Interesting Links for 29-12-2015

[andrewducker]

• A Softer Avenger - A Softer World + MCU = Awesome
  • marvel avengers funny comic viaDraxar
• UK government rejected flood risk warnings from climate advisers
  • flooding UK government conservatives viaJennieRigg
• That’s No Moon: The models and miniatures of the original ‘Star Wars’ trilogy
  • starwars models movies viaSoonLee
• William Gibson: how I wrote

Comments

[cmcmck]

Given my life experience, I've heard both lots of awful stuff..........

[andrewducker]

I'd imagine that you would.

And that neither set of stuff is any fun.

[cmcmck]

Nothing like!

[kalimac]

1) William Gibson: That's interesting to me, because I was around at the time: I knew Bill casually then, and heard him read a chunk of the then-unpublished Neuromancer at an SF con. It's also interesting because of the impetus he needed to begin a novel. Most SF writers used to begin with shorts, as he did; but around that time the field began getting an influx of authors who thought nothing of starting out with whole novels and rarely writing shorts at all. But in all these years I've never seen that difference discussed

[soon_lee]

Adam Roberts shakes his cane at clouds! News at eleven!

(Most of the time, I find myself disagreeing with Roberts' columns. This is no exception. He might be the sort of reader who doesn't mind being told the butler did it, but I do. And even if the butler did it, don't tell me how; part of the fun is finding out by reading it for myself, not by someone telling me. What I want from my entertainment (be it books, movies or other media) is clearly very different from what Roberts wants.)

"37 things changed during the production of "The Force Awakens"
That explains some of the disjointedness in the movie.

"William Gibson: how I wrote Neuromancer"
My favourite bit:
I do remember seeing Terry, some time after I’d turned it in. I hadn’t heard from him, at all. He was descending a curved stair, from the upper to the lower lobby at some convention hotel. Had he gotten my, um, manuscript? Yes, he said. “Is it going to be OK?” I asked, my anxiety phrasing the question. He paused on the stair, gave me a brief, memorably odd look, then smiled

[kalimac]

Terry Carr was a very cool-mannered guy, even when handling as revolutionarily important a manuscript as this one.

The last sentence of the quote may sound less cryptic if you know that he died, regrettably young, a couple of years later.

[nancylebov]

The Frailty Myth (history of women and sports) goes into some detail about "throwing like a girl". I had no idea there was so much research on throwing. In any case, "throwing like a girl" is simply and identically equivalent to throwing like someone who is inexperienced/untrained at throwing.

[andrewducker]

Sounds about right to me.

I really hate the way that sports-classes in school focus on the best pupils, and alienate the rest. It's an excellent way to end up with 80% of people never doing exercise.

Ace Science Fiction Special

[snarlish]

I was a fan of Gibsons writing from reading him in OMNI, and picked up Neuromancer on its publication, as well as a couple other in those series.
Green Eyes was pretty interesting, as well as Palimpsest, which like Neuromancer really was a new voice.
Neuromancer blew everything else out of the water, IMO, and really had me struggling to enjoy most other science fiction thereafter.

Re: Ace Science Fiction Special

[soon_lee]

I didn't encounter his short stories until after I read Neuromancer. Neuromancer was genre-changing, but his short stories were excellent ("The Gernsback Continuum", "Dogfight"). It's a pity he doesn't do them anymore.

Re: Ace Science Fiction Special

[andrewducker]

Oh yes, I loved the collection Burning Chrome. Dogfight really stuck with me.

RE: Re: Ace Science Fiction Special

[snarlish]

Both of those are great. There are hints of Gernsback in the Blue Ant series with the location specific AR projects. Man, gonna go read those again.

[radiumhead]

i hate that there's new star wars movies. I really, really do. I cant shit on it enough. They really shouldve just let it die after Jedi. But, greed, so, no.