(1) BACK TO NARNIA? According to Evangelical Focus, a fourth Narnia movie – The Silver Chair — could be ready in 2016
The story happens decades later. In Narnia, King Caspian is now an old man. Eustace and Jill will be asked to find Caspian’s son, Prince Rilian, with the help of Aslan.
Scriptwriter David Magee (“Life of Pi”, “Finding Neverland”) is writing the film adaptation, which will be released five years after the previous movie, “The Voyage of the Dawn Treader.”
Collider says the next film will be the start of a new franchise entirely – one where The Walden group, makers of the earlier movies, will not be involved.
The rebooted angle doesn’t come as a total surprise. The Mark Gordon Company and The C.S. Lewis Company took over the rights from The Walden Group back in 2013, when they first announced plans for a Silver Chair adaptation, so it’s not surprising that the production companies would want to build something new instead of relying on the foundation of a franchise that was ultimately always a bit of an underperformer.
Collider also asked about casting.
Given the plot of The Silver Chair, the fourth book in the series, which takes places decades in future from where we last saw our heroes in 2010’s Voyage of the Dawn Treader, I also asked if we would see any of the original cast reprising their roles in the new film. The answer is a hard no.
[Mark Gordon] No, it’s all going to be a brand new franchise. All original. All original characters, different directors, and an entire new team that this is coming from.
If the phrase “original characters” causes your hair to bristle, don’t worry, I asked him to clarify if these were entirely new character creations or existing characters in the Narnia mythology that have yet to get the movie treatment, and he confirmed the later. The new characters will come “from the world” of Narnia.
The IMDB FAQ has more information about what characters will be included:
Will we see characters from earlier Narnia films?
Not necessarily. We should see Eustace Scrubb as a main character, along with Aslan. But Silver Chair, the novel, does not include his Pevensie cousins, Lucy, Edmund, Susan and Peter. Other returning characters who may or may not be included are Trumpkin (PC), King Caspian (PC, VDT), Ramandu’s Daughter (VDT), and Lord Drinian (VDT).
(2) IDEA TO HONOR GERRY ANDERSON. Some of his admirers have launched a “Campaign for blue plaques in honour of Kilburn creator of Thunderbirds”. (via Ansible Links.)
Gerry Anderson, who attended Kingsgate Primary School, is most famous for the cult 1960s series Thunderbirds, which featured iconic characters including Scott Tracey, Lady Penelope and Parker.
The Historic Kilburn Plaque Scheme (HKPS) is looking to raise £2,500 to mark his contribution with two plaques: one on his old school in Kingsgate Road, and one on the Sidney Boyd Court estate, on the corner of West End Lane and Woodchurch Road, where he used to live.
Mr Anderson lived with his parents in a large detached house on the site of the estate from 1929 to 1935 before the area was bombed in the war.
(3) AND WE’RE STILL MAD. “Seven TV Finales That Went Out of Their Way to Anger Fans” at Cracked. Number six is Quantum Leap.
In the last episode, Sam somehow leaps into his own body in some kind of odd purgatory-like dimension that looks like a bar — which, as far as purgatory dimensions go, ain’t half-bad. Also, a guy who is implied to be God is there, working as a bartender. If the fact that even God had to have a part-time job in the early ’90s doesn’t disprove Reaganomics, what will?
(4) IS THIS CHARACTER THAT POPULAR? Suvudu’s Matt Staggs reports “Poe Dameron to Have Monthly Comic Book”.
He was only on screen for a few minutes, but Star Wars: The Force Awakens Resistance pilot Poe Dameron turned out to be one of the film’s biggest breakout characters. (Well, maybe next to TR-8R.) This week, Lucasfilm Ltd. and Marvel Entertainment announced that he’ll be the star of his own comic book: Star Wars: Poe Dameron. The new ongoing series will be written by Charles Soule (Lando, Obi-Wan and Anakin) and illustrated by Phil Noto (Chewbacca).
(5) UNDER-REMEMBERED AUTHORS. David Brin, in a post that begins with a tribute to the late David Hartwell, also names some forgotten authors – who should not be.
A fun little conversation-starter? On Quora I was asked to name “forgotten” sci fiauthors. Other respondents were citing Roger Zelazny, L. Sprague de Camp, Ursuala Le Guin, Lester del Rey, A.E. VanVogt, Fritz Lieber, Clifford Simak, Harlan Ellison and Theodore Sturgeon. Well, of course Zelazny and Farmer and Ursula and those others should never be forgotten. But would any reasonably well-read person say they are? Or Walter Miller or Iain Banks? No, not yet on any such list! And I hope never.
For my own answer I dug deeper. From Robert Sheckley and Alice Sheldon (James Tiptree Jr.) and William Tenn, the greatest of all short story writers to lamented classics like John Boyd’s “The Last Starship From Earth.”
(6) CALL FOR PAPERS. The MLA 2017 session “Dangerous Visions: Science Fiction’s Countercultures” seeks papers that probe the following topic –
In the introduction to the chapter on “Countercultures” in his edited volume The Oxford Handbook of Science Fiction (2014), Rob Latham asserts that “Science fiction has always had a close relationship with countercultural movements” (383). The alternative worldmaking capacities of SF&F, in other words, has long had resonances in the sub- and countercultural movements of the past few centuries, “especially,” as Latham qualifies and expands, “if the allied genre of the literary utopia [and, we might add, the dystopia] is included within” the orbit of SF.
The convention will be held in January 2017 in Philadelphia. Papers proposed to the panel … might address the countercultural forces of the following topics, broadly conceived, or take their own unique direction:
- pulp magazines
- SF and the Literary Left
- the New Wave (American or British)
- cyberpunk
- British Boom
- contemporary/world SF
- postcolonial SF
- (critical) utopias/dystopias
- SF as counterculture
- SF beyond “science fiction”
- SF comics, films, television
(7) TODAY IN HISTORY
- January 23, 1957 – Machines at the Wham-O toy company roll out the first batch of their aerodynamic plastic discs–now known to millions of fans all over the world as Frisbees.
(8) SOME GOOD OLD DAYS. The Traveler at Galactic Journey in “20,000 Leagues Over The Air!” is among the very first in 1961 to review Vincent Price’s performance in Master of the World.
Every once in a while, my faith is restored in Hollywood, and I remember why I sit through the schlock to get to the gold.
My daughter and I sat through 90 minutes of the execrable, so bad it’s bad Konga because we had been lured in by the exciting posters for Master of the World. It promised to be a sumptuous Jules Verne classic a la Journey to the Center of the Earth, and it starred the inimitable Vincent Price to boot.
It was worth the wait–the movie is an absolute delight….
(9) TIME TRAVELING IN STONE. On Book View Café, Steven Popkes tells about a road trip that combined “Fossils and Atomic Testing in Nevada”.
It was also a different perspective to see how people in Nevada viewed such things. I was living in California most of that time. We ducked and covered in the classrooms in case war came. But, in Las Vegas, people saw the flash. There were hundreds of tests in Nevada, many above ground. Every time an above ground test happened, it was seen across much of the state. In California, we were scared of something amorphous. In Nevada, they saw it every few months.
Then, back to the hills and looking for rocks and fossils.
We ended up with about 100 pounds of rock holding down every counter in the hotel room. Fifty pounds were our addition to the adjacent rock garden but the remaining 50 pounds needed to be shipped. We ended up purchasing a sturdy suitcase in Walmart and paying $25 for a check on. We heard, “what do you have in here? Rocks?” more than once. We just smiled and gave them our credit card.
(10) TROUBLE MAGNET. Lela E. Buis shares her ideas about “The dangers of Internet activism”.
However, some of these activists have run afoul of public opinion and suffered for it. Jenny Trout was dropped by her publisher after the Fionna Man episode. Ann Rice, Kevin Weinberg and Marvin Kaye suffered from their efforts to counter some of these attacks. Sarah Wendell received a lot of negative attention after Vox Day featured her comments on his conservative blog. And Day is a prime example himself. Everyone in the SFF community should know his name after last year’s Hugo debacle, but most of the press is so negative that it leads people to discount his viewpoints.
(11) TERMS WITHOUT ENDEARMENT. Did Steve Davidson just refuse John C. Wright’s surrender?
[Davidson] Response: “Publicly repudiate slates and campaigning. Don’t participate; let your readers know that you don’t endorse slates and have requested that your works not be included on them.”
[Writer left unnamed in article] “Done! I accept your offer, I have posted a notice on my blog eschewing slate voting, and you must now perform your part of the deal, and forswear putting my works, should any be nominated, below ‘No Award.’”
[Davidson continues] And now for the analysis.
First, note that in the first quote from PP we have this “assuming it wins the nomination”.
This whole thing is about the nominating process and the final voting, not just the final vote. PP has very carefully tried to thread a needle here by entirely ignoring the fact that slates and campaigning are pretty much a done deal by the time we get to the final ballot.
So, PP. No. Your assumption about what you’ve agreed to do is meaningless because the assumption is wrong – and I think deliberately so.
Moving on: We’ve been through this in detail for over two years now. You may have made a statement on your blog – but I see no requests you’ve made to have your works removed from slates.
[Thanks to Andrew Porter, and John King Tarpinian for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Daniel Dern.]
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11 — I actually made what I thought was a fair effort to read all the nominees on their merits and judge them accordingly. And I ended up voting all of the Puppy slate below No Award. I’m not sure yet what I’m going to do if we get another slate this year — I was only able to get through some of the nominees by promising myself I’d never have to read another word they’ve written, and if they’re on the ballot again this year I may just skip them, since I already know I don’t like their writing. On the other hand, that masochist part of me that read all the nominees last year may come to the fore.
Apparently I really needed to read some supers books; I’ve read three this weekend, including the one I just put down a couple of hours ago. Specifically:
Lexie Dunne’s Superheroes Anonymous and Supervillains Anonymous. Do not buy these separately; the first ends on a cliffhanger, and the second completes the origin story. The third book is due around September.
Michael Bailey’s Action Figures – Issue One: Secret Origins. I think the best part about reading this was knowing that there are already three sequels.
Stoic Cynic: If there can only be two fifths, what happens to the other three?
@Jim Henley
You made me do this. I am innocent.
Poe, a flier; a fast male flier
Rey, who scavenges a bit,
Maz, a host who knows the most,
Finn, a white shirt drone who quit,
Snoke, a hologram quite tall,
Ren, a very angry joe,
Beeb, a droid head on a ball,
Which will bring us back to Poe.
Poe, Rey, Maz, Finn, Snoke, Ren, Beeb, Poe!
I completely understand M. Davidson being fed up here. There’s something a little too precious about this Wright character’s behavior, and I don’t think it’ll be at convincing when he comes in next year on a slate, claims he had nothing to do with it, and then assumes anyone who votes No Award robs him of the Hugo that was rightfully his.
@Kip W.: That is very beautiful.
Lisa Goldstein: I do not believe that one is ever morally required to read 100% of each nominated work. One has to read enough to know whether or not one considers them award worthy. If that’s only the first chapter, that’s fine. How many books have you ever read that you thought the first chapter was terrible, but ended up thinking the book itself was not merely ok or serviceable or good, but worthy of an award for being the best published work in the field?
Yeah, me neither. So read until you’ve determined your opinion of their worth, and then stop. Award-worthy stories and books will hook you in and you’ll keep reading regardless of any felt obligation to; ones that aren’t … won’t.
Agree with Cally. I’ll read, but I’ll be a lot less inclined to soldier on with something I’m not enjoying.
Kip W. — That is fantastic.
I feel like half of a short story or 100 pages of a novel is enough for me to decide it’s not going to be worth finishing.
Admittedly, there are some short stories that I DNF after just a couple pages, and some novels that I flip through and never really begin, but I think I’d give a work just a little more consiferation if it was on a ballot (no matter how).
I pretty much always finish books I start, though I’m not sure why. (Maybe I’m just curious about where they’re going?) But it looks like JCW has a new novel out, and there’s a good chance it’ll be nominated, and I had so many problems with his prose that I’m just dreading it. Yeah, I know I’m over-thinking this, but I’m trying to convince myself that it’s okay to stop reading a book after you’ve gone a few chapters and given it a chance.
I don’t feel obliged to finish everything I start, either. I generally give a wider berth to anything that’s by a new author whose work I don’t know much about and to anything that comes well-recommended, especially if by someone I know personally.
Last year, I completed everything but the Anderson novel, and I gave that a decent shot. This year, there are a couple of likely nominees that I have to grit my teeth to start reading at all. If Wright gets nominated, I’ll give his book a brief scan to confirm that his prose and themes are along the lines of what I’ve seen from him before. I’ve read more hours of his work and the theories underlying it than I feel it merits, so unless he’s changed his opinions substantially, I only need to read so much. That decision has nothing to do with slating, except that last year’s slating exposed me to an unusually large sample of one person’s work, and I might have been more generous if I’d seen less of it. The presumably non-slated Seveneves might get the same treatment, or at least limited to a 50 page starter read, on the same theory that the author’s style doesn’t work for me and only so many hours need to be devoted to confirming that.
Re: forgotten SF writers.
As I scrolled through Brin’s post* and the Quora responses, I kept wondering, “Who is doing the forgetting?” And “Just what constitutes ‘forgetting,’ anyway?” Dropping off the shelves at B&N? Not being reprinted in, say, the last two years? Those are artifacts of the publishing biz, and, to be sure, when a writer’s work is out of print for long enough, only readers who have aged out of the commercial/demographic sweet spot are likely to have some recollection of it.
On the other hand, libraries, retrospective anthologies, the Science Fiction Book Club, and used-book stores gave readers of my generation access to what earlier fans had read in what one would have thought to be the thoroughly ephemeral medium of the pulps. Cultural memory is not completely dependent on the conventional marketplace, especially now, with the internet’s role as universal back-fence/corner-bar/barbershop/beauty-parlor conversation space.
I do note that there are writers who were alive and active when I started reviewing in the 1980s who now only show up in retrospective or omnibus volumes (Sprague de Camp and Poul Anderson come to mind immediately). And there are more-recent writers whose career trajectories were not what I would have expected from the quality of the work I saw (Donald McQuinn, Wil McCarthy, Tom Maddox). I suppose it’s easier to forget a writer whose work doesn’t get a reprint, let alone a movie deal.
On the other other hand (which might be losing its grip), I’m looking at the list of titles I reviewed for Locus starting in 1990 and I see writers I have been following (sometimes with gaps) since that year and who would seem to remain in our collective awareness: Joe Haldeman, Greg Bear, Larry Niven, Allen Steele, Michael Flynn, William Gibson, Bruce Sterling, Walter Jon Williams, Michael Swanwick, C. J. Cherryh, Eleanor Arnason, Paul McAuley, Robert Reed, Vernor Vinge, Steven Gould, John Barnes, Nancy Kress, Stephen Baxter. And that’s just 1990-93 and excluding the deceased (Farmer, Vance, Knight, Pohl, Anderson, Asimov, Heinlein, Sheffield, Budrys, Patricia Anthony, George Turner, Jack Williamson), whose visibility in the marketplace (as distinct from cultural memory) becomes a matter of publishers’ (or small-press operators’) enthusiasm.
* Which listed only one writer I did not immediately recognize and remember reading: James Inglis, who turns out to have published five stories in the UK, 1958-65. He doesn’t even have an entry in SFE.
@Kip W: Awesome! It took me till the end to realize what you were doing, though. It’s tough for me to recognize songs I know from lines of different text without any music or credit. (Hint #36 to all you filkers.)
@Rev. Bob: So Superheroes Anonymous is good? The sample I read didn’t really get anywhere, so it was tough to tell and I let it fall off my “books to consider if I can find a longer sample” (not the list’s real name). I always want to find and like superhero fiction, being a comic book fan for decades, but they’re uncommon, and usually the samples don’t get far enough to tell if they’re going to be good. But I want to like superhero fiction.
@Lisa Goldstein: I’m with @Cally, @nickpheas, and @Vasha. If you’ve gone a few chapters and it’s still not working for you, there’s no shame in stopping. Some people pick up books in a store and put them down if the first page (or some random page from the middle) doesn’t seem interesting; several chapters – even one! – seems very fair to me
I have books on the shelf that I put aside and tell myself I’ll get back to, one day. In some cases, I’m pretty sure I’m fooling myself! Occasionally I really do just get out of the mood for a particular book, then wind up finishing it weeks or months later. But history has shown me that’s the exception (for books I set aside). 😉
@eselle28: I don’t believe you mean “a wider berth” (to steer clear), do you? More like you give well-recommended works and works by new-to-you authors more of a chance? Just guessing, since steering clear of well-rec’d works didn’t make sense to me, sorry.
@Kendall: You’re entirely correct. Sorry – tired and got a bit careless. I meant more slack, basically.
(3) AND WE’RE STILL MAD: No mention of Xena, Warrior Princess? It still ticks me off that Herc and Iolus get to ride off into the sunset, but TPTB decide that Xena doesn’t get a ‘happily ever after?’
As for JCW and the rest of the motley crew on last year’s slates, if they ever learn to write they might get legitimate votes. If they don’t, tough shit. Life’s too short to continue to try to read the unreadable.
Mordechai Roshwald seems to be obscure now, although he died fairly recently.
Kendall: I always want to find and like superhero fiction, being a comic book fan for decades
Have you read Carrie Vaughn’s After the Golden Age? It’s usually grouped with YA, but it’s definitely superhero fiction. I’ve read it, and liked it a lot, especially the main character (the child of two superheroes). There is also a sequel, Dreams of the Golden Age, but I haven’t gotten around to that one yet.
And then there are the victims of the 1990s Del Rey Purge: Gilliland, Frezza and so on.
@Cally
I only saw a single short SF work all year that got off to a bad start and yet I ended up wanting to nominate it for an award. That was The End of the War, by Django Wexler.
A truly bad story (1-star) makes itself evident in the first few paragraphs. It’s stuff that escaped the slush pile. (The Thing from the Slush Pile!) A surprising number of short stories fail that test (over 7% by my count), but I’ve never seen a novel that did–other than self-published stuff.
You have to be careful, though. Some excellent stories are very confusing at the start. Hyperion, by Dan Simmons is like that, and The Quantum Thief, by Hannu Rajaniemi, is a really extreme example.
I plan to read (and rate) all the short fiction the puppies nominate. I’ll at least read a few chapters of the novels. And I’ll try very, very hard not to be biased for or against an author just because of the things he/she has written outside the story I’m reviewing.
By the way, am I the only one who thinks Sad Puppies 4 is failing? They seem to have gotten just a few percent of the number of nominations they’d need to have to produce a proper recommendation list in any category. Much of the little they have received is from a handful of people, or from people nominating their own stuff, and it includes some pretty obscure stuff. If they really stick to their promise to produce a ranked list based entirely on what people have posted on their site, it’s going to be pretty thin. (That is, most things in the top 10 might have gotten only 1 or 2 votes.)
The ending of Neon Genesis Evangelion is almost legendary for how divisive it is. It totally breaks from the main action–no Angels, no NERV, no Evas–and takes place almost entirely within Shinji Ikari’s head. Many of the shots are still drawings or sketches, except for one sequence that reimagines the characters in a cliched school comedy anime, and the final “Congratulations” sequence. A lot of people thought it was just slapped together because the studio ran out of money.
It took the movie End of Evangelion to resolve the actual main storyline, in a way that can be seen as bitter, bitter revenge against fans who didn’t “get” the TV ending.
Kip W – My wife and I LOLed. Thank you.
@Kendall: Superhero stories are a hard sell for me, both in comics and in print; I usually can’t get past the premise, no matter how good the writing. So you may take it as an extra recommendation or the opposite when I say that two superhero stories I read recently really appealed to me: “The Last Pantheon” by Tade Thompson and Nick Wood and “Kaiju maximus®” by Kai Ashante Wilson.
We can but hope. There’s only so much derision people can take. The other question though is when the dead elks who’ve got nomination rights carried over receive their sealed instructions, what still they do?
Cally on January 24, 2016 at 11:08 am said:
Dune! 🙂
Seriously, I bounced off the first chapter like three times before finally managing to get through the book. But once I did, it quickly became one of my favorites! (This was quite a while ago, when the book was relatively new.) The experience left more open to soldiering on through books others have recommended, even when my initial reaction to the start is poor. But at the same time, I cannot say that that experience has ever been repeated. So, overall, yeah, I generally have no problem with deciding something isn’t good enough to win without slodging through the whole thing.
(Actually, I came close to repeating the experience with Joan Vinge’s The Snow Queen, but I was never actually put off enough to drop the book. Just unimpressed with what seemed to me to be a slow start. Of course, my experience with Dune may have affected my approach to reading that one.)
Re: Forgotten writers (and I’ll go ahead and accept a fairly broad-and-vague definition of “forgotten” here): Yeah, Sheckley! I got the NESFA anthology of his short fiction a couple of years ago, and I was amazed at how well some of those old stories I vaguely remembered stood up to the test of time. Not to mention all the stuff I had never encountered before. IMO, still one of the best satirists in the field. I’ll also endorse votes for Tenn and Henderson.
One on the borderline (because a lot of people still remember one of his books) is James Schmitz. A Tale of Two Clocks (aka Legacy) is one of those books I’ve been re-reading forever. (Not to mention the huge crush I had on Telzey Amberdon when I was 13.) 🙂
Another borderline case: Clifford Simak. A friend in high school insisted that he was the greatest SF writer ever, and, while I never actually completely agreed, he did persuade me to read a lot more Simak, and he’s definitely one of the greats, but not widely read or discussed these days, as far as I can tell. (Simak, that is. Not my friend.)
Greg Hullender: By the way, am I the only one who thinks Sad Puppies 4 is failing?
They’ve been very quick to complain the last couple of years that the Worldcon members have been “doing it wrong” with regard to Hugo nominations — but I think they are now discovering that it is actually not an easy process to 1) read widely and 2) determine which things they’ve read are Hugo-quality.
A lot of them may decide that something which is this time- and effort-consuming, with no guarantee that one’s personal preferences will see results, falls into the “Too Hard” category — which is why slates are so desirable to them, because it’s much easier to be told how to nominate than it is to figure it out yourself.
Oh, and as for Diana Wynne Jones: I don’t think she even comes close to qualifying as “forgotten” after the huge boost she got from Studio Ghibli recently. But she’s well worth discussing anyway. Currently (re-)reading: her A Sudden, Wild Magic. (I finished Cherryh’s Hestia, which was ok, but not particularly memorable.)
> “There is also a sequel, Dreams of the Golden Age, but I haven’t gotten around to that one yet.”
Dreams of the Golden Age is also good, although in some ways more of a conventional superhero narrative than After the Golden Age was. I’d recommend them both.
Other Superhero-themed fiction —
Vicious, by Victoria Schwab, is a good, tightly-written book that plays with the superhero tropes in interesting ways.
Steelheart, by Brandon Sanderson, was very good. I was, however, a little disappointed by the sequel, Firefight. I hope it picks back up for the last book in the trilogy.
Playing for Keeps, by Mur Lafferty, was pretty good, and I’d pick up a sequel if she ever writes one, but in my opinion the beginning and middle were stronger than the ending.
Black & White, and the sequel Shades of Grey, by Jackie Kessler and Caitlin Kittredge, are pretty good. (I feel they must regret that name for their sequel now since every websearch is now inevitably going to bring up, shall we say, a different book first.)
Superfolks, by Robert Mayer, is a relatively early take on the subject and considered by many to be the ultimate source of the, maybe call it postmodernist take on superheroes. It’s a strange and uneven work, but worth reading for those interested in the genre.
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, by Michael Chabon, is more about the creators of superheroes than superheroes themselves, but it’s a great, great book.
(And some books I was less impressed by: Lots of people like Soon I Will Be Invincible, by Austin Grossman, but it didn’t do much for me, mainly because I was far more interested in one of the minor characters than either of the main ones. I got tired of the Wild Cards books, by multiple authors, pretty quickly — the stories were too uneven in quality. The Rise of Renegade X, by Chelsea Campbell, and Evil Genius, by Catherine Jinks, are both takes on the supervillain concept that I found fairly unmemorable. Seven Wonders, by Adam Christopher, left me thoroughly unimpressed.)
I’ve tried myself to put effort into making sense of the Semiprozine category as an area that I had a poor grasp of previously. Even with the help of the Clarke’s World directory and a comprehensive list it isn’t easy – and that is just one category.
One thing I have noticed, while there is a great deal of diversity in the semiprozines out there there isn’t some sort of huge untapped source of conservative, overtly-right leaning fiction out there in semiprozine land. Given the nature of the category this isn’t because of mainstream-publishing industry gatekeepers. Yes, there are some more traditional than others but I’d say more that are committed to the kind of diversity that tends to make puppies sad.
I’d agree that some of those forgotten authors don’t seem very forgotten. On the other hand, I’m saying that on a website where I’ve actually managed to have discussions with people about the works of John Collier and Joyce Ballou Gregorian, so the internet may be warping my opinion of what constitutes obscurity.
[ticky]
Greg Hullender wrote:
Which will make it exactly like their last slate, where the most recommendations any novel candidate got was 3 or 4 and many that ended up on the slate weren’t recommended at all, so that will be no big change for them.
That is just how slates work; they convert a wide field where nothing got more than a few percent of the nominations to a narrow field of stuff chosen for reasons other than quality which then gets near 100% of the nominations. Or if the people running SP4 (whoever they might actually be) really go for ten and don’t rank them, 50% of the nominations, (which is still way more than anything would have gotten honestly.) In the meantime stuff even the slate makers would have liked much better will be forced off the ballot because nobody in the small group of people choosing the slate happened to read it.
Deja vu.
@Kendall
Yes, normally it’s proper to TTTO one’s filks. I was writing from a prompt Jim dropped in a comment, and was burning to finish it, and it all seemed obvious (well, to me, obvs), and I honestly expected the reaction to be, “Well, X already did this over at Blog A,” and “Yes, but Y’s version was funnier, and Z’s included the whole verse and finale.”
Anyway, I’ll pretend to be more thoughtful in the future and put a TTTO at the end.
@Greg Hullender,
Given the disparity between what was recommended in the SP3 call for recommendations thread & what ended up on the SP3 slate, I’m adopting a wait & see approach. SP4 is supposed to be completely different but the Sad Puppy branding makes me skeptical.
Today’s read — Castle Hangnail, by Ursula Vernon.
Well. That was DELIGHTFUL!
Speaking as a small, cheerfully gothy person who would have loved to get a crumbling evil castle to call my own, even with all the attendant infrastructure problems, this tale of a small, cheerfully gothy person who gets a crumbling evil castle to call her own (along with all its attendant infrastructure problems) *may* have pushed a few of my wish-fulfillment buttons in the best possible way.
Thumbs up.
Perfect Poe-Rey-Maz filk. It helps that there are so many one-syllable names in TFA!
Re: tough beginnings–ironically, Hyperion is the one I always think of where I loved loved loved the beginning, specifically the Priest’s Story, as a fantastic chapter of the very best horrifying sf storytelling, and the rest of the book was a slog through unlikable people doing baffling things for…reasons.
OK, I know I’m days late to the party, but as far as fictional spaceships, I’d love to have the Cygnus from The Black Hole. As long, of course, as it wasn’t populated by murderbots and captained by a madman.
> “As long, of course, as it wasn’t populated by murderbots and captained by a madman.”
Picky, picky.
Kyra: Well. That was DELIGHTFUL!
I know, right? It’s not what I’d consider to be “my sort” of fiction at all — and yet I loved it. It’s like a YA version of The Goblin Emperor.
And I only got it from my library and read it because of all the rave reviews here on File770 by people whose taste seems to somewhat align with mine — so Thank You, Filers, for ensuring that I got to enjoy that delightful book.
I never read or nominate YA for the Hugos. But this book is on my Hugo nomination longlist (which is still dismayingly short right now, as books I expect to love keep disappointing me — which is why the occasional unexpected delight like this one is such a pleasure).
NON-SUPERHEROES (er, I mean, we’re all super!):
@Xtifr: So the moral is, give every book two chapters to rope you in, in case it’s Dune? 😉
@Kip W: No worries, I’m just whining ‘cuz I can’t figure them out half the time. I did figure out yours at the end – and loved it. 🙂
SUPERHEROES: Of course, Amazon’s suggesting a lot of superhero books, now that I’m looking at superhero books (kicked off by @Rev. Bob’s comment).
@Mary Frances: Thanks! Vaughn’s “Golden Age” books are on my “books to check out again” list (not its real name). They fell off my RADAR quite a while back; the sample didn’t grab me or I wasn’t in the mood or something. But then a few Filers rec’d them, so they got on my list. In fact, with another rec (yours), it’s probably time to bump it higher on my list.
@Vasha: Thanks! I have Queers Destroy Fantasy and hope to read all the Queers Destroy issues soon (I’m woefully behind, eek!). I may start with Wilson’s story, based on your rec. 🙂 I’ve heard good things (here and elsewhere, IIRC) about the collection with Thompson’s novella.
@Kyra: Lots of info/recs, thanks! Some of these I have (bought, gift, or got free) but mostly haven’t read yet. A couple are in your “less impressed” list. I haven’t heard of a few of these, like Black & White (which sounds interesting and I’ll look into).
I read very mixed reviews of Superfolks last year and decided to skip it, despite its place in comic-related history; maybe a mistake? It sounded kinda cheesy. Chabon’s didn’t really sound like my thing, but I’ve seen a lot of praise for it since it came out (and I own it; a gift when it came out, IIRC), so again, maybe a mistake (especially since I own it).
I like Mur Lafferty and used to listen to her “I Should Be Writing” podcast, back in the day. I listened to Heaven from “Afterlife” but got bored and dropped it partway through Hell; wow, I didn’t realize the series went up to 6 books now! Anyway, I never got around to Playing For Keeps, but I forget why (maybe the description didn’t grab me?). I should check it out, though; I seem to have the free PDF she released to promote the print version.
Thanks again, one and all. 😀
If anything, I’m more likely to enjoy the first few pages of a book and then lose interest/find that it doesn’t live up to that early promise. That’s not just because of how I think: it’s also that writers often put more energy, effort, and/or time into polishing the beginning of a book than the rest.
Hence, the page 117 test, which I learned about at a Readercon panel many years ago: pick up a book. Open to page 117 and start reading at the top of the page. Use that page, rather than the first page, to decide whether to read the book.
I use this in addition to blurbs, author’s previous reputation, and recommendations from friends, not all by itself, but it might work if I was in an airport bookshop and urgently in need of something to keep me distracted on a long flight.
Yes, there’s a risk of spoilering yourself, but something a third of the way through a book is unlikely to be the Big Revelation. It’s a risk I’ve been willing to take.
(1) Meh. No Liam, no sale. And it is a pretty meh book.
(3) What, no mention of “How I Met Your Mother”? Even the lead of that said “the reaction wasn’t that bad — only 60% of the audience hated it!” (more like 90%)
(4) The bromance is strong with this one. He didn’t deserve a zillion more toys than Rey, though, she’s on-screen 10 times as much as he is! But he is ideal for content that fills in some space and doesn’t interact with the main plot.
(6) It’s SJW all the way down! 🙂 Will they invite Siamese cats?
(10) Well, no, Lela, it’s not the press that gave Teddy a bad name. It’s the fact that people read his own words and all on their own decided he’s a despicable excuse for a human being.
(11) People have voted No Award plenty of times in plenty of years when there weren’t slates. Like the 1977 (for 1976) Best Dramatic Presentation that went NA. I myself keep voting bona fide SJW Heuvelt below No Award every damn year. There’s not a year I’ve voted since 1982 that something hasn’t ended up below NA. Sometimes things just suck all on their own.
Life is too short to read bad books. Particularly when you’re on a deadline, as you are in Hugo voting. Abandon them as you will — or maybe skip to the end to confirm that you indeed shouldn’t have wasted your time with most of the book.
“Barsk” was… not good. Not award-worthy, anyway. It’s a shame, I love the author’s other work, but this (as emgrasso said) failed. Bogosity in physics, linguistics, a lack of characters (there’s like 10 people in the whole galaxy!), and frankly I began to have a lot less sympathy for the putative heroes and more for the putative villains. I was rooting against the deus ex machina by the end. It was all tell not show. Bad worldbuilding. Do not pay full price for it. It’s not going on my Hugo list.
“After the Golden Age” is swell, though. Read it now. I wish I’d read it the year it was eligible, but alas I came across it a year too late.
And of course the question is not “will anything by the Crimson Marsupial make my ballot?”, but “how many things by the CM will be on it?” (As of today, 2)
Vicki Rosenzweig: the page 117 test
Thanks for the tip! I’m lucky enough to have a fantastic library system so I’m not often in a position to do the book-buying crapshoot, but this is good to know.
RE: (11)… I think that engaging at all with JCW is inadvisable. My repeatedly reinforced impression of months of his visible/online behavior is that he is habitually irrational and mendacious. Much like his friend VD, who exhibits similar characteristics in his visible/online behavior, I think there is too little prospect of constructive engagement with such a person to make communication with them a sensible use of one’s time or effort.
@ Greg Hullender
I think it’s much too soon to say. In the halcyon days of late January 2015, after all, I had never heard of SP3 and had no idea it was being planned–and yet the S/R Puppies wound up dominating the Hugo ballot and the sf/f community’s conversation for much of the rest of the year.
I imagine that whether SP4 will get much attention this year or get any nominees on the ballot will depend on a variety of factors not yet known, such as: Will Larry Correia, who has a much higher profile than the other pack leaders, be heavily involved in promoting their slate and platforms again this year, or not? Will 2016 Puppy numbers for nominations and then later for voting be higher, lower, or the same as in 2015? Will the Rabids and Sads promote nearly identical slates again this year, or will they run separate, competing slates instead? Also, will the large number of counter-Puppy fans who registered supporting m’ships in 2015 -nominate- in 2016? And will large numbers of counter-Puppy fans register for MACII to vote in 2016?
BTW, I was at ConFusion in the Detroit area this weekend and had the pleasure of meeting a few File 770 readers and participants. 🙂 (wave, wave)
ULTRAGOTHA on January 24, 2016 at 8:54 am said:
Ultragotha, can you expand on the first sentence? I’ve been having to get Ford’s stuff from the library and used bookstores for a while now.
@Mike Glyer: BTW great Pixel Scroll title!
@lurkertype: Another vote for After the Golden Age, heh. Groovy.
Regarding DWJ – I adore her and it always makes me sad that the only kids (and parents) who seem to have heard of her around here are the ones I’ve suggested her books to. She’s at the top of my list when I have a kid looking for those types of books, but she’s almost always a new-to-the-reader author. Occasionally we get teens who ask for Howl’s Moving Castle because they’ve seen the movie, but those are the ones who actually know that there is a book that came before it.
In her case, I don’t know if it’s forgotten as much as people here just never knew her work to begin with. Either way, it’s unfortunate.
BravoLimaPoppa: can you expand on the first sentence? I’ve been having to get Ford’s stuff from the library and used bookstores for a while now.
John M. Ford was a science-fiction writer whose family, apparently ashamed of his profession, has refused to bring his out-of-print works back into print. He died intestate (without a will), so his family, rather than his partner, inherited the rights to his work.
ETA: Wikipedia has a list of links to the paucity of Ford’s works which are available online.