Continuing to go through the Best Fancast Hugo Award eligibility list on this Google Spreadsheet, there’s something I noticed which I thought was interesting: For a category called “Best Fancast,” there are an awful lot of “professionals” on it.
This is not to say that someone who gets paid to write and/or edit and/or create science fiction and/or fantasy works by another company can’t be a fan and talk about the industry, the genre, and/or the people who are involved in it. It does set up a potentially unrealistic expectation about the quality of said works, and/or that the hosts have access to better equipment and a higher caliber of guests or material.
As a result, there’s a chance that as I review these “Best Fancasts” further, I may be a bit more critical of certain shows than others; I certainly hope that’s not the case. So here’s round two of my reviews of Hugo Award-eligible works for “Best Fancast”:
Following up on my last post wherein I said that I’d be reading (or listening to) as many 2016 Hugo Award-eligible works as possible before the nomination deadline, the first thing I did was to set a bookmark for this Google spreadsheet because it seems to be a pretty good place to start when it comes to finding works that were published in 2015 and are eligible to be nominated.
What I like about this spreadsheet is that it’s not curated: If someone read (or listened to, or saw) a piece that was eligible and they think it is a good or great piece, it goes into the spreadsheet. This allows for the most widest possible range of works to be listed and it’s done in a very egalitarian way. There also aren’t any synopses available which means that when you click on a link to a short story, you’re diving right into the work blind without any preconceptions as to what the work is about.
As I started to go through the short stories on the spreadsheet, I soon realized that there’s a vast difference between a piece of work that I like and a piece of work that I think should be nominated for a Hugo Award. It will be pretty easy to tell which stories fall into which categories.
So without further ado and in no particular order, I present to you the first in several reviews of Hugo Award-eligible science fiction short stories:
As with almost everything genre-related in my life, the reason I became interested this year in reading as many Hugo Award-eligible works as I can before March 28 this year is all thanks to my former college professor Dr. Atara Stein (may you rest in peace).
As a young undergrad at Cal State Fullerton, I had taken her Science Fiction literature class because I’d become interested in learning how other people have written science fiction in the hopes that I would be able to write my own. One of the first things she told us on the first day was that because even the science fiction genre encompassed a wide breadth of topics and themes, we would be focusing on what to her embodied what science fiction was as its very heart: What does it mean to be an intelligent “human”?
Through the clarifying lens of the “artificial intelligence” theme, a partial list of everything I read that school year is as follows: Neuromancer, Frankenstein, “I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream,” Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, and He, She and It. We also watched the director’s cut versions of Blade Runner and Terminator 2 as well as the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode “The Measure of a Man” (because she was also a secret Trek fanfic writer on the side).
It’s because of her college course that my philosophy about what makes “good” science fiction has to flow from satisfying at least two of these three criteria:
Does the work examine what it means to be “human” in some extensive way?
Is a very important part of how the plot and/or setting works tied to the use of technology created by sentient beings?
It is very improbable that the events in the setting of the book will happen during my lifetime?
This is a rubric which I’ve been following both consciously and sub-consciously my entire life, and it’s the rubric by which I plan to read and critique as many science fiction comics, short stories, novellas, and novels as are eligible for the 2016 Hugo Awards as I can before the nomination deadline of March 31.
At this most recent CONvergence Con (a sci-fi/fantasy-based convention in Minneapolis, Minn.), I was one of the panelists on two different panels that sought to speak about where and how women can exist in formerly male-dominated genres and spaces.
In The Smurfette Principle in Marketing panel, we tackled the idea that there isn’t often a lot of merchandise available for girls and women because there is often only one woman or girl in a group of men or boys in any given genre show, book, or movie. In the Genre Feminism panel, we spoke about why it was important to increase the visibility of women or girls in a genre show, book, or movie (along with other visible minorities as well) and how people as creators and consumers can promote these ideas.
Specifically to creators, I talked about Geena Davis (whose name I couldn’t remember at the time; apologies, Ms. Davis!) and how back in December 2013, she wrote a guest column for The Hollywood Reporter about how easy it can be for screenwriters to increase the number of roles in film and on TV for women and girls:
Step 1: Go through the projects you’re already working on and change a bunch of the characters’ first names to women’s names. With one stroke you’ve created some colorful unstereotypical female characters that might turn out to be even more interesting now that they’ve had a gender switch. What if the plumber or pilot or construction foreman is a woman? What if the taxi driver or the scheming politician is a woman? What if both police officers that arrive on the scene are women — and it’s not a big deal?
Step 2: When describing a crowd scene, write in the script, “A crowd gathers, which is half female.” That may seem weird, but I promise you, somehow or other on the set that day the crowd will turn out to be 17 percent female otherwise. Maybe first ADs think women don’t gather, I don’t know.
I don’t know how many people here read Ryan Sohmer’s edgy/adult-ish webcomic “Least I Could Do,” but it’s been one of my daily reads since I was introduced to it by my friend Harris O’Malley (aka Dr. Nerdlove). Also, after discovering the Vlogbrothers and posting about their very first webseries “Brotherhood 2.0,” I became a huge fan of theirs as well.
Back in 2007, the Vlogbrothers and their audience came up with the concept of the “evil baby orphanage,” which was their solution to the “If you could go back in time to kill Hitler as a baby, would you do it?” question. They thought that the more ideal situation would be to time-travel to when the most evil humans in history were children, take them away from the circumstances in which they became evil, and raise them in an orphanage to be good and responsible citizens. This idea caught on so well with the Nerdfighter community that with the Vlogbrothers’ blessing, an indie game company called Wyrd Miniatures was able to successfully Kick and start a card game.
“Zufruh” answers the question: What happens when you take the most evil men and women in history and place them in a daycare as toddlers?
It’s a strip I’m doing with Anna-Maria Jung, and I decided to do something a little fun with it, and put it up on Patreon. For those of you unfamiliar with it, Patreon is a subscription based system that lets you pay as little as a buck a month, giving you access to the comics as we produce them.
How much we update, if we create this at all, is up to you. If not, it goes back into the vault.
I liked the concept of the “Evil Baby Orphanage/Daycare” as a thought experiment from the Vlogbrothers, and I liked it enough as a card game to back the Kickstarter. However, judging from the sample comic above (which was the thumbnail image you get if you paste Sohmer’s Patreon link into Facebook), I’m not sure if I like it as a webcomic. (Or at least a webcomic written by Ryan Sohmer.) I’d have to see more before I decide if I’d add it into my blogroll, but I don’t think I’d become a Patreon of his in order to do so.
The video on his Patreon site—though slickly produced—has even less information:
Other questions I have are “Why is it called ‘Zuhfruh’?” and “Why did you decide to include the gay pride logo into yours if one of the main characters was known in his adult incarnation for sending thousands of gays and lesbians to concentration camps?”
My reaction when I feel backed into corner is to be an asshole. It’s essentially how I defend myself. It’s been that way since was in elementary school. I’m 36 now. Maybe it’s finally time to try and let some of that shit go.
—Mike Krahulik, explaining how he reacts to criticism on Twitter.
When I first heard that Penny Arcade creator and artist Mike Krahulik had stated at the recent PAX Prime during a Q & A panel led by president Robert Khoo that it was a “mistake” for them to pull the “Team Dickwolves” T-shirts from their store, I was shocked, but not surprised.
If you haven’t seen the remarks in context yet, press play on the video below, fast-forwarding to about 22:09 minutes in:
If you were to ask me where you could find a webcomic which tells the tale of Charles Babbage’s self-proclaimed war against street musicians, I wouldn’t have had any recommendations for you… until now.
The Organist part 1 (c) Sydney Padua // Click to enlarge
With its tongue lodged firmly within its cheek, I present to you this short story arc out of “2D Goggles or The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage,” lovingly entitled “The Organist” by Canadian illustrator Sydney Padua.
Much thanks to Jane Irwin and her comic Clockwork Game for the hat tip.
One of my favorite blogs to dip into from time to time is Smart Bitches, Trashy Books. Originated by writers Candy Tan and Sarah Wendell, the blog seeks to showcase what’s good, fun, informative, sexy, and surprisingly intelligent about the romance novel industry through their irreverent and occasionally deep book reviews.
Growing up, I loved romance novels. In my parents’ bedroom, half of a shelf was dedicated to Danielle Steel books. These were “forbidden” books so naturally as a teen, I devoured all of them. Once I graduated from college, reading romance novels became something my mom, my sister, and I could talk about—just as long as we didn’t talk too long about the sex scenes, that is.
About a year ago, I decided that I wanted to get back into reading some romance and especially finding a new author to follow as I’d phased out of my Danielle Steele, Fern Michaels, Catherine Coulter, LaVyrle Spencer, Maeve Binchy, Jennifer Crusie phase of reading. And before you ask, even Nora Roberts’ romance novels had been wearing a bit thin. Thankfully, Candy and Sarah have a section on their website devoted to their “best” blog entries, which is how I learned about Loretta Chase. Armed with a new name, some Amazon.com credit, and a visit to the bookstore, I was ready to read. Continue reading “Two Books Enter: Lord of Scoundrels versus Your Scandalous Ways“→
[Editor’s Note: Many thanks to Lauren at Kid Champ for letting me borrow her “Thundertome” idea for this review series. – TL]
When I first got my Android-enabled phone, I searched for something to read on it during a long 45 minute subway commute. A Google search for “free ebooks” took me to Google Books and their app, and I downloaded two books by Jane Austen, one I’d never read before (Sense and Sensibility), and one I’ve read so very many times over the years: Pride and Prejudice.
The first time I read Pride and Prejudice was outside of a school context, and while the text was somewhat unwieldy to me, I really loved the story of these two mismatched lovers who have to get over themselves before they can really appreciate each other and fall in love. Over the years, I’ve read the book hundreds of times, and I was looking forward to reading it all over again. As I turned the pages on the touch screen with my thumbs, the finer details of the story sunk deeper into my brain and I began to gain a new appreciation for the story. Which, of course, lead to my next thought: How can I read more? Continue reading “Two Books Enter: An Assembly Such as This versus A Wife for Mr. Darcy“→
When I first dreamed up the idea behind GeekingOutAbout.com, I was determined that one of the key things we would always do is to not only highlight what’s neat and geeky out there in the world but also to highlight those other creative people who are choosing to get up off of their butts and make their dreams a reality. That’s why I was extremely excited when a fanfic author named Jennifer Matarese whose work I’ve followed for years finally self-published her first original fiction novel to the Kindle, with other eBook formats to come.
Titled Heroine Addiction, it’s the story of Vera Noble, a retired bisexual superheroine who is just trying to live a quiet life in a small town. Unfortunately, the world of capes and crusaders catches up with her when her father Everett, a notable hero in the big city, is reported missing by his arch-nemesis and secret male lover and Vera is the only one who is able to find him. Continue reading “First-time author to use first book to raise funds for teens in need”→
Continuing to go through the Best Fancast Hugo Award eligibility list on this Google Spreadsheet, there’s something I noticed which I thought was interesting: For a category called “Best Fancast,” there are an awful lot of “professionals” on it.
