Hugo Awards - Novelette 2021

I am motivated to read this year's novelette nominees primarily based on the first story listed below.  It was originally published as "I Sexually Identify As An Attack Helicopter".  The author was then subject to all manner of abuse and harassment until they asked Clarkesworld [to withdraw the story].

I thought at the time that the story was marvelous.  The text of the story was great.  One need not delve into the subtext to enjoy the story.

But...if you wanted to reflect on that subtext, gender in general and transgender specifically, then there was a lot to chew on.  Most importantly, the author didn't kick the reader out of the story for wanting to think about it further.  The best method for attracting converts is to leave the door open.

1. “Helicopter Story”, Isabel Fall (Clarkesworld, January 2020) - well...see above.  This is a top-notch story.
2. “The Inaccessibility of Heaven”, Aliette de Bodard (Uncanny Magazine, July/August 2020) - The story tells of fallen angels that rebelled against Heaven/God who are forced to live among common humans.  It isn't clear if this is our Earth, but it is close enough.  The rebellion lives on while they are on earth.  Humans are subject to angelic "effects".  The angels long to return to their home in heaven.  I thought it was a well-crafted tale.
3. “Two Truths and a Lie”, Sarah Pinsker (Tor.com) - This story is about a young woman who slowly discovers that she and most of her childhood friends were subjected to a sort of mystical storyteller whose stories about the children seem to come true.  It is a bit of a think piece on the impact of our words on one another and especially on our children that slowly resolves into a horror ending.  Pretty good stuff.
4. “Burn, or the Episodic Life of Sam Wells as a Super”, A.T. Greenblatt (Uncanny Magazine, May/June 2020) - The world of this story includes people with supernatural abilities.  Unfortunately, the normal humans don't like the supers...at least until the supers can step in and save the normal humans.  The ending wasn't the greatest as our protagonist, Sam Wells natch, discovers that he doesn't want to use his powers.  He just wants to be an accountant that helps the "front line" supers do their thing.  We discover at the end that Sam is immune to fire.  His clothes, not so much.  I think a better ending would have involved Sam being adopted by firefighters as he can wander into fires to rescue people without the fear of being burned alive.
5. No Award
6. “Monster”, Naomi Kritzer (Clarkesworld, January 2020) - A young scientist goes to China in search of her high school friend that just so happens to be a ubiquitous super-brilliant villain that has murdered many people to develop a serum that makes him super strong and quick.  She ends up killing the villain and destroying all evidence of his discovery to prevent it from falling into the government's hands.  This was not a bad story.  It just didn't measure up to what I think Hugo-worthy work should be.

Not mentioned -

“The Pill”, Meg Elison (from Big Girl (PM Press))

It seems like this story might be in conversation with Cliff and the Calories by Robert A Heinlein.  In Heinlein's tale, our protagonist is committed to a diet to keep her in a super svelte condition because she thinks that is what her boyfriend wants.  Spoiler, he prefers her with a little more meat on her bones as being too skinny makes her look unhealthy.

In The Pill, our protagonist is obese in a world that is discovered a pill that causes everyone to be a healthy weight.  The downside is that one in ten people who take the pill die.  Our heroine eschews the pill and ends up being a sort of live porn star who is steadily being encouraged to go from obese to morbidly obese.

The story has several significant flaws.

• It portrays the US FDA as rapidly and cavalierly approving the drug even though the 1:10 death rate is well documented from the trials.  The FDA never approves a drug quickly.  And FDA officials are terrified of approving a drug that kills one out of 100,000 much less one out of every ten people.
• As an aside, it should be pointed out that America's problem with obesity is primarily the result of poor government policies originating with the food pyramid of the 1970s that advocated an increase in starches and carbohydrates.
• Obesity is not healthy.  The NIH estimates that obesity reduces a person's lifespan by an average of 14 years.  There are real-world consequences for being obese that include heart issues and diabetes. Our various public and private means of funding health care are strained by obesity.
• As an additional aside, consider the implications of a treatment that kills one in ten that then improves the health of the other nine such that they regain 14 years of healthy, productive living?  While we lose a person 30-40 years early, we gain over 120 cumulative years in the other nine.  I wouldn't accept a 1:10 death rate in a pharmaceutical treatment, this particular cold equation suggests that our society would be better off even with that disastrous sort of drug.
• The story briefly entertains and then immediately discards, the idea of changing one's diet and increasing one's physical activity as a means of losing weight.  Instead, the story validates and excuses poor eating habits.
• The story describes those that take the pill as having a single body style.  There isn't any more diversity of appearance as everyone has the same chiseled features.  That is utter nonsense.  If you look back at older photos before American prosperity gave rise to the American obesity epidemic you will see a wide range of appearances that were all very healthy.  The author is offering a false choice to the reader.

Unlike Heinlein's tale that supports a healthy lifestyle, this story endorses a decidedly unhealthy lifestyle.

Being honest here, I have struggled with my weight.  In my prime in the Corps, I was 190 lbs.  After the service, I gradually increased my weight to 255 lbs.  After I got serious about my health, I was able to go back down to 195 lbs. - they were good-looking pounds, but I still had more to lose.  Various factors over the last few years have caused me to go back up to 225 lbs.  I want to go back down.  Losing weight is hard.

But it isn't impossible for the vast majority of obese people if they are willing to learn some simple rules about eating and commit to a very modest amount of exercise.  This story does harm to the obese by offering succor to their desire to be seen as "normal".  Rewarding this story with being a finalist for a Hugo is unconscionable.

Interesting News - 6/21/2021

If my opinion isn't persuasive, then please listen to these American parents talk about how the methods being used to present CRT in their local schools are racist.  There are elements of CRT that are useful.  We certainly need to teach a broader review of American history.  There are other elements that are, without question, racist.

As I already knew, the key to addressing the California wildfires is forest management.  California has denied foresters the authority and funding to do their job properly.  Californians have paid the price for their government's malfeasance.  Hopefully, this policy change for the better is the start of a trend.

The new Miss Michigan is Vivian Zhong - currently a medical student studying pediatric cancers.  Congratulations Vivian!

The IRS has denied non-profit status to a Christian educational organization on the basis that biblical teachings are exclusively Republican.  I'm OK with that decision as long as they use the same rationale for de-certifying left-wing groups such as Move On who exist to educate voters in a manner that exclusively supports Democrats.

FTR, I'm sorry to hear that the Bidens lost Champ.  Also FTR, I've not seen anyone in my media stream mocking the Bidens over their loss.  That won't stop leftists from claiming otherwise.

David Chipman is Mr. Biden's nominee to head the ATF.  He said he wants to ban "assault weapons".  But he cannot define with any degree of specificity what constitutes an "assault weapon".  Unsurprisingly.  If it can't be defined, then it can be enforced on a whim.  George Orwell has had a few words to say about government based on the whims of a few.

Requiring positive identification for voters to be eligible to vote is popular among Americans across the board.  All races.  All party affiliations.  All income levels.  Based on Byron York's breakdown of the polling results, the people that are most opposed to requiring voter ID are white, rich, college-educated Democrats.  Not terribly surprising as they seem to have the least in common with average Americans.

The same building.  The same sort of activity.  Two very different outcomes.  Justice is certainly not blind in Washington D.C.  Protesters that stormed the Senate chambers in the Capitol building over Brett Kavanaugh's nomination to the Supreme Court were given the option of being arrested.  Those protesters that stormed the same building on January 6, 2021 were not.  I have issues with the motivations of both groups, but that isn't the point.  The point is that the government is apparently electing to enforce laws based on whether the viewpoint of the perpetrators is pleasing or offensive to the government agents doing the enforcement.  Selective enforcement of our laws undermines our system of justice and threatens the basis of our great republic.

An American Senator is a member of a racist club.  He will not be called to account for that membership.  He is a Democrat.  The Democrats routinely get a pass from our leftist-dominated media on their bigotry.

More good news from the world of medicine.  Another treatment for AIDS is on the horizon.  As the blogfather says "faster, please!"

A final item about Joe Bolanos.  He attended Mr. Trump's rally on January 6th, but left the ellipse for a hotel rather than walking to the Capitol Building.  He was not there when the protesters broke into the Capitol.  He never entered the building.  Yet his home was raided, he was taken into custody in front of news cameras, and his property seized in the raid has yet to be returned.  I you ever wonder why folks are skeptical of the FBI and DoJ, here is a prime example that justifies that skepticism.

Juneteenth

Considering the kerfuffle over the Juneteenth celebrations last weekend, I thought I'd put in my $0.02.

The day is a fitting celebration for the end of slavery.  Every American should celebrate that occasion regardless of race.  It is a piece of American history and our national heritage.

However, it should not be a holiday that is marked by a paid day off for federal government employees.  That isn't a comment about the holiday's importance or relevance.  It is a comment about how federal employees get ten paid holidays; several of which are not holidays for most private employers.  That should not be increased to eleven.  Nor am I interested in displacing a currently established federal holiday.

Our nation celebrates a great many holidays (both secular and religious) without giving federal employees the day off.  We can and should celebrate this one as well.

Frankendann Rises

 As suggested a couple weeks ago, typing remains a bit difficult.  It is getting better.

The short version is that we were hosting a couple of dogs; one of whom decided that climbing a four-foot chain-link fence was an appropriate activity.  I disagreed and hauled her butt back off of the fence before she could leap into the neighbor's yard.

One of the ligaments or tendons in my left wrist thought that such an action was unwise.  I won the battle with the dog, but the wrist won the war.

I had reconstructive surgery a few weeks back.

So my summer will be consumed with a series of casts, braces, and exercises developed by the horned-one for his amusement.  I hope to get the pin removed in a couple of weeks.  The doc has assured me that the removal is very easy.  I'll feel a bit like Frankenstein in the meantime.

And here's the cause of all the trouble.  She's gone home now.  She's a very nice puppy...except for a few minutes last winter when she became just a bit too focused on climbing fences.

A Quilting Family

I recently learned that I am not the first person in my family to take up quilting.  My grandmother, Isabel Cramer (Maybee) Stark, made quilts.  Two of them to be precise.

Grandma Stark sewed a lot.  She made curtains for lots of family members when they bought new homes.  She made clothes for my mom[1] until mom started school.  Grandma Stark also made clothes for her cousin, Charlotte Ann.

I used to spend a week or two each summer with my Grandma and Grandpa.  They took me to see Star Wars; my pick, not theirs.  One summer I discovered her embroidery floss.  She let me make my own patches for my denim jacket.  It was remarkably fun doing something from scratch.

I did 4H one year to learn about embroidery.  Fast-forward a few decades and I have completed roughly 30 quilts.

One of my aunts revealed that Grandma had also quilted.  Her first quilt is on display in my aunt and uncle's home and it will eventually find its way to one of my cousins.

The pattern is known as Mariner's Compass.  I've only completed one quilt using that pattern and I'm unlikely to return to it as it is very time/labor-intensive.  Lots of custom cutting for the pieces.  I had the benefit of some modern triangles to help with cutting each of the various pieces.  Making the same pieces using a ruler and custom measurements would be much harder.

Isabel Stark - Bicentennial Project - Click to embiggen

Parenthetically, that headboard and side table were in the room that was my aunt's for many years.  It was good to see those magnificent pieces of carpentry again.

My aunt sent along the following that has been lightly edited for privacy purposes.

Mom made the quilt in 1976 and deemed it her Bicentennial Project.

She used a large white cotton sheet and appliquéd the stars onto the sheet. Looking it over and holding it up to the light, I can see two machined seams putting the backing together. It was a bedspread, and there is no batting inside.

It looks to me like she probably machine stitched the edges to the backing and then folded the edging over onto the front white sheet, and that is hand-stitched.

I remember her saying that a traditional quilt should be done by hand. All of the stars and the appliqué are done by hand as is the quilting. 

Of course….I have no idea when the long arm machines started to be produced.

Mom only made one other quilt. It was after she finished this one. The second quilt was commissioned by a friend for her mother and the commission went to the church. It was not a formal pattern and was made of many fabrics in a diagonal across the piece. The friend, a professional pottery artist, said at the time that Mom’s sense of color and design was phenomenal in that she never had any formal training.

Compass - Click to embiggen

As described, Grandma created the compasses from pieces and then sewed them onto a flat sheet.  This is a process known as applique.

Compass center detail - Click to embiggen

 

The center medallions were also added via applique.

Compass detail - Click to embiggen

Here is a detail from one of the compass sections.  

Accent strips - click to embiggen

The additional accents are just strips that are gradually shifted to cross over one another.  They also do a weaving pattern over the medallions located between the compasses.

Back and binding - click to embiggen

Grandma Stark had a great sense of style and color.  I hope that my quilts continue that tradition.  Unfortunately, the Compass I made for my dad hasn't survived very well.  The colors on the Michigan State fabric ran.

[1]My mom would victimize my brother and me by making our clothes while we were young.  There are photos.  There are photos!  I cast very few aspersions towards my Grandma, but setting this example for my mom is one thing we all could have lived without.

Interesting News - 6/14/2021

I am not against the idea that black lives matter

I am not against opposing fascism

I am not against teaching true history in schools

I am not against a holiday celebrating the end of slavery

I AM against people using these things as a Trojan horse to push radical ideology

— Leonydus Johnson (leave/me/alone) (@LeonydusJohnson) June 18, 2021

The bottom line for me is that the crowd would not have been in DC on January 6th were it not for the lies about the vote and lies about then-Vice President Pence's ability to alter the counting of the electoral votes.  The larger...and one might correctly point out mostly peaceful...crowd provided cover for those elements that wanted to engage in violence in an attempt to stop the just process of counting the electoral votes.  If President Trump and his allies had been telling the truth, then the crowd of protesters would have been much smaller and would not have been able to provide that sort of cover for those bent on mayhem.  That being said, I do think it is useful to understand how they got into the Capitol building.  I think it was largely incompetence on the part of Capitol hill police, but who knows.

This sort of thing drives me a bit nuts.  If we were talking about one of Donald Trump's progeny, the left and the media...but I repeat myself...would be consumed in near apoplectic rage declaiming the entire enterprise as thinly veiled corruption.  But it is Joe Biden's son, so our media "betters" cannot be bothered.

The latest in the saga of the real Lady A; vocalist Anita White.  The woke crowd continues their pattern of using their position of privilege to abuse minorities in the cause of appearing moral.

The Babylon Bee has won against The New York Times.  Great news for those in favor of free speech and fact.

Is the tide turning against Cancel Culture?  Probably not...yet.  But I trust that people like Kevin Hart and Charles Barkley will help lead the way out of that wilderness.

According to climate change theory, an increase in global temperatures should cause an increase in extreme weather. May is the month with the most tornados.  Yet not only was May 2021 pretty quiet, but almost all of the low tornado months on record have also come in the last 20 years.  Maybe...follow me on this...the dominant theories are subject to a significant level of uncertainty that should cause us to be reasonably cautious about accepting the climate models used to express those theories.

Continuing with the climate change trend, one theory is that humanity is the driving factor in the increasing level of CO2 in the atmosphere.  The Wuhan/Covid pandemic of 2020 caused a significant reduction in global travel as well as local travel.  Yet the trend of increasing CO2 in the atmosphere has not altered one iota.  Maybe human activities aren't quite as influential as some folks suggest.

Recently, the socialist news agency Propublica presented a report on the taxes paid by a couple of the wealthiest Americans.  They attempted to calculate an effective tax rate.  Unsurprisingly, they utterly failed.  The tax rate is based on one's income, not on one's total wealth.

Here are (one - two) a couple of good articles on race and racial issues in America from Quillette.  Read the whole thing.

An attorney with the ACLU claims that liberals are leaving First Amendment free speech behind.  I disagree with his assessment that these are liberals.  Being a liberal requires being open-minded and tolerant.  The people the attorney is referencing are either leftists or potential future American Chekas.  They neither understand nor desire to be open-minded or tolerant of anything that disagrees with their theology ideology.

One last item for the week is a look back at how the feds were interested in Hunter Biden's fiscal issues back in 2016.  Hunter neglected to pay his taxes - I mean a LOT of unpaid taxes.  Something that would invite the full-court press from the IRS if it were a normal citizen.  But Hunter has connections.  Naturally, the left and the media...but I repeat myself...are disinterested in this wealthy American that can't be bothered to pay his fair share.  Nor are they interested in the appearance of impropriety surrounding his finances.

2021 Hugo Awards - Best Novel

Typing is still a bit hard these days, so this will be brief.  My final ballot for the Best Novel Hugo Award for 2021 will be as follows.  I think.

1. Black Sun, Rebecca Roanhorse (Gallery / Saga Press / Solaris)
2. Piranesi, Susanna Clarke (Bloomsbury)
3. Harrow The Ninth, Tamsyn Muir (Tor.com)
4. Network Effect, Martha Wells (Tor.com)
5. No Award
6. The Relentless Moon, Mary Robinette Kowal (Tor Books / Solaris)
7. [blank]

Unmentioned

• The City We Became, N.K. Jemisin (Orbit)

Black Sun was a fantastic read.  It was infused with several mythologies from the pre-Columbian Americas.  The book also contained some elements of the grimdark sub-genre; a personal preference.  I was ignoring everyone so I could read more.  Ms. Roanhorse is a tremendous talent.  This book is a showcase for that talent.  Just read it.

Piranesi was also a great read.  It contained reality-bending elements that were reminiscent of Philip K. Dick.  A worthy nominee, but not quite as good as Black Sun.

An aside before we continue.  I have previously suggested that the pool of Hugo Award nominators appears to have a limited range of authors/topics/publishers that they will consider as suitable for their nominations.  I periodically encounter a modestly provicial attitude that this limited range of experience is suitable because "it's the Hugos".

The result of that attitude is that successive novels in a series end up being nominated even though prior entries nominated in prior years were not selected for the award.  My general experience is that the quality of successive entries in a series frequently declines as the series progresses.  That is partially the result of successive entries either relying on the reader being familiar with prior entries to fully engage with the current entry and/or the author creating a cliffhanger ending to encourage the reading of the next installment.  This award is for the "Best Novel".  A novel should be a complete piece of work.

I am considering the option of a personal rule that puts any novel from a series below No Award unless all of the prior entries have won for the years that they were nominated.  At the very least, I think the bar should be higher for a subsequent entry to win a Best Novel Hugo if the prior entry/entries did not also win the award.  Other people will make other choices.

Harrow the Ninth is the second in a series from Tamsyn Muir.  The first entry, Gideon the Ninth, was fantastic.  I had it in second place behind Middlegame on my ballot last year.  Harrow the Ninth was a fun and engaging book.  While it included most of the same characters as the prior entry, their relationships were substantially different.  One need not have read the first installment to enjoy this book.  Unfortunately, the book ends on a cliffhanger, so this isn't a complete story.  The entire book bends reality in so many ways.  The ending was a completely unexpected twist.  I will read the third installment eventually, but probably not when it comes out as I suspect that it will be heavily nominated for the Hugo Best Novel category.  If this were 2022, then I'd probably put it below No Award based on the principle discussed above.  I think this series would make a great Best Series nominee.

Network Effect is the latest entry in the Murderbot series from Martha Wells.  I read the entire series in one sitting last year.  It is a great series.  The series is nominated for the Best Series award and I have voted for it for that award.  However, there are a couple of reasons why Network Effect doesn't belong at the top of the Best Novel ballot.  First, as described above, the reader really needs exposure to the prior entries in the series to get the full effect of the novel.  The novel does not stand on its own.  As a separate plot flaw, our protagonist, Murderbot, still isn't wearing armor despite several entries in the series where a little armor would have been very helpful.  While Murderbot is continuing to develop in other areas, they simply haven't learned that part of their old existence, the wearing of armor, might continue to be useful from time to time in their new existence.  Again, if this were 2022, then I'd probably put this below No Award despite finding it to be a very enjoyable book.

No Award - this should be self-explanatory.

The Relentless Moon is the third entry in the Lady Astronauts series by Mary Robinette Kowal.  It continues the tradition of heavy-handed virtue signaling.  The reader is to take but one message from the book and no enjoyment of the book is to be permitted unless that message is received and accepted as gospel truth.  Also, the story involves a level of trust in the competence of the United Nations that has never been justified in the entire history of that clubhouse for national chief executives.  I noped out of this one early.

I am not mentioning The City We Became at all on my ballot.  The book began with a reference to the demonstrably false narrative that modern police in the US kill black men willy nilly without repercussions.  The facts do not support that narrative.  The facts do support a long-overdue national conversation about how police interact with all of our citizens.  The facts do support changing police culture so that Americans that are black are treated with the same level of trust and respect as all other Americans receive.  But no rational reading of the current statistics regarding people killed by the police justifies the narrative that the police are routinely killing American black citizens.  Shortly thereafter, the author included a signal that she doesn't care for white people to read her book.  I accepted her racist language on its face value and promptly gave it the Dorothy Parker treatment.  I rarely regret purchasing a Hugo Best Novel nominated work.  This is one such exception.

Interesting News - 6/7/2021

 Another weekly roundup.  Enjoy!

Funny how things worked out; A Dry Bones comic.  Not haha funny.  The other funny.

Interesting News 5/31/2021

The continuing hatred for Tim Tebow mystifies me as well.  He has done nothing to deserve it.

Requiring positive identification isn't a controversial process in Europe.  It should not be controversial in the United States either.

Democrat Representative Eleanor Holmes Norton may not have gotten the memo from the DNC.  But gender is not supposed to matter according to some.  Common sense and human history suggest that it does.

Old but still relevant.  Evergreen, one might say.  Why the Hammer and Sickle Should Be Treated Like the Swastika

Early on, people labeled concerns about the Covid/Wuhan virus originating from a laboratory located in China as xenophobic and fundamentally flawed.  Their allegations of xenophobia were wrong when they were made.  We may never have 100% proof of it coming from a lab thanks to the secretive CCP government.  But we should never have allowed the media and their leftist political allies to prevent the reasoned discussion of the lab origin theory.  It's looking more and more like there was some sort of lab accident and the American people were partially funding certain activities at the lab.

An interesting profile of Sen. Tim Scott (R)-SC.  I'm not sure if he will run for the Presidency, but I think he would make a good one.  Scott-Sasse 2024?  Or the other way around.  Either option works for me.

--

Typery Foreshortened

 My typed work will be a bit brief over the coming months.  I am recovering from having the link between my scaphoid and lunate reconstructed.  Typing with only one hand encourages brevity but does little for clarity.

Interesting News - 5/24/2021

This is the second installment of our Interesting News series.  Enjoy!

Sinfest 5/22/2021 - Tatsuya nails it in one!

Excessive TV rots the brain and the body.  TV time may be a proxy for just being sedentary.  In either case, go for a walk, do something that requires actual thought and action to maintain your health.

Matt (or Mat - I'm not sure) is someone that I have been following (on and off) for several years.  It turns out that he has an affinity for numbers (hence his handle "Polimath") and a talent for data formatting and presentation.  He has had a productive year analyzing Covid numbers.  In his latest from Substack, he challenges people to not believe stories that are too good to be true.  In this case, the media narrative that the D or R behind a state governor's name is not a useful proxy for evaluating Covid related public policies.

Jordan Peterson responds to "REAL communism has never been tried" and murders it with fire 🔥⚰️ pic.twitter.com/Xyj2e1UFpI

— Not the Bee (@Not_the_Bee) May 25, 2021

+ 

Getting Into My Tagline Generator

Wayyy back in the day, people used to include taglines when they posted to electronic bulletin boards, Usenet groups, and similar such forums.  There was a piece of shareware known as Taglinator that did a fine job of selecting random taglines from a list.  You could modify the list and add your own.

The resulting tagline might look something like this.

Regards,

Dann

Some pithy saying or one-line joke or something profound....who knows! 

My Taglinator file wandered away over the years.  I rather enjoy [adding a] including closing [to] an online response with a tagline.  So, I ended up creating a new random tagline generator via Google's Sheets application.  The list was seeded with some common taglines from years gone by and has been slowly expanding with the addition of new taglines from various sources.

So what are my criteria for adding something to the list?  Mostly, the line has to be modestly funny or an interesting observation.  With one (at this point) exception_[1], the person/source is someone that has something to say that is worth remembering.  I probably have enjoyed their work on past endeavors either as artists, academics, politicians or as a commentator on society in general.  Sometimes I just run across a quote that reflects my perspective.

Sadly, modern cancel culture compels me to point out that all of the sources of quotes are human and therefore have flaws.  John Wayne's opinions on race were reasonably mainstream for the '50s and early '60s.  They wouldn't pass muster today.  The socialist advocacy of Robert A. Heinlein and George Orwell was rooted in ignorance and inexperience with socialist theories from an earlier age.  We know better today about how socialism works in reality vs. how it is presented as a theory.  Whoopi Goldberg has advocated some questionable ideas from time to time; such as instances where rape might be "rape" rather than "rape-rape".

No person is free from criticism.  No one is perfect.  Criticisms of a person in one area do not negate useful observations that they might offer in other areas.

With one (at this point) exception_[1], the people and quotes included in my list have something to do with either an appreciation for the person or an appreciation for the value of what they are saying in the quote.  Sometimes it's a bit of both.  I've enjoyed a lot of Whoopi's movies and generally support the perspective in the quotes.  I'm not a fan of "The View".  John Wayne made great movies and was a patriotic American; these are worthy of respect.  I'm also glad that his ideas on race no longer define American society.

Appreciating people is not a binary choice.  People are complex.  It's OK to support someone where their influence is positive while acknowledging their flaws.  It's called tolerance.  It reflects nuance.

_[1] George Bernard Shaw supported regimes that committed mass murder.  People should keep that in mind before remembering him fondly.  I'm OK with reminding folks of that fact.

Interesting News - 5/17/2021

We are introducing a new feature here at Liberty At All Costs.  "Interesting News"

We can add exclamation points if that helps create enthusiasm.

Rather than trying to write a lengthy epistle based on some news item, we are simply going to link to the news item.  The link should be attended by nothing more than a pithy paragraph.  For now, the week will begin on Monday with the final product being pushed out on the following Sunday.

These are news items that I might ordinarily share via various social media feeds.  The inclusion of an item does not mean outright endorsement.  Merely that there is some bit of news or a unique perspective that is worthy of consideration.

Let us begin with the inaugural Interesting News, the flotsam and/or jetsam of my reading.

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Meeting in the middle on religious and LGBTQ rights - Ironically, the state of Utah is the source of some groundbreaking legislation that accommodates both the rights of LGBTQ folks to live and work while also respecting the religious beliefs of the faithful.  In 2008, Utah supported Prop 208 in California that banned same-sex marriages.  In 2015, the Utah legislature worked in cooperation with LGBTQ advocates to craft a law that met most of the objectives of both groups.  Both sides are loath to call it a compromise.  Jonathan Rauch calls it a quintessential example of the sort of collaboration that the Constitution was designed to foster.

I suppose if you misspell "sorcerer", it's a sorcerror?

— LK Lohan (@LKLohan) May 11, 2021

The Order Of The Stick #1234 - OOTS is a long-running comic featuring semi-self-aware fantasy role-playing game-type characters.  Periodically...perhaps frequently...OOTS will correspond with reality a little too closely.  I wish more people would appreciate this approach to a thorny issue.

Sinfest 11 May 2021, 14 May 2021, 15 May 2021, and 16 May 2021 - Sinfest is over 20 years old.  It started off as one type of strip and has gradually shifted over the years.  I walked away from it for a while as it thematically became a bit of a one-note strip.  While I didn't mind the "one-note" so much, I did mind that being the only thing going on.  The artist, Tatsuya Ishida, has expanded his scope of topics.  The strip from 12 May 2021 happened to occur close to a time when I encountered this Chemical Brothers video.  An intriguing combination.

What do you call it when the media purposefully skews reporting about political campaigns?  Perhaps it is time to call them something other than the "media"; propagandia?

Stolen from somewhere - click to embiggen

What is the difference between aerosol and droplet transmission of a virus? The science - it is not settled.  Even though the medical community thought that 5 microns size was the magic number, the truth was that the 5-micron value only told part of the story.  Science is a process.  It is fallible.  But, when the scientific process is followed, it is self-correcting.

Donald Fagen recently released a new album titled "Cát Bụi Cuộc ĐỜI" which is apparently (thanks Google translate) Vietnamese for "Sand and Dust of Life".  I'm still waiting for it to come up in my Spotify rotation, so I cannot comment on the music.  I just happened across the album while setting up my queue of music.  I couldn't find news about the album anywhere on teh Interwebbers.  This is about as stealth of an album drop as I've seen in a long, long time. [update - made it halfway through the album.  It's nothing like his other work.  Unremarkable music.]

Filtration Or Net Fishing For Fiction

Alternatively...The Windmill is My God and Cervantes is the Most Holy Prophet.  Lord make me a fisher of books!

Take your pick.

In my series of continuing digressions into fandom, I'd like to add some (hopefully apolitical) thoughts about how readers find books.  I'm not sure if filters or nets are the better analogy.

Filters capture contaminants but allow useful material to flow past.  Contaminants are usually a small percentage of the whole.

Fishing nets capture the relatively smaller volume of desired material (i.e. fish) while letting the vast majority of material (i.e. water) flow through.  The size of the net can influence what you "catch".  Small, tight nets with smaller gaps are tossed off of docks and from the shore to catch small baitfish.  Larger nets with larger gaps are floated in the oceans (or really big lakes) to catch tuna and other larger fish.

Maybe nets are the better analogy.

Not only does the size of the net matter, where you use it matters.  Using a small net in the middle of the ocean probably won't yield as many baitfish compared with tossing it off of a dock.  Using a drift net in the middle of a small river might yield a few large carp, a turtle or two, and maybe some bass, but you won't catch bucketloads of smelt.  Using a net off of the coast of California coast will yield a different catch than the same net in the Caribbean or in the Aral Sea.  [yes...I know...that's the point]

So what are the "nets" of fandom?

I Like That Author's Prior Work - This is an easy one.  An author writes a really good book that deeply affects the reader.  That reader is more likely to make time for any subsequent work from that author thereby precluding the time needed to "cast a net in a different spot".

The [insert publisher here] Mailing List - The Tor mailing list, to name one.  I'm on it.  Periodically they offer a free book that sounds interesting.  Free and interesting fiction is an easy way to attract reader attention.  

Professional Reviews - Sites such as Locus Magazine and Bookbub do a pretty good job of identifying quality fiction.  However, they do not read and review everything.  All professional review sites include internal processes that limit the span of their reviews.

Acquaintances and Friends - Word of mouth is a good means of spreading the news about an author and/or their work.  The only qualifier is that one's range of acquaintances needs to be sufficiently broad to encourage exposure to a diverse range of authors and works.  As much as I enjoyed books out of the Dragonlance mythos, I would not trust a group of friends who focus on reading Dragonlance books to tell me about the best works in the wider science fiction/fantasy genre.

Contests/Awards - Whether juried or based on reader voting, awards can be a great way to find new authors and works.  Currently, my best award-based experiences are with the Self Published Fantasy Blog Off.  I have good experiences with some other contests as well, but this one has provided me with the best results.

Other? - I think the above pretty well covers most of the major "nets".  But who knows.

Why is this important?  Take a look at this year's best novel nominees for the Hugo Awards.

• Black Sun, Rebecca Roanhorse (Gallery / Saga Press)
• The City We Became, N.K. Jemisin (Orbit)
• Harrow the Ninth, Tamsyn Muir (Tor.com)
• Network Effect, Martha Wells (Tor.com)
• Piranesi, Susanna Clarke (Bloomsbury)
• The Relentless Moon, Mary Robinette Kowal (Tor Books)

I had heard about five of those six books as they were released last year.  I had not heard about Piranesi.  Ironically, that is one of only two books that I am looking forward to reading.  

I read Network Effect because I was plowing through the rest of the Murderbot series at the time.  I was interested in Harrow the Ninth because I thought the prior entry in the series, Gideon the Ninth, was quite good.  I didn't read Harrow last year because I was predicting that it would be a finalist this year.

I didn't bother with reading the rest of those books for the same reason; the relatively small, and quite frankly provincial, group of people nominating works for the Hugo Awards appear to have a rather limited range of "nets" for finding good new books.  They also seem to have a limited number of "fishing spots" in which to ply those "nets".

The lack of diversity among the nominees suggests to me that the group of nominators lacks diversity in their reading habits and expectations.  The quality of the awards will suffer until that changes.

Yet Another Government Action Undermining Our Republic

There is an article over at Rasmussen discussing the 2020 census and the "updates" that have been applied by the Biden Administration.  While this is written as an opinion piece, it is being hosted over at Rasmussen; a serious polling firm that tries to do polling correctly and accurately.

The Biden Administration has inexplicably "adjusted" the population counts for several Democrat-leaning states.   The obvious result is that those states will not lose as many seats in the US House of Representatives.  The flip side of that is that there are Republican-leaning states that will not gain as many seats in the US House.

My many friends on the left that wonder why I distrust their version of expansionist government should refer back to this issue in the coming years.

There is an extensive and well-documented trend of people moving out of Democrat-leaning states and into Republican-leaning states.  Adjusting the census values to minimize that trend is questionable.  The fact that all of the adjustments run in one political direction is also questionable.

Highly questionable.

While I am not a big fan of "deep state" conspiracy theories, I do think there are cultural issues in play.  The civilian employees have a preference in terms of their working conditions and the operations of their respective agencies.  Generally, the larger the agencies, the better the employee's chances for advancement and the less their chance of being laid off.

People living in majority Democrat places tend to expect more government services and support the politicians that advocate for funding those services.  

There is a bit of symbiosis between Democrat politicians and government employees.  This isn't a purposeful conspiracy but rather is just the natural alignment of groups with objectives that complement one another.

Here's the problem.  If Donald Trump had won the 2020 election and had his administration "adjusted" the census count to enhance Republican representation in the US House without sufficient justification, then wouldn't the Democrats have screamed bloody murder?  Impeachment?  Hell, they would have howled even if the justifications were documented and reasonable.

The mainstream media, ever a leftist-friendly group, would have come unglued.  Allegations of vote fixing would be broadcast 24 hours per day.  It would have been presented as an abridgement of the voting rights of the citizens of those Democrat-leaning states.  Other speculation would have been offered with wild abandon.

I predict that none of these people will have any issue with the Biden Administration's attempt to manipulate the census for political objectives.  I also predict that they will look at anyone that questions these "adjustments" as if they had grown a third eye in a prominent location.

The lack of a critical media response is just the latest example of how our demonstrably biased media is undermining our great Republic.

The following are from the article.  Read the whole things for additional context.

No. 1: New York -- We've been tracking the annual population/migration changes between states since the last census in 2010. Over the past decade, New York LOST about 1.3 million residents on net to other states. (This does not include immigration, births and deaths.) Still, this is a population loss that is the equivalent of two, maybe three, lost congressional seats. But the final numbers ADDED approximately 860,000. That's roughly twice the population of Buffalo and Rochester -- combined. This is the state that has lost by far the largest population over the past decade.

No. 2: Many deep-blue states had 2020 census numbers significantly revised upward from their December estimates: Connecticut, Hawaii, Illinois, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island and Vermont.

No. 3: Many red states had 2020 census numbers lower than their 2020 estimates: Arizona, North Carolina and South Carolina.

No. 4: Going back to the 2010 Census, the final head count in every state was within 0.4% of the original estimate, and 30 of them were within 0.2%. This time around, 19 states were more than 1% off, 7 were more than 2% off, NY was more than 3.8% off, and NJ was more than 4.5% off.

No. 5: Virtually every one of the large deviations from the estimates favored Democrats. Just five states in the 2020 census were within the same margin (0.41%) that all states were within from the 2010 census.

Media Bias - A Rumination On Ruination

 Media bias is real.  It has been measured in the past and it continues to be proven on a regular basis.  Project Veritas, in a tremendous bit of undercover reporting, got a CNN producer to admit that they had altered their news coverage to make Donald Trump look worse and Joe Biden look better.  Their intent was to alter the results of the 2020 Presidential election.  

It looks to me like they were successful.

A few weeks before that, CBS's 60 Minutes program offered some fake news as real news by attempting to paint Florida Governor Ron DeSantis as being in some way corrupt in his administration's deployment of the Covid vaccines.  60 Minutes lied.

What brings me to this topic today is how the illicit bias of our mainstream media is helping to undermine American civilization.

I watched it for years.  My dad would frequently go off on a rant about Donald Trump.  Sometimes he was right.  But more often than not he was basing his thoughts on his continual media diet of CNN along with occasional pieces from CBS, NBC, etc.  At no point did he encounter any media personality offering a dissenting opinion.

I'm not sure if it makes me sad or glad that dad wasn't around to find out that he was sold the fiction of the Trump/Russia allegations.

I am sad to see that it never ends.  The policies of New York Governor Andrew Cuomo undeniably resulted in tens of thousands of senior citizens dying due to Covid-19.  His administration lied about those deaths for months.  Yet the mainstream media lionizes Gov. Cuomo as being a marvelously successful governor.  Parenthetically, the administration of Michigan's Governor Gretchen Whitmer followed similar regulatory policies with reasonably similar results.

The same media portrays Ron DeSantis as being an absolute failure with respect to Covid-19.

The data tells a much different story.  As of February 15th, Florida's deaths due to Covid on a per capita basis were below the national average.  At the very least, in the middle of the pack.  Michigan ranked a bit higher.  A bunch of northeastern, high-density states had the worst outcomes.

But this isn't the story that you get from our mainstream media.  Instead, we get a highly distorted narrative where reporters commit verbal contortionism to create the impression that Democrat governors have all the correct policies while Republican governors have all the wrong policies.  So-called "red" states are presented as if people are dying in the streets.

The truth is more complex and a bit nuanced.  It is also true that attempting to fit any reporting on Covid into a strictly "Democrat vs. Republican" narrative is impossible if the media is committed to reporting the facts.  Some Democrats had good policies and some had bad ones.  The same is true for Republicans. 

If they are instead committed to acting as agents of propaganda, if they have taken a political side within the American culture, then the reporting of facts is no longer of concern.

And the ruination of American civilization lies dead ahead like the iceberg waiting on the Titanic.

2016 Hugos - Novel

I found the following while looking through my unpublished blog entries.  Most of this written back in 2016 with the exception of the last two novels on the list.

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I didn't get around to the novel category last year.  I focused on the sub-novel length works last year and ran out of time.

My mistake.

This year, I started buying the novel nominees as soon as the finalists were announced.  I didn't wait for the packet as I really wanted to get through as much material as possible. 

My thinking on the finalists in this category has changed over time.  I finished the last one in late May or early June.  Since then, I have changed my vote a couple of times. 

This is not a full-on book review.  It's just my impressions relative to my voting for the Hugos.  Without further delay, here we go.

Spoilers!!.....duh

The Cinder Spires: The Aeronaut's Windlass by Jim Butcher (Roc)

While this book was not my first read, it was by far my favorite.  The novel includes multiple character perspectives and very detailed fantasy world-building.  

I thoroughly enjoyed the positive themes of people governing themselves politically and individually.  There was a tension between the idealized version of how people viewed themselves and the reality of how they interacted with the world around them.  There was a sub-text of people aspiring to be better than they were.

That goes for many of the antagonists as well.  One of the hallmarks of good writing is to create interest/sympathy for an antagonist.

In addition to creating a well-formed and coherent world filled with a variety of character types, he has also accomplished the unique task of making a steampunk-themed world sensible to me as well as making me like cats.

The Fifth Season by N.K. Jemisin (Orbit)

Reflection on this novel has resulted in the most significant change to my ballot.  It has moved twice from fourth to second place.  In terms of world development and plotting, I find it to be a very narrow second to The Cinder Spires.

Ms. Jemisin has created a wonderfully detailed world.  The one regrettable feature is the unquestioned class/career social structure that affords few opportunities for individuals to follow a unique path.

Four issues separate this novel from being in first place.

The acceptance of socially imposed class/career structures.  The protagonists don't really mind being limited to what they are as long as they aren't on the bottom of the social structure.  They don't advocate for equal liberty.  They advocate for some other caste to be on the bottom of the pile.

The idealization of society as a sort of quasi-socialist utopia.  For a brief time our protagonists are free from their masters and join a quasi-socialist society run/led by people of their "caste".  The society indulges in common cooking arrangements rather than household/individual sufficiency.  The society survives by stealing the productive wealth of others instead of producing something of use that can be traded.

(Socialism appears to be the currently preferred political system of fantasy writing.  Which is appropriate as the only place where it works is as a fantasy.  In the real world it is the most bloody and oppressive system invented by humankind.)

The primary characters are self-absorbed with their social position without a sense of humor.  They are almost wholly consumed with achieving revenge.  No matter how justified their revenge might be...and it is justified...I just am not interested in reading about characters that do not aspire to be something better.  Ms. Jemison might take a look at Joe Ambercrombie's First Law series to see characters with both nasty and humorous sides that want to be something better tomorrow than they are today.

The book centers on the plight of the social cast of orogenes;  people that can manipulate the earth.  Among other skills, they can create or silence earthquakes; quite useful on a planet that is quite seismically active.  The orogenes are kept under control (effectively held as slaves) by another caste.  There is precisely one orogene in the book that is free to do as he pleases.  I find the lack of refugee bands of orogenes to be less than believable.  Of course, groups of free orogenes running around would result in a very different book.

In thinking about the sub-text of the world, consider the orogenes as government power instead of as individuals.  From that perspective, the novel suggests that their unrestrained power is in some way a good thing.  Human experience suggests that unlimited government power generally results in poverty and oppression.  But that is not a sub-text that the author intends.  I think that subtle shift would have made this a better novel.

Uprooted by Naomi Novik (Del Rey)

I loved Uprooted from the start.  This is a tale about a young woman living in a land where a wizard comes every few years to take a young maid to his castle.  The maid is always returned safe and sound to her family, but after the experience is rarely satisfied with her small-town life thereafter.

The wizard usually takes the most beautiful young maid.  But one year, he takes the one who appears to have some innate ability to learn/use magic in lieu of greater physical beauty.

The story unfolds along the intersection of two themes.  One theme is the conflict between good and evil.  Evil is represented by an unknown malignancy that grows in a specific forest.  The forest seeks to spread itself and thereby spread the evil.

The second theme is that of magic that is traditionally learned as more of rigorous science with formal rules and traditions as to how magic is performed.  As a contrast, our young heroine slowly blossoms into a sort of magic performed by intuition and feelings instead of as the result of rules and study.

The novel begins at a modest pace that unfolds the world in an interesting manner.  The pace rapidly accelerates as the "evil" spreads and the wizard must respond to ever-increasing threats.  The storyline unfolds in a reasonably linear format that primarily follows the one central character.  The linear format is not as complex as the multiple threads used in the two preceding works.

The weakest part of the story is the last few chapters where we learn that the "evil" is simply misunderstood and the "good" isn't as good as they think.  The "healing" comes from the new wizard, our young, intuitive heroine, who slowly repairs centuries of harm with intuition and empathy.

I was less than impressed with the ever flawed concept of being able to feel our way to new solutions to old problems.

I loved the writing, the use of language, and the general story.  The subtext was less than inspiring.  That subtext coupled with the generally more simple/linear framework put this book in third place on my ballot.

Seveneves: A Novel by Neal Stephenson (William Morrow)

Seveneves is two novels in one.  The first half presents a global catastrophe in the form of the destruction of the moon.  The resulting detritus rains down on the earth, raising the atmospheric temperature, and generally making the planet uninhabitable.  Humanity races for lifeboat rockets that will allow a limited number to survive until the planet cools.

Hijinx ensue.  People cheat the system designed to preserve the most genetically/biologically fit individuals.  There are daring rescues and grisly conflicts.  The close of the first half brings us to what is left of the moon still in the usual orbit.

Seven women are the sole survivors among the thousands of humans that left the planet.  Fortunately, one of them is a highly skilled geneticist who can create sufficient genetic diversity to allow humanity to survive this rather extreme genetic bottleneck.

The second half begins by leaping a few thousand years in the future.  Humanity has built a myriad of space-born structures.  The population has expanded and split into seven discrete groups based on their progenitors.  Each group reflects inheritable qualities from each of those seven women.  There is some interbreeding between the groups, but not all that much.

All of the cultural norms from thousands of years of human civilization are gone.

The earth has cooled and humanity is ready to come home.  Exploration has begun.  It turns out that the humans that left the planet are not the only ones to have survived.  There is conflict and confrontation between all of the descendants of humanity.

While I enjoyed this book a great deal, there were a couple of issues.  The first is the behavior of the seven surviving women.  They meet in the immediate aftermath of a conflict that results in the death of every other human.  They immediately sit down for a conference on how they can survive.  One of the first topics is the lack of genetic diversity.

The geneticist indicates that she can manipulate genetic codes to create the diversity that will be needed to help the human race survive.  What is ignored is the comparative treasure trove of genetic material present in the bodies that are floating all around them.  Instead of sitting down to have a chat, they could have immediately improved their genetic diversity by collecting and freezing samples.

The second issue is the range of "technology" that develops in the centuries that follow.  Some of it is impressive and seemingly possible.  Some of it represents flights of fancy.  Books that attempt to be hard science fiction should avoid flights of fancy.

One such flight is pretty significant.  There is a structure that is a spinning ring that orbits the earth.  Other human settlements/structures pass through the middle of this ring as it swings around the earth.  The big problem here is that the axis of motion for the spinning ring would be roughly parallel to the equator.  This would result in the precession of the axis; the ring would rotate as it orbited the earth.  There would be too many times when this precession would preclude any other object from passing through the middle of the spinning ring.  

There were other flights of fancy in the back half of the book that had my "nit-picking reader" fully operational.  There was so little of that sort of thing in the first half of the book that it was a bit confounding to find so much of it in the back half.

I very much enjoyed the book and understand why others would nominate it.  But it wasn't as good as the other works listed above.

No Award

Ancillary Mercy by Ann Leckie (Orbit)

This is being written in 2021.  A few years have passed.  This novel bounced off of me pretty hard for a couple of reasons.

One of those is the plot point that the controlling political forces don't care about gender.  Humans care about gender even if there are alien species that do not.  I am moved by books about humans and human reactions.

Another is that this is a putatively MilSF novel in which our intrepid military protagonist response to every point of conflict by sitting down to a nice cup of tea.

Those issues aside, this was a reasonably interesting if not terribly memorable novel.  It just didn't clear the bar relative to the Hugo Awards for me.

Book Review - The Stone Knife

The Stone Knife by Anna Stephens
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

Cardboard characters. The introductory chapters felt more like an identity politics indoctrination class rather than a work of fiction where individual identities are an integral part of the narrative.

Dorothy Parker is holding on line 1.

View all my reviews

420 Is An Odd Number

You might not know it, but April 20th is a pretty great day.  April 20th is "National Lookalike Day".  A great day for identical twins and regular folks that just happen to look a little too much like someone else for comfort.

Numerically, 4/20 is a day that is high on many people's calendars.  Sometimes you have to weed out the stems and leave the useless stuff aside, but eventually, something great will flower on a day like today.

For those with a powerful case of the munchies, today also happens to be National Cheddar Fries Day and National Pineapple Upside-Down Cake Day.  Munch on!

Appropriately enough, this is National Volunteer Recognition Day.  Remember to give thanks to those that volunteer to make your community a better place.  If you don't get thanked, then consider volunteering.  There are some great organizations out there that would appreciate your time and effort.  For my fellow vets, I recommend the American Legion and Veterans of Foreign Wars.  Jarheads already know about the Marine Corps League.  Find a group and make your piece of the world better.

A lot of great stuff happened in history on April 20th.

Freedom of religion was granted to the Jews of New Amsterdam (later New York City) in 1657.  The Siege of Boston began following Concord and Lexington.  It was the hard beginning of a war that turned out pretty well for the Americans.

The US Congress created the Wisconsin Territory in 1836.  Where would we get great cheese if we didn't have Wisconsin?

Of course, there were some bad things that happened on April 20th as well.  The Columbine High School massacre happened on this day.  

Adolph Hitler was born on this day.  But I choose to remember that today was also the last time that dirty paper hanger saw the sun, 1945.  It was the last time he left his bunker before he took the coward's road.

April 20th was the last day of the Bay of Pigs invasion.  Sadly, Fidel and his communist cronies survived to oppress the Cuban people.

Today happens to be the 49th anniversary of the Apollo 16 landing on the moon in 1972.  Ken Mattingly famously missed out on the Apollo 13 flight and got rotated into the Apollo 16 slot.  He ended up doing an EVA on the return flight to the Earth to retrieve some external equipment.

Danica Patrick won the Indy Japan 300 in 2008 and became the first female driver to win an Indycar race.

Lots of interesting people died on April 20th; for example, Antipope Victor IV.  He was elected by a dissenting group of Cardinals to be a dissenting Pope in opposition to Alexander III.  The two vied for control of the church until Victor's death.  Alexander III reprimanded his Cardinals for celebrating Victor IV's death in 1164.  Victor IV's grave was destroyed by the order of Pope Gregory VIII when miracles were reported at the gravesite.  Can't have a dissenter be seen as doing anything productive, can we? [It turns out that Antipopes were a "thing" for quite some time!]

The Third Great Khan of the Mongol Empire, Güyük Khan, died on this date.  Chief Pontiac, proclaimed by some as the most famous Indian of the eighteenth century, was assassinated on April 20th.

Bram Stoker, of Dracula fame, died on this date in 1912.  Funnyman Benny Hill passed on this date in 1996.

Some interesting people came into the world on April 20th.

General Holland "Howlin' Mad" Smith developed the first amphibious landing techniques and became the "father" of modern American amphibious warfare.  For us Marines, the ability to go from water to land and back again is mighty important!  General Smith concluded his career as the Assistant Commandant of the Marine Corps.  He was born this day in 1882

John Paul Stevens started out on this date in 1920.  He eventually served as an Associate Justice on the U.S. Supreme Court.

George Takei, of Star Trek fame, was born on this day in 1937.  American author Peter S. Beagle joined the club in 1939 while actress Jessica Lange came aboard in 1949.  Luther Vandross was born this day in 1951.  We also have Killer Mike who came along in 1975.

Don Mattingly, the baseball player and manager, started out on April 20th in 1961.  Actors Crispin Glover and Andy Serkis (Gollum!  Smeagol!  Caesar!  Richard!) came along on this date in 1964 while Carmen Electra was born in 1972.

April 20th, 1965 also happens to be the birthday of Steve Rogers.  We were friends from the same little neighborhood and graduated together from the same high school.  We were even in Mrs. Allen's 5th-grade class together in 1976.  Steve died unexpectedly a few weeks back.  This has to be a pretty hard day for his family this year.

April 20th is my birthday as well.  We haven't had snowfall in Michigan this late in April for decades.  Y'all can blame it on me.

Update - It stuck on the ground!

And it has stuck through most of the following day.  Woohoo!!

Potential Hugo Nominees - 2022

 To be updated as the year progresses.

Best Related Work

THE PUNK IN CYBERPUNK: A CYBERPUNK MANIFESTO by T.R. Napper

Hugo Nominees 2021 - Preliminary Thoughts

The short-listed nominees for the 2021 Hugo Awards have been announced.  Like many, I have thoughts.

Best Novel -

• Black Sun, Rebecca Roanhorse (Gallery / Saga Press / Solaris)
• The City We Became, N.K. Jemisin (Orbit)
• Harrow The Ninth, Tamsyn Muir (Tor.com)
• Network Effect, Martha Wells (Tor.com)
• Piranesi, Susanna Clarke (Bloomsbury)
• The Relentless Moon, Mary Robinette Kowal (Tor Books / Solaris)

As I have suggested in the past, the nominators seem to be focused on a limited range of authors.  I purposely didn't read Harrow The Ninth or The City We Became in 2020 because I knew they would be on the short-list this year.  I did read Network Effect as I was working through the prior novella-length entries in that series already.  

The point is that four of the six nominees have had other works nominated recently.  Of the other two, Martha Wells' series is popular with many nominators.  I was unaware of Piranesi before it was nominated.  Upon reading the summary at Goodreads, I have high hopes for this book.  I can't say where it will appear on my ballot, but the concept sounds interesting to make it worth my time to read.

At least three of the works are subsequent entries in a series.  In my experience, subsequent entries in a series rarely surpass (much less equal) the quality of the first entry.  Very rarely.  If the initial entry didn't win, then I doubt subsequent entries will do any better.

I participate in the Hugo Awards to encounter new works and/or authors that I might have otherwise missed.  Having so many repeat nominees and/or serial entries diminishes that possibility.

Meryl Streep is the only actor that gets nominated for an Oscar for almost every movie she makes.  That's a bit odd, but it's Meryl.  Now we have a cadre of four authors that are repeatedly making the short-list?  Nope.

Best Novelette -

I nominated the novelette I Sexually Identify As A Helicopter by Isabel Fall.  I found it remarkable.  The con staff has shown the title as "Helicopter Story".  The original publisher, Clarkesworld, has indicated that the author changed the name at some point in time.  The author has indicated a willingness to accept the award.  It is Isabel's prerogative to rename the story.  While I will use the new title for participation in reading/reviewing/ranking the nominated works, I do wish that Isabel had kept the original name.  The only way to beat bullies is to never give them an inch of what they are asking.  Isabel was indeed bullied last year over this story.

Best Series - 

This is the first category where I would like to have a method for putting certain titles below "No Award" without harming the chances of the rest of the field.  I don't know that I will have time to sample all of the series.  While I have heard good things about a few of the nominees, I consider only one of the three series that I have sampled to be worth considering for the award in this category.

Best Related Work -

Best Dramatic Presentation, Long Form - 

There is at least one and perhaps two nominees in each of these categories that I would like to put below "No Award" without harming the chances of any of the rest of the nominees.  Alas, this is impossible.

Best Graphic Story -

• DIE, Volume 2: Split the Party, written by Kieron Gillen and Stephanie Hans, letters by Clayton Cowles (Image Comics)
• Ghost-Spider vol. 1: Dog Days Are Over, Author: Seanan McGuire, Artist: Takeshi Miyazawa and Rosie Kämpe (Marvel)
• Invisible Kingdom, vol 2: Edge of Everything, Author: G. Willow Wilson, Artist: Christian Ward (Dark Horse Comics)
• Monstress, vol. 5: Warchild, Author: Marjorie Liu, Artist: Sana Takeda (Image Comics)
• Once & Future vol. 1: The King Is Undead, written by Kieron Gillen, iIllustrated by Dan Mora, colored by Tamra Bonvillain, lettered by Ed Dukeshire (BOOM! Studios)
• Parable of the Sower: A Graphic Novel Adaptation, written by Octavia Butler, adapted by Damian Duffy, illustrated by John Jennings (Harry N. Abrams)

On a positive note, there isn't a Saga entry for this year.  On another positive note, I have been meaning to read DIE Volume 2.  On a negative note, Monstress is nominated for the fifth consecutive year.  I have thoroughly enjoyed Monstress.  I might even put Volume 5 in the first spot on my ballot.  But I am suspicious when consecutive works in a series always find their way onto the short-list over and over with only 303 people nominating in the category. 

Best Semiprozine - 

Escape Pod & PodCastle do not seem to be properly placed in this category.  They are both podcasts that are comparable to podcast nominees from prior years in the "fancasting" category that were also headlined by professional writers.  Fortunately, I probably will not get to this category.  If there was a means of placing those nominees below "No Award" without harming the chances of the rest of the nominees, then I would surely use it.

Best Fancast - 

While there are a couple repeat nominees, there are also several new titles.  I'm looking forward to sampling their work. [updated] I just couldn't do it.  There were too many repeats to want to wade through all of the entries to give them a fair sampling.

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I wish entertaining times for everyone in the coming months.  If you haven't participated in the Hugo Awards in the past, then I recommend you give it a try.  You will encounter some of the best work being done in the genre.

"But The Book I Like Is Better!"

 I was engaged in an online discussion about the relative popularity of novels that were nominated for the best novel Hugo award.  This discussion was sometime last August (2020).  

The primary assertion being made last August was that Larry Correia's works aren't as popular as those selected for the Hugo best novel shortlist.  A couple of other conservative-leaning authors were included for comparison purposes by one interlocutor.  I am interested in not seeing authors excluded from critical evaluation based on their politics.  Also, I'm not a specific fan of Mr. Correia. His Saga of the Forgotten Warrior series is on my TBR pile.

These discussions frequently end in pointless goalpost shifting, confirmation bias, and very selective cherry-picking of data.  A book that sells a lot of copies will be called great as long as the right sales numbers can be used to buttress a person's perspective; "my book is so good that everyone read it".  Once sales volume information runs against their perspective, there will be a switch to how the book is underappreciated and better than some best-selling bit of popular drivel; "your sales numbers don't matter because popular drivel isn't as good as my obscure book".  Or two different sub-genre categories will be used to "prove" something.

Watching two people, or two groups of people, flip and flop over what defines a book as "great" was once entertaining, but now is just tiring.  Given the growth in the number of genre titles published each year, it is becoming easier and easier for a reader to find a quality piece of genre literature that has not come to their attention previously.

As an exercise, here were the books for the 2019 Hugo Best Novel award along with their rankings via Amazon.  These are overall Kindle rankings as I couldn't find a good method for limiting it to the SF/F genre.  The data was pulled on 4/7/2021.

#65,263 - The Calculating Stars, by Mary Robinette Kowal (Tor)

#144 - Spinning Silver, by Naomi Novik (Del Rey / Macmillan)

#15,771 - Record of a Spaceborn Few, by Becky Chambers (Hodder & Stoughton / Harper Voyager)

#38,356 - Trail of Lightning, by Rebecca Roanhorse (Saga)

#66,783 - Revenant Gun, by Yoon Ha Lee (Solaris)

#166,183 - Space Opera, by Catherynne M. Valente (Saga)

I was partial to Grey Sister by Mark Lawrence; also published in 2018.  It didn't even make the long list for the Hugo best novel category.  I would easily put it above at least half of the short-listed works.

#31,699 - Grey Sister - Mark Lawrence

[An aside.  I pulled data last August for those same books and got VERY different results.  The Calculating Stars was closer to the #10,000 to #15,000 range.  Spinning Silver wasn't nearly that high in Kindle sales as it was on 4/7/2021.

Perhaps Kindle rankings aren't a great comparison method as it shifts over time.

My original point was that Grey Sister was an equally popular book that was largely ignored by the pool of Hugo nominators.  I think the point is worthwhile even if the shifting sands of the Kindle ranking algorithm aren't of any utility in proving the point.

End aside.]

Simply focusing on a few, select conservative-leaning authors is a distraction from the larger point that there are a lot of really good books out there.  When making comparisons, it is better to compare a book with the contemporaneous cohort of books published that year.  As an example, I think The Legend of Huma by Richard Knaak was a big miss by those with an interest in awards. It was on the NYTimes bestseller list in 1988. I found it to be a satisfying read with both an entertaining tale and engaging subtexts. Yet it didn’t receive any recognition from the various “literary” awards.  As a guess, this is because the Dragonlance series and Wizards of the Coast (publisher) were not seen as being capable of producing a literary meritorious work.

Using a similar Amazon yardstick, The Legend of Huma fairs fares[1] pretty well against all of the Hugo Best Novel finalists from 1989 as well as almost all of the works listed in the 1989 WorldCon report of nominations.  (I believe these numbers are from Kindle Books - Science Fiction/Fantasy sub-category.  But it's been a while.  Again, sorry.]  The only book with better sales was by Isaac Asimov.  And...well...he was Isaac Asimov!  The data was pulled on the same day in August of 2020.

#26,458 The Legend of Huma by Richard Knaak

Not listed in KS – Cyteen, by C.J. Cherryh [winner]**

#488,544 – Red Prophet, by Orson Scott Card

#67,218 – Falling Free, by Lois McMaster Bujold

#106,791 – Islands in the Net, by Bruce Sterling

#53,799 – Mona Lisa Overdrive, by William Gibson

Not listed in KS – The Guardsman, by P.J. Beese and Todd Cameron Hamilton – [withdrawn]

[from the long list of 1989]

#1,851,058 – Orphan of Creation, by Roger MacBride Allen

#1,326,895 – Deserted Cities of the Heart, by Lewis Shiner

Not listed in KS – Alternities, by Michael P. Kube-McDowell

#67,483 – Dragonsdawn, by Anne McCaffrey

#464,446 – The Gold Coast, by Kim Stanley Robinson

#487,340 – Ivory, by Mike Resnick

#12,177 – Prelude to Foundation, by Isaac Asimov

#175,591 – Hellspark, by Janet Kagan

#245,495 – The Paladin, by C.J. Cherryh

** There was a 3-book collection that seems to represent the nominated work. It was only available in audiobook and paperback. No Kindle edition.

This is an apples-to-apples comparison in that all of the books are from the same year. But it’s cherry-picking because I picked 1989 and of course the Amazon ranking algorithm can significantly shift the ranking from week to week.  My point remains that there is a wealth of quality works of SFF literature that do not attract the attention of Hugo nominators in any given year.

In the 1970s, the SF/F genre was small enough that having authors present as repeat nominees was normal.  The number of authors has exploded since then as have the total number of works published each year.  It should be harder for a specific author to be a repeat nominee unless their work is incredibly special - every author can't be Connie Willis.  Given the expanded competition and even taking Sturgeon's Rule into account, a pool of nominators with broad experience in the genre should find it harder to repeatedly nominate the works of any specific author.

This problem gets worse when it comes to some of the less active categories such as "fancast" and graphic novels.  There are fewer nominators for those categories.  Those nominators appear to be focused on a limited range of works.

Either expanding the range of works experienced by Hugo nominators or expanding the number of Hugo nominators to cover an expanded range of works would improve the quality of the works that make the shortlist of nominations.  I do not know how to make that happen structurally other than to continue advocating that nominators push themselves to experience a broader range of works.

What is counter-productive is the occasionally seen response that the shortlist for any given year is an excellent representation of the best of the field.  In my opinion, it may be a good representation of the best of the field but it can, will, and does omit equally worthwhile works by dint of the biases present in the limited pool of nominators.  A pool of nominators with a broader range of experience would provide a better quality shortlist.

[1]At least I have mastered "there, they're, and their"!