By Ersatz Culture: (Note: most of the following links are Chinese language. Also, unless otherwise stated, all Chinese names and titles are via machine translation; apologies for any errors.)
The winners of the 35th Galaxy (Yinhe) Award were announced at a ceremony in Chengdu on Saturday September 28. A report with the full results was subsequently posted by Science Fiction World on Monday, although the explanation of how the scoring by the panel of judges worked was somewhat incomplete, which caused a degree of confusion until additional information was provided. It should perhaps also be noted that Science Fiction World is the organizer of this award, and many of the winning works are published by them.
(1) CHINA’S 2024 GALAXY AWARDS. [Item by Ersatz Culture.] The 35th Galaxy (“Yinhe”) Awards were presented in Chengdu on Saturday September 28. There doesn’t appear to be a video of the ceremony officially available, but a screen capture of the livestream has been posted to Bilibili. A fuller translated list of the winners may follow later, but here is a brief summary of the winners that Anglophone fandom might recognize:
Best Novel was won by Yan Xi’s Age of the Gods, which appeared in the 2023 Hugo nominations below the cutoff point. (This was originally published online in 2022, and in print in 2023, which I assume is why it appeared for two different years.)
2023 Hugo Best Short Story finalist Jiang Bo was one of three Best Novella winners here
2024 Hugo Best Short Story finalist Baoshu was one of five winners in the same category here
The Cyberpunk 2077: Big City Dreams comic and R. F. Kuang’s Babel shared the Best Imported Book category
Adrian Tchaikovsky won Most Popular Foreign Writer, presumably based on the serialization of City of Last Chances (and possibly Cage of Souls, although that was serialized in 2024)
Robert Silverberg’s Dying Inside, as translated by Feng Xinyi, shared the Best Translation category.
Click for larger images.
Galaxy Award banner Galaxy Award bannerGalaxy for Best Short StoryGalaxy for Best NovellaGalaxy for Best NovelGalaxy for translation of Dying InsideGalaxy for BabelAdrian Tchaikovsky
(2) TOYPLOSION AND BACK AGAIN. Cora Buhlert has a three-part report about her trip to Toyplosion, a vintage toy convention, and the sights coming and going. Lots of photos, toy commentary, local history, and family stories.
…As I ventured further into the city center, I had to stop at a pedestrian crossing where the pedestrian traffic light symbol was not the regular stick figure, but a little miner with a lantern. Apparently, this is a thing in the Ruhrgebiet. Coal mining may be dead, but the miners are still around, immortalised as “Ampelmännchen”. In many ways, this is very illustrative of how the Ruhrgebiet has turned its industrial history into a tourist attraction….
…The same stall also had several vintage Strawberry Shortcake dolls as well as other girl-aimed toylines of the 1980s on display. I chatted a bit with the owner and reminisced about how my Grandma bought me the entire first wave of Strawberry Shortcake dolls in January 1982, when my parents were on a cruise (my Dad had co-designed the ship, so it was work for him and he apparently spent most of his time running around and fixing problems, while my Mom was terribly seasick) and I was sent to stay with my grandparents. Grandma took me shopping in the city center and after spending an inordinate amount of time trying on clothes, she took me to what was then the best toyshop in town, where they had just gotten Strawberry Shortcake dolls in stock. And because I couldn’t decide in which one I wanted, Grandma – bless her – bought me the entire first wave. I don’t even want to think about how much that would have cost her – US toys were expensive in the 1980s because of the high exchange rate. What makes this even more remarkable is that my Aunt and to a lesser degree my Mom always referred to Grandma as “stingy” (she was their stepmother – my biological grandmother died young and I never met her), yet my supposedly “stingy” Grandma spent what must have been a lot of money just to buy me Strawberry Shortcake dolls. Grandma had actually worked as a dollmaker for a while in the difficult years after WWII, so she had an affinity for toys and always got me nice ones. Grandma and Grandpa even gave me handmade doll beds – Grandpa, who was a carpenter by trade, built them and Grandma sewed the pillows and blankets. I’m not sure if I ever told Grandma how much those Strawberry Shortcake dolls meant to me (she died in 1996 and has dementia for the last five years or so), though I suspect the fact that I promptly turned her kitchen floor into Strawberry Land and appropriated Grandpa’s footstool as a house for the dolls told them how much I loved their gift. I still have the dolls BTW – packed away in a box – and they still smell….
…Now it’s quite common for German coalmines to have names. However, German coalmines are have names like Germania or Teutonia or Concordia or Zollverein or St. Bonifacius or Zollverein or Monopol or Heinrich Robert or Count Friedrich or Queen Elisabeth or Victoria Auguste or Sophia Jacoba or Ottilia or – if the mine was in former East Germany – Karl Liebknecht or Ernst Thälmann. Erin, however, sounds much more like an Irish maiden than a coalmine in the Ruhrgebiet.
Turns out that there is a reason for this, for the coalmine Erin was established in 1867 by William Thomas Mulvany, an Irish geologist and entrepreneur who came to the Ruhrgebiet in the 1850s in search of business opportunities that were difficult for a Catholic Irishman to access in Ireland under British rule. He wound up founding and operating several mines in the Ruhrgebiet and gave them all names relating to Ireland such as Hibernia, Shamrock and of course Erin. …
I’ve dreamed of being a writer since I could form sentences but what really ignited me was a Halloween short story I did back in the 5th grade. As I advanced through middle school, high school, and college, my passion for writing increased into an obsession almost. I truly felt that I would cease to breathe if I could not put pen to paper and bleed out my imagination all over the page. Writing is my sanctuary; it always has been a way for me to deal with my living nightmares.
Tell us about your work in 25 words or less.
I craft Puerto Rican Gothic tales, eerie thrillers, and soulful poetry that blends my Afro-Boriquena roots with cultural magic and folk tales…
This is a corollary to my recent post about historical fantasy set in the Renaissance, and it discusses the extent to which historical settings free women writers to write honestly and brutally about anxieties of beauty. Basically, evaluating the book My Lady Jane in tandem with The Familiar got me thinking about a recurring beat in historical fiction, and what it says about our media environment and repressed emotions surrounding beauty. As the late Harold Bloom was fond of remarking, “period pieces” often tell us much more about contemporary anxieties than they do about whatever history they purport to depict, and one could add that the anxieties of women — the primary creators and audiences of historical dramas and fiction — are especially likely to seep through the period trappings.
In particular, I’ve recently been fascinated with a cliche beat we could call the “wardrobe humiliation scene.” It’s a fixture in the first act of a standard historical book/drama, along the lines of: whilst getting fitted for a dress, the heroine — usually preparing for some ball or arranged marriage — gets told by various assessors that she’s plain, unfashionable, ill-groomed, or fucking busted (or they insinuate as much); various forms of historical looksmaxxing are often utilized (fabrics, powders, jewelry) to conform her to the norms. It’s a masochistic, often weirdly humorous scene — as repetitious as it is, the needs it satisfies are multifaceted and often not as straightforward as one would think….
Howl’s castle has such an intricate and detailed design. Could you describe the castle’s animation process? How many people were involved?
I’m not sure I can count. There were many, many people who worked on it. In terms of drawing such a large item like that castle, there would usually be a base design for it, and then various animators could draw from that base design. But in this case, there was no such initial base design. So there might be one scene where it was drawn one way and then another scene where the little house wasn’t in the same place. But somehow, even with these angle changes that may show different things, it looked like one castle in the end.
There may be different things stuck onto the castle, but as long as there’s the mouth and the eyes and the chimneys, then people just perceive it as the same thing. So, we take advantage of that sort of misconception on the part of the audience to draw slightly different things.
(6) MEGALOPOLIS B.O. STINKS; WILD ROBOT MUCH SWEETER.[Item by Mike Kennedy.] Going into Sunday, Francis Ford Coppola’s self-financed $120M epic Megalopolis is projected to open in 6th place domestically this weekend, with a disappointing $4M box office. It is also received a low score (D+) from movie viewers according to rating firm CinemaScore.com.
The Wild Robot (DreamWorks), meanwhile, is opening 1st domestically with an estimated $35M weekend box office and an A audience rating from CinemaScore. Final box office totals may change for either film. “’Megalopolis’ Bombs at Box Office, ‘Wild Robot’ Soars to No. 1” in The Hollywood Reporter.
DreamWorks Animaton and Universal’s family film The Wild Robot is charming moviegoers and audiences alike, boasting both a stellar 98 percent Rotten Tomatoes critics score and a 98 percent audience score, not to mention an A CinemaScore from moviegoers. Thanks to great word of mouth, Wild Robot came in No. 1 with an estimated $35 million.
If only the love were being spread around.
Francis Ford Coppola — in one of the low points of his long and illustrious career — is watching his new movie Megalopolis get almost utterly rejected by moviegoers (it was likewise maligned by many critics). The film received a disastrous D+ CinemaScore from audiences and only cleared an estimated $4 million in its domestic debut (many rivals predict final numbers will be lower). Heading into the weekend, tracking and Lionsgate expected it to do at least $5 million to $7 million.
(7) TOBIAS TAITT DIES. Tobias Taitt, writer of the autobiographical comic Black, passed away September 16. James Bacon toured the Cartoon Museum’s exhibit about the comic (artwork by Anthony Smith) in 2021: “BLACK: The Story Of Tobias Taitt”.
(8) KRIS KRISTOFFERSON (1936-2024). Actor and country singer-songwriter Kris Kristofferson died September 28 at the age of 88. In 2004, he was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame. His performance in the film A Star Is Born (1975) earned him a Golden Globe for best actor in 1977.
In the sff/h genres he is best known for his appearances in the Blade movies (Blade, Blade II, Blade: Trinity) opposite Wesley Snipes. Also in Planet of the Apes (2001) as Karubi.
His music appeared in another half dozen sfff/h titles including Watchmen (2009)
(9) MEMORY LANE.
[Written by Paul Weimer.]
Anniversary, September 29, 2005 –The debut of XKCD
By Paul Weimer: It started off innocently enough, with some random sketches by its creator Randall Munroe. A girl in his class. Excitement at the debut of SERENITY. It was mildly amusing but would never have had its cultural impact if it stayed that way. A few months in, the webcomic got geekier, the artwork better, and then there was the secret sauce. The thing that made, I think, the webcomic really take off.
The alt text.
Alt text gets a bad rap. On Mastodon, you get hated if you don’t put it on your photos. Other sites don’t allow it at all. But in XKCD, the creator made alt text an art form, instead of describing his drawings, but coming up with the idea of footnoting them, often with some very funny, if sometimes mordant comedy and observations.
Why wouldn’t a comic that blends science, technology, history, popular culture and more not be utterly popular, especially one that works on several levels, in and out of the text itself?
The intellectual curiosity (as seen in his two books, What If and What if 2) and his ability to just make that into a simple and amusing image on a regular basis makes XKCD something to enjoy time and again and again.
My favorite XKCD strip is going to be an obvious one. He won a Hugo for a 3000 image strip that Munroe updated over five months, telling a grand story set millennia in the future as the waters of the Mediterranean rise…but it is not the story of that rise. It’s the story of the relationships and the people who watch it inexorably happen.
…The play follows two inseparable friends, Will and Jim, on the verge of adulthood. As contrasting as night and day, one yearns for adventure beyond their small town, while the other finds comfort in familiarity.
Their lives take a thrillingly unsettling turn when a mysterious carnival, led by the enigmatic Mr. Dark, rolls into town under the cloak of darkness.
The carnival offers irresistible promises, but at a sinister cost. Will and Jim must confront their deepest desires and grapple with the consequences of wishing for things better left untouched….
Performances run on weekends from October 11th to 13th and October 18th to 20th.
General admission tickets are only $22 and can be purchased online by clicking here.
For more information about the play, visit the website by clicking here
As promised by a creepy social media campaign that emerged online this week, “Sinners are coming.”
Michael B. Jordan appears in the new Sinners trailer, marking the first look at his buzzed about but until now very mysterious horror movie with Ryan Coogler, his director on Fruitvale Station (2013), Creed (2015), Black Panther (2018), and Black Panther: Wakanda Forever (2022).
Jordan stars as twins in this period piece set in the South. A cryptic logline explains the brothers tried to leave their troubled lives behind but return to their hometown for a fresh start, only to discover that “an even greater evil” is waiting to welcome them back. Early reports described the project as a vampire film…
California Governor Gavin Newsom has signed a law (AB 2426) to combat “disappearing” purchases of digital games, movies, music, and ebooks. The legislation will force digital storefronts to tell customers they’re just getting a license to use the digital media, rather than suggesting they actually own it.
When the law comes into effect next year, it will ban digital storefronts from using terms like “buy” or “purchase,” unless they inform customers that they’re not getting unrestricted access to whatever they’re buying. Storefronts will have to tell customers they’re getting a license that can be revoked as well as provide a list of all the restrictions that come along with it. Companies that break the rule could be fined for false advertising.
The new law won’t apply to stores that offer “permanent offline” downloads and comes as a direct response to companies like PlayStation and Ubisoft. In April, Ubisoft started deleting The Crew from players’ accounts after shutting down servers for the online-only game. And last year, Sony said it would remove purchased Discovery content from users’ PlayStation libraries before walking back the move.
In all likelihood, in the next 25 years, we’ll find evidence of life on another planet. I’m willing to say this because I’m not a scientist and I don’t work in media relations for NASA. But all evidence points to us getting closer, every year, to identifying moons in our solar system, or exoplanets beyond it, that can sustain life. And if we don’t find conditions for life on the moons near us, we’ll find it on exoplanets — that is, planets outside our solar system. Within the next few decades, we’ll likely find an exoplanet that has an atmosphere, that has water, that has carbon and methane and oxygen. Or some combination of those things….
… But at the moment, much of the work at JPL is devoted to finding and examining exoplanets, and there is an urgency to the work that is palpable. In more than a dozen conversations with some of the best minds in astrophysics, I did not meet anyone who was doubtful about finding evidence of life elsewhere — most likely on an exoplanet beyond our solar system. It was not a matter of if. It was a matter of when. And if there’s going to be one scientist to bet on being part of the team that does it, it will be Vanessa Bailey. To date, only 82 exoplanets have been directly imaged, and Bailey found one of them….
In this Fanbase Feature, THE FANBASE WEEKLY podcast co-host Bryant Dillon participates in a one-on-one interview with special guest Craig Miller (writer – STAR WARS MEMORIES, MORE MOVIE MEMORIES / original Director of Fan Relations at Lucasfilm / marketing consultant on THE LAST STARFIGHTER, THE DARK CRYSTAL, & more) regarding his recently released book, MORE MOVIE MEMORIES (2024), the origins of his career, his thoughts on his own place in pop culture history, his love for and approach to being both a creator and part of fandom, and more.
[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, Chris Barkley, Cat Eldridge, Ersatz Culture, Paul Weimer, James Bacon, Lise Andreasen, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Steven French, Kathy Sullivan, Teddy Harvia, Mike Kennedy, and Andrew Porter for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Jim Janney.]
The 2020 Galaxy (Yinhe) Awards were presented at the at the Shaocheng Theater in Chengdu, China on October 24.
Shaoyan Hu has provided Amazing Stories with an English-langauge version of the winners list, repeated here with permission of publisher Steve Davidson. (Many thanks!)
Best Novel Award
not given this year
Best Novella Award
Our World of Science Fiction, by Bao Shu
The Realm of Eternal Catastrophe, by Chen Hongyu
Double Helix, by Qi Yue
Best Short Story Award
The Colored World, by Mu Min
Hibana, by Tai Yi
The Secret of Tithonus, by Fen Xing Cheng Zi
Trinity333, by Hui Hu
The Elegant Blending, by Liu Yanzeng
Best Web Fiction Award
A Look Back of Millennia, by Huo Zhong Wu
Best New Writer Award
Fen Xing Cheng Zi (The Secret of Tithonus)
Wei Mo (Driverless)
Most Popular Foreign Writer Award
Sayuri Ueda (The Dream of Reed Whistle)
Best Translation Award
Sun Jia (VALIS, by Philip K. Dick)
Best Art Award
Cover Art of Science Fiction World Translations Vol 1., 2019, by Jiu Dai Huo Ying
Best Editor Award
Li Xin
Chen Yao
Best Sci-Fi Organization
Science Fiction Association of Renmin University of China
Wo Wei Science Fiction Association of Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications
Science Fiction Association of Southwest Jiaotong University
Best Related Book Award
The Secrets in The Three-Body Problem, by Tian Jiagang, Sichuan Science Technology Publishing House
Sci-Fi Chronicles: A Visual History of the Galaxy’s Greatest Science Fiction, by Guy Haley, Translated by Wang Jiayin, China Pictorial Publishing House
Best Imported Book Award
Dragon’s Egg, by Robert L. Forward, Translated by Kuan Yuan, Sichuan Science Technology Publishing House
Best Original Book Award
The Egg of Universe, by Wang Jinkang, Sichuan Science Technology Publishing House
Algorithms for Life, by Chen Qiufan, CITIC Press Group
Shaoyan Hu is a part-time translator for speculative fictions. He has worked together with other translators to render A Song of Ice and Fire series into Chinese language. His other translation works in Chinese language include Marooned in Realtime by Vernor Vinge, The Scar by China Miéville, and The City & the City by China Miéville. There are also a number of short stories, novelettes and novellas translated by Shaoyan that appeared in various SF&F magazines in China.
(1) 2017 GALAXY AWARDS. Here is a partial report of the winners of the 2017 Galaxy Awards, presented in China at the Chengdu International SF Conference.
The Galaxy Awards also have an award for best #fandom group, which goes to Sichuan University. This is a pretty great group of kids. pic.twitter.com/rOZBF0f4nt
— Crystal M. Huff, ? ? (they/them) (@crystalvisits) November 11, 2017
Heyyy, I know that book! @hannu won a Galaxy Award best work introduced by translation, for the Chinese version of Quantum Thief! pic.twitter.com/yQM570DpOf
— Crystal M. Huff, ? ? (they/them) (@crystalvisits) November 11, 2017
(2) I SAY HELLO, YOU SAY GOODBYE. The Atlantic asks “What Happens If China Makes First Contact?” The author traveled to China to report on its SETI efforts, and had lengthy conversations with Liu Cixin whose Three-Body trilogy explores the hazards of such contacts.
The search for extraterrestrial intelligence (seti) is often derided as a kind of religious mysticism, even within the scientific community. Nearly a quarter century ago, the United States Congress defunded America’s seti program with a budget amendment proposed by Senator Richard Bryan of Nevada, who said he hoped it would “be the end of Martian-hunting season at the taxpayer’s expense.” That’s one reason it is China, and not the United States, that has built the first world-class radio observatory with seti as a core scientific goal.
Seti does share some traits with religion. It is motivated by deep human desires for connection and transcendence. It concerns itself with questions about human origins, about the raw creative power of nature, and about our future in this universe—and it does all this at a time when traditional religions have become unpersuasive to many. Why these aspects of seti should count against it is unclear. Nor is it clear why Congress should find seti unworthy of funding, given that the government has previously been happy to spend hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars on ambitious searches for phenomena whose existence was still in question. The expensive, decades-long missions that found black holes and gravitational waves both commenced when their targets were mere speculative possibilities. That intelligent life can evolve on a planet is not a speculative possibility, as Darwin demonstrated. Indeed, seti might be the most intriguing scientific project suggested by Darwinism.
Even without federal funding in the United States, seti is now in the midst of a global renaissance. Today’s telescopes have brought the distant stars nearer, and in their orbits we can see planets. The next generation of observatories is now clicking on, and with them we will zoom into these planets’ atmospheres. seti researchers have been preparing for this moment. In their exile, they have become philosophers of the future. They have tried to imagine what technologies an advanced civilization might use, and what imprints those technologies would make on the observable universe. They have figured out how to spot the chemical traces of artificial pollutants from afar. They know how to scan dense star fields for giant structures designed to shield planets from a supernova’s shock waves.
… Liu Cixin told me he doubts the dish will find one. In a dark-forest cosmos like the one he imagines, no civilization would ever send a beacon unless it were a “death monument,” a powerful broadcast announcing the sender’s impending extinction. If a civilization were about to be invaded by another, or incinerated by a gamma-ray burst, or killed off by some other natural cause, it might use the last of its energy reserves to beam out a dying cry to the most life-friendly planets in its vicinity.
This week’s headlines came courtesy of one Kevin Beaumont, a Brit who, using Google Maps, was able to spot the disguised ship near Longcross Studios outside of London. Disney covered the Falcon with sheeting and tucked the beloved “hunk of junk” behind a ring of shipping containers, shielding it from fans and Imperial troops alike
TFW I realize as a tor.com reviewer I am competing against myself as a jamesdavisnicoll reviewer and vice versa. No choice but to double down until I emerge victorious.
Mattel has struggled with slumping sales despite hiring a new chief executive early this year, Margo Georgiadis, a former Google executive.
Mattel in late October reported a 14% drop in its third-quarter sales, excluding the effect of currency fluctuations, and suspended its quarterly dividend. It blamed some of the decline on the recent bankruptcy filing of retailer Toys R Us Inc.
That prompted S&P Global Ratings to lower its ratings on Mattel’s corporate debt, and led one analyst to say that Mattel might be better off as a takeover target.
“We believe its brands and manufacturing footprint could be worth more than $10 billion in their current state,” analyst Gerrick Johnson of BMO Capital Markets said in a note to clients. “Thus, the company could have value to a financial, industry or entertainment conglomerate buyer.”
Mattel’s market value is $5 billion after the stock plunged 47% so far this year. The stock jumped 5% Friday to close at $14.62 a share.
(6) FAAN AWARDS. Corflu 35 announced that Nic Farey will be the FAAn awards administrator for the 2018 awards, given for work published in 2017 and to be distributed at Corflu 35 in Toronto.
(7) LIGHTNING STRIKING AGAIN AND AGAIN. Andrew says, “This story is reminiscent of the ‘On/Off’ star in Vernor Vinge’s Deepness in the Sky.” From the BBC, “‘Zombie’ star survived going supernova”:
When most stars go supernova, they die in a single blast, but astronomers have found a star that survived not one, but five separate explosions.
The “zombie” star kept erupting for nearly two years – six times longer than the duration of a typical supernova.”
“Intriguingly, by combing through archived data, scientists discovered an explosion that occurred in 1954 in exactly the same location. This could suggest that the star somehow survived that explosion, only to detonate again in 2014.
The object may be the first known example of a Pulsational Pair Instability Supernova.
“According to this theory, it is possible that this was the result of a star so massive and hot that it generated antimatter in its core,” said co-author Daniel Kasen, from the University of California, Berkeley. “
Andrew Kreisberg, executive producer of The CW DC Comics series including The Flash, Supergirl and Arrow, has been suspended by producers Warner Bros. TV Group over allegations of sexual harassment by multiple women.
Warner Bros. Television, the studio behind the Greg Berlanti-produced comic book shows, has launched an internal investigation into the claims leveled against Kreisberg.
“We have recently been made aware of allegations of misconduct against Andrew Kreisberg. We have suspended Mr. Kreisberg and are conducting an internal investigation,” Warners said in a statement late Friday. “We take all allegations of misconduct extremely seriously, and are committed to creating a safe working environment for our employees and everyone involved in our productions.”
(9) TODAY IN HISTORY
November 11, 1994 – Interview with the Vampire premieres.
(10) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY BOYS & GIRLS
Born November 11, 1922 — Kurt Vonnegut
Born November 11, 1960 — Stanley Tucci, actor (Transformers: Age of Extinction, Muppets Most Wanted, Jack the Giant Slayer, The Hunger Games series).
Born November 11, 1962 — Demi Moore, American actress (Ghost)
Born November 11, 1964 – Calista Flockhart (Supergirl)
Born November 11, 1966 – Alison Doody, actress (Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade)
Born November 11, 1974 – Leonardo DiCaprio (Inception)
(11) CALLING GITCHY GUMIE. Matthew Johnson’s offered these lyrics in comments to help File 770 compensate for failing to mention the anniversary of the loss of the Edmund Fitzgerald as an item in “Today in History.”
The legend comes down from the APAs of old
Of the fanzine become a webjournal
The pixel, we’re told, never gives up its scrolls
In the winds of September eternal.
With a full load of links and a hold full of thinks
And Ray Bradbury stories remembered
With two fifths of scotch and a God that they’d stalked
Through the winds of eternal September.
(12) PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER. N.K. Jemisin tweeted:
On the complicated history of Joel Chandler Harris’ Uncle Remus stories
Gates: Joel Chandler Harris did an enormous service. We can debate the fact that, well, he certainly wasn’t a black man, and we could debate what his motivation was, and we can wonder, did African-Americans receive any percentage or share of the enormous profit that he made? The answer is absolutely not. But on the other hand, a lot of these tales would have been lost without Joel Chandler Harris.
Tatar: I was going to present the counter argument that is, did he kill African-American folklore? Because after all, if you look at the framed narrative, who is Uncle Remus telling the stories to? A little white boy, and so suddenly this entire tradition has been appropriated for white audiences, and made charming rather than subversive and perilous, dangerous — stories that could be told only at nighttime when the masters were not listening.
Gates: But think about it this way: It came into my parlor, it came into my bedroom, through the lips of a black man, my father, who would have us read the Uncle Remus tales but within a whole different context, and my father, can we say, re-breathed blackness into those folktales. So it’s a very complicated legacy.
As reported by Wired, Johnson posits that based on the development of life, culture and approximate age of the planets in the universe, Star Wars takes place about roughly 9 billion years after the big bang that created the universe as it is now known. If true, this leaves at least 4.7 billion years between the stories of Star Wars and the present day world. In other words it is “a long time ago.”
The most interesting evidence Johnson gives to this theory is the planet of Mustafar; the site of Anakin and Obi-Wan’s climatic duel in Revenge of the Sith and later home to Darth Vader’s castle. Mustafar is a planet overflowing with lava and containing a nearly ridiculous amount of volcanoes but that climate isn’t all that different to what Earth was like in its early stages. Similarly, Hoth, the famous snowy planet from Empire Strikes Back, could be another Earth-like entity experiencing an ice age. Star Wars‘ motif of having “themed planets” is really nothing more than Earth-esque planets being in different stages of development.
In the 1960s, a Russian engineer proposed a civilian computer network to connect workers and farmers all across the Soviet Union, and the idea made it all the way to the highest authorities in Moscow.
What went wrong? Watch this video to find out, and read this in-depth piece for analysis on how this Soviet failure unfolded.
John Lewis this morning unveiled its latest Christmas campaign advert that features a young boy who befriends a scruffy monster who is sleeping under his bed.
The two-minute advert, set to a cover of Beatles track Golden Slumbers by Elbow, tells the story of Joe – who realises a snoring and farting 7ft imaginary monster called Moz lives under his bed.
Joe – who is played by seven-year-old London twin brothers Tobias and Ethan – befriends Moz and the pair get up to mischief, playing in the boy’s bedroom in to the small hours.
After a number of sleepless nights, Joe keeps falling asleep during the day. So Moz decides to give him a night light, which when illuminated makes the monster vanish meaning Joe can sleep undisturbed.
But as the advert comes to an end with the tagline “For gifts that brighten up their world,” viewers soon realise when Joe turns off the night light, Moz returns – meaning they can remain friends.
…Much like the poor boy he keeps awake at night, Moz the Monster feels a bit tired. While undeniably sweet, Moz is a bumbling character that you can’t not love, we have seen it all before. The monster is – really – a hairier version of Monty the Penguin, the CGI star of a few years ago.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jw1Y-zhQURU
[Thanks to Martin Morse Wooster, John King Tarpinian, JJ, Cat Eldridge, Chip Hitchcock, Nic Farey, Andrew, and Carl Slaughter for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day StephenfromOttawa.]
Let’s start by looking at how much our authors made in 2016 before taxes or expenses. The total ranged from a few dollars to almost five million. Eight novelists made more than a million dollars (before taxes) in 2016.
I admit, I was a little surprised by this, and wondered if maybe people were exaggerating or hit an extra zero. Fortunately, the survey also asked for an identifier (name or other) and an email address for anyone who wanted to be informed of the survey results. Looking at who was reporting these numbers, I believe they’re accurate.
Average Income: $114,124
Median Income: $17,000
(I think the median is more useful than the average, here. The average is pulled up significantly by those very successful outliers.)
Much more data, sliced and diced various ways, at the post.
(2) NEW AWARD FOR PAKISTANI SF. The inaugural Salam Award for Imaginative Fiction will be given this year. The new short story award, intended to “promote science fiction and related genres of writing in Pakistan,” is named for Dr. Albus Salam, one of the pioneers of science in Pakistan.
The website’s administrator says some Pakistanis may see pirated copies of sf movies, when it comes to written sf there’s little awareness —
I don’t know if science fiction as a genre even exist for Pakistani readers. When you go to book stores, you don’t find any books other than religous ones or text books needed for school curriculum. How can an average reader than get exposure to different genres of writing and specially fiction?
Eligible for the award are original, previously unpublished English-language stories of 10,000 words or less by persons residing in Pakistan, or of Pakistani birth/descent. (The complete guidelines are here.) Entries must be received by July 31.
The winner will receive a cash prize of Rs 50,000, a review by an established literary agent, a review from a professional editor, with the potential for publication by Tor.com.
(3) I LOST ON… Jeopardy! devoted a category to “Sci-Fi Books” on February 14. I only knew the $1,000 question – you’re bound to do better. (The correct reply will display if you scroll over the dollar amount.)
I didn’t get this one despite having read the damn book!
Thomas in this James Dashner sci-fi book awakens being “jerked upward like an old lift in a mine shaft”
Unfortunately, the minds behind NaNoWriMo don’t seem to appreciate what that word “apolitical” really means. How do I know? Because of this email the Internet-based creative writing project sent to its mailing list late last week.
Dear [Name],
As a creative writing nonprofit, we’re not a political organization. We don’t endorse candidates or support any particular party. In an ideal world, we would focus only on empowering people to write.
Yet we find ourselves in a time where people’s ability to tell their stories—and even to safely exist—is at stake….
So while we are not a political organization, we feel moved to take action.
In response to the executive order, as well as any future government efforts that threaten people’s basic freedoms, we will:
Celebrate creativity over apathy, diversity over fear, and productivity over despair.
Welcome all stories and continue to make NaNoWriMo a safe space for all writers.
Advocate for the transformative power of storytelling to connect people and build a better world.
If you have concrete ideas for how we can work toward these goals (or if you have feedback about anything in this message), please share your thoughts.
That wasn’t all. Oh, no, not by any means. They also took issue with President Trump’s desire to end the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities.
There are a few things about NaNoWriMo that one must consider before truly understanding the context of the above email. First, there are no prizes for NaNoWriMo. “Winners” are basically all who complete a book, and the prize is…well, you wrote a book. Not insignificant considering how few people who talk about books ever finish one, but that’s about it.
Further, since it is basically an internet writers group/contest, President Trump’s executive order will have precisely zero impact on it. None.
In short, there’s absolutely no reason for Grant Faulkner to put his name on an email about a piece of political hay that impacts his operation in no way, shape, or form.
The email is more about virtue signaling, a way to tell progressives that NaNoWriMo is with them — and screw the right-leaning members of the email list! Of course, it’s also possible they couldn’t imagine that anyone on their list actually leans right politically.
(5) THE MEANS OF PRODUCTION. The Shimmer Program has posted Sanfeng’s “Science Fiction in China: 2016 in Review”. I found it an interesting contrast with U.S. society – people generally were happy to hear about President Obama’s tastes as an sf fan, but what if he had announced a plan to co-opt science fiction to further his policies?
SF as National Agenda
Historically, the trajectory of Chinese SF was heavily influenced by top-down political forces at times. Recently it begins to receive continuous and influential support from the governments at all levels. On the one hand, following the tradition of focusing on ‘science’ in science fiction, the government re-emphasizes SF as a useful instrument for popularizing science and improving citizen’s scientific literacy. On the other hand, due to the high popularity and penetration rate of SF media, it is conceivable that the so-called ‘SF industry’ is often adopted in governmental agenda for creative and cultural industry development.
In a central government’s paper regarding promoting citizens’ science literacy issued by State Council in February 2016, it is explicitly stipulated that the government shall support science fiction writing as part of popular science writing. More details were revealed in a later talk given by Han Qide, president of China Association for Science and Technology (CAST), announcing that CAST will set up a national award for SF and host international SF festivals. The story reached the climax when Vice Chairman Li Yuanchao attended 2016 National SF Convention held in September 2016 and gave a speech at the opening ceremony warmly encouraging SF writing.
The post also tells about the 30th anniversary Galaxy Awards, and the inaugural winners of a new set of Chinese sf awards.
At its 30th anniversary, Galaxy Awards were presented on the evening of September 8th. Best Novel was awarded to Dooms Year by He Xi. Three days later, the ceremony of 7th Chinese Nebula Awards was held in National Library of China. The top award Best Novel was awarded to Jiang Bo for Chasing the Shadows and the Lights, which is the final installment of his epic Heart of Galaxy trilogy.
A couple of new SF awards are noteworthy. First ‘Droplet Awards’, named after a powerful and terrifying alien weapon in TBP, were organized by Tecent to call for submission of SF screenplays, comics and short videos. Best Screenplay was awarded to Day after Day by Feng Zhigang and Best Comics to The Innocent City by Yuzhou Muchang. Besides, First ‘Nebula Awards for Chinese SF Films’ were presented at a ceremony held in Chengdu in August 2016. Best SF Movie was given to a 2008 children SF movie CJ7 directed by Stephen Chow. Best SF Short Film was awarded to Waterdrop, a highly praised fan film of TBP, directed and produced by Wang Ren.
(7) TAKE YOUR SHOES OFF, SET A SPELL.Co-Geeking’s Erik Jensen is an American married to a Finn (Eppu) and living in the U.S. He has written a column of advice to fans going to the Worldcon this summer: “How to Helsinki: Concerning Finns”. There are quite a few do’s and don’ts, for example —
DO give people space – Finns expect a lot of it and they will give you a lot of it in return. If you’re talking to a Finn and they back away, don’t chase them. They’re probably not trying to get away from you, they’re just resetting comfortable boundaries. (See previous points.)
DO take your shoes off if you visit a private residence – so you don’t track in dirt that your host then has to clean up. Most Finnish homes have places for taking off and putting on shoes right by the front door….
…DON’T suggest getting together unless you want to make concrete plans – “We should do lunch some time” is just a casual pleasantry in the US. It’s an expression of general good will with no commitment attached. In Finland it is a commitment to future plans and Finns will expect you to follow through.
DON’T make small talk – if you’re in conversation with a Finn and feel like there’s an awkward silence, don’t try to fill it. For most Finns, silence is not awkward at all, but comfortable. The conversation will start again when someone has something to say.
“Hotels: Understanding the Differences between Countries” (in Progress Report 3)
“Non-Fandom Things to Do in Helsinki, If You Have the Time” (in Progress Report 2)
“Älä hätäile! Don’t Panic! A Short Guide for Pronouncing Finnish” (in Progress Report 2)
(8) TODAY IN HISTORY
February 15, 1903 — The first Teddy bear goes on sale.
Toy store owner and inventor Morris Michtom places two stuffed bears in his shop window, advertising them as Teddy bears. Michtom had earlier petitioned President Theodore Roosevelt for permission to use his nickname, Teddy. The president agreed and, before long, other toy manufacturers began turning out copies of Michtom’s stuffed bears, which soon became a national childhood institution
February 15, 1950 — Walt Disney’s animated feature Cinderella opens in theaters across the United States.
(9) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY BOY
Born February 15, 1950 — Matt Groening, cartoonist; creator of The Simpsons.
(10) FORD’S IN HIS FLIVVER. Stephen Baxter has an op-ed in the February 11 Financial Times, “Dude, where’s my flying car?” He looks at flying cars, based on Uber’s announcement that they are launching a flying car development project. Examining the way flying cars are portrayed in movies from Metropolis through Back To the Future and Thunderbirds Are Go, he concludes that it’s more likely that monorails and electric cabs will be the future’s preferred form of transportation and “flying cars will remain a plaything of the super-rich–and a dream (perhaps in virtual reality) for the rest of us.”
Note – you will probably hit a paywall using the direct link. I was able to access and read the article through a Google search.
(11) LITTLE BUNDLES OF JOY. And maybe not all that little, when you pop for the maximum sized bundle.
There’s a Humble Bundle of sff books from Subterranean Press.
In Nobody Owns the Moon, Milligan begins his inquiry from the ground up, so to speak, starting with the fundamental question of whether space exploration itself can be ethically justified at all, specifically focusing on whether manned space exploration is justifiable. By starting at such a fundamental level, Milligan indicates that he is going to tackle the questions at hand without presuming that anything is justified. Instead, Milligan works through each issue with as few preconceptions as possible, examining both the arguments for and against the proposition being examined. This can seem frustratingly indecisive at times, because with most questions there is no clear cut answer one way or the other, because there are pros and cons to every position. The end result is that for most such questions, the answer lies in choosing which is the best of a flawed collection of alternatives, not in choosing the one that is clearly correct.
Milligan is also concerned with only dealing with questions that result from actions that are within the realm of possibility. To this end, he spends a fair amount of time examining the question of whether terraforming a planet to be more Earth-like is possible before he gets into the question of whether it is ethical. As he points out, examining a question that could never possibly come to pass is simply idle speculation. To a certain extent, almost all of the questions Milligan addresses in the book are somewhat hypothetical – no one is currently actually mining asteroids or terraforming Mars, but as he outlines in the book, they are all within the realm of reasonable possibility, and thus it is worthwhile to consider their the ethical implications.
(14) FIXING THE SCIENCE IN SCIENCE FICTION. Joe Stech, of Compelling SF, asks you to help him decide which of his guidelines to work on first.
Every so often I receive engaging story submissions that have wonderful writing and great human elements, but contain clearly implausible science. This can pull readers out of the story and potentially mar an otherwise excellent work.
I’ve been thinking about working with scientists to create a series of writer’s guides to help with this pain point, and I was hoping you could help me out by letting me know which subjects you’d find most useful in such a series. The idea is that we’d provide a general overview of the topic and then give some specific tips regarding common misconceptions that we’ve seen. If you have a moment please let me know what you think via the following survey:
The document was uncovered in the National Churchill Museum in Fulton, Missouri, by the institution’s new director Timothy Riley….
Churchill was a prolific writer: in the 1920s and 30s, he penned popular science essays on topics as diverse as evolution and fusion power. Mr Riley, director of the Churchill Museum, believes the essay on alien life was written at the former prime minister’s home in Chartwell in 1939, before World War II broke out.
It may have been informed by conversations with the wartime leader’s friend, Lindemann, who was a physicist, and might have been intended for publication in the News of the World newspaper.
It was also written soon after the 1938 US radio broadcast by Orson Welles dramatising The War of the Worlds by HG Wells. The radio programme sparked a panic when it was mistaken by some listeners for a real news report about the invasion of Earth by Martians.
Dr Livio told BBC News that there were no firm plans to publish the article because of issues surrounding the copyright. However, he said the Churchill Museum was working to resolve these.
(16) SAME BAT CHANNEL, NOT SAME BAT. Carl Slaughter sent a link to “The Evolution of Batman in Television and Film, 1943 – 2016.”
I feel like I should start with the usual call to action/disclaimer: if you’re eligible to vote for any of the awards (Nebulas/Hugos/etc.), then please do so, even if you felt you haven’t read enough. It’s a big field and few people can claim to have read everything that came out last year–and generally the people who recuse themselves from voting tend to be marginalised folks, which skews ballots. So please please vote?
Here is an excerpt from her recommendations.
Novelettes
I enjoyed Fran Wilde’s JEWEL AND HER LAPIDARY: set in a universe where gems hold magic but can drive people mad, JEWEL concerns itself with the fall of that kingdom, and the desperate straits in which it leaves its princess and her companion. This is a heart wrenching tale of power, friendship, and two women’s struggle to survive.
Marjorie Liu’s “The Briar and the Rose” (which I suspect is a novelette, from Navah Wolfe’s and Dominik Parisien’s The Starlit Wood) is a retelling of Sleeping Beauty with a twist: a swordswoman falls in love with Rose–but Rose is only herself one day of the week, when the witch who occupies her body has to rest… I loved the characters and their relationship, and the quest undertaken by the swordswoman to free Rose.
Alyssa Wong’s “You’ll Surely Drown Here if You Stay”: a weird Western with a lovely friendship at its core, a tale of the desert, magic, belonging, and the weight of the dead. Definitely sticks in the mind.
Christopher Kastensmidt’s Elephant and Macaw Banner is sword and muskets set in colonial Brazil, following the adventures of Gerard van Oost and Oludara in a land filled with strange creatures. It’s a series of linked novelettes (with gorgeous cover art), and it’s great fun. Two volumes came out last year: A Torrential Complication and A Tumultuous Convergence.
(18) SIRI. In “The Voice (Siri)–a 48 hr film” on Vimeo, Yonatan Tal imagines what Siri would do if confronted with too many inane questions, including knock-knock jokes and “Where can I get some drugs?”
[Thanks to Martin Morse Wooster, Andrew Porter, Steven H Silver, JJ, Mark-kitteh, Joe H., Peter J, John M. Cowan, John King Tarpinian, Aaron, and Carl Slaughter for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Dawn Incognito.]
China’s Galaxy Awards were presented at a ceremony held September 8. Here is a list of the winners in translation from this source. The Google doc incudes the original Chinese titles. (The characters don’t reproduce on my WordPress, so I have left them out.)
Most Innovative Book
The Collected Short Fiction of Li Cixin (Sichuan Science and Technology Press)
Best Foreign Book
Mike Resnick’s Kirinyaga (Sichuan Science and Technology Press), translated by Wang Meizi
Andy Weir’s The Martian (Yilin Press), translated by Chen Zhuo
Best Supporting Work
Li Miao’s The Physics of The Three Body Problem (Sichuan Science and Technology Press)
Best Sci-fi Game
Lightning Fighter (Tencent)
Best Translator
Sun Jia [Recent translated works include: Philip K. Dick’s Game Players of Titan and The Penultimate Truth (Sichuan Science and Technology Press, 2015), Lauren Beukes’ Zoo City (Tsinghua University Press, 2015), and Scott Hawkins’ The Library at Mount Char (Heaven and Earth Press, 2016)]
The winners of the 25th annual Galaxy Awards were announced at a ceremony in Shanghai on September 20. Regina Kanyu Wang delivered the results to English-language readers as part of her coverage of the event for Amazing Stories. (The titles are her translations.)
BEST SHORT STORY
“Age of the Elderly” by Han Song
“Wake up at Dust” by Jiang Bo
“Reaping the Childhood” by A Que
BEST NOVELLA The Windy City by Zhang Ran
BEST NOVEL Escaping the Mother Universe by Wang Jinkang
BEST NEW WRITER:
Chen Zijun
BEST TRANSLATION: Wyrd Sister by Hu Shu
BEST ARTIST
Liu Junwei/Shark Dan
BEST EDITOR
Yang Feng, deputy editor-in-chief of Science Fiction World
MOST POPULAR FOREIGN WRITER
Ken Liu
BEST ORIGINAL BOOK Escaping the Mother Universe, Sichuan Science and Technology Press & Science Fiction World
BEST TRANSLATED BOOK The Difference Engine, New Star Press
BEST RELATED BOOK Fly! The Great Qing Empire: Imagination and Science in Modern China, Beijing United Press & Motie Press
BEST GAME The Legend of Galaxy: Time Fleet
BEST SCREENPLAY Honey from the Star
BEST SCIENCE EDUCATION ORGANIZATION
Beijing Green & Shine Foundation
Fosun Charity Foundation
The Galaxy Award was established in 1986 and currently is hosted by China’s Science Fiction World magazine.
