Awards:
The Dragon Award finalists were announced. The award’s eccentric eligibility period, November through July of the following year, means odd additions and exclusions (some 2019 books may have been nominated last year). As you would expect, this list of popular books upsets some people. File 770 cataloged a few reactions.
(Dragon Award nomination and voting are not tied to membership in any convention, and basically anyone with an email address can nominate and vote. It says one vote per person in the FAQ’s, but if you have more than one email address I don’t know how they would identify multiple votes.)
Obituary:
Carlos Ruiz Zafon, author of the Shadow of the Wind quartet, died in June. The Guardian had an obituary for him then. A few months late…
Housekeeping:
As a general rule, our Giveaways are for people with a USA mailing address. If there’s an exception to that, we note it in the Giveaway post. We try to consistently include this information in our Giveaways, but since each of us contribute, sometimes it gets missed. The reason is the cost of international shipping.
Books and Writing:
On Mary Robinette Kowal’s blog, writer Linden A. Lewis shares her favorite bit from her forthcoming novel The First Sister.
Here’s an interesting opinion piece with lots of nuggets about female writers who wrote under male pen names, but the author, while saying there might have been many reasons the female authors made these choices, doesn’t offer any; and doesn’t take into account that part of the value of doing this might be for present-day readers, for whom 18th-19th century women writers are almost invisible. Would the compromise be “[Name] writing as [pseudonym]?”
Libraries need our help.
DC will publish a long work by John Ridley, The Other History of the DC Universe. The character choices he made look good, but when he talks about the book itself, the way the narrative melds graphics and text sounds fascinating too.
Thanks to Kat for this article about Native and First Nation storytellers making their voices heard.
Art:
John Picacio was 2018’s Guest of Honor at WorldCon, and architect of that year’s MexicanX Initiative. You’ve seen his artwork; check out more of it.
TV, Film and Streaming:
Black Girl Nerds share some early tidbits of a Disney animated feature, Raya and the Last Dragon.
On his blog, Peter Clines talks about the heydays (there was more than one) of the B movie.
Jurassic World, Dominion gave Entertainment Weekly a first look. After the second film, I hoped the third one would be feisty cannabis farmers in Humboldt County, California, fighting sport-hunters who invade their farms to hunt the raptors who accidentally got released there. Sadly, it seems that will not be the storyline.
Games:
How about a Princess Bride board game?
Internet:
Athena Scalzi wrote a frothy and enlightening column for The Whatever. Why don’t young kids these days use periods when they text? Here’s the answer.
At Nerds of a Feather, Adri and Joe discuss the Hugos—not the ceremony, the awards.
XKCD has an observation.
Bardcore:
Yes, bardcore—contemporary songs arranged as medieval European music–is a thing. Enjoy “Jolene” as Hildegard von Bingen might have arranged it.
Marion, I would very much like to watch Jurassic World III: The Raptors are Totally Stoned, Man.