Today’s word for Wednesday is a noun, enantiomorph, which means mirror image. The original meaning came from the words for “opposite shape.” Thanks again to HaggardHawks.
Saturday May 21 was Owl Saturday. Baby owl after a bath, courtesy of Ellen Datlow.
Awards:
File 770 reports that the Eugie Foster award will be given out at DragonCon. Foster, who wrote the beautiful, elegiac short story “When it Ends, He Catches Her,” died in 2014. The award will be given to shorter works that are “irreplaceable, that inspire, that entertain.”
Books and Writing:
Damien Walter talks about the various sub-sub-genres in SFF. Oh, oops. I’m not supposed to call them genres; my bad. And excuse me, Mr. Walter, but you call out “weird” as a community and don’t mention Jeff VanderMeer? I notice the article has been updated a time or two since I first read it.
It was Item 1 at File770 and take a look at those comments. This crowd is not pleased with his categorizations!
You can win every novella Tor.com Publishing has released, which include Victor LaValle’s “The Ballad of Black Tom” and Nnedi Okorafor’s Nebula-winning “Binti”. Just go here and sign up.
Speaking of Tor, here they tease John Scalzi’s new SF novel, The Collapsing Empire, due out in 2017. It looks like it’s not set in the Old Man’s War universe.
A couple of weeks ago Fantasy Faction posted this column on the ways screenplays and teleplays can help with novel writing. What do you think?
I don’t go to The Economist for articles about writing, but this take on the “style usage wars” was educational and fun. For instance, I didn’t know that the original word the phrase “running the gauntlet” had been “gantlet.” I always wondered by you were running a glove.
Kate Young is a food blogger, and her new cookbook contains recipes inspired from food in books. Here she tells the story of making the treacle tart she read of in J.K. Rowling’s HARRY POTTER series.
Internet:
Dr. Chuck Tingle (you remember him from this year’s Hugo nominations) has launched a new website and it is www.therabidpuppies.com. It is safe for work, (I mean, it looks safe for work…) and Dr. Tingle has “come out” so to speak as a supporter of N.K. Jemisin’s The Fifth Season for the Best Novel Hugo. And as far as lacking the foresight to secure a domain name when you intend to create a brand, especially a controversial one, well, what can I say?
Come for the Book Desk, stay for the awesome bookends. This site has some cool stuff!
Owl (c) Chloe Yingst
TV and Movies:
Spoiler Alert: Entertainment Weekly caught up with Agents of SHIELD and talked to the actor who plays the character who died. This is a great interview, but if you haven’t seen the season finale, be warned – it does tell you who died.
Spoilers, spoilers, spoilers. This week’s Game of Thrones revealed the origin of the White Walkers.
Casting is well underway for the Marvel superhero movie Thor:Ragnarok. Tor.com provides a few confirmed names; Cate Blanchett and Jeff Goldblum.
In Axanar; The Saga Continues, JJ Abrams announced that Paramount will be dropping its lawsuit, due to intervention by Justin Lin. So far there is no official confirmation of this statement.
Tor.com reviews AMC’s adaptation of the comic Preacher.
Shamier Anderson, who plays the strictly-business Black Badge Agent Dolls on Syfy’s quirky comic-book adaptation Wynonna Earp, is interviewed by The Young Folks.
Games:
Science Fiction/Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA) has voted to allow game writers as members, President Cat Rambo tweeted on May 18. The association has been discussing this possibility for a while.
At a recent gaming event, Dreamhack Austin, the audience on Twitch-chat, an invitation only chat app, unleashed a barrage of racist comments at Terrence Miller, an up and coming Hearthstone player. The moderation team was unable to stem the wave of racist slurs and was not supported by the event’s support team. The parent company Blizzard’s CEO has issued an apology and vowed to make changes.
Science and Technology:
Google has a solution for driverless-car-versus-pedestrian collisions, and it’s glue. I thought this was a prank article, but it appears to be genuine. I might have linked to it even it if were a prank, because it’s just so mind-boggling.
Octopus (c) Chloe Yingst
Even if you don’t have strong feelings or beliefs about GMOs, it’s hard to go anywhere these days without some discussion of them. This summary of the in-depth study done by the National Academies of Sciences is excellent, and contains a link to the study itself.
Gizmodo reports that swarms of octopus are taking over the oceans. I have to admit, I never thought that it would be cephalopods who took over the world, but I like octopus. And honestly, if Syfy is looking for the next Sharknado, well, maybe this is it.
Giveaways:
We still have some active Giveaways. Check here to see if you can win a book!
Art:
You can find Chloe Yingst’s bold and luminous watercolors here, and purchase her work here.
Awwwww! The baby owl!!!
And I love the octopus art.
The baby owl bowled me over, and I like everything I’ve seen of Chloe Yingst’s work so far.
I loved that Walter article! And I love your sassy response, too. :)
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