WWWednesday: September 26, 2018

Awards:

Locus has the Man-Booker Prize short list.

Tananarive Due received the Octavia Butler Award.

Happy Autumn! Autumn Leaves, courtesy of Amazon

Conventions:

I don’t think this is behind a paywall; Amy Brennan writes about Nine Worlds, accessibility issues and the convention in general. The panel on “Cheese and Cheese” sounds funny.

Books and Writing:

Gary Trudeau talks about fifty years of “Doonesbury” and writing satire in the Trump era.

I’m including this article from Locus, about a “future stories” short fiction contest hosted by Pigeonhole, but when I went to their website, I couldn’t find anything about the contest (which closes 10/31 according to Locus). If someone is successful at finding it, could you drop a note into Comments?

Locus also provided an interview with one of the editors from Amazon’s 47 North, the marketing behemoth’s SF/YA imprint of their publishing arm.

Here is an eerie, beautiful and creepy short dark fantasy story to read as the leaves curl, the night grow longer and the dawns get colder. Full disclosure, I consider Garrett and friend and I heard him read this story aloud. It  knocked me out. (Warning; self harm.)

With Shimmer Magazine closing, where are the speculative fiction markets for the strange, the eerie and the beautiful? Syntax&Salt is definitely one of them. Take a look.

The Book Smugglers’ own Ana Grillo reviews the novella “Prime Meridian” by Silvia Moreno-Garcia for Kirkus.

Fall vegetables, (c) Marion Deeds 2018. Sorry about using my own photo but I loved the colors.

The U.K. Guardian shares maps of imaginary countries. (Thanks to Jana for this link.)

Goodreads removed FIYAH, the Magazine of Black Speculative Fiction from the review site stating it did not meet their requirements; all Goodreads subjects must have an ASIN or ISBN. This stirred up a lot of discussion, particularly once it emerged that this rule was not being applied consistently. FIYAH is now back up at Goodreads, but the previously submitted reviews of the first six issues are gone. Goodreads has not stated publicly whether it has changed its policies. This kerfuffle reminded me that I need to renew my subscription.

If you haven’t read FIYAH you are missing a treat.

While I was reading about Captain Marvel and smiling more I came across a Comicsgate reference. I thought, “What’s Comicsgate?” Well, to no real surprise, it’s a group of people on social media who dislike the fact that marginalized folks are finally getting their stories into comics. I had to look around a little, but I found this pretty good article about its genesis. Apparently a bunch of female Marvel employees drinking milkshakes was the catalyst, because that makes sense, right?

Movies and TV:

Getting ready for Halloween? Rosemary Benson looks back at 1963’s The Haunting, an adaptation of Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House.

The House With a Clock in its Walls did decent box office on its opening weekend.

After numerous anonymous people complained on social media that Brie Larson, who will pay Captain Marvel in the upcoming movie, should smile more on the movies poster, Larson found and posted a cluster of famous male superhero posters – now with cheesy smiles.

Science and Tech:

This is not only interesting science, it’s a positive story about possible rehabilitation for some people with spinal cord injuries.

Sea creatures make waterproof homes of mucus. This article is behind a paywall but you can click on the “Three Stories” button and see it for free. It’s fascinating.

Here’s a video about the decades-long Russian experiment with foxes.

Internet:

A scholar found a letter from Galileo long thought to be lost. Was it in someone’s attic? Deep in the heart of a secret labyrinth that required a scavenger-hunt and deciphering numerous clues? No. It was in a library.

Most food trucks don’t ask you to do the cooking, but this one, traveling through Manitoba, politely insists. The two owners are historians doing an oral history project (“oral history!” Get it?) about food and they invite people to come aboard and cook something from their family and tell the story about the dish. Neither recipe nor story need to be fancy.