Sci-fi and Heroic Fantasy discussion

I thought: why not have a topic that's about fun articles or humorous items all related to sci-fi and fantasy. This was brought to you by this article:
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Like most of you, I live in constant terror of the embarrassment of a grammatical faux pas, so I listen regularly to the Grammar Girl podcast. What can that have to do with science fiction or fantasy?

Well, usually nothing whatsoever, but I thought you might find it amusing that her portmanteau this week is Brandalized .

SF&F author Jim C. Hines has a new blog post up to release a new photo in his satirical "SF&F cover poses for charity" series, and I thought if you haven't seen them, some of you might find it amusing. Mr. Hines has been duplicating/satirizing the sexist cover poses of female characters in various SF&F books, and together with fellow author John Scalzi, has been doing a regular "pose challenge".

You can find links to his previous cover poses in his post Striking a Pose and his previous charity challenges at the bottom of this blog post: Cover Posing for Charity . That page also includes a link to donate to the Aicardi Syndrome Foundation charity.

This month's satire also brings in SF&F authors Patrick Rothfuss, Charles Stross and Mary Robinette Kowal in poking fun at a new (and ridiculous) cover for a classic Poul Anderson Ensign Flandry novel. That Latest post of a new Cover Pose is here.

Caution: these images cannot be un-seen.

And the cover models do not shave their legs. Just so you know.

An interesting day for SF&F authors in mainstream media with two articles on classic SF writers:

The Atlantic has a retrospective on Cordwainer Smith.

And USA Today has an article on Ursula K. Le Guin.

(It's not either of their birthdays, so I'm not sure what prompted either article.)

This is an older article re: 2009 WorldCon conversation between Award-winning science fiction writer Charles Stross and Nobel prize winning economist Paul Krugman from Stross's blog. There's both a link to an MP3 for audio or a transcript for reading.

Krugman: "What you came out believing, if you went to the New York’s World Fair in 1964, was that we were going to have this enormously enhanced mastery of the physical universe.... And there hasn't been that kind of dramatic change."

Stross: I think things have changed a lot in the last 30 years, but not in the direction that somebody 30 years ago would have expected...

This is a variant on the old, "Where is my flying car?" discussion. I enjoyed it because Stross, in my opinion, is one of the premier practitioners of near-term science fiction predictions (Accelerando, Glasshouse, Halting State, Rule 34). So instead of flying cars and commercial flights to the moon, I got the Internet, cell phones, DVDs and video games.

I went to the 1964 NY World's Fair. Remember when IBM was the computer industry and AT&T was the phone industry? Well, it gave us some really impressive world's fair pavilions. Also the Unisphere. (I also went to the Vancouver Expo 86, which was the last world's fair held in North America.)

I just started reading The Physics of the Future (Jim's recommendation), and on the theme of predicting the future, I just re-listened to this conversation on my iPod, so I thought I'd share. I think it would be reasonable to stop listening when the Q&A session starts, since not a lot of interesting get said after that.

Jim Minz of SciFi publisher Baen Books's did a radio interview with North Carolina's public radio station WUNC. You can find a link to the audio MP3 at their website here:

WUNC Radio Interview with Baen's Jim Minz

The first half of the interview is mostly Mr. Minz's biography, and the second half gets down to his sci-fi experience at Baen.

“The real problem isn’t that someone wants to steal your book,” he said. “The real problem is finding someone who wants to bother to buy your book in the first place.”

Note: at the beginning of the program, there's a reference to an IRS Star Trek Parody video. (The Internal Revenue Service is the US tax collection agency.) I located the vid on YouTube for you (link), but it's not very funny, so I don't recommend you spend the time to click on it.) Didn't really expect the IRS to have a sense of humor, did you?

Original WUNC link via Lois McMaster Bujold's blog.

If this was just another list of "my favorite fantasy books and movies", I'd ignore it. But this article is funny and I need to share:

50 Essential Epic Fantasies (part 1)

The Lord of the Rings: Odd that the light-hearted story of a gardener’s voyage to see an elephant has been so badly misinterpreted over the years.....

Earthsea: In the spirit of the television adaptation, I’m going to change the type to white....

Also, he mentioned Dave Sim's Cerebus (though misspelling the author's name; why does everyone want to put an S on the end?). Not a book I've ever put on a fantasy list I've made, though now that I've had it suggested, I can't imagine why not. It's a hilarious sword and sorcery sendup in graphic novel form.

That was interesting. Thanks. A lot weren't the picks I would have made, but the points were great, often humorous.

Cerebus is a strange comic book...for one, the first issue was counterfeited, ghod only knows how many are out there. Also Cerebus ran, if i rember right, in 100 issue story arcs. Only the first story arc is Conan-type S&S fantasy.

Spooky said:

"Also Cerebus ran, if i rember right, in 100 issue story arcs."

Not quite; the arcs themselves aren't that long-- maybe 20 issues each? But the accomplishment was that he did a full 300 issues of a more or less unified story, and it's a weighty work overall, whatever one thinks of Sim's philosophy.

my boo-boo Gene, thanks for the save...the next longest run i can think of on a comic was Stan Lee on Fantastic Four...something around 200 issues...last i heard anyway

Gene wrote: "Spooky said: "Also Cerebus ran, if i rember right, in 100 issue story arcs."

The arcs themselves aren't that long-- maybe 20 issues each?..."

The arcs vary in length. "Church and State" was the longest, requiring two "phone books" when reprinted as trade paperback. The shortest appears to be "Rick's Story". (Oh, I also have a "Diamondback" card deck.)

Gene wrote: "But the accomplishment was that he did a full 300 issues of a more or less unified story, and it's a weighty work overall, whatever one thinks of Sim's philosophy."

Indeed. Sim & Gerhard were quite proud to have never missed a deadline in that run. They started in the very early days of independent comics, when other indies were notorious for not meeting dates to the printer or distributor (and for dying after 3-5 issues.) Sim promised a 300 issue story, and he delivered (over 25 years!) It's a great story, too, and splendid to see how the writer and artist evolved over the years, too.

A syndicated US AM radio show, Coast to Coast, (specializing in conspiracy theories) has assembled a bunch of their SF/F author interviews into a Youtube Video you might find interesting. Niven, Haldeman, Bujold (finally I know how to pronounce Vorkosigan, and I didn't even have to buy an audio book!), and Di Filippo.

i am a Coast to Coast fan...im sad to say John B. Wells, who did the interviews that night, was totaly lost and out of his element...no one currently among the regular hosts can really handle a SF or hard science subject....i wish we had Art Bell back....

Spooky1947 wrote: "i am a Coast to Coast fan...im sad to say John B. Wells, who did the interviews that night, was totaly lost and out of his element...no one currently among the regular hosts can really handle a SF ..."

I have to agree that the interview part of Larry Niven's visit in particular was pretty close to a train wreck. Niven, always an optimistic sci-fi writer, clearly didn't agree with Wells's premise of a society in decline. (Not to mention that Niven had to remind him who wrote 1984 and The Moon is a Harsh Mistress.) But the caller segments were much better, since apparently the shows listeners read a lot more sci-fi than the interviewer.

Just FYI, but my library has all the Vorkosigan books in audio format. I'm listening to them now. They're free that way & very well read.

Jim wrote: "Just FYI, but my library has all the Vorkosigan books in audio format. I'm listening to them now. They're free that way & very well read."

Where does one get them legally for free?

G33z3r wrote: "Where does one get them legally for free?"

Was I not clear in #18? I get them from the local library. At least none of mine (I belong to 3 local ones.) charge me to download an audio book or drop by & pick up the CD's. Your library may differ both in content & associated fees, but you should try there before buying audio books. I rarely listen to them twice in a decade, if ever.

Jim wrote: "Was I not clear in #18? I get them from the local library. ..."

Sorry, I interpreted "my library" as your own personal library rather than a public library.

Ah! I guess that is confusing. I usually just refer to the jumble as 'my books' or 'shelves', not 'my library' since they're scattered all over the house in any spot I can build shelves or even stack them. I think of a library as a central repository, something I would love to fit into the budget. Imagine having a room big enough to hold all my books!!! Heaven!!!

I'll try to remember to add 'public' from now on.
;-)

Jim wrote: "Ah! ... I usually just refer to the jumble as 'my books' or 'shelves', not 'my library' since they're scattered all over the house ..."

I think it's because both Amazon and Audible call the pages where they list my Kindle and audiobook purchases as my library, and iTunes keeps track of my music file called library, so I've just come to think of "library" as a place that stores my eStuff. I read somewhere that a "library" was once a place that stored physical books. Alexandria, wasn't it? :)

We're going to need a retronym.

my "library" is my spare bedroom...i have a 2 bedroom apt. so the spare bedroom is a desk and walls covered with shelf space...atm i am playing with the idea of moving the library to the master bedroom for the extra space (i can get away with this sort of madness because im single so no one to yell at me for doing what i want)

Publisher's Weekly tallies the top 20 best-selling books for the first half of 2013. I spotted two SF/F titles: A Memory of Light at #11 and World War Z at #16.

The Washington Post blogs a list of 29 suggested sequels to Sharknado, which apparently was one of the US SyFy channel's original B-movies. (Aren't those usually Saturday night? It is Friday, right?)

They can remember it for you wholesale...

MIT scientists implant a false memory into a mouse’s brain (NY Times)

old news...i rember Art Bell having guests on C2C way back in the day talking about the possibilty of a "soul-catcher chip"

BBC wonders, If you were first human on Mars, what would you say?"


A. "Boy, it's great to get out of that tiny capsule!"

B. "Tharks!!!"

C. "OK, let's unpack the killer robot."

D. "Hey, it looks kinda like Ohio."

E. "Everyone remember where we parked."

F. @CNSA 步行去。尼斯日落。 #Mars

G. All of the landers were fooled. We were deceived.

What does F mean? Is it "walking to a nice sunset" or something similar machine-translated into Chinese? :) I don't know what it means otherwise.

Ice Cream Flavors Inspired by Book Titles

A take on Ben and Jerry's whimsical ice cream flavor names puns on book titles. Go ahead, top "Whirled War Z" (product contains no actual brains.)

OK, so this isn't really a web "article" but it is totally fun and it is sort of sci-fi...you'll understand when you see it if you haven't already. Maybe everyone has already seen it and I was late to the game? Hopefully, the link below works because I can't get into You Tube from work to make sure it's correct. I'm sure someone will let me know if this is broken. www.youtube.com/watch?v=WPkByAkAdZs‎

G33z3r wrote: "Ice Cream Flavors Inspired by Book Titles

A take on Ben and Jerry's whimsical ice cream flavor names puns on book titles. Go ahead, top "Whirled War Z" (product contains no actual brains.)"

Those were totally awesome. I'm emailing the link to my friends now.

Wired has a fun little ditty up this month: Your Favorite Movies Laid Out as Vintage Treasure Maps.

The idea is to guess which movie is represented by each of 9 "treasure maps". (a couple are actually labeled, and so should present no real challenge! :) Since it's Wired, all but one are genre films (and seriously, who hasn't seen....?). I couldn't figure out #3 without calling up the answers. I'm not much of a fan of....

(Seems to have been posted a couple weeks ago, but I just noticed today thanks to SFSignal.)

Not really SF, but weird enough to be. Fake poodles.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/artic...

It's National Apostrophe Day. (US? Some sources claim it's International Apostrophe Day. Neither should be confused with National Punctuation Day nor National Grammar Day.)

So, Grammar Girl's podcast asks about Who Started Using Apostrophes in SciFi/Fantasy Names.

And the winner is.... The Martian Manhunter?

Interesting, but incorrect. Zelazny used apostrophes in names earlier in one of his first (1963) & best known stories A Rose for Ecclesiastes. The main Martian character is M'Cwyie.

REH used apostrophes in some of his names. Belit had N'Yaga as her shaman when she met up with Conan in "Queen Of The Black Coast" which was published in 1934.

Even earlier, ERB used to hyphenate names for much the same reason, I think. For instance, Zo-al & Ga-va-go in The Moon Maid: & Jad-bal-ja, the Golden Lion in the Tarzan series.

Grammar Girl needs to lighten up & get over her issues with the names.

That's impressive that you remember those, Jim!

I had to look them up to make sure, but pretty much remembered them because I never know how to pronounce them. I always try to correctly pronounce names mentally when reading else I can get confused by all the odd ones I find.

I thought Lovecraft used apostrophes, but couldn't find any examples in a quick look.

Jim wrote: "I had to look them up to make sure, but pretty much remembered them because I never know how to pronounce them. I always try to correctly pronounce names mentally when reading else I can get confused by all the odd ones I find...."

I almost never think of pronunciation when I read. It's more an exercise in pattern matching for me, unless the name is common or short and obvious. That's especially true in fantasy or the odder forms of sci-fi: more like "the really long name starting with V" or the "weird name starting with B". That usually means when I'm done reading, I have no idea how to pronounce the names.

If I get into a conversation about a book, I'll suddenly realize I have no idea how to pronounce the name of some character or place. Vorkosigan? Barrayaran? Cthulhu? Why do authors do this?

(Also, I don't type but use voice dictation for writing here, so all those non-standard names need to be spelled. What's wrong with names like Mary and Robert, anyway?)

Or I can listen to the audio book and then have no idea how to spell the name! :)

You might want to try it, G33z3r. I used to do the same thing as you but found I got confused between long, weird names that start with the same few letters. Once I started discussing the books with my wife & kids, I had to pronounce them & found that it helps me keep them straight better.

I agree about not knowing how to spell names after reading an audio book. I'll often google the book or look up the Wikipedia entry just so I can write an intelligible review.

I think a lot of authors use weird names because it gives the story a more outlandish feel. Some, like Brust, because it's a different language & culture - Hungarian in his case, I believe. That's fine up to a point & usually aren't too bad with a few tips, although certain letter combinations aren't very intuitive. Unfortunately, some authors go too far when they're making them up on their own.

When browsing books on shelves, I'll often glance in them. If I see a 'Cast of Characters', I'll generally drop the book like a hot potato. Any story that needs a section to keep all the characters straight with a pronunciation guide usually confuses me to the point that I lose interest.

Still, I appreciate the warning. I've put down The Asgard Run by Steve Vance because it has so many characters. The names aren't weird & each gets a paragraph or two to introduce them, but there are just too many to keep them all straight. A dozen seem to be main characters - there is no focal character. I've had other books I'd rather read & am not sure if I'll pick this up again or not.

Jim wrote: "Once I started discussing the books books with my wife & kids, I had to pronounce them & found that it helps me keep them straight..."

Nah, pronunciation is overrated. :) The percentage of names I will ever need to pronounce is very small compared to the numbers I encounter, so I cross that linguistic bridge when I come to it.

Also I noticed when I do take the time to guess at a pronunciation of an unusual name, I'm more likely to get it wrong than right; which means when I do finally hear it said at some convention panel or podcast, I have to unlearn my earlier mistake. (I remember fixing a pronunciation for Kushiel in my mind. Seemingly such a simple word, yet when I heard Ms. Carey say it, it took some time to realize she was talking about a trilogy I had read!)

For some of us, it's best to remain silent and be thought a fool than to open my mouth and remove all doubt. :)

Jim wrote: "When browsing books on shelves, I'll often glance in them. If I see a 'Cast of Characters', I'll generally drop the book like a hot potato. Any story that needs a section to keep all the characters straight..."

Doesn't bother me quite so much, because I find the authors very rarely make any significant use of such a large cast (Martin and Jordan excepted perhaps.)

I remember at the start of a couple of his Lost Fleet books, Jack Campbell went to the trouble of listing 50 or 100 battleships, destroyers and dreadnoughts and whatnot, complete with squadron assignments. If I thought I'd have to know a tenth of that, I'd have dropped it, too.

Ah. In fact, the Kushiel books I mentioned earlier list about 100 characters upfront, divided into the various great houses. Fortunately, only a dozen are relevant to the story, and I don't recall having to refer to the glossary while reading.

Amazon is sharing some images of early drafts of Theodore Sturgeon's works. Included are a draft page from "More Than Human", some short story notes (amusingly written starting from both top and bottom of the page), and an early script outline for the Star Trek episode "Amok Time".

Ah, the days of manual typewriters, when you marked text up and gave it back to the typist, and when cut-and-paste actually involved scissors and adhesive.

A blogger has gone through Wikipedia and assembled sales figures for lots of popular SF/F authors: Best-selling SF/F Authors.

Rowling, King, Tolkien, Lewis, and Meyer topped his list. (Note at the bottom he lists a number of popular authors for whom figures weren't available.)

Interesting, G33z3r! Thanks. I was surprised by some that were on the list & others that weren't. I was surprised that Michael Sullivan, a new author, made the list, but REH, ERB, & LE Modesitt didn't. I guess the first two have been gone too long as many authors didn't have figures after their deaths.

E-book seller Smashwords has some interesting data to offer on What Affects Book Sales. Some interesting sales statistics for their site. Short titles sell better than long titles. Also, really long tail.

G33z3r wrote: "E-book seller Smashwords has some interesting data to offer on What Affects Book Sales. Some interesting sales statistics for their site. Short titles sell better than long titles. Also, really lon..."

Thanks G33z3r! Very interesting! As a small independent publisher, it really makes you think

i don't care about tinker-toys in low-earth orbit...i want a Death Star, or at least a Star Destroyer...the ISS is a ton of JUNK

G33z3r wrote: "An interesting day for SF&F authors in mainstream media with two articles on classic SF writers:

The Atlantic has a retrospective on Cordwainer Smith.

And USA Today has an article on Ursula K. Le..."

Thanks for the heads-up!

For those who enjoy the stranger art of creating continuity out of chaos, here's a strange theory that places all Pixar movies in a single, arguably coherent alternate universe timeline (that's also circular):

The Grand Unified Theory of Pixar

(This is what comes of excessive freeze framing.)