Tag Archives: Lodestar Award

Pixel Scroll 10/28/16 The Pixel Came Back from the Nothing-at-Scroll

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(1) YOUR ONE-MAN WIKI. Remember, Camestros Felapton is reading Infogalactic so you don’t have to – “Say, Camestros what’s your new fave Voxopedia page? [Update]”.

Why, I’m glad you asked that question, disembodied voice that writes the blogpost titles. My new favourite Voxopediapage is:

LIST OF ASIAN MEN’S INVENTIONS: …

And that’s not all – Elsewhere on Voxopedia more women have gone missing:

Kitty Joyner is the lead picture for ‘engineer’ on the Wikipedia page

Look, she has a slide rule and everything! Sadly her presence was just too confusing for the poor folks at Voxopedia. Maybe that big circular gizmo in the background didn’t look pi=4 enough. So, to prevent fainting and to protect sensitive dispositions, Joyner has been replaced by Oliver Heaviside.

Phew!

(2) BIG BRAIN THEOREM. TV Guide’s Liam Matthews ranks “The 11 Smartest People Who Have Appeared on The Big Bang Theory“.

The Big Bang Theory is a show about scientists, and it bolsters its academic credibility by bringing in guest stars from the world (galaxy?) of science to play themselves, as well as casting actors with graduate degrees to play characters on the show.

I’m not qualified to rank these guest stars on smarts, because I failed physics in high school. But as a professional clickbaiter, I am qualified to rank them based on how annoying I find their public persona. So without further ado, here are the 11 smartest people who have appeared on The Big Bang Theory, ranked from most to least annoying.

(3) KELLY FREAS. The Space:1970 blog posted “Kelly Freas STAR TREK Portfolio (1976)”.

In 1976, legendary science fiction illustrator, Frank Kelly Freas, published the Star Trek Portfolio, featuring gorgeous charcoal portraits of the officers of the U.S.S. Enterprise. Needless to say, it’s a highly-desired collectible these days.

spock-freas-portfoilio

JJ says, “I think that Spock bears a strong resemblance to Tommy Lee Jones! Of course, in 1976, Tommy Lee Jones looked like this…”

tommy-lee-jones-1976

(4) VERBAL ENGINEER. Popular Science interviews Ken Liu:

In your Dandelion Dynasty series, you reimagine transportation, military hardware and the rest of the technological landscape in a style you’ve come to call “silkpunk.” How did you come up with that approach?

In creating the silkpunk aesthetic, I was influenced by the ideas of W. Brian Arthur, who articulates a vision of technology as a language. The task of the engineer is much like that of a poet in that the engineer must creatively combine existing elements of technology to solve novel problems, thereby devising artifacts that are new expressions in the technical language.

In the silkpunk world of my novels, this view of technology dominates. The vocabulary of the technology language relies on materials of historical importance to the people of East Asia and the Pacific islands: bamboo, shells, coral, paper, silk, feathers, sinew, etc. And the grammar of the language puts more emphasis on biomimetics?—?the airships regulate their lift by analogy with the swim bladders of fish, and the submarines move like whales through the water.

(5) FABULOUS OLD STUFF. Marcin Wichary recommends the Museu de la Tècnica de l’Empordà in Figueres, Spain.

(6) WHERE’S THE BEEF? Episode 21 of Scott Edelman’s podcast Eating the Fantastic features Alyssa Wong and one of  Kansas City’s famous barbecue joints.

Alyssa Wong

Alyssa Wong

Listen in as we chow down on BBQ and talk about what franchise inspired her to write fanfic, the exciting moment when she first encountered a character who looked like her, where she hopes to be 10 years down the road, how she encountered Faceless Ghost Grandma, why she said, “I hate being bored and I don’t like rules,” and more.

(7) EUROCON LIVESTREAM. The 2016 Eurocon in Barcelona, Spain will be livestreamed on November 4, 5 and 6 — http://kosmopolis.cccb.org/bcneurocon/.

Their trilingual dictionary may come in handy —

eurocon-barcelona-trilingual-dictionary

(8) NAME THE YA AWARD. Lew Wolkoff of the Young Adult SF/F Award Committee asks fans to participate in their survey.

As you know, the World Science Fiction Society is in the process of creating a Campbell-like award for Best Young Adult Science Fiction or Fantasy Award.  The motion passed at Kansas City and was passed on to Helsinki for, hopefully, final approval.

One of the matters that has yet to be settled is the name of the award.  The Young Adult SF/F Award Committee is currently doing an online survey to get suggestions on what that name will be.  This survey ends on November 15.  The results will be tabulated, and a second survey of members of the World Science Fiction Society will be taken to get a recommended name (or names) for the 2017 Business Meeting.

Each year the World Science Fiction Society (WSFS) gives out the Hugo and Campbell awards at its annual convention, Worldcon. The awards highlight the best science fiction and fantasy works of the previous year, and they are presented for best novel, short story, graphic story, editor, artist, and a number of other categories. Thus far there has been no award to recognize young adult (YA) books.

In response to this, the Young Adult Award Committee was created to study the viability of an award recognizing excellence in YA science fiction and fantasy at Worldcon. WSFS has since supported the creation of an award for YA fiction, and the committee’s task now turns to naming it.

We are looking for an award name that is especially evocative. We hope to capture the transformative, transportational, and captivating power of books for young adults.

(9) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY GIRLS

  • Born October 28, 1902 – Elsa Lanchester, Frankie’s bride.
  • Born October 28, 1952  — Annie Potts. When you decide who ya gonna call, she answers the phone.

(10) KEEPING YOUR UNIQUE VOICE. Credit where it is due – Dave Pascoe had a good column of writing advice today at Mad Genius Club.

One significant trick I learned from Dean Wesley Smith is focusing on a specific writing technique for a story. Make sure you get the sensory information into every page. Whether it’s a mention of the odors you characters smell, or the vivid colors around them (or drab, if that’s the way you roll, you dystopianist, you), or the moan of the chill wind between the weathered slats of the abandoned homestead in which your people are sheltering for the night, give the reader anchors for their imagination. And then, let the reader know the character’s reactions. That low moan, that sends a prickle up the spine of your hero, that recalls the hunting cat that terrified him as a child.

(11) TEXT TO SCREEN. Those who have been participating in the adaptation discussion here will want to eyeball Violette Malan’s “My Top Ten Novel-to-Movie Adaptations” at Black Gate.

I want to begin by saying that I’m making no judgments (well, hardly any) on which is the better version, the book or the movie. I’m only saying I thought the adaptations were good. Anyway, in no particular order, here are my top ten film adaptations (at least for this week) with the screenwriter, the source material, and the director identified.

The Princess Bride William Goldman from his own novel, directed by Rob Reiner I can’t think of anything new to say, at least not today, about what is probably my favourite movie of all time.

The Shawshank Redemption Frank Darabont adapted and directed from the Stephen King novella (Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption)

The single greatest change from novella to movie was casting the Red character as a black man. Whether that was done because they wanted Morgan Freeman, or whether it was done beforehand, I don’t think matters. A couple of other things were changed (the kid whose testimony could have freed Andy Duschesne wasn’t murdered in the original) but in each case it was done to underline some aspect of character or plot that the conciseness of screenwriting (see above) necessitated.

(12) A VIKING FUNERAL. Anne C. Perry witnesses “The Extinction Event: The Beginning of the End” at Pornokitsch.

Five years later, Jurassic has published almost fifty books. That’s thousands upon thousands of pages of stories by over a hundred authors, with art by a dozen artists, which have (so far) raised more than £8,000 for charity along the way, which is a hell of a history. Especially given that Jurassic London lost fully half of its staff after the first year, when one of the two of us (me!) leveraged her experience founding a small press to get a job in traditional publishing.

If, five years ago, we could have chosen how we’d end Jurassic, The Extinction Event is exactly what we would have wanted: it’s big, bold, brilliant and beautiful. It contains 33 stories, some from previous publications and some which are entirely original, and features new art from nine artists. In Extinction you’ll find apocalypse, bombast, lightning and lava. You’ll also fine joy and sorrow and laughter and misery, cowboys and werewolves and mummies and spaceships… and, for some reason, rather a lot of spiders.

(13) TUCKERIZING RAISES BONANZA. Monster Hunter Nation came through in a big way to help pay someone’s medical bills. Larry Correia reports:

Earlier this week I posted about taking donations to help out my buddy Mitch with his medical bills, and that we’d be taking donations in exchange for me using your name in a book.

So many of you jumped in that we had to close it the next day. We raised over $20,000 in a day and a half….

Logistically speaking, that many names is going to take me a long time and several books to work through. There are a few spots in Monster Hunter Siege I will be able to use for charity red shirts, but this is going to take years.

I tell you, once I run through these names, and I’m doing this again for some other cause several years down the road, I’m totally going to jack up the price on you guys. 🙂

The important thing is that you are awesome, and you did something amazing for a good man. Mitch is already using this money to pay bills. Once again the Monster Hunter Nation has come through. I love you guys.

(14) SCHADENFREUDE. If you like seeing someone dish it out, Michaele Jordan’s “MidAmeriCon II: Con Report” at Amazing Stories is for you. She flays the programming division, MidAmeriCon’s version of LonCon’s Fan Village, Dave Truesdale, and Charlie Lippincott.

This programming bias came back to bite them in the butt. When [Charles] Lippincott saw that MidAmericon II was planning a Star Wars day, he decided this was his chance to cash in. He prepared his own ‘MidAmericon II’ program. (We know he prepared it in advance because 4-page, 10 x 14, glossy fliers with full color illustrations do NOT happen overnight.) It was to be an all-day media event, hawking autographs ($50.00 apiece) and featuring talks, slideshows and Q&A (conflicting with numerous other con functions, including the masquerade, and again not free). He did NOT consult with the con about this program.

Having laid his plans, he proceeded to escalate his demands to MidAmericon II, demanding more money, more publicity, more perks, etc. (As I was working the press room, I saw some of his emails myself, and can personally verify that he took a high-handed ‘gimme-gimme’ approach to what we will laughingly call negotiations.) When the con failed to meet some of his new demands, he canceled on the day before the con.

He then proceeded to hold his own stream of events anyway, just across the street — without removing MidAmericon II’s name from his glossy flyer — while bad-mouthing the con at every opportunity. He stood by his plan to charge high prices for attendance at his events. I mean, really. Would YOU pay $50.00 for Charles Lippincott’s autograph? Or another $50.00 to see a slide show of scenes from movies you already know well?

Well, turnabout is fair play. The Lippincott counter-con was a disaster.

(15) THE BIRD. Why, no, Stubby, I didn’t know these authors were acquainted! “When Charles Dickens & Edgar Allan Poe Met, and Dickens’ Pet Raven Inspired Poe’s Poem ‘The Raven’”.

“There comes Poe with his raven,” wrote the poet James Russell Lowell in 1848, “like Barnaby Rudge, / Three-fifths of him genius and two-fifths sheer fudge.” Barnaby Rudge, as you may know, is a novel by Charles Dickens, published serially in 1841. Set during the anti-Catholic Gordon Riots of 1780, the book stands as Dickens’ first historical novel and a prelude of sorts to A Tale of Two Cities. But what, you may wonder, does it have to do with Poe and “his raven”?

… It chanced the following year the two literary greats would meet, when Poe learned of Dickens’ trip to the U.S.; he wrote to the novelist, and the two briefly exchanged letters (which you can read here). Along with Dickens on his six-month journey were his wife Catherine, his children, and Grip, his pet raven. When the two writers met in person, writes Lucinda Hawksley at the BBC, Poe “was enchanted to discover [Grip, the character] was based on Dickens’s own bird.”

(16) SANDERSON HITS JACKPOT. “DMG Nabs Rights to Brandon Sanderson’s ‘Cosmere’ Book Universe in Massive Deal” reports Variety.

DMG Entertainment has nabbed film and licensing rights to “Cosmere,” Brandon Sanderson’s acclaimed series of interconnected fantasy novels. The entertainment and media company has committed to spending $270 million, which will cover half of the money needed to back the first three movies made from Sanderson’s canon. That makes it one of the largest literary deals of the year. DMG beat out several interested parties for rights to the series. As part of the pact, insiders say Sanderson will receive a minimum guarantee on each film that is produced, as well as a rich backend, allowing the author to make millions.

[Thanks to JJ, John King Tarpinian, Hampus Eckerman, and Scott Edelman for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Steve Wright.]

Sasquan Posts Committee Reports to Business Meeting

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For your advance reading pleasure, Sasquan has posted these committee reports being submitted to the business meeting.

Kevin Standlee has also announced:

The Business Meeting videos are going to be uploaded to a YouTube channel set up for this: The Worldcon Events Channel, 2015 WSFS Business Meeting Playlist at https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL0oLnkb-s4Yd_nZwV7lG_aItUV_5aP0aB

The easiest way to find out when each segment is uploaded is to subscribe to this channel, because nobody (especially me) is going to have the time to Tweet out the uploads as they happen.

One of the most anticipated reports comes from the YA Hugo Committee. It begins:

The Committee was (re)formed at Loncon 2014 in order to consider the issues surrounding a possible Young Adult Hugo. Such an award was first proposed at Chicon 1991 and in the 24 intervening years of debate, several proposals have been nixed, and discussions have at times been contentious. This Committee was therefore formed to approach and research the issue in a (somewhat) systematic manner, and to report its research to the Business Meeting.

Findings: The Committee looked into comparable awards, addressed past debates at Business Meetings, and considered the present Hugo Awards. Details of this work can be found in the Exhibits to this report, entitled ‘Common Concerns Expressed at the WSFS BM’, ‘Definitions of YA,’ and ‘The Hugo vs. The Newbery.’

The Committee finds that requests for an award recognizing teen literature (or YA) are indeed reasonable: teen lit, despite its popularity and quality, is not well represented by the current Hugos; the majority of YA awards are given by juries; the Worldcon community of teens, adults, and professionals would make the award unusual; the long-lasting demand for such an award is attested by repeated debates during almost a quarter-century of Business Meetings.

Under the existing methodology of the Hugo Awards, however, a separate category for YA fiction is not practical. That is, the Hugo fiction categories are defined by word count, not by age categories. We suggest instead the creation of a Campbell-like award, since the Campbell addresses authors and thereby functions outside the Hugo methodology.

Motion: The Committee requests that the Business Meeting reform the Committee for another year (with the addition of new members). The new version of the Committee will focus specifically on the issues surrounding the creation of a Campbell-like YA/teen lit award (possible topics of discussion presented in Exhibit 4), with the results presented at next year’s Business Meeting.

Sasquan Agenda Finalized

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Yesterday was the deadline to submit new motions to the Sasquan business meeting. Kevin Standlee says the agenda in its essentially final form will include ratification votes on four constitutional amendments initially passed at LonCon 3, eight proposed amendments to the WSFS Constitution, and five resolutions.

You can find the agenda here.

Standlee says the YA Hugo study committee will not offer a proposal but unlike last year it will report progress:

There is no proposal from the YA Award committee. After discussing it (and they’ll have a long report which will be online along with other reports before Worldcon and will form part of a huge — currently 60 page — set of Business Meeting handouts), the committee decided to ask to be continued for a year with the idea of producing something next year, particularly given the crowded agenda this year.

The YA Hugo study committee was authorized by the 2013 business meeting, after members voted “object to consideration” to a motion that would have created the category. The published list of members is here:

This new committee is chaired by Dave McCarty. The members are Jodie Baker, Adam Beaton, Warren Buff, Johnny Carruthers, Martin Easterbrook, Chris Garcia, Helen Gbala, Patrick Nielsen Hayden, Tim Illingworth, Farah Mendelsohn, Sue “Twilight” Mohn, Helen Montgomery, Cheryl Morgan, Kate Secor, Kevin Standlee, Adam Tesh, Peter De Weerdt, Tehani Wessely, Clark Wierda, Lew Wolkoff, Aurora Celeste and Dina Krause.

The committee reported last year at LonCon 3 that no progress had been made but it was renewed for another year.

Loncon 3 Nixes Experimental YA Hugo

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Steve Cooper, Co-Chair of the 2014 Worldcon, Loncon 3, said in a message to the Smofs list that a meeting of the full committee decided against introducing a YA special Hugo or YA award despite requests to use its one-time authority under the WSFS Constitution to do so.

Reasoning – As there is currently a business meeting sub-committee in place to bring forward proposals for a YA Hugo / Award to the WSFS business meeting at Loncon 3, we believe it would be wrong for Loncon 3 to pre-empt the workings of this committee, especially as they do not have a draft proposal we could test. So any such move would be seen as Loncon 3 giving an opinion that we believe X is the solution to the YA award, and as the administrating convention for the business meeting where the proposals will be tabled this would be inconsistent with the due impartiality the WSFS membership would expect of us.

Cooper added, “We do not plan to issue a press release on this as it is not our policy to announce things we are not doing, but many of the individuals who have lobbied us to run and not-run a YA Special Hugo have been informed of our decision. People on this list are free to pass on our decision to others not on-here, but we would ask that the decision in full – including the reasoning – is quoted.”

Advocates for a YA Hugo category Chris M. Barkley and Juli Marr responded on Facebook expressing “profound disappointment” about the decision and criticizing the way it was communicated. They also rebutted the reasons given for the decision.

That being said, we would like to reiterate several points; the call for this Special award would have served a dual purpose; to see if the idea a of YA award had any traction with the Hugo Award electorate and for the Hugo Award administrators to provide the YA Committee (and the Business Meeting) any indications of problems that may have occurred during the nomination or voting process.

While we acknowledge the Committee’s reasoning for not presenting the award, we maintain that such an award can be administered this year, without the appearance of prejudice or impropriety by the Committee towards the YA study group. Language from previous proposals could have been used for the expressed purpose of administering the award for this occasion.

However, In light of this decision, we can only look forward to the upcoming discussions of the YA study group over the winter. It is our fervent hope that we will present a viable YA Hugo Award proposal for passage at the Loncon 3 Business Meeting.

Chicon 7 Votes on Hugo Rules Changes

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The Main Business Meeting at Chicon 7 ratified the new Best Fancast category [PDF file], most of the changes to the Semiprozine and Fanzine Hugo categories [PDF file] first passed at Renovation in 2011, the existing Best Graphic Story category — which faced a sunset date — and rejected a motion for new Best Young Adult Fiction category.

The Best Fancast category was passed last year and Chicon 7 exercised its option to place it the 2012 Hugo ballot. Best Fancast recognizes fan podcasts, videos, etc. — and effectively removes them from the fanzine category. Statistics provided to the Business Meeting showed on its trial run this year Best Fancast had participation levels that favorably compared with the fanzine category in terms of nominating vote totals and number of items nominated. The ratification vote sailed through without much comment. The category comes with a sunset provision, so it will come up again for review in a few years.

The redefinition of the Semiprozine and Fanzine categories had to get over a few more hurdles before being ratified, due to fans offering amendments.

Voters agreed to restore the phrase “or the equivalent in other media” that had been struck out of the existing Best Fanzine rules. The cover argument was that keeping the language protected the eligibility of publications done in electronic form, although that has been policy for years — the vast majority of fanzines are now created in digital media and distributed online. What the real effect of keeping “equivalent” in the rule will be is hard for me to say. Rich Lynch said he was comfortable with the outcome because the new requirement for “periodical publication” was retained.

Ben Yalow also convinced the meeting to adjust the new verification rule in the Semiprozine and Fanzine categories. Nominees will now “be required to provide information that they meet the qualification of their category” instead of being “required to confirm…” Yalow felt the original wording implied an unwanted restriction on the powers of the Hugo Administrator.

The meeting also agreed to Rich Lynch’s housekeeping amendment to delete a few surplus words that had been unintentionally passed as part of the motion in 2011.

The Best Graphic Story category needed to be ratified once more at this year’s meeting to stay in the constitution, though of course it has been functioning for several years. We were told 344 nominating votes were cast in the category this year, for 244 distinct items, of which only 9 had 5% of the vote (a minimum eligibility standard). Two fans cited these stats as support for their opposing views, Chris Barkley saying it proved the category’s viability, Kent Bloom saying it showed the pool of Hugo-worthy works is very limited. Phil Foglio spoke in favor of keeping the category — one where he’s won nearly all the Hugos — humorously admitting, “Yes, at the moment we’re dominating, but you know, we’ll die someday…” Despite a lively controversy, the ratification easily passed.

The proposed Best Young Adult Fiction Hugo category aroused more passion. Some in favor argued the Worldcon would stunt its growth by rejecting the category, while opponents noted YA has no real definition and Ben Yalow said, “We don’t give out Hugos for marketing categories, we give Hugos out for works.” Lew Wolkoff contended there really wasn’t enough expertise among Hugo voters because many don’t read YA works unless something especially draws one to their attention. The motion failed 51-67.