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corn in the bible posted:vox day said that after this proof that the hugos are worthless, they;re going to try and gently caress with nebulas next It's one of the reasons Beale opened Castalia House — to poison the Nebulas. • SFWA members vote for the Nebulas. • SFWA membership is available to anyone with one book or three short stories. • Castalia is publishing an series of short-story anthologies, frequently featuring the same authors. • Castalia, being run by Beale, is publishing the work of the ideologically pure. As such, Castalia stacks the deck of the Nebulas to a) get awards with a higher industry cachet than the Hugos and b) get back at the SFWA for daring to kick Beale out (for being a racist poo poo head on the SFWA's official social media channels, including calling N K Jemisin 'subhuman').
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Aug 24, 2015 17:35
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Does the SFWA consider Castalia an acceptable market for publishing credits?
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Aug 24, 2015 18:26
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At present they do not. But the list is almost a year old (coincidentally, Castalia house is not much older) and probably up for review soon. The criteria for being a qualifying house are a minimum word rate and something vaguely to do with genre, which is more a self-identification as far as I can tell. Pro word-rate markets that aren't whatever genre is can still qualify if they pay the rates. So basically, assuming Beale has enough of his personal inheritance to shovel into a fire to pay the rates, SFWA would pretty much have to specially exclude Castalia specifically 'for being a total shitshow', which seems fair to me.
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Aug 24, 2015 18:37
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Hell, Castalia is how we get Kratman and Antonelli. What more proof they need?
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Aug 24, 2015 18:38
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anilEhilated posted:Hell, Castalia is how we get Kratman and Antonelli. What more proof they need? I thought Kratman was on Baen, or did they kick him to the curb?
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Aug 24, 2015 18:40
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flosofl posted:I thought Kratman was on Baen, or did they kick him to the curb?  Suffice to say it's enough for me to stay the hell away.
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Aug 24, 2015 18:45
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occamsnailfile posted:SFWA would pretty much have to specially exclude Castalia specifically 'for being a total shitshow', which seems fair to me. Which I don't think they would hesitate to do and drat the consequences, because you know Vox would start issuing legal threats. The Nebula is the one that the other writers choose, if someone started loving with that award, they will get extremely short shrift.
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Aug 24, 2015 18:49
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corn in the bible posted:vox day said that after this proof that the hugos are worthless, they;re going to try and gently caress with nebulas next this guy is such a rotten gaping rear end in a top hat god drat
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Aug 24, 2015 18:50
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Isn't Day like the only writer ever to get expelled from SFWA? One would think they won't allow him anywhere near the Nebulas.
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Aug 24, 2015 18:52
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Holy poo poo, John Carter and Dejah Thoris's kid is named Carthoris? That is the stupidest loving thing I've ever heard. And people give Twilight poo poo for the made up baby name, but it's a million times better than Carthoris, oh my god.
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Aug 24, 2015 19:00
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anilEhilated posted:Isn't Day like the only writer ever to get expelled from SFWA? One would think they won't allow him anywhere near the Nebulas. Depending on what version of the story you hear, there's also Stanislaw Lem.
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Aug 24, 2015 19:02
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An obsessive yet resourceful neonazi on a crusade to destroy all literary awards that don't go to his terrible books feels like a good novella plot.
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Aug 24, 2015 19:56
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boom boom boom posted:Holy poo poo, John Carter and Dejah Thoris's kid is named Carthoris? That is the stupidest loving thing I've ever heard. And people give Twilight poo poo for the made up baby name, but it's a million times better than Carthoris, oh my god. Eh, I tend to cut 100+ year old stories a little slack in the goofiness department, especially because it's not like Carthoris is weirder than other Barsoomian names. If it makes you feel any better, they name the second kid Tara.
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Aug 24, 2015 20:14
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I've been thinking about this and if I were one of the Puppy ringleaders I think I'd be seriously tempted to put a whole bunch of John Scalzi-esque stuff on the slate. After all, when they pack the slate full of Castalia House scumbags people can burn the category with no remorse whatsoever, and they've shown that they'll do so. So next year I'd throw my weight behind Scalzi and Ancillary Mercy and that kind of stuff instead of shoveling another load of Castalia-branded crap onto the ballots. Give them the choice between withdrawing, winning with puppy support, or burning the category and no-awarding themselves. Any of the three outcomes can be spun as a victory for their side. Withdrawing is their ability to dictate the ballot, burning the category shows that they can force a scorched earth response, and winning with their support is hypocrisy when you consider all the backslapping that Kloos got for withdrawing. It seems like a much stronger tactic and it's sure to stir up far more poo poo than packing another ballot full of John C Wright and watching the voters no award it again.
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Aug 24, 2015 20:51
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If the Sad Puppies want to give Ancillary Mercy a Hugo, I'll welcome them to it with open arms. They're too doctrinaire for that kind of thing to happen.
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Aug 24, 2015 20:54
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Khizan posted:I've been thinking about this and if I were one of the Puppy ringleaders I think I'd be seriously tempted to put a whole bunch of John Scalzi-esque stuff on the slate. After all, when they pack the slate full of Castalia House scumbags people can burn the category with no remorse whatsoever, and they've shown that they'll do so. You don't seem to understand how the Puppies work. They don't work like theirs to win, they want their work to win. This whole farce started because Correia was mad his lovely book didn't win several years ago; instead of accepting his book wasn't good enough, he concluded the only reasonable explanation was that there was a conspiracy.
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Aug 24, 2015 21:12
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That's true of Correia, but I think Vox Day just wants to watch the world burn, so to speak.
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Aug 24, 2015 21:31
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One of the regular gaming bundle sites, Groupees, has an ebook sci-fi bundle up for the next 4 days: Open Road Media Sci-Fi Bundle $1 Tier
Plenty of well known authors and Sterling's Schismatrix Plus is one of my favourite post-human sci-fi books, that also contains the complete Shaper/Mechanist collection. All books are available as epub, and also as mobi or pdf.
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Aug 24, 2015 21:54
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The description for the Piers Anthony book starts thus:quote:CALIGULA OF THE STARS Well that's loving terrifying. quote:(...) Hope Hubris began as an innocent. Because he defended his older sister against the violent lusts of a wealthy scion, Hope and his peasant family were forced to flee Callisto, one of the moons of Jupiter. Pursued by the bloodthirsty scions across the airless desert, they barely escaped with their lives. The illegal space bubble was overcrowded with refugees, all hoping to reach Jupiter for asylum. Yeah. I have no faith in this being readable, from this author.
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Aug 24, 2015 22:00
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You could have stopped at Piers Anthony
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Aug 24, 2015 22:06
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Antti posted:The description for the Piers Anthony book starts thus: I haven't read it, but that's vol.1 of his 'Bio of a Space Tyrant' series, and from the mid-80s before he went full-creep instead of mostly-creep.
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Aug 24, 2015 22:08
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The 'Bio of a Space Tyrant' also seems a significant clue.
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Aug 24, 2015 22:08
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Antti posted:The description for the Piers Anthony book starts thus: It's worse than that--it has a Piers Anthony-insertion (pun definitely intended) ubermensch taking over Jupiter which is the space US and enacting all sorts of extreme radical-left policies to destroy the immense number of pirates in Jupiter's moon space, curb special interest corruption, and legalize drugs and child sex. Wait, what? That's totally in there--'puberty is fuckable' becomes national law. It's a long, dreary road full of straw men and occasional side quests into gang rape, cannibalism and rationalizing pedophilia. I am just amazed someone feels the need to dredge Cold War weirdo fantasy into an ebook bundle. Several of the other books look interesting though.
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Aug 24, 2015 22:11
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Fart of Presto posted:Plenty of well known authors and Sterling's Schismatrix Plus is one of my favourite post-human sci-fi books, that also contains the complete Shaper/Mechanist collection.
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Aug 24, 2015 22:15
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deety posted:Eh, I tend to cut 100+ year old stories a little slack in the goofiness department, especially because it's not like Carthoris is weirder than other Barsoomian names. If it makes you feel any better, they name the second kid Tara. Carter+Thoris= Carthoris. I wish that naming scheme caught on. "This is Taylor and Jessica and their son, Taylessica."
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Aug 24, 2015 22:29
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boom boom boom posted:I wish that naming scheme caught on. "This is Taylor and Jessica and their son, Taylessica." That's how celebrity couple nicknames work (e.g. Bennifer, Kimye, Brangelina, etc.)
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Aug 24, 2015 23:31
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fritz posted:I haven't read it, but that's vol.1 of his 'Bio of a Space Tyrant' series, and from the mid-80s before he went full-creep instead of mostly-creep. No, it's full creep. It starts with a bunch of pirates gang-raping his sister, describing it in Playboy-forum level detail, "purple-headed warrior" and all. I don't know how bad it got from there, because as an 11-year old girl finding it in the jr. high school library, because somehow people thought he was a loving kid's author when really he's just an author who wants to gently caress kids, I didn't have the stomach to keep reading that poo poo.
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Aug 25, 2015 01:30
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Stuporstar posted:No, it's full creep. It starts with a bunch of pirates gang-raping his sister, describing it in Playboy-forum level detail, "purple-headed warrior" and all. I don't know how bad it got from there, because as an 11-year old girl finding it in the jr. high school library, because somehow people thought he was a loving kid's author when really he's just an author who wants to gently caress kids, I didn't have the stomach to keep reading that poo poo. Let's just say "bad" and then move on.
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Aug 25, 2015 02:14
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I just got through reading Bios by Robert Anton Winston. It's very good, but thematically incredibly similar to Axis. His prose is getting better and I like the shift to a more small-scale intimate story. It's just kinda of annoying that again that the antagonist is some grandiose, world-spanning vague unknown that turns out to be a gigantic alien consciousness that has no ill-will towards humanity, but is so very different from us that its attempts to communicate with us end up being fatal. The climax is the protagonist having their body colonised by something physical (crystals in Axis, fungus/bacteria in Bios) that allows them a link with the grand consciousness but also ends up killing them while they spout a big monologue to an ancillary character about how everything in the universe is connected and it's so beautiful.
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Aug 25, 2015 03:08
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SurreptitiousMuffin posted:I just got through reading Bios by Robert Anton Winston. It's very good, but thematically incredibly similar to Axis. His prose is getting better and I like the shift to a more small-scale intimate story. It's just kinda of annoying that again that the antagonist is some grandiose, world-spanning vague unknown that turns out to be a gigantic alien consciousness that has no ill-will towards humanity, but is so very different from us that its attempts to communicate with us end up being fatal. The climax is the protagonist having their body colonised by something physical (crystals in Axis, fungus/bacteria in Bios) that allows them a link with the grand consciousness but also ends up killing them while they spout a big monologue to an ancillary character about how everything in the universe is connected and it's so beautiful. Poorly done, it's a get out of jail card for "how the gently caress do I wrap this up?". I've seen this kind of thing done well, but even after fatal or near-fatal communication, it usually raises more questions than it answers for the characters and the reader. Even then, it's not usually the main antagonist when it does work or even really an antagonist. Here, I'm thinking about Dragon in Asher's Agent Cormac books. Of course, the AIs in that series *could* have been like that as well --vast intelligences far evolved from human understanding-- but the POV for the AIs laid that to rest by making them super-intelligent anthropomorphic personifications. (still loved the books) Proteus Jones fucked around with this message at 03:31 on Aug 25, 2015 |
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Aug 25, 2015 03:28
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Stuporstar posted:No, it's full creep. It starts with a bunch of pirates gang-raping his sister, describing it in Playboy-forum level detail, "purple-headed warrior" and all. I don't know how bad it got from there, because as an 11-year old girl finding it in the jr. high school library, because somehow people thought he was a loving kid's author when really he's just an author who wants to gently caress kids, I didn't have the stomach to keep reading that poo poo. You'd think an author who has written this stuff for decades might be looked in to by the FBI or something just to make sure he's only writing creepy child rape scenes in his awful books and nothing more. 
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Aug 25, 2015 04:52
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Stuporstar posted:"purple-headed warrior"  But not surprising really. I had a cousin who was huge into Xanth when I was a preteen and would regale me with indepth plot summaries.
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Aug 25, 2015 05:00
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This poster loves police brutality, but only when its against minorities!
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I'm going to ask for recommendations here. I have a bunch of ideas for stories, but I need to be a good reader to be a good writer, and I was hoping to find other authors who worked with similar themes and ideas to see how it's done. I want books with at least one of the following: -Good New Weird authors other than China Mieville and Jeff VanderMeer. -More worlds like Urth from Book of the New Sun, The Night Land, Bas-Lag, Ambergris, Fallen London, , or the ones in Tormentum: Dark Sorrow or From Software's Souls games. -Cosmic horror stories that break away from the Lovecraft purism model in interesting ways. -Anthologies of stories in the same world, like City of Saints and Madmen. -A world where humans either don't exist, or aren't the default people. (I read The Goblin Emperor already. It was decent.) -By the same token, a world with inventive races distinct from elves, dwarves etc. that aren't in a planet of the hats scenario (a homogenous, interchangeable group). -A story that makes good use of tarot symbolism on a level that isn't just surface. -Something with a culture like something from the real world's Renaissance era, though not necessarily an Italian-inspired one. I specifically want to get a feel for period dialogue that strikes a balance between being authentic and easy to read. -A magical academy where a Chosen One student doesn't hog all the focus. I want to see what it's like to teach at or even run such a school. -Stories about regret, guilt, redemption, or falls from grace. -Stories that focus more on law vs. chaos than good vs. evil as metaphysical forces that shape the world. Since I've read the thread, I've added the following to my reading list, so there's no need to repeat yourselves in that regard: -The Night Land (original purple prose version because it was free and I don't mind that so much) -The Dark Forest (The Three Body Problem was great.) -Blindsight -The Book of the New Sun (rereading) -The Library at Mount Char -City of Stairs (and City of Blades when that comes out) -The rest of the Gentlemen Bastards and Bas-Lag books (The Lies of Locke Lamora and Perdido Street Station are two of my favorite books ever.) -The Magicians trilogy -The Ambergris books (The author's Wonderbook is my favorite writer's handbook; it's specific to my needs and gorgeously illustrated.) -The Revelation Space books
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Aug 25, 2015 13:56
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Viriconium by M. John Harrison?
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Aug 25, 2015 14:01
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Solitair posted:I'm going to ask for recommendations here. I have a bunch of ideas for stories, but I need to be a good reader to be a good writer, and I was hoping to find other authors who worked with similar themes and ideas to see how it's done. So, it doesn't fill most of the requests, but have you read the Culture books? They made me a much more imaginative thinker and some books differ completely in content and plot from others. Some are medieval, some are (almost) post-human, and all of them are great. Best series I've ever read.
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Aug 25, 2015 14:03
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Solitair posted:I'm going to ask for recommendations here. I have a bunch of ideas for stories, but I need to be a good reader to be a good writer, and I was hoping to find other authors who worked with similar themes and ideas to see how it's done. You really need to read Last Call by Tim Powers. Go now! Secret history of Las Vegas with a huge helping of tarot symbolism, cosmic forces, etc. Really well written and well done.
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Aug 25, 2015 14:05
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Solitair posted:I want books with at least one of the following:
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Aug 25, 2015 14:15
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Solitair posted:-The Night Land (original purple prose version because it was free and I don't mind that so much) the anthology of four stories John C Wright put out Awake in the Night Land is pretty good (set in the same universe obviously). the first 3 stories at least are very solid stories in the same vein as the original, with different riffs on the same themes. the last is a bit more divisive for various reasons (and it pretty much requires reading hope hodgson's house on the borderlands) a bunch of fan fiction with these stories is available at: http://nightland.website/ Neurosis fucked around with this message at 14:27 on Aug 25, 2015 |
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Aug 25, 2015 14:22
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cultureulterior posted:You might consider Graydon Saunders "A Succession of Bad Days", which is about a group of magically posthuman students attending class at what will become a magical academy, if they can get the bugs out. If that doesn't sound interesting, try Succession anyway, it's excellent.
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Aug 25, 2015 14:30
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Solitair posted:-Stories about regret, guilt, redemption, or falls from grace. Use of Weapons
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Aug 25, 2015 14:33
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