Poveglia Island, photo by Atlas Obscura
Awards:
I can’t believe people have to do this, but apparently they do… Archive of One’s Own issued a statement explaining that their Hugo win was for the concept of the archive itself, and the achievement of creating a space and a community for fanfiction, not for anything written or produced on the archive. AO3 is a community of people who write fanfiction, which means they are using worlds, concepts and characters developed by someone else. No writer on the site “won” a Hugo for their fanfiction.
It turns out that some of the people who apparently needed this reminder are File 770 followers. (See item 3.) The comments after this post are split nearly 50-50, with about half believing that the contributors to Archive of One’s Own are committing trademark violations and some going so far as to say that their own Hugo wins are besmirched by the win. With friends like these, who needs sad puppies?
The inaugural American Tabletop Awards were announced on September 9.
Conventions:
In spite of the challenges they have faced and continue to face, Arisia intends to go forward for January, 2020.
Books and Writing:
On Mary Robinette Kowal’s blog, Alexandra Rowland discusses her favorite bit of her forthcoming book, A Choir of Lies.
Librarians and archivists are scanning books that are in the public domain.
Carnegie Mansion, photo by Atlas Obscura
LitHub shared an article from a few months back about AI’s learning to write novels. It’s interesting. I can’t help noticing that the AI in the story was “taught” about fiction through a steady diet of Western fiction. This is how you build bias into your algorithms.
I didn’t know there was a National Palindrome Week, but Mike Glyer says there is, so… all righty, then. Pretty cool stuff.
Brad Torgerson won a Dragon award, Best Science Fiction novel, for A Star-Wheeled Sky. I looked for Torgerson’s blog and diddn’t find a current one at first, but I did find a synopsis of the book here. Then, of course, I found the blog or at least an author website, and an old post on the book.
Great news! A MURDERBOT novel! IO9 also gives us a cover reveal of Martha Wells’s fifth MURDERBOT project.
Scooby-Do adventures were really… gothic. Surprisingly, the author makes this argument work.
Jim C. Hines posted a column about his wife’s memorial service on his blog.
I go away for three days and Veronica from Archie Comics becomes a vampire. Why do things like this keep happening? Anyway, IO9 has some details about Veronica’s –or Vampironica’s –solo comic run.
Joe Hill’s Locke-and-Key adaptation project, which has been slightly star-crossed, seems to be on track after all, at Netflix. I’m excited and worried (worried because the NOS4A2 adaptation was a dud to me, but it wasn’t Netflix.)
Games:
This oddly-named game sounds fun.
TV and Movies:
Entertainment Weekly’s list of 8 new shows to watch contains some genre offerings, including Evil and The Watchmen.
Do we like longer movies, or not? The Hollywood Reporter takes a look at the phenomenon.
Who’s going to see Ad Astra? Newsday didn’t like it much. The Daily Dot liked it better, and took a different perspective.
The new Joker movie looks disturbing. IO9 sat down with director Todd Phillips and Joaquin Phoenix, who plays the title character, to talk about this different approach to Batman’s nemesis.
Internet:
These are fun! From Syfy Wire; North Farmington High School seniors cosplay various characters for their student ID cards. Apparently this has been a school tradition for a few years now.
A furry convention has uninvited right-wing provocateur Milo Yiannoloupos from the Midwestern FurFest. This is from Rightwing Watch, which has a definite point of view, but the rescinded membership has been confirmed on Twitter.
A gamer whose part in a fake 911 “swatting” call led directly to the death of an innocent man has been sentenced to 15 months in jail. The conspirator who actually made the call got a sentence of 20 years.
Perhaps more than you wanted to know about lobsters.
Earth:
Here are 12 weird deserted islands. Some are downright scary. At least one, the lazaretto in the Venice lagoon, sounds like the best candidate for a haunted place ever.
Photographs:
Obviously, I lifted the pics from the deserted islands article.
If you’re a fan of the All Soul’s Trilogy by Deborah Harkness, Poveglia in Venice has good reason to feel haunted. So cool that it was mentioned in that article.
My dad has always loved palindromes. He is a retired electrical engineer whose area of expertise is satellite communications. He worked for a defense contractor (Harris Corp). When I was a kid growing up in the 80s, I remember him making up this palindrome:
ME DO MODEM
I love this, Kat!