(1) As noted by Patrick on Making Light, the Guardian has an editorial about the sudden turnaround in British public opinion regarding the need to help Syrian refugees, “a shift clearly caused by the heartrending photographs of young Aylan Kurdi’s drowned body washed up on a Turkish beach.” More commentary about the main topic in his post, but here’s the reason someone sent me the link —
Likewise, I’m as small-minded and focused on the local as anybody else. Normally the displacement of millions of innocent Syrians tends to weigh on me as merely one of a seemingly endless series of humanitarian crises for which there is never enough attention or care. But put one particular namecheck into a Guardian editorial and you have my undivided attention:
[I]t is also an astonishingly vivid demonstration of the inadequacy of statistics to move our moral sentiments compared with the power of pictures, and still more of pictures that bring to life stories, to affect us in ways that reasoning never could. As the critic Teresa Nielsen Hayden observed, “Story is a force of nature.” One single death and a refugee family have moved a nation to whom 200,000 deaths and 11 million refugees had remained for years merely a statistic, and not a very interesting one at that.
That was…unexpected.
(2) The impression I get from Larry Correia’s “MHI Challenge Coin Update” is that today – the 5th – is the last day to order Monster Hunter International challenge coins. Unlike another famous Puppy, he probably has only one 5th in his deck.
Monster Hunter International challenge coin
(3) Steve Davidson ends his new opinion piece about SP4 on Amazing Stories on a satirical note:
But until the event is scheduled, we’ve still got Sad Puppies IV to deal with, because the problem is, as spokesperson for that effort, Kate Paulk’s words do not match her stated intent.
I’ll shortly be announcing the creation of the One True SF/F Award Run by Real Fans for Real Reasons, which will be presented at a soon-to-be-announced convention, the One True SF/F Genre Convention Run by Real Fans for Real Reasons. Which no doubt will be quickly shortened to SFFGCRBRFFRRCon, just as the awards themselves (a silver flying saucer base, above which will be mounted a symbol for science fiction, fantasy or horror that will be crowd-sourced and unique every year) will soon be known as the SFFGCRBRFFRRies.
Everyone attending the convention will receive a ribbon to attach to their ID badge. That ribbon will state that the wearer is a REAL FAN for REAL REASONS. Additional ribbons, containing short, pithy summations of REASONS can be appended to the RFRR ribbons for those who wish greater specificity. Summations such as: “I’m clueless about fandom but it must be doing something wrong because I am not the center of attention”, “Money is the root of all evil, I earn so much I must be Evil”, “The message in my message fiction is that message fiction sucks” and “Someone on the internet told me that someone on the internet is doing it wrong”. For a fee, personal REASON ribbons will be made on site.
(4) Patrick May – “Sad Puppies 4: A Slate By Any Other Name”
Recommendations will be collected on the Sadpuppies 4 website, where one page will be dedicated to each category. In February or March, Paulk’s stated goal is to post “a list of the ten or so most popular recommendations in each Hugo category, and a link to the full list in all its glory.” Paulk goes on to say “If you want to see your favorite author receive a nomination and an award, your best bet will be to cast your nomination ballot for one of the works in the top ten or thereabouts of The List.”
And therein lies the problem. Even though SP4 is not positioning their list as a slate and even though the organizers plan to provide a recommendation list with more entries than allowed nominees, the approach of ranking the recommendations and suggesting that people vote for more popular works gives the appearance of attempting to game the Hugo nomination process. As we saw at Sasquan, this raises the ire of a significant percentage of Hugo voters. Yes, some people voted against the works themselves and, yes, some people voted against the Sad Puppies personally, but many voted No Award because slates violate what they see as the spirit of the process. Skewing the voting patterns from anything other than purely individual choices will be interpreted similarly.
(5) We interrupt this Scroll to link “If You Were A Platypus, My Dear – A Play In As Many Acts As Is Required” by RedWombat (Part I and Part II)
Puppies: DO YOU SEE THIS ANTI-RURITANIAN SCREED!? IT WON THE HUGE AWARD!
Commenter D: No, it was only nominated—
Puppies: THIS IS WHAT IS WRONG WITH THE HUGE AWARD!
Troll B: You’re all so racist against Ruritanians.
Commenter B: You’re the one who brought them up in the first place! No one was saying anything about Ruritanians!
Troll B: As an outsider, it’s obvious to me that’s what you were talking about. You should just admit that you all think they’re tax cheats.
Commenters J-Q: …we don’t. No one thinks that. That would be racist.
Troll B: JUST LIKE THAT RACIST PLATYPUS WHO HATES RURITANIANS
FFA: *makes popcorn*
(6) A post on Hackaday admires Sasquan’s Hugo base, made by Matthew Dockery (aka gfish):
A lot of hackers like science fiction. If you aren’t one of them, you might not know that the Hugo is a prestigious science fiction award handed out at the World Science Fiction Convention every year. The statue looks like a rocket ship, but every year the base the rocket ship rests on is different. Kinetic sculptor [gfish] realized the convention would be in Spokane (his hometown and near his current residence) and decided to enter the competition to create the bases. He won, so the 2015 Hugos all have [gfish’s] bases on them and it’s pretty neat that he’s shared the process he used to make them.
And base maker “gfish” takes you step-by-step through the design and manufcaturing process:
The image I had in mind was a kind of spiky, tessellated… something. Rocket blast, maybe, or the central plateau of Washington state, surrounded by mountains. I wanted to leave it ambiguous…
Once I was happy with the design, I needed to find a way to “unfold” it into individual polygons. I had heard of the Japanese papercraft program Pepakura being used by costumers to make armor, so I tried that. It worked — and it even let me test my design in paper first! I’m glad it did, because this let me refine the design in a very fast and cheap way. Things always look different in real life.
I’ve wondered whether people have been shanking themselves on the edges while carrying these Hugos. Flashback: In 1989 Deb Geiser says she cut herself working on a Hugo (mine, as it turned out) and those weren’t sharp at all.
Gfish/Dockery continued a tradition started by Hugo-maker Jack McKnight — missing part of the con to finish working on the awards —
There was a slight panic at the last minute because I sized the holes wrong on one of the nameplates before sending the file to the laser etching service, but that was easily solved with my dad’s drill press. And I missed the masquerade because I was stuck in a hotel room bolting on rockets. But you know what? That was absolutely okay. This is probably the closest I will ever come to winning a Hugo myself, and I loved every minute of it.
(7) Cracked delivers another round of honest movie posters.
(8) Thomas Olde Heuvelt comments on John C. Wright’s “Hugo Controversy Quiz Questions”
What struck me is your answer to question 6. You state: “Do you remember how science fiction began? We write stories about space princesses being rescued by space heroes from space monsters, pirates, and evil robots. Those who attempt to find a deeper meaning or a social crusade in that are ill informed illwishers whose ulterior motives are unfriendly to our genre.” This much boils down to something I’ve read was part of the main argument for Sad Puppies 3 (I believe it was Brad Torgersen who said it, but I may be mistaken): that they wanted stories about tentacles, not social issues. A pledge for more ‘adventure’, to generalize. Which is a fair argument, I think.
Except… your story that got replaced by mine, “Yes, Virginia, There is a Santa Clause,” is not a story about space monsters or tentacles, it’s a story about a Christmas miracle imposed by God, and fairly evangelical as interpreted by many. (Whether it can be taken as an ‘adventure’ story, is an argument I won’t go into here). I immediately take your word that your intent is not to “indoctrinate the readers into a particular [in this case Christian] worldview” and even “reject that premise with scorn and umbrage”. But I do know that for many who are not Christian (like me), the story *may* read as evangelical and indoctrinating. So, if you didn’t have any agenda and just wanted to tell a good story, the interpretation of indoctrination is purely based on a difference between what is close to you and what is close to non-religious readers. And that, I think, is exactly the same the other way around. I am fairly sure that John Chu didn’t have any political agenda when he wrote a story with gay characters (“The Water That Falls On You From Nowhere”), and I’m a 100% sure that I didn’t have a political agenda when I wrote my first Hugo-nominated story, “The Boy Who Cast No Shadow” (which also happened to feature a gay character). I’ve read many misassumptions that stories like these are always part of some bigger conspiracy to push a social agenda. But that’s nonsense. I don’t have an agenda, except to write what I think are good stories. They may differ from what you think are good stories, and that’s perfectly fine. That’s the real diversity in sciencefiction and fantasy.
Let me state this: people who write different stories than what you know or like, not necessarily have “sad and narrow lives”. You glorify what you know. I glorify what I know. Stephen King glorifies what he knows. Whether it’s God, or a gay tentacle, or an evil clown – as long as they are good stories, who cares?
I am, #inallmodesty, one of the finest people who kicked him out of the Novelette category to begin with.
— Thomas Olde Heuvelt (@Olde_Heuvelt) August 25, 2015
(9) Otherwise, a typical day at the office for John C. Wright – “More of the Same”
I note that Mr George RR Martin calls for a return to civility in the Sad Puppies debate (http://grrm.livejournal.com/440444.html). I welcome the idea and would not be displeased if the Puppykickers were men of such character as to be able to carry through with it. But I applaud the gesture….
They addicts of Social Justice seek forever to be outraged at some nonexistent injustice, so that they can paint themselves as martyrs and crusaders in a righteous cause, but without the inconvenience of suffering martyrdom or the travail of crusade which would accompany any fight against a real injustice.
One sign of Morlockery is to pen a missive asking one’s foes to abandon their arms and surrender in the name of compromise or civility or somesuch hogwash, while offering nothing, nothing whatsoever, in return, not even basic honesty.
Nor is Mr. Martin in a position to offer anything. Like the Sad Puppies, his side is a loose coalition of likeminded but independent members.
If he refrains from incivility, but his allies do not, I gain nothing by forswearing the use of such colorful terms as ‘Morlocks’ or accurate terms as ‘Christ-haters.’ If I wanted to be bland and inaccurate, I would adopt the flaccid language of political correctness.
And, by an entirely expected coincidence, during the same fortnight as Mr. Martin’s call for civility, we find other members of the SocJus movement busily not being civil or honest:
The surrealistic sensation of finding oneself subject to the two-minute hate for things one did not say by eager Witch-hunters (leveling silly, false and negligent accusations apparently in hopes of gaining a reputation for zealotry) is not one I would wish on any unstoical soul. In this week’s episode, we find that I call men bad names not because they betray my trust, ruin my favorite show, and seek to worm their sick doctrines into the minds of impressionable children, but because I do not like women befriending women. Who knew?
https://quoteside.wordpress.com/2015/09/05/the-weekly-round-up-592015/
(10) Philip Sandifer – “Weird Kitties: Best Novel Open Thread”
So far, for my part, I’ve gotten through Seveneves, which I thought a good but not great Neal Stephenson novel, and am about a third of the way through The Vorrh, which is very much the sort of novel you’d expect Alan Moore to call “the current century’s first landmark work of fantasy and ranking amongst the best pieces ever written in that genre.” The latter will almost certainly make my ballot; the former could be knocked off without too much trouble. I’ll probably not get to The Shepherd’s Crown, since I’ve not read a Discworld novel in decades, but may well nominate it just because a Hugo ballot without it would just feel wrong somehow.
(11) The argument against reblogging entire posts:
Famous economist quotes 100 percent of my blog post. That's capitalism, right? http://t.co/o3p2cqRR2P
— Nick Buy My Book Mamatas ??????????????? (@NMamatas) September 5, 2015
[Thanks to Shao Ping, Mark, Steve Davidson and John King Tarpinian for some of these links. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Jack Lint.]
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But I doubt you have regular street-battles between Antifan and Neo-Nazis.
It happens, but not that often mainly because of armed police and the peculiar spread of politics in the US: fascism is essentially a rural and extraparliamentary phenomenon in the US, and antifa is focused on the cities. It’s not like there are multiparty parliaments with one or more fascist or near-fascist parties in office, with urban recruitment. But sometimes, there’s some action.
Let’s save everyone some time.
Over the next few months various individuals,groups and publications are going to be gathering their nominations for the next Hugos.
There will be snarky comments; thinly and not-so-thinly veiled insults and back-handed compliments; delight at previously unknown works and ‘suggestions’ to be followed if “they want to be taken seriously”.
Instigators on both (or all) sides will write things that start out reasonable but will be unable to resist tossing a grenade into it.
Someone will be referred to as a Marxist.
Someone will be called sexist.
The words/phrases “colonialism”; “tired cliches”; “traditional”; “return to glory days of. . .” and “cultural appropriation”, among others that have been done to death, will be done to death.
Someone will write a poly-syllabic mess that sounds like he overdosed on William F Buckley.
Voting will be either a triumph or a travesty depending on who wins.
Then it will all start over.
@Emma re: Sandifer:
My days of not taking him seriously are certainly…..probably just beginning, actually.
Well I’d say ‘important’ (and significant) would be part of the argument for ‘great’. The issue would be what could I add to the case for Madame Bovary being great that would come from me reading it? Sure, if I was particularly good at generating original criticism of French literature then I might find new insights into the book that others have not but even then for a work that has been pulled apart so many times it is very unlikely that I would find anything new to add.
What my own reading of a book would add is the extent to which it appealed to me and the extent to which affected me both emotionally and intellectually. I don’t think those are insignificant things but I don’t think they add, by themselves, much to the case of whether Madame Bovary is a great work of literature. That *lots* of people may have been deeply affected emotionally and intellectually by the book is salient but I already can make that claim. Additionally having read the book I would have a better understanding of the arguments others may have made that it is a great work of literature but that relates more to my capacity advance other people’s argument.
To what extent does this apply to the Hugo Awards? Much less so. New works don’t have the years of people revisiting them and pulling the case of to see how they work. That The Peripheral left me a bit bored and cold is more germane and that I thought the info-dumps in Seveneves add to the story rather than detract is a thing worth saying.
I think Sandifer is misapplying the Madame Bovary argument above to a situation in which it simply doesn’t apply. We (as in the big intersubjective net of everybody) hasn’t finished reading these new books yet [OK we haven’t finished reading Madame Bovary yet or Great Expectations yet either but they have been read enough that there is a substantial cloud of opinion on them]
In 3189, now that we’ve encountered an alien race that reads rot13 from birth, we’re all scrambling for a new way to discuss spoilers.
@IamNan: Gur pbybavfgf ner fznyyre guna gur pbybffv, V nffhzr gurl ersbez sebz gur vpr zber dhvpxyl. Vs lbh ivrj gur vavgvny cnentencuf gnyxvat nobhg gur pbybal njnxravat nf njnxravat sebz nsgre gur fcevat naq abg njnxravat va gur zbeavat, vg fgvyy ubyqf gbtrgure. Nyfb, gur gerrf gurl rng jrer nccneragyl phg qbja rneyl, fb gurl pbhyq or erzanagf bs n cerivbhf plpyr, naq gur guva sberfg pbhyq or orpnhfr gurer ner ab arj gerrf tebjvat nsgre gur vagreehcgrq pbybffv/gerr yvsrplpyr.
I can only offer a data point – I also didn’t finish the book but I loved the TV show. Went back to the book and still couldn’t get into it, but I still love the show.
Definitely. One of Germany’s larger parties is the Social Democratic Party (the oldest party and founded in 1863/69). They are currently in a coalition with the conservatives which means that the current Vice-Chancellor is a Socialist. Bush jr. actually had to deal with a socialist Chancellor in the form of Gerhard Schröder. And Vice-Chancellor Joschka Fisher was from the Green Party, who are, in some ways, a different brand of socialist.
Today we also have Communists like Gregor Gysi (who’s related to Doris Lessing and a brilliant speaker) or Sarah Wagenknecht.
Here’s the amusing thing about Wakulla Springs & IYWADML for me (as a card-carrying Social Justice Warrior and no doubt other things). I thought both of them were gorgeous pieces of literature, each in its own way. I found them incredibly well written and worthy of praise. But I also found them incredibly marginal members of the category “speculative fiction”. And when I made my selections for both the Nebula and Hugo awards that year, this judgment slid them way down in my rankings relative to other works that had a different balance of excellent writing and SFFnal content. So I tend to be extremely amused when I find people making assumptions about my literary evaluations based solely on my social politics.
Here in the year 9797, we find all socio-political categories quaint and amusing, but understand why they are still a staple of historical fiction, however ill-categorized.
> “The issue would be what could I add to the case for Madame Bovary being great that would come from me reading it?”
That isn’t really what I was getting at.
What if you read it and it’s terrible?
Not just “oh, this really doesn’t speak to me”. Not just “well, I can see why some people like it, but I don’t”. TERRIBLE. Poor structure, cardboard characters, dull prose, a plot that was a cliche even at the time it was written.
Think that couldn’t happen? It’s happened with books I’ve read. Not with Madame Bovary, but with others I could name.
How could so many critics possibly be wrong? Well, here’s a question I’d like to pose — according to a number of prominent, well-regarded critics at the time, the greatest novel of the 19th century was … Kenilworth. According to a number of prominent, well-regarded critics today, Kenilworth is a relatively unimportant footnote in literature, not a great book, really nothing special at all. So to anyone who hasn’t read the book, I’d like to ask, which group is right?
Are you sure?
(Think the “test of time” will give you the answer? Kenilworth had been written about 80 years before this “best novel of the 19th century” judgement was being made. It had stood the test of time. Until it didn’t. Maybe it will again.)
Without reading a book, you CANNOT judge whether it was great. Only whether other people believe it to be great. That is not the same thing.
@Jamoche re Hic Sunt Monstra: Gur pbybavfgf ner nofbyhgryl vpr tubfgf. Jura gur aneengbe fnlf gur gjb bs gurz “zrygrq” ng gur raq bs gur fgbel, gung’f yvgrenyyl gehr. Vg’f jul ur qrfpevorf uvzfrys nf nyjnlf uhatel; ur jnf nyjnlf uhatel orsber fgneivat gb qrngu. Vg’f jul gur pbybavfgf chefhr gur yvgrenyyl checbfryrff uhag bs gur vpr pbybffv. Vg’f gur vpr erzrzorevat jung gurl qvq va yvsr.
I also am finding “The Oiran’s Song” memorable and not just because of its brutality. I didn’t mind that I had to read it with Wikipedia open in another tab; not explaining all the culture-specific terminology made the story flow better. And there is just enough hint as to when the story is taking place that necessary historical information can be slipped in (the profession of oiran is in decline; there’s a war going on but the why of it doesn’t really matter for the story’s purposes). One thing that bugged me initially was that I couldn’t figure out why it was told in second-person, intimate enough to be first person. I think vg’f gur bav gryyvat Nxven uvf yvsr-fgbel va beqre gb fnl “V haqrefgnaq lbh”, dhvgr n tvsg gb erprvir sebz na vzzbegny orvat.
JCW:
They (sic) addicts of Social Justice seek forever to be outraged at some nonexistent injustice,
Back in the 30s, Time Magazine always put that part of the spelled-out name in scare quotes. I think that’s a practice that should be revived.
@Jim: BX, fb jura Wvyyvna genvyf bss jura gnyxvat nobhg vpr erzanagf, vg’f abg whfg orvat hcfrg nobhg ure cneragf, vg’f fulvat njnl sebz npprcgvat ernyvgl?
Won’t be the first time something subtle passed me by 🙂
I read “Hic Sunt Monstra” the way that Jim Henley did, which is why I found it an impressive story. It’s one of those where the ending clicked and made me see the whole rest of the story in a new light.
@rrede
That rant regarding Sandifer was a beautiful thing, and articulated a bunch of stuff that’s been rattling round my head since this morning (but which I couldn’t articulate clearly. Thank you.
Well I think you have very insightfully got to the essence of the difference in our viewpoint. For me the primary issue is that other people think that it is great – but not on a whim but by a long process of criticism and re-evaluation. How I experience the book is of so little significance that it adds effectively nothing. It may be that I am write and collective opinion is wrong but rationally I have to accept that it is more likely that my opinion is the less reliable one.
Is that collective opinion infallible? No, because literary criticism and cultural opinion is not a robust methodology – unlike the methodoligies in science and mathematics. [Yet the ‘wrong in the wrong-in-the-past argument can be applied there also] However, while fallible it isn’t nonesensical.
In short: my opinion & experience of a book is always one of many. The greatness or otherwise of a book does not rest on anyone person’s experience of it (IMHO) and in the case of something like Madame Bovary my experience of it makes no difference one way or another.
Note this very much is NOT an argument for avoiding ‘great’ works and forming your own opinions and even convincing others that your opinions are correct.
I can’t get into “Hic sunt monstra” because I can’t accept the conceit of vpr erperngvat yvivat vaqvivqhnyf jvgu nyy gurve zrzbevrf naq srryvatf. Rfcrpvnyyl fvapr gur nhgube gevrf gb unaqjnivatyl rkcynva vg jvgu gur ovg nobhg gurer orvat inevbhf xvaqf bs vpr; gurer pregnvayl ner, ohg pelfgnyyvar sbezf vpr KV, vpr KVV, rgp. qba’g unir erfheerpgvir cebcregvrf. Probably a matter of where my suspension of disbelief line is drawn in science fiction. In fantasy I’d be able to say “never mind plausibility, just go with the emotions and the implications.”
@Daniela: on national-socialist = socialist in Germany
I’m probably a little late, both in comment time and CEST/MESZ.
For an official start just google: steinbach nazis links
That is Erika Steinbach, proud member of center-right-Christian CDU.
And I’ve seen this equation sometimes in debates with pegida people and the like this year.
I guess “Rotfaschist” / “red fascist” has some history, too, but rather considering Stalinism.
“Hic Sunt Monstra”: I got distracted by the scale problems in the worldbuilding and missed the subtle hints. Going back I see it now, but the scale problems are still there.
http://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-34153119 A ballet version of Orwell’s 1984
I kind of want to say something mildly in defense of message fiction in general. If you can read it as a subgenre of its own, the way people read things like Passion plays and Piers Plowman and Pilgrim’s Progress, there’s probably the same ratio of good to bad among message works as any others.
I have to say this because one of my favorite books ever was Cement.
Obviously I know I have more tolerance for message fiction whose messages I am in some sympathy with (I don’t have to have perfect agreement), and on the other hand, a sympathetic message is definitely not enough. A reasonable assortment of literary/fun-reading qualities must be present. And also, I am sure that messages with which I in harmony with are less visible to my view anyhow.
No, I need to correct that paragraph. I’m not a cool-headed academic and if the message, or the worldview, or the premise is reprehensble to me, I can’t normally slog through the work. I can give some stupid ideas some slack, but there is a limit.
My personal thoughts: if a book has attracted a swarm of imitators and critical commentators, if there are allusions to it scattered around like confetti in other books, then you may certainly conclude that it is influential, even important. But I’d be hesitant about applying the label “great” unless I’d actually read it.
Of course, it’s perfectly possible for a book to be influential, and important, and even great, without being universally enjoyable. The example I always use here is Henry James. I freely concede his importance; writers and critics whom I respect immensely have described James’s art and method in detail, and I will defer to their well-reasoned judgment and gladly proclaim James a great writer. Just, please don’t ask me to read any, because my personal reaction to Henry James is more or less that of Pursewarden in the Alexandria Quartet: “Would you rather read Henry James or be pressed to death by weights?”
It’s a personal reaction; James is doing his thing with great skill and artistry, but what he’s doing doesn’t resonate with me. The fault lies neither in Henry James nor in myself; it’s just one of those things. (For that matter, Lawrence Durrell and the Alexandria Quartet aren’t exactly universally beloved. Heck, the first time I tried to read Justine I slammed the book shut halfway through the first paragraph, and didn’t open it again for two or three years.)
The year is 3748, the name of the place is Babylon MDCCCLXXXVIII.
@Jane-Dark: @rrede
That rant regarding Sandifer was a beautiful thing, and articulated a bunch of stuff that’s been rattling round my head since this morning (but which I couldn’t articulate clearly. Thank you.
Glad you enjoyed it! I haven’t been able to post much the last few days (ARGH START OF CLASSES), but I’ve been reading and enjoyed some of your posts (alas nothing specific can be dragged to the top of my mind, but I definitely reocgnize your name!)–hope we can talk more later!
@Jamoche: No question different people will bring different tastes and preferences to the reading party. That’s why
all the CHORFs who disagree with me must be destroyed by my slate!we give out the Hugos by voting.At least that’s how it would have appeared from the Year 4770, from where I should be typing this. Stupid Great Filter…
> “For me the primary issue is that other people think that it is great – but not on a whim but by a long process of criticism and re-evaluation. How I experience the book is of so little significance that it adds effectively nothing.”
That way of looking at things is odd to me for a number of reasons, but as long as we are agreed, as I believe we are, on the pertinent point currently at hand — that it is an inappropriate way to attempt to judge works specifically for the purpose of making Hugo nominations — then I cannot say the differences in the ways we choose to judge greatness actually bothers or concerns me. So, I’ll leave it be.
The people in That Party who actually believed in the “Socialist” part of the name were purged in 1934. That should have settled any questions about it.
Jim Henley: Yes, exactly.
If we cared about critical opinions, we’d give the award to Ancillary Sword (see https://chaoshorizon.wordpress.com/2015/02/01/final-best-of-2014-sff-critics-meta-list/).
5554. In the city that used to be London, a small robot is wandering down a street, pushing a pram full of parts. It’s a big problem, obsolete hardware wanting to live longer. They call themselves Johnnys, a name that’s lost in history, along with a million other Chapter 5s.
Taking off from Camestros’ and Kyra’s comments on test of time, great books, important books, etc. etc. etc.
One of the best assignments I ever had in one of my graduate courses was in a course informally known as “Elizabethan Playwrights Who Were Not Shakespeare!” Yes, there were some. Nobody tends to know them anymore because SHAKESPEARE!
(One thing I learned–wow, was Shakespeare a wimp when it came to killing off characters in tragedies–even his Hamlet didn’t strew as many bodies around as SOME of his contemporaries. Hah, think GRRM is bad, you oughta check out…..erm, I cannot remember most of their names…in my defense, this class was one I took as a senior allowed to take a graduate course my last year by my Shakespeare prof who knew my work from other courses and noted I’d taken all the undergraduate Shakespeare classes, so….which means that class in 1979).
We had to pick one of the playwrights we were studying and research the history of critical response to their work (had to be able to find at least 200 years of commentary, though, of course, not all the commentary had to be by academics since the academic discipline known as “English” is a very recent historical development). Then we had to analyze the changes in critical response over time.
WOW. Enlightening to say the least.
Another one of my favorite profs (taught the Romantics) told me once that during his lifetime, it was as if Shelley and Keat were on a see-saw: the academic critical consensus could not allow both to be “great” at the same time. They just went up and down. (That was in an undergrad course, so we didn’t do the research, but I trust his sense of it).
In MY lifetime, I can tell you that the table of contents for the Norton Anthologies of American Literature (and Norton ANTHOLOGY=platinum standard of canonization) has shifted dramatically in terms of what is included: in my day as an undergraduate (1977), AMERICAN literature started with the Puritans.
Starting about in the 1990s (I incorporated some library research exercises for my students in the undergraduate critical theory course), the ToCs started including translations of American Indian materials and SPANISH (the first books printed in the “New World”, aka insert Terry Pratchettian rant about how it was only NEW to the European colonial invaders, were in Spanish, not English).
The idea that there is some critical consensus growing over time that “winnows” out the less great/important/whatever works is contradicted by the fact that critical consensus changes dramatically over time, and doesn’t necessarily have any relationship to popularity at the time of writing. And the historical fact that in the U.S./American literature critical consensus tended to limit canonization to a very select group of white male authors (Melville as a working class dude was kept out for quite a while, I gather) makes me wax even more dubious about this idea of “greatness” being conferred by a bunch of overly educated elite mostly until very recently white male critics.
And the earlier you go, historically speaking, the more dubious things are: _Beowulf_ survived in ONE copy. ONE! And it was read only by philologists for years until some dude named Tolkien wrote the essay that started Beowulf studies as a literary field saying wow, this poem is good. (He thought it was good, but of course, who knows if the people who sat around listening to some variant of the no doubt multiple ones being sung around the fire thought it was good, or what else was out there, or what else was written down and didn’t survive.).
OH, and anybody discussing how critical processes work to establish canons ought to have to read Joanna Russ How to Suppress Women’s Writing because as an academic and critic and fiction author, she had English litcrit pegged.
I remember reading about a group of women poets who worked with Sappho, none of whose works were written down or didn’t survive; and about how critical opinion didn’t like them as much as the single great poet of Lesbos; and how one of them was laughed at because she had a taste for outré metaphors, such as comparing something (I forget what) to grapefruits; and I was thinking that posterity might well have been more enthusiastic about that kind of originality.
Beth in MA on September 6, 2015 at 8:55 am said:
Since no one else has answered, and at the slight risk of spoiling some of the fun, look at the date and time in the preview box while you’re typing a comment. The month and day are generally correct, but the time seems to be permanently stuck at 2:41pm (we should try to fix that dial on the time machine), and I’m typing this in 5684, only 91 years ago, in the “Roaring 5680s”, about five years before the great stock market crash of early 5690.
@Sanddorn
Erika Steinbach might be a proud member of the CDU but I’m not so sure if the CDU is so proud to have her. She’s part of the extreme-right wing of the CDU. If yu ask me, she should just retire.
Pegida.. now that’s another thing. Some of that has to do with the rather complicated German history and the two Germanies. I have a friend who’s from Saxony and she once said that part of the problem is that the ’68 revolution never happend and the GDR (DDR aka East-Germany) never in any way dealt with their Nazi-past, instead the government even had high ranking Nazi-turncoats in their ranks, no matter what Ulbricht and later Honecker said (nope, they weren’t all anti-fascists). If you take a look, most Pegida-followers are the generation that still grew up in East-Germany.
Of course, that doesn’t explain Bavaria and Horst Seehöfer with his “concerned” hate-mongering.
Never heard “Rotfschist) but ist does make kind of sense when looking at Stalin (dictator with a totalitarean regime).
But I think we are degressing 🙂
Let’s change the topic to books :-). On my current reading list:
Ian Kershaw – Hilter (ups, okay). Well-written and interesting, but get the ebook. The paperback is HEAVY and weights over 1 kg.
For some lighter reading I’m delving into “The Very Best of Charles de Lint”. I just love his short-stories and his take on Urban Fantasy (not one werewolf or vampire in sight), instead lots of mythology and magic, music and art.
Next will be “Die neunäugige Krone” by B.C. Bolt, German Urban fantasy, set in Berlin during the 1920s.
Yes – I absolutely agree on that point. I’m saying that process by which collective opinion is formed is very important and it is something that the Hugos do well.
Also “discuss Madame Bovary” was on my File770 secret mission game card.
I have never read Madam Bovary, but I have read Posy Simmon’s graphic homage Gemma Bovary (recommended along with Tamara Drew).
*cough*Kit Marlowe*cough* I almost had a fight with a fellow English lit student because of him. Things got slightly heated because he dismissed Marlowe as completely irrelevant.
On my reading-list and I really need to get around to it. Once you delve a bit into history it’s fascinating to see how many female artists of all kinds suddenly come to light. Women Writers weren’t the only ones whose art was surpressed.
> “I just love his short-stories and his take on Urban Fantasy (not one werewolf or vampire in sight), instead lots of mythology and magic, music and art.”
Spoiler warning. Ng yrnfg bar bs gur fgbevrf va gung pbyyrpgvba vf tbvat gb fhecevfr lbh …
@Kyra What’s the website again?
@cmm
Also, if you are going around announcing yourself as one of the finest writers working today, you really ought to check for typos (or have someone else do it) before posting. Just sayin’.
He’s an ideas man.
Kyd, Nashe, Marlowe, Webster, Tourneur, Jonson, Middleton, Beaumont, Fletcher, Marston… yes, I remember taking the “Mediaeval and Renaissance Drama” course as an undergraduate. Some really great work. (I also did two Shakespeare courses, one at the honours level. I don’t seem to have taken any Renaissance plays that I remember in graduate school, despite the presence of Stephen Orgel on the faculty; instead I did lyric poetry with Fish.)
(And for bodies on stage The Revenger’s Tragedy has to be up near the top, just as there’s nothing as bleak as Webster in Shakespeare.)
> “What’s the website again?”
rot13.com
(But, er, don’t expect a major revelation or anything, mostly an idle comment. Just didn’t know if you were the type who liked not knowing anything at all in advance.)
Thanks Kyra.
I usually don’t mind spoilers. I’m one of these horrible people who reads the end of crime novels first :-D. I’ll wait to be surprised. I’ve read a lot of his shorts before and I know he’s always good for some interesting surprises and twists. For a long time Charles de Lint was an autobuy for me. I’ve slacked of over the last few years (too much work combined with depression will do that to you 🙁 ).
Fourteen deaths in Titus Andronicus. Sure, there’s bloodier plays around, but Shakespeare certainly could mow ’em down when he felt like it.
I didn’t realise Beowulf only had one single copy, wow! Or that it is a relatively recent addition to the canon in terms of high school/college lit.
Now it makes me wonder if all the other epic poets thought the Beowulf guy was a jerk, and would be horrified that his work was the one piece of their literature that survived.
Or if Beowulf was a journeyman piece for the poets guild and was never meant to be great classic literature.
Or if Beowulf was a fanfic pastiche of some REALLY great Anglo-Saxon poet…
Beowulf never did much for me. Kill monster, drink, sing, kill monster, drink, rinse, lather, repeat.
I liked Flaubert’s Parrot when I read it. I don’t recall Madame Bovary but I feel I might like it more if I read it again today, outside of class.
@jamoche wrote:
“Hic Sunt Monstra”: I got distracted by the scale problems in the worldbuilding and missed the subtle hints. Going back I see it now, but the scale problems are still there.
I woke up thinking about “Hic Sunt Monstra.” I’m not familiar with the concept of “scale problems” in world building and I wonder if you would elaborate a little so I can consider your point.
I feel I may have backed myself into a rhetorical corner where I can now only read about Madam Bovary and not ever read the book itself.
@cmm – Do you even metal?
Regarding Kit Marlowe… there’s a really fun semi-academic book about his death, kind of a cross between history and a mystery novel. Does anyone else recall it? I have it at home somewhere and can find it later if anyone’s interested. I remember it being a very fun read and maybe insightful into Elizabethan England.
Russ taught for a while in the department where I got my PhD (alas, before my time); and it is SHAMEFUL how little attention she (and in particular, that book) get.
Also, if you get a chance to see The Revenger’s Tragedy on stage, don’t miss it! A company in Seattle did it a few years ago, with copious amounts of gore.
@rrede, your words are very kind, and you have my sympathies on the start of the semester. I’m not teaching till winter — or at least, not courses, but I do teach a range of workshops, and mentor a number of people learning to integrate computing skills into humanities research, so autumn still feels harried.
Looking back on the 21st Century, the Class of 9416 decided that a Hugo vs Puppies Prom Theme would be most appealing. please make sure that Hugos all have something spiky and Pups should assume a proper hangdog expression upon entrance to the Prom Sphere.
It seems to me that much of the criticism of Terry Pratchett’s later works is a result of ignoring Neil Gaiman’s observations about Pterry’s character; the desire to see him as a nice funny guy, who has stopped being as funny as he used to be because of illness, is an appealing story.
It enables people to dismiss Pterry’s remarkable ability to put the boot into the horrors that human beings routinely inflict upon other human beings; he wrote message fiction, which was brilliantly camouflaged by knock about humour, to dissect our species worst characteristics. Unfortunately he had a great deal of material to work with, but in his writing he steadfastly maintained that everybody is capable of doing evil things, but nobody is beyond redemption.
I suspect that this is one of the reasons why JCW wanted to punch him; after all, Pterry was an atheist and yet he had a rock solid moral compass. In JCW’s world this isn’t supposed to happen, yet it did, provoking in him a milder reaction – punching – than his axhandles and tyre levers, but driven by the same motivation.
I am currently in 6,946, where Pterry’s work is honoured, but reports of one or more time machines leave me unable to decide whether I’m in the past or the future…