WWWednesday: January 18, 2017

I don’t read Wil Wheaton’s blog very often, but the other day I did, and I found this. Philomena Cunk is too wonderful not to share.

Awards:

Yikes! Only two days left on this one; the James White Award is still open for entries, and winner are published in Interzone. The award is open to not-yet-professional writers and the word length is 6,000 words.

The winners of the Stabby Awards for 2017 were announced, and Pierce Brown won for best novel with Morningstar.

Books and Writing:

Winter is coming, maybe, someday. When, exactly? Once again, GRRM responds to a fan, and once again provides no real answer.

Orbit Books has acquired 3 original novels from N.K. Jemisin. The first is due out in April, 2019.

Many of us love the DISKWORLD series for many reasons. Katherine Trendacosta gives us a few more, and 10 things to remember over the next several years.

Salon talked to Junot Diaz about Octavia Butler.

As you know, I often link to things here that are about writing in general. In space opera and epic fantasy, the odds against accidentally naming a character after an actual living person is slightly less likely, and if you do, the consequences are slight. What if your realistic novel contains a war criminal character with the same name as one, identifiable, living, innocent person? This LitHub essay takes a look at exactly that occurrence.

Movies and TV:

Neil Patrick Harris plays the evil Count Olaf on the new Netflix series Lemony Snickett; A Series of Unfortunate Events that became available last Friday.

Despite the fact that George Lucas is basically a Northern California local boy, San Francisco lost out on the bid to host the Lucas Museum. Lucas had originally planned it on the site of the historic San Francisco Presidio, but that fell through, as did a plan for lakefront property in Chicago, Illinois. Los Angeles, who knows about celebrities, managed to win the prize. I’m not angry, San Francisco, I’m just very disappointed.

Constantine returns! It’s an animated series.

Cons:

[caption id=”attachment_83941″ align=”alignleft” /> Art Nouveau Peacock

WorldCon 75 has added two new vice-chairs after the resignation of two vice-chairs. It looks like the incoming folks, Karolina Leikomaa and Colette H, Fozard, have some good experience.

EverCon is a gaming Con Wisconsin. They had several milestones in January; they expanded to three days, they moved from a smaller venue to a larger one… and they had to enforce their Code of Conduct when a person started being a creep. It looks like they handled it well, although the person is still being creepy.

Games:

Ars Technica reviews tabletop game Pandemic; Reign of Cthulhu and asks whether we have reached Peak Cthulhu. Not possible, I say.

Space:

Jeanette Epps and Andrew Fuestel will crew the international space station next year, NASA announces. Many of us saw Epps at Mid-AmeriCon II last August. In fact, she accepted Nnedi Okorafor’s Hugo for “Binti” on her behalf.

Space X had a successful launch on Saturday, but they’ll need to have many more to reach profitability, according to this article.

Earth:

I don’t quite know what to make of this. The Sploid article has a light tone, but the actual film… well, it doesn’t. This is all about empathy, and it’s fascinating. And sad.

Art:

Glendale, CA, encourages artists to paint murals on utility boxes. It’s called Beyond the Box. This website contains photos of each one (many of which are SF themed or dinosaur themed.) This site provided this week’s art. I really like the different styles. (Thanks to File 770.)