Until I went looking for Harry Warner, Jr. on Wikipedia, I never knew that Roger Ebert was an sf fan. From 2004:
Thought Experiments: How Propeller-Heads, BNFs, Sercon Geeks, Newbies, Recovering GAFIAtors, and Kids in the Basements Invented the World Wide Web, All Except for the Delivery System
… [I]t was in the virtual world of science fiction fandom that I started to learn to be a writer and a critic. Virtual, because for a long time I never met any other fans; they lived only in the pages of mimeographed fanzines that arrived at 410 E. Washington St. and were quickly hidden among the hundreds of SF mags in the basement, on metal shelves that cost four books of Green Stamps. “Hidden,” because at first I concealed my interest in fandom from my parents. Fanzines were not offensive in any way–certainly not in a sexual way, which would have been the worst way of all in a family living in the American Catholicism of the 1950s, but I sensed somehow that they were . . . dangerous. Dangerous, because untamed, unofficial, unlicensed. It was the time of beatniks and On the Road, which I also read, and no one who did not grow up in the fifties will be quite able to understand how subversive fandom seemed.Most fanzines had a small circulation of a few hundred, but they created a reality so intriguing and self-referential that, for fans, they were the newspapers of a world. Looking through old issues of Xero, which during its brief glory was one of the best fanzines ever published, I was stunned by how immediate and vivid my reaction was to names not thought about for years: Harry Warner Jr., Mike Deckinger, Guy Terwilliger, Gene DeWeese, Bob Lichtman, bhob Stewart (how evocative that “h” was!), Walt Willis, Bob Tucker, “Ajay” Budrys, Ted White. I met Donald Westlake as an adult (we have been on a couple of cruises together) and he was surprised to find that I was already reading him in Xero. I found established professionals (Harlan Ellison, Donald A. Wollheim, Anthony Boucher, Frederik Pohl, Avram Davidson, James Blish) happy to contribute to a fanzine, indeed plunging passionately into the fray. I confess happily that as I scanned pages and pages of letters of comment (“locs”), my eye instinctively scanned for my own name, as it did forty years ago, and when I found it (Blish dismissing one of my locs), I felt the same flash of recognition, embarrassment and egoboo that I felt then; much muted, to be sure, diluted, but still there. Locs were the currency of payment for fanzine contributors; you wrote, and in the next issue got to read about what you had written. Today I can see my name on a full-page ad for a movie with disinterest, but what Harry Warner or Buck Coulson had to say about me–well, that was important…
I didn’t discover fandom until ten or fifteen years after Ebert, at the point where Star Trek and Star Wars and all the sociological changes of “the Sixties” were about to break the shell of “that rocket-ship-&-raygun kiddie genre from the pulps & the funny pages”. But there was still a feeling that Fandom was its own little global village, a hiding-in-plain-sight parallel universe where hyperverbal dexterity and a near-autistic attention to detail were celebrated instead of punished.
I’d already been to a couple of local (NYC) comic-cons, and one of the first Star Trek gatherings, before getting a ticket to my first real sf convention (Lunacon ’71, IIRC). My dad decided he’d better warn me about Those Fen People:
“Back before you were born [the early 1950s], I was reading an sf magazine in a jazz bar, waiting for the band. Some guy sidled up to me, and over the next few months I ended up visiting fan gatherings at some of their homes. But, to be honest, they weren’t as well-read as the jazz fans, and they could be ruder than the [motorcycle] bikers I hung out with on the weekends…
In fact, some of them weren’t as well-read as the bikers, and even ruder than the jazz fans!”
Botsplainer
I still don’t get how Harlan Ellison, Arthur C. Clarke, Isaac Asimov or Poul Anderson could create stories with nuance, complex morality and rich characterizations that overcame the desire of the eponymous socially awkward, misogynist, Asberger’s candidate SciFi fan for crap (that condition going across several generations, and whose id is usually measured by how much they deify the swashbuckling white nature of James Tiberius Kirk).
Suffern ACE
@Botsplainer: perhaps because they weren’t generally mean spirited and weren’t into making snide comments, but generally curious?
Tommy
I used to do a ton of work for Amtrak. They would often talk about “foamers.” People that so liked trains they’d foam at the mouth when one went by. At first I thought that was kind of strange (and I like trains BTW). Then I realized I have a room in my house as we speak, I call my Lego room. Just Legos. I am 45 and I can’t get myself enough Legos. Heck I just bought this:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIA3ZE1DC1097&nm_mc=KNC-GoogleMKP&cm_mmc=KNC-GoogleMKP-_-pla-_-Collectibles-_-9SIA3ZE1DC1097&ef_id=U9pAcwAABbJKKBKt:20140803223356:s
Coffee, another passion of mine, you can build with Legos. I’ve come to think that fandom or just a love of this or that is a healthy thing.
KG
@Suffern ACE: no, it can’t be that… It can’t ever be as simple as that. It has to be because of racism and sexism and class. It can never be just for the sake if entertainment.
See also: people who ruin everything; assholes
Botsplainer
@Suffern ACE:
For me, much of the community of awkward white male SciFi fandom trends overwhelmingly libertarian and is overwhelmingly soft racist.
My feeling is that they never did toughen up in high school and were bad at sports (thereby eschewing concepts of teamwork).
Of course, your mileage may vary.
WereBear
Yes. A world where it was okay to be smart.
I never understood how I was supposed to be “good at school” and yet it was terrible to be smart.
KG
@Tommy: ever see the james may special where they built an entire house out of Legos? Fucking awesome, that
Tommy
@Suffern ACE: I see things like Comic-Con and think, not really my cup of tea, but you go guys/girls. Have fun.
Botsplainer
@Tommy:
One of my law school classmates is still like that. He collects all things train – old menus, train china, ashtrays and signs. His collection is pretty valuable these days.
Tommy
@KG: Yes I did. Amazing.
schrodinger's cat
@WereBear: I went to a Catholic all girls school run by Jesuit nuns till grade 10 where it was cool to be smart. I don’t get this nerd and geek business at all and why you can’t be smart and popular at the same time.
Karen in GA
Iggy leads a sing-along.
@Tommy: I look at the most enthusiastic Comic-Con attendees and I see a lack of self-consciousness that I envy. (I could be completely missing something; I often do.)
schrodinger's cat
@Botsplainer: I love trains. I have taken Amtrak several times in the Boston-NY-DC (I-95) corridor. I love traveling by train when I am in India. The food is vastly better than Amtrak!
Botsplainer
@schrodinger’s cat:
I’ve known plenty of smart, popular people. Good problem solvers, good leaders.
What they aren’t is obsessive sticklers for detail. They’re not going to shriek when something goes “against the rules” or is outside the parameters of the manual. They do what works, and their social skills allow them to justify it.
Tommy
@WereBear: OK to be smart. Many of the things I did as a kid are only now like cool. Funny how that works isn’t it. I guess it is like a retro thing. As to the person that said us fandom people are losers and can’t play sports …. well I went to D1 college on a sports scholarship. Willing to bet I can get their ass in any sport they choose and then come back to my house and play with my Legos :).
Botsplainer
@Tommy:
Nah, your Legos are cool by me. I’ve wanted to see Legoland for years, but I don’t think the wife would allow it.
WereBear
@schrodinger’s cat: I went to a consolidated high school in a small Southern town. Girls were supposed to be attractive and subservient. Boys were supposed to play football.
Anything else was “weird.”
There aren’t a lot of Jesuits in such a locale.
schrodinger's cat
@WereBear: There was an all boys school attached to the parish too and we beat them at all thing academic!
Botsplainer
@efgoldman:
I could easily fall into model trains. The good modelers do a lot of study.
I tend to think that a solid hobbyist isn’t passive – a hobby is active, and a lot of actual work.
Sitting around and reading pulpy novels? Not so much.
Mike in NC
Any references to a Comic-Con must include mention of “Galaxy Quest”, a great sci-fi spoof.
Tommy
@schrodinger’s cat: I think you are missing the point I am trying to make, clearly not well. In my high school, back in the 80s, I can’t speak to today, the most popular people were both smart and good at sports. Heck the lady that will be the Valid Victorian in the high school where my parents live is also the most prolific scorer in the history of Illinois basketball. Clearly she can do both things, great grades and sports, at the same time.
WaterGirl
@Karen in GA: Did I miss something, or were we left hanging without know where the smell of smoke was coming from??
P.S. I have never seen an animal convey so much with its facial expressions. Not quite sure how it’s possible,but Iggy seems to pull it off.
KG
@Tommy: this was my experience in Orange County in the early/mid-90s. I had an AP Physics class that was all jocks and cheerleaders (in part because it was only offered during the last two periods of the day and our last period led directly into practice)… I still remember six of us getting up to leave early for a water polo game and one of the cheerleaders looking around and say, “wow, the entire polo team is in this class.”
shelley
Well, you can go to Legoland and she can go to Getty Square.
schrodinger's cat
@Tommy: I am and always have been pretty lacking in the sports department.
Tommy
@Botsplainer: I was on a date the other day. Babysitter fell through. I was like you can bring your kids over (9 and 12 year old girls). I parked them in my Lego room. When I say I have a Lego room I am not joking. Those young ladies thought it was like the coolest thing they’d ever seen.
scav
@Botsplainer: Even then it depends — there’s an element of charm and social something that can even transcend that. Only reason the male line of half my genetic code continues to exist. Even an early generation start-up programmer staggered on to a natural death with well-attended wake.
Ruckus
@Botsplainer:
If your friend likes trains he would probably like this – The Warther Museum
I’ve been a couple of times and am still awe struck at the detail and workmanship. It boggles the mind the amount of work the man did as a hobby.
trollhattan
@Tommy:
How can youse guys discuss it without mentioning flushing the Lego(tm) poo down the Lego(tm) loo?
Legoland (Carlsbad) is fun, so long as you bring a kid. It’s lower-key than the usual suspect theme parks, and they make an effort to have rides that rely to some extent on muscle power.
They’ve added this since we went last year.
Tommy
@KG: I am proud of my ability to play sports. It didn’t happen out of no where. I worked my ass off. I mentioned I went to college on a DI scholarship. That was golf. I hit golf balls until my hand bleed.
WereBear
@Tommy: Oh, I loved being smart! I could not figure out all the mixed messages.
Didn’t help to be a girl, decades ago.
Karen in GA
@WaterGirl: Well, I never really spent much time on the porch anyway.
I’ve got a couple of pictures of him with just amazing expressions, practically human. I think it’s a mini schnauzer thing — the eyebrows probably help.
Matt McIrvin
@Suffern ACE: Harlan Ellison is, in fact, generally mean-spirited and loves nothing more than snide comments.
Iowa Old Lady
I came to fandom late and find a little weirdness stokes my creativity.
Actually, some of the characteristics aren’t much different than those my academic colleagues had. You don’t get to be a full prof at a Research 1 university without being obsessive.
WaterGirl
@Karen in GA: I hope you are just being coy about the smoke on the porch because you are planning to pick up that story line tomorrow.
Raven
Sitting down to a nice dinner on the waterfront at Beaufort . Hardly any rain caught a little shark and had a great day!
Matt McIrvin
@Botsplainer: I never did toughen up in high school and have always been terrible at sports. Somehow I avoided libertarianism.
It did not escape me that most of the people beating me up were hard-racist, homophobic and enthusiastically neo-Confederate, which probably affected my politics.
Tommy
@WereBear: I know my mom is the smartest person in the room. My dad knows that. It is a cool thing to know.
Matt McIrvin
…However, I find in general that trying to fit national political categories to the high-school jocks vs. nerds dichotomy doesn’t work. Some of the most reactionary assholes I’ve known have been both jocks and nerds.
And a significant fraction of the people in the nerd crowd I hung with were not particularly intelligent.
Botsplainer
@Tommy:
That game is so mental – from shot/club selection to the level of concentration needed for each shot.
Do you still play much?
lamh36
Hmmm, anyone else find this very convenient for NYPD?
Ramsey Orta, bystander who filmed Eric Garner’s arrest, busted on gun possession charges, cops say
Karen in GA
@WaterGirl: There might be an explanation tomorrow of how it happened, but knowing Iggy, he’s already happily bounded off to the next thing.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@WereBear:
OT, but I am sorry to have to report back that your favorite sleep mask doesn’t fit me right — it covers my ears in an uncomfortable way and can’t be pushed above them. But the blue blocker screen protector for my iPad that I bought at the same site seems to be helping, so it’s not a total loss. ?
Botsplainer
@Matt McIrvin:
You are the exception, then.
If you’re down deep South and a white male teen, chances are you’re either a sneering bully, a giggling toadie, a snickering spectator or bullied. It’s the rare young man who can be outside all those classifications and go against the neo-Confederate social grain – he’s got to be capable of administrating beat downs of his own.
WaterGirl
@Karen in GA: Well, at least you know he’ll never hold a grudge!
Karen in GA
@lamh36: Of course not. Total coincidence.
And the cops will be very kind to him, as we’re already seeing from their getting him prompt medical attention after his — ahem — undisclosed medical episode.
KG
@Tommy: i know how that goes… i worked my ass off in water polo. wasn’t quite good enough for a scholarship, but was good enough to play at the JC level and probably could have played DI if I were to have swallowed my pride and played JC polo. I didn’t have a lot of natural talent, I was the first in/last out crazy competitor guy, and was alway annoyed by the guys who had natural talent and didn’t bother to work half as hard as I did.
Matt McIrvin
@Suffern ACE: …Also, there were a lot of horrible things about that subculture, particularly as regards consent and abuse, which are only in the painful process of being cleaned up today.
Isaac Asimov regarded conventions as places where he was entitled to grope any woman he came across, and got pissy when he couldn’t. Marion Zimmer Bradley’s husband Walter Breen, and, as it now turns out, Bradley herself were raping children for decades, and other people knew about this and abetted them; there was a lot of resistance even to banning Breen from conventions when his behavior was a matter of public record. The defensive cordon was at least as bad as in the Catholic Church.
Suffern ACE
@lamh36:
I’m imagining that if the writer were to read that statement aloud, he’d cackle.
askew
So, there is talk of rebooting Ghostbusters with an all-female cast by the guy who directed Bridesmaids and The Heat. Predictably, some white guys are freaking out about it:
Personally, I’d be much more interested in a Ghostbusters with some combination of Sandra Bullock, Melissa McCarthy, Amy Poehler, Tina Fey, etc. then any of the guys the author listed above.
Suffern ACE
@askew: i didn’t know there was a spirit of the original Ghostbusters that needed to be obeyed.
Botsplainer
@Matt McIrvin:
The story on Bradley and Breen is horrifying.
http://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/jun/27/sff-community-marion-zimmer-bradley-daughter-accuses-abuse
Bradley was molesting her own daughter.
stibbert
I never was a zine or con guy, but somehow my late grade-school ( ’68 – ’70) reading of early Heinlein, Asimov & L’Engle morphed me into an avid SF-reader in high-school, where Bradbury, later-period Heinlein, Huxley, Orwell & most especially the several Harlan Ellison-edited ‘Dangerous Visions’ collections put me firmly into a free-thought imaginative state.
Ughfortunately, my reading also effectively alienated me from my high-school contemporaries, who’d never run across an Illustrated or Ticktock man.
rikyrah
In my high school, you were either smart or popular. Can’t think of one popular kid that was National Honor Society.
Tommy,
the Lego room makes me raise the eyebrow, but I bet it’s a sight to behold.
I am fascinated by those who hold onto the interest and turn a hobby into a collection.
I totally understand those who love model trains. I love them. My favorite exhibit at the Museum of Science and Industry is the Model Train one.
Though I doubt I’d ever do the dress-up thing, I’d love to go to Comic-Con for the panels. I watch so many of the shows, I would love to just be in an environment where people understood what I was talking about when I bring up different shows. Right now, only one person in my circle has the same kind of interest in those shows. If not for the internet, I’d have no place to discuss them.
NotMax
@stibbert
Fortunately, you had a mouth and could scream.
:)
WereBear
@Matt McIrvin: I know that’s a common opinion, but personally I have not found that to be so.
He’s abrasive and opinionated, sure. A professional gadfly. But, to quote a favorite documentary, he’s never thrown a fan down an elevator shaft.
drkrick
@askew:
Maybe this will be a good time for them to figure out that they’re not entitled to “feel a level of ownership” of stuff they don’t actually own. Jesus, entitled much? If you don’t like the new movie, don’t buy a ticket, but lose the idea they’re not allowed to make it.
Botsplainer
@askew:
There were a lot of potentially great story lines in the 80s that suffered in the execution. Ghostbusters was one – and I can give you four great reasons why. The first three were about marketing toys- Slimer, Stay-Puft and the car. The last was incomprehensible characterization, in what they did with Rick Moranis’ vocalization. Without those features, it would have been hella more solid.
The beef with the sequel was the baby, and related solely to the recent success of baby movies when that movie popped.
askew
Yeah, the whole article just reeked of entitlement.
tybee
@Raven:
wave across the river towards lady’s island. i have friends there. :)
SiubhanDuinne
Open Thread? Good!
Sonnet: Lines of gratitude on the occasion of my 72nd birthday
As I complete my own three score-and-twelve
(Thrice twenty-four, or two times thirty-six)
I notice broken things that I must fix,
And see a thousand books that I must shelve.
Advancing age doth simplify, they say,
But “they” know not whereof they speak, I think;
Stuff multiplies, I tell you with a wink,
And complications visit every day.
Yet I am grateful for the best of friends
In real life, and Balloon Juice, also too.
You calm my worries. Energy ascends
To tackle life’s small challenges anew.
I thank each one of you for birthday wishes.
And now for cake. Yum yum, it looks delicious.
Suffern ACE
@drkrick: look, we have to draw the line in the sand somewhere, and we might as well draw it in ways that cater to the as many of my whims and wishes as possible. I mean, Channing Tatum and Jonah Hill are being boxed out of roles that could make them famous, so it’s not just about me.
schrodinger's cat
@SiubhanDuinne: Happy Birthday!
Suzanne
In my HS experience (in Mormon-dominated Mesa, AZ), smart and popular didn’t really overlap. Mormons held all the Student Council positions, and the girls were not typically expected to go to college, and if they did, it was only to find a dude to marry. Approximately 45% of the student body was white and LDS, 45% was Latino and Catholic, and 10% was everyone else. A disproportionately high percentage of the “everyone else” made up the academic achievers. Looking at how many of my classmates turned out, I am happy that I was in that 10%.
NotMax
Last time was at San Diego Con it was a big deal for comics fans but not yet the BFD for pop culture fans it has become.
That was in the days well before it was held in the current convention center, when the streets down by the waterfront still offered an alternating assortment of seedy tattoo parlors and even seedier bars, when the ‘official’ con hotel sported carpet so threadbare that each hallway floor looked as if it had a comb over.
Matt McIrvin
@Botsplainer: I was not deep down but right on the edge: western Fairfax County in the 1980s was a mixture of cultural South and not-South. But it was whiter, less affluent and much more Southern in those days than it is now.
I recall my junior-high-school administration as only nominally concerned with bullying, but mightily bothered by fights that caused any sort of public disruption, so they let bullies run free but went hard after kids who responded to bullying by fighting back. A friend of mine got in some trouble for that, and ended up telling them off in the vice-principal’s office. Me, I was so hopeless at beatdowns that I figured if I just waited them out they’d eventually either drop out or end up in jail or both, and that was a correct assessment.
Suzanne
@SiubhanDuinne: You. Are. Adorable.
rikyrah
@lamh36:
Don’t believe it.
There is nothing about the NYPD that would get them the benefit of the doubt from me or any other thinking Black person.
They planted that gun.
WereBear
@Mnemosyne (iPhone): Does that mean your other sleep mask wasn’t working for you either, thus putting you in the market for my suggestion?
That one I love was the fourth kind I tried. That’s why I like the DreamEssentials site so much. They have every conceivable kind to choose from, and reviews to help out.
Makes me wish there was a swap club for failed masks.
I get a kick out of the kind that you can write messages on the outside with dry erase marker :)
So glad the blue light thing turned out to be useful!
WereBear
@Botsplainer: Mr WereBear has always exclaimed, “No one teased me in high school.” And I’m like, “Of course they didn’t, you have a giant neck and shoulders to match.”
I remember a tragic case of a weedy high schooler who was bullied so mercilessly he brought a gun to school and killed his tormentor. In just a year or so he “got his growth” and was a formidable presence.
And then the bullying would have stopped.
WereBear
@Botsplainer: My mind, now blown.
Like the incredible backstory on Michael Dorris’ suicide.
Ben
@Botsplainer:
My grandmother was a friend of Asimov’s. Apparently he was a notorious womanizer and my grandmother frequently gave him grief about it until her death (a few years before Asimov’s own passing).
NotMax
Silly (but fun) SF: Phil Foglio’s Buck Godot is available to page through online for free.
rikyrah
Rula Jebreal Corners Geraldo: ‘How Many People at Fox Are of Arab Descent?’
by Evan McMurry
Former MSNBC contributor, Rula Jebreal took a break Saturday night from putting 30 Rock hosts against the wall to corner Geraldo Rivera during a segment on media treatment of the Israel-Hamas conflict. Jebreal argued that diversity in coverage came from diversity of viewpoints at media outlets.
For instance: “How many people here on Fox News are of Arab descent?” she asked Geraldo, who appeared initially to think it was a rhetorical question.
“I don’t know,” he answered.
“I’ll tell you: zero,” she replied. “This is what we are lacking. This is the narrative that has never been told: the story of people who have lived for forty-five years under military occupation and have one dream, to have a sovereign state or to live with dignity. …If we don’t manage to solve that issue and their aspirations, we will leave them in the hands of extremists. If we don’t questions policies, extremists win.”
Fox doesn’t employ any Arab hosts or anchors, but does have two Arab contributors, Lisa Daftari and Walid Phares.
http://www.mediaite.com/tv/rula-jebreal-corners-geraldo-how-many-people-at-fox-are-of-arab-descent/
schrodinger's cat
I am not a huge fan of science fiction, more often than not science fiction seems to be short on science and long on fiction. I have read a few Arthur C. Clarke’s books, I thought the Rama series was interminably boring, I also found Heinlein to be fairly unreadable.
Botsplainer
That sort of thing has historically run in families, and you see echoes of the sexual dysfunction across generations.
There was one local Irish Catholic family fathered by a prominent local writer who was a world class drunk. As time progressed, it also became known that in addition to his alcoholism, he was physically and sexually abusive to all of his kids.
A law school classmate of mine was married to the son. At some point, it became apparent that the paternal aunt (another law school classmate of mine) was molesting my friend’s son. She wanted to come at it legally, and gave her husband the option – his sister (and extended family, which lined up behind auntie pervert), or his child. He chose his sister and extended family,
The child was deemed unreliable to testify agaist the aunt, so the criminal prosecution collapsed, but a lot of horrific stuff came out in their divorce. There’s a hideous bit of testimony that went something like this:
And so it went. All the kids were having sex with the other kids, as the evidence came out.
Auntie Pervert is still as ugly inside as out – she married a prosecutor and used to drag young prosecutors, male and female, up to their bathroom during their many house parties to show off the remodeling job and ask them about the nature and extent of their sex lives. Typically she’d relieve herself either way in their presence.
She’s a sick woman. I have no use for her.
NotMax
@schrodinger’s cat
SF authors such as Ursula K. LeGuin, James Tiptree, Jr. or Octavia E. Butler might be more up your alley.
schrodinger's cat
@NotMax: I will check them out, thanks!
Southern Beale
Apparently the fundies are peddling a youtube video that shows Planned Parenthood counselors instructing kids about how to have sex, including bondage, sado-masochism, etc. It’s called “Sexed: Dangerous Sex Advice For Kids,” supposedly taken under cover. Anyone know about this? Is there another side to the story here?
WereBear
@Botsplainer: Not all “madness running in families” is genetic.
WereBear
@NotMax: In addition, I’ve found Theodore Sturgeon to have a lot of depth in his characterization.
There’s also the hard science/soft science dichotomy; it’s a rare author who can do hard science and deep characters.
Mike J
@schrodinger’s cat: If you want more science in your fiction, check out The Martian by Andy Weir. Astronaut gets left behind on Mars, has to survive until he can somehow get home. The author got actual rocket scientists to comment and come up with plausible ways out of each predicament.
Unrelated, here’s what I dealt with today. The CPU fan on my home network server died. Kept it running with a room fan blowing into the case while I built its replacement. Wheeeee!
Unrelated to sci-fi or dead computers, I made mozzarella after jefferyw pointed at the recipe. Here’s a shot of it in action.
Botsplainer
@efgoldman:
*chuckle*
No, she ain’t my aunt. She’s the blood aunt of the small boy she molested.
Botsplainer
@WereBear:
I agree. It is learned behavior, not genetic.
Once it starts in a family, it is very difficult to stamp out.
schrodinger's cat
@WereBear:
True, but most SF I have read, has neither.
Not exactly SF but I love Richard Feynman’s books, even his scientific papers are a joy to read.
Not Adding Much to the Community
@Botsplainer: “Sitting around reading pulpy novels? Not so much.” Yeah, but that’s not the goddamned hobby, is it? Fandom, specifically: fanzines, and letter writing, were the hobby. Any mook with a computer and a printer can make a fanzine these days, but in the days of Mimeograph (or, shudder, hectographs) it was a hobby that required effort and dedication.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@Botsplainer: I think that’s part of why I loved muni court so much. I could saunter about various rules when necessary to get the right result in a way that felony and civil practice aren’t amenable to. For very good reasons.
Mike J
@Not Adding Much to the Community:
Band flyers seemed to be more fun back when you had to really dig to find just the right retro s&m image to put behind your Peavy amp lettering for the band playing at the 144 seat Antenna club on a Tuesday night.
Suffern ACE
I thought these photos of army rations were interesting. The items weren’t bad per se, although I don’t know if I would buy them.
I’m assuming that the rations are meant for the field and not the mess hall. But I’m curious as to how 3d printing the meals would improve them.
raven
@tybee: We spent the afternoon at Hunting Island. Caught a little whiting and then a little sandshark with the whiting for bait.
Sunset at Beaufort.
Pogonip
@efgoldman: What is a seamhead? Sounds painful.
My son’s into picturesque little towns. Around here, these tend to be surrounded by miles of corn or bean fields. Now when he invites me to go little-towning, I have fun by applying oddball adjectives to each field we pass, e.g. a noteworthy bean field.
If there’s a hobby weirder than that, I want to hear about it.
I will now resume reading this egregious blog.
WereBear
@Matt McIrvin: That is awful. Proof that people can show very different faces to different people.
schrodinger's cat
@raven: Great photo!
Frankensteinbeck
On the nerd/popular thing, I believe the question is heavily affected by the 80s, specifically, being a period where intelligence, kindness, lack of manliness, and sexual undesirability were all considered linked. Man, the more I look back on the environment I grew up in, the more horrified I am. It’s even a major component of the current political mess.
@Botsplainer:
I hadn’t heard about this, but I’m glad it’s coming out for a peculiar reason. Part of the gender mess of the last few decades has been the assumption that rape is something men do to women, including child abuse. People abuse power to satisfy their desires, including both sex and cruelty. All of these gender dysfunctions reinforce each other. For instance, if people have a gut understanding that only women are victims, predators (and not just sexual ones) will assume all women are naturally targets. That’s a huge problem right now.
Having read Bradley’s books, I’m also not terribly surprised. I would never assume anyone is a rapist because they have sexual issues, but she certainly had them.
Pogonip
@SiubhanDuinne: Happy birthday!
joel hanes
@stibbert:
‘Dangerous Visions’
IMHO still unsurpassed. “When It Changed” is a masterwork.
I wish I wish I wish Harlan would get off his ass/change his mind and finally publish The Last Dangerous Visions — he bought up the rights to most of the contents decades ago, and IIRC some of them are still unpublished.
I have loved and avidly read SF since I first encountered those books with the spaceship/atom spine labels in the children’s library, but I have never been able to get into fanac. Fanzines bore me, I’m not attracted to the idea of a con, I don’t really want to meet my favorite authors — I love their work, not them.
Bob Munck
Fandom is just a g-d hobby.
And it isn’t, or at least wasn’t, Trekkies or comic-book readers or people who think “transformers” are something other than copper wire around an iron core.
MomSense
My winter project this year is going to be building a suspended track just under the ceiling in my youngest son’s room so that his model trains can go around his room. He doesn’t want them to take up floor space and we are thinking about designing some system for accessing them via ladders that are mounted and move along the wall.
For all I know we may never finish this project but we are having a lot of fun thinking about it and planning it.
This is a wicked good little model railroad in Jonesport, Maine. Spent many rainy afternoons there with my kids when we were on vacation. The model of the red house with the white front porch near the beginning of the video is a replica of Steven King’s house.
http://bangordailynews.com/2013/11/09/living/a-couples-labor-of-love-jonesport-widow-continues-to-operate-showcase-impressive-model-railroad/
WereBear
Likewise, but after the explosion of talent in the ’60’s and ’70’s it hit a huge wasteland that it didn’t climb out of for quite some time.
Took me out of the groove.
joel hanes
@Pogonip:
to go little-towning
I have a thing for surviving General Stores, the kind of place where you can buy bait, a fishing license, groceries, medicine, twelve feet of heavy chain, books, hats, cast iron cookware, and wool socks. (There’s a beauty in San Gregorio, on the coast side of the San Francisco Peninsula). For years I made a practice of buying the oddest postcard offered and immediately writing a couple lines and sending it to my elderly Grandma by giving it back to the person behind the counter.
trollhattan
@SiubhanDuinne:
Your gift of The Internets for the day is thus, secured, and am sure you’ll understand that you have to share it with Cole.
Enjoy every morsel!
joel hanes
@WereBear:
Gardner Dozois became my guide in that sea of mediocrity; my sister was a big help too.
Ursula LeGuin, too, remaineded reliably good; I think that The Telling is one of her best.
How do you like the Bujold “Vorkosigan” books ?
Pogonip
@efgoldman: Ah. Insouciant seamheads.
Hee Hee Hee.
Suffern ACE
@efgoldman: don’t get too excited about that walk off home run in the 14th inning. Casey still strikes out way too much and his WAR adjusted has been declining since June 3.
zattarra
I’m a product of the NYC comic culture of the 1980s. So fanzines and conventions are in my blood. I went to my first comic book convention with my dad when I was around 10. By the time I was 13 I was taking the subway in to the City for conventions on my own. Did my first Star Trek convention (the old Creation shows in NY if anyone remembers) when I was 13. Been to comic con numerous times. Am a nerd, a dork and a geek :) And have slowly (last 10 years or so) watched what was my little counter culture hobby (comic books) turn in to main stream pop culture. I was at the mall with the kid last month and the trendy teen stores were stocked with comic shirts and wallets and stuff I would have worn in the 80s. Heck, most the art on this stuff was retro 70s and 80s except for Kirby stuff from the 60s. It was weird.
Had the advantage growing up though of being one of the biggest nerds/geeks around but also being built like a linebacker. I took no grief for being what I was :)
joel hanes
@WereBear:
I get a kick out of the kind [ of sleepmask ] that you can write messages on the outside with dry erase marker
I Aten’t Dead Yet
NotMax
@SiubhanDuinne
Happy natal anniversary.
Shall refrain from making any Summer of ’42 references.
MomSense
@efgoldman:
TMRC is fantastic! I wonder if they would take the Beal model railroad. My youngest loves trains and sort of got the rest of us to love them too. We all love to take train rides and visit narrow guage musuems. There is a lake we visit every summer that is really remote but there is a train that goes by twice a day. I find it comforting–the idea that life is always moving along.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@raven: Beauteous Beaufort sunset! Thanks.
raven
@schrodinger’s cat: Thanks, pretty easy given the subject matter.
OldDave
@NotMax:
Phil and Kaja’s “Girl Genius” serial is a lot of fun as well, and is also available online for free. “GG” was first published in late 2002, and has continued since, with a new page published every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. If you don’t want to read all 1500+ pages in Act I, the second act began earlier this year.
Bob In Portland
This.
And this.
SiubhanDuinne
@NotMax:
A very natural train of thought.
RSA
I used to read a lot of science fiction when I was a kid, and I enjoyed it very much. I was never part of fandom, though. One thing that irritates me today is a sort of fannish triumphalism about science fiction predicting the future. Like the title above (sorry, Roger). There are a handful of cases in which a specific science fiction idea inspired some real development, but almost all examples out there are just cherry picking.
Amir Khalid
@Bob In Portland:
We mustn’t forget this.
SiubhanDuinne
@trollhattan:
It’s Cole’s day. I am feeling generous. He may have All the Internets, and their Traditions.
OMG it was so good — homemade chocolate cheesecake smothered in fresh raspberries, with hot raspberry sauce. Unspeakably good.
Hal
Since this is an open thread, I just had to post because I love noise max.
Look out! Americans want Repubs in control. Which I guess is technically true because Americans were polled. So what overwhelming percentage want this undoubtedly awesome result?
Wow, so people want a Rethug Congress!
.
Most? Not majority, which isn’t even true when taking margin of error in to account, wouldn’t “most” mean well over 50%. No wonder Romney thought he’d be President.
Suffern ACE
@Hal: lol. 43 to 41! A clear mandate!
SIA
@SiubhanDuinne: HAPPY BIRTHDAY SD! I raise my [non-alcoholic] beverage in your honor! ☆
Amir Khalid
@RSA:
More than for predicting this invention or that, what I admire most about something like Star Trek is that, at least in its television incarnations, it encouraged young people to look to learning and science as the way forward for humankind. For the most part, it celebrated diversity and its heroes focused on thinking their way through their problems.
And what has disappointed me about the reboot is that it’s now become just another action-movie series.
Botsplainer
@efgoldman:
Ah, the guy with his nose so buried in his program while scribbling that he misses the double play.
Mike in NC
@raven: We stayed at MCAS Beaufort several years ago while touring SC and GA. I think we were the only people in the BOQ at the time. But God bless the Marines, as the room was well stocked with beer and liquor! You can be damn sure the Navy would have never done that.
schrodinger's cat
@Amir Khalid: Word. I too like Star Trek for its optimism and idealism. I like the later years of TNG and DS9 the best. Voyager was so-so and I gave the prequel a miss. I am not a huge fan of TOS or the reboot.
RSA
@Amir Khalid:
Yes. I agree with you about that; I admire Star Trek TOS and its TV descendants for the same reason.
WereBear
@joel hanes: I recently picked up the Gardner Dozois anthologies through my Oyster app, as a way of getting back into the swing.
Haven’t read Bujold in ages… don’t think I read those in particular.
Gin & Tonic
@Bob In Portland: Read the other story about the Butkevich interview and its re-splicing. The original interview, BTW, was back in April.
Incidentally, Robert Parry of the always-unnamed sources — does *he* have any relevant language skills? Has he ever set foot in Ukraine? I know your other favorite source, the Hong Kong-based plagiarist Escobar, does not and has not.
Ukraine is a wonderful country, Bob. Americans don’t need a visa (contra Russia.) Go take a trip and see for yourself.
Matt McIrvin
@askew: You know, I really never thought of the guy-ness of Ghostbusters as its most essential quality.
I saw that again recently and was heartened to find that it mostly still holds up, though it’s also obviously very much of its time. The jokes mostly land; the action clips right along; the visual effects are of a type you don’t see any more, about as good as they ever got in the pre-computer-graphics days, and they’re lovely to see.
The comic lechery of the Bill Murray character doesn’t seem as cute as it did then. Ernie Hudson’s character comes across as surprisingly more likable than I remembered, and it was frustrating that the movie didn’t really do much with him.
Then I saw Ghostbusters 2 (I don’t think I ever actually saw it back in the day) and was astonished at how slow-moving and listless it was. Very little of significance happens in the first half of the movie, and it’s not very funny either. I’m not sure what happened there. It felt like they were cashing in and really didn’t want to be there.
JimV
I think a lot of good s-f that was written in the 1950’s is “unreadable” now because the ideas seem old hat. At the time they were new and I could feel my mind being expanded by them. What if there are alien lifeforms on other planets? What if some of them are intelligent? What if they are more intelligent than us? What if we can make mechanical people (robots) to do our menial work? What if those robots can think? What if they are smarter than us? Anthologies of short stories had dozens of ideas that were new to me and left my head spinning. Of course, as s-f great Theodore Sturgeon said (Sturgeon’s Law), 90% of it was crap – and 90% of everything is crap.
Also of course, science has invalidated a lot of the premises used then, such as Heinlein’s premises that life could exist on Mars and Venus. So someone reading “The Red Planet” or “Double Star” might think.”Martians? This is silly.” But they were great reads for me in my teens. I suppose the same will happen to Vernon Vinge’s great “A Fire Upon the Deep” and “A Deepness in the Sky” in 50 years. (What if there are intelligent alien creatures who form composite minds from small packs of individuals? What if there is a planet containing intelligent life whose sun goes on and off in a 250-year cycle?)
Amir Khalid
@Matt McIrvin:
Don’t you remember the moment when Dan Aykroyd’s character gets his knob shined by a lady ghost? (I was surprised that one got past the censors here.)
Mnemosyne
@Matt McIrvin:
Hudson does get the best line of the movie, though (and I always forget that he’s the one who says it):
“Ray, when someone asks you if you’re a god, you say yes!“
Mike J
@Mnemosyne: Nah, the best line is Murray’s after Sigourney/Gozer says, “I want you inside me.” “I don’t know. You’ve got two people in there already. It could get a little crowded.”
Mandalay
So Bill Clinton spewed gushing praise, and sucked the very dead cock of Richard Mellon Scaife at a memorial service for the vile fucker yesterday.
Speaking of the time that Scaife’s paper endorsed Hillary Clinton in 2008 over Obama, Bill Clinton said:
“You need to know that she treasures that column and that experience,” Clinton said.
Actually asshole, we don’t need to know that Hillary Clinton treasures that experience. It will hard enough to vote for her in 2016, without being reminded that there will be only a sliver of difference between her and her filthy rich opponent, and that she will have far more in common with Alan Greenspan and Richard Scaife and Mitt Romney and Jamie Dimon than almost anyone who ends up voting for her.
As Occupy Wall Street knew, Democrats vs. Republicans (or liberals vs. conservatives, or left vs. right) are all smoke screens put out by those in power. The real distinction is the 0.1% vs. the 99.9%, but they really don’t want you thinking that way.
Put them up against the wall, including Bill and Hillary. All of them Katie.
Bob In Portland
@Gin & Tonic: The Bogdan B. interview may very well be sloppy propaganda. I’ll see what is counter reported against the charges in The Examiner.
I admit I haven’t given much credence to The Examiner. From wiki:
Chris T.
@Frankensteinbeck:
After reading some of the comments in this thread, and thinking about things, I now suspect it’s a matter of both time and place.
Where I grew up was border-Dixieland-territory (technically south of the Mason-Dixon line), and when I grew up was the 1970s (extending a bit into the 1980s) and both of those offered poisons and terrors for “thinking too much” or “being seen as smart”. The boys got bullied; the girls got shunned.
It seems to have improved everywhere, but perhaps improved the least in the places that need it the most, on the whole.
Bob In Portland
@Amir Khalid: First off, the alleged BUK in the pictures doesn’t look like images of BUKs I googled. There is one video where it appears that the alleged BUK is in a military convoy, most of the jeeps seem to be missing and in the still pictures the jeeps aren’t visible at all. That’s not proof of anything more than the likelihood that it was a Ukrainian army column rather than the rebels. The first picture is just a picture of truck cab. The missiles are pretty evident on the top of a BUK and the best we get is that in one picture the missiles were covered.
Second, I can’t really tell where the pictures were taken. Can you?
Third, where is the integrated radar system necessary to target the missile?
Fourth, if you believe the story, a BUK was moved across the border from Russia on the morning of the incident, then untrained rebels shot down the airliner. I’ve heard it takes months to train on them. If it were the rebels, and presuming that there was a radar system in place to target the airliner, it was a pretty damned lucky (unlucky) shot to hit something at 10,000 meters on the first try without any training. I guess they must have pushed the right button. If it were the Russians they would know from the transponder signature and the altitude of the airliner what it was. So if it were the Russians it was a deliberate shoot down to bring suspicion on themselves and the rebels, which makes no sense, unless they planned to blame it on the Ukrainian army. But they didn’t, not immediately. The Ukrainians immediately blamed it on Russia, so Russia didn’t have its propaganda in place, which makes no sense at all. If you are going to have a false flag operation you have your ducks lined up. Peculiar. “Let’s shoot down an airliner and hope they blame it on the Ukrainians.”
On the other hand, we know that the Ukrainians did have BUK batteries in the area. On yet another hand, we have the Ukrainian fighter plane in the area moments before the plane went down. Russia released its radar of this. It hasn’t been contradicted by the US. It hasn’t been addressed. The US would have had satellite images of a BUK being moved into position and yet two weeks on we haven’t seen it. US Key Hole satellites are parked over Ukraine. We haven’t heard the tapes from the ATCs. Why the two-week delay? No US radar reports.
I will be interested to see how the State Department reacts tomorrow. The article is dated for yesterday, which gives State two days to verify it. The way propaganda works you throw up lots of crap and hope that some of it sticks. So we also get stories of Russia violating a cruise missile treaty, which is almost funny considering, you know, whose cruise missiles have been doing what to whom, and Russia losing that fifty billion dollar suit in court. If the mainstream US news and the State Department both ignore this story then I’d advise you to do the same. If this is such solid proof then they will grab onto it. They may grab onto it if it’s not solid, but they should acknowledge it.
After watching how badly the New York Times has been reporting our foreign policy “initiatives” I guess I can’t knock The Daily Beast. But the publisher, John Avlon, is a Yalie who worked in the State Department and is married to the great granddaughter of Herbert Hoover and has promoted himself as a “centrist” although since he was the chief speechwriter for Rudy Giuliani and worked establishing New York City’s Office of Emergency Management. I’m not sure if he’s that much of a centrist.
Fun Fact: Did you know that before WWI Herbert Hoover had the rights to lots of that central Asian pool of oil and gas per the Czar? You know, that giant pool to the north of Afghanistan and east of Ukraine.
I’ll wait to see if the State Department or NSA or someone in the government confirms where these pictures were taken and shows their satellite pictures to confirm this.
Meanwhile, how did you prove to yourself where those pictures were taken, if it was actually being hauled by the rebels (or the Ukrainian army) and that that is a BUK?
Also, the author Eliot Higgins, claimed that Syria had deployed the Sarin gas (it was apparently removed from his wiki entry so I guess he’s not bragging about it anymore), where we almost got into our next war. I presume you’ve seen since then that his rocket trajectories were wrong and that it actually looks like al-Nusra were the perpetrators of the sarin attacks. Right?
So now Higgins has been involved with two cases where the US has wanted to go to war (I count wanting to bomb Syria as going to war). With the first one he appears to be wrong. The second one, well, tell me how you know where those pictures were taken and who was moving it.
I really don’t know anything at all about Higgins besides that he’s a Brit. Do you?
Joel Hanes
@WereBear:
Bujold’s series about Aral, Cordelia, and Miles Vorkosigan is superb space-opera.
Read them in order.
People rave about China Mieville; too weird for me, although I read every word of four of them. The world-building reminds me of the Voynich Manuscript – gratuitous, weird for the sake of weirdness.
The right time to read Stephenson’s Snowcrash was ca 1993, but it’s still a hell of a romp if you haven’t.
His Cryptonomicon is a more solid book that will age better.
I am fascinated by almost every word ever written by William Gibson.
You might try Gaiman’s American Gods
In movies, Serenity is a standout.
Bob In Portland
@Amir Khalid: Here is another article, basically Seymour Hersh versus Eliot Higgins.
It’s a nice story, someone sitting on a couch in Britain and figuring out things like missile trajectories in Syria, but not very believable. To me, at least. The story about the MH17 has a number of questions. I presume that Higgins didn’t get off his couch and take those pictures himself, and it seems like he got a lot of his information from someone in Ukraine’s ministry of counterterrorism. The rest are unsubstantiated reports.
I’d also note that repeating others’ unverified reports and being a stenographer for the ministry of counterterrorism isn’t the same thing as plotting (albeit incorrectly) missile trajectories from his couch. The latter suggests some kind of remarkable talent, for which Higgins received his notoriety. The first is merely a story which gathers a lot of disparate reports, and I’m not sure how each of them were verified.
But we’ll see.
Fun fact: Did you know that Bob Woodward worked for ONI a couple of years before he did his magic with Deep Throat?
Bob In Portland
@Amir Khalid: I’ve been trying to find out something about Eliot Higgins. All I know is that his bios all say that he lost his job and stays home watching his toddler daughter and figuring out rocket trajectories and doing investigative reporting.
Here is an article which connects him with a guy named Van Dyke who was maybe a free-lance reporter, maybe a fighter with the anti-Khadafy forces, or maybe something else. Can’t verify the sources, but somebody doesn’t like Van Dyke.
J R in WV
Disappointed and shocked to hear about Marion Zimmer Bradley and her husband, Walter Breen were child rapists and abusers!!
Don’t know how I missed it when the story broke, I’m not so much into “fandom” although I enjoy modern author’s blogs a lot. More than shocked, horrified! To be so successfully creative and then shown to be vile at the same time. I really feel for the people who were abused by famous people, no doubt feared they wouldn’t be believed speaking out against a famous author, etc.
What a shitty thing to learn. I will have to tell MRs J R tomorrow, not looking forward to it at all as she loved the literary work of M Z Bradley. Never heard of Walter Breen, not into collecting coins.
Well, I started this comment hours ago, went to other sources for more information, worse than I thought in the beginning. Gonna be a book-burning round here real soon.
Something you can’t unsee, thoughts you can’t unthink. Sleep you won’t get back. Shit!
Matt McIrvin
@J R in WV: Yeah, unfortunately, it’s also the kind of thing that needs to be brought up.
The weird thing is that so much of it has been well-known for decades, but until very recently it was Something We Don’t Talk About Unless We Have To in the fan community. What sparked recent interest in it was a very short-lived article on tor.com celebrating MZB as a pioneer feminist and champion of gay/lesbian rights, which made absolutely no mention of any of this. Which led to some “you know about Walter Breen, right?” type comments, retrospectives of the “Breendoggle” (as they cutely called it back in the Sixties), and then Bradley’s kids started speaking up…
Ivan Ivanovich Renko
@SiubhanDuinne: HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!!!!!!!!!!!