind on the subject.
> “Drat, I was privately hoping the recount would include a bunch of new votes for Patrick Ness.”
(There were a couple more, in fact, but Spin also increased its count a little, so it ended up being a wash for that one.)
@Kyra
Double drat!
OK, closing the voting on Round Two, posting the results shortly. I did a couple quick double checks on it, so I think there were no missed pages this time …
My comments are going to be pretty brief this time around, since I spent a lot of time doing the recount and would like to get Round Three up before I fall asleep.
21ST CENTURY SCIENCE FICTION PART TWO:
ALL THESE BOOKS ARE YOURS EXCEPT EUROPA EUROPA
In addition to the votes below, there were also votes for Grimspace, Fortune’s Pawn, Glasshouse, and The Best of All Possible Worlds.
As was mentioned previously, due to voting tabulation error, God’s War and The Hunger Games should have gone on to Round Two; they will be added to Round Three as unseeded competitors.
1. LASTING DAMAGE, NOSTALGIA FOR INFINITY
WINNER: Look to Windward, Iain M. Banks – 16 votes
Revelation Space, Alastair Reynolds – 6 votes
2. THE SPEED OF SOFTWARE
WINNER: The Speed of Dark, Elizabeth Moon – 14 votes
The Lifecycle of Software Objects, Ted Chiang – 8 votes
3. BLOGGERS AND TECHNOPHOBES
WINNER: Rainbows End, Vernor Vinge – 17 votes
Feed, Mira Grant – 15 votes
An extremely close one here.
4. THE FUTURE HANGS ON A SLENDER THREAD
WINNER (seeded): Fledgling, Octavia E. Butler – 20 votes
Cloud Atlas, David Mitchell – 8 votes
5. ONE PERSON MANY BODIES
WINNER (seeded): Ancillary Justice, Ann Leckie – 48 votes
Kiln People, David Brin – 2 votes
Crunch.
6. GIRL AND BOY
WINNER (seeded): The Girl with All the Gifts, M. R. Carey – 22 votes
Little Brother, Cory Doctorow – 8 votes
7. HURT IN THE DARK
WINNER: Embassytown, China Miéville – 13 votes
The Red: First Light, Linda Nagata – 11 votes
Another extremely close one; Nagata has scored well in some very tough rounds.
8. SERIOUS ILLNESS
WINNER (seeded): Lock In, John Scalzi – 22 votes
Station Eleven, Emily St. John Mandel – 9 votes
9. QUADDIES AND SPACE BATS
WINNER (seeded): Diplomatic Immunity, Lois McMaster Bujold – 26 votes
Learning the World, Ken MacLeod – 5 votes
10. MOST OF HUMANITY GETS WIPED OUT
WINNER: Accelerando, Charles Stross – 15 votes
Oryx & Crake, Margaret Atwood – 8 votes
11. LOOK BACK, LOOK AHEAD
WINNER (seeded): Farthing, Jo Walton – 22 votes
Spin, Robert Charles Wilson – 9 votes
12. IT’S HARD TO TALK TO IT
WINNER: Annihilation, Jeff VanderMeer – 14 votes
Blindsight, Peter Watts – 12 votes
13. I JUST WANT TO GET HOME
WINNER (seeded): The Martian, Andy Weir – 19 votes
Ragamuffin, Tobias Buckell – 8 votes
14. DEATH IS NOT THE END
WINNER: Passage, Connie Willis – 12 votes
Love Minus Eighty, Will McIntosh – 2 votes
15. KIND OF A LOT GOING ON
WINNER: Anathem, Neal Stephenson – 14 votes
River of Gods, Ian McDonald – 8 votes
16. MYSTERY STORIES
WINNER (seeded): The Lost Steersman, Rosemary Kirstein – 19 votes
The Yiddish Policemen’s Union, Michael Chabon – 11 votes
17. TIME AND SPACE
WINNER (seeded): Leviathan Wakes, James S. A. Corey – 23 votes
The Time Traveler’s Wife, Audrey Niffenegger – 8 votes
This is the round where the literary SF all got wiped out, pretty much.
Five books I’ve read left.
I’m just hoping Anathem stays in long enough for me to read it.
I lost one book this round (Station Eleven(/i>), but it was up against another book I’d read so chances were good I’d lose one of them.
Another who was hoping that Ness would be the YA to win out in the recount…
Round Three of the brackets has been posted:
https://file770.com/?p=25220&cpage=4#comment-350051
> “This is the round where the literary SF all got wiped out, pretty much. Five books I’ve read left.”
Yeah … Cloud Atlas, Station Eleven, The Time Traveler’s Wife, and Oryx and Crake all gone at once. All ones I love, too. Literary fiction (and also YA fiction) don’t seem to last in the brackets here, in general.
Will R
Please don’t tell Nick Mamatas about Vivienne and I interpretting words differently. We will get in trouble.
Dang, nearly missed this, stupid “work”…
1. LASTING DAMAGE, NOSTALGIA FOR INFINITY
Yeah, there’s nobody who really can get that across as well as Banks could when talking about the Culture Wars: Look to Windward, Iain M. Banks
3. BLOGGERS AND TECHNOPHOBES
If we’d chosen a different Vinge, I don’t know if this would have been so easy: Feed, Mira Grant
5. ONE PERSON MANY BODIES
Kiln People was really many people in many bodies, they just had a common root; so Ancillary Justice, Ann Leckie
9. QUADDIES AND SPACE BATS
MacLeod’s too much fun: Learning the World, Ken MacLeod
10. MOST OF HUMANITY GETS WIPED OUT
Are we wiped out if we all change gradually? Accelerando, Charles Stross
12. IT’S HARD TO TALK TO IT
And yet he’s so good at it: Blindsight, Peter Watts
13. I JUST WANT TO GET HOME
No contest: The Martian, Andy Weir
15. KIND OF A LOT GOING ON
Yet ultimately clearly laid out: Anathem, Neal Stephenson
17. TIME AND SPACE
It’s twelve years old, overly optimistic except when it presses the hollywood everyone-is-an-emo-killbot-with-angst-issues button, but you still keep going back for the sequels: Leviathan Wakes, James S. A. Corey