This week’s word for Wednesday comes, once again, courtesy of Haggard Hawks. It is anacronym, a noun, a word that is an “anachronistic acronym;” a word that started as an acronym but has been in use for so long that many people don’t remember its origins. One example is scuba in scuba-diving; “scuba” stands for “self-contained underwater breathing apparatus.” A really interesting one is “Care package.” I thought that literally mean a package you brought someone to show you cared (or who needed care) but CARE is the acronym for the non-governmental humanitarian aid group Co-Operative for American Remittances in Europe, founded in 1945. I didn’t make that up.
Giantess by Leonora Carrington. (c) Leonora Carrington
If you haven’t visited the You-Tube channel of Haggard Hawks, or the blog, please deny yourself this pleasure no longer.
Awards:
Mythopoeic Society Award finalists are announced.
Nominated for Best Adult Literature:
The Darkest Part of the Forest by Holly Black; The Buried Giant by Kasuo Ishiguro; A Thousand Nights by E.K. Johnston; Uprooted by Naomi Novik; Shadowshaper by Daniel Jose Older. That last one is a puzzler. I’m glad to see it one the list, but it was marketed as YA.
Nominated for Best Children’s Fiction:
Circus Mirandus by Cassie Beasley; Serafina and the Black Cloak, by Robert Beatty; The Girl Who Could Not Dream by Sarah Beth Durst; The Tiffany Aching Series, by Terry Pratchett; Castle Hangnail by Ursula Vernon.
The winners will be announced at MythCon 47, August 5-8, in San Antonio, Texas.
Books and Writing:
I recently had an experience where a book that changed my view of the world appeared completely randomly, at eye level, in the used bookstore I frequent. As “random encounters” with books go, that barely is one – we do expect to find books in bookstores after all. Still, many of us love the idea of the “found” book that changes our destiny… or the book that deciphers our destiny. Lit-Hub studies both of these phenomena in this article.
F&SF interviewed writer Susan Palwick about her beautiful and melancholy short story “Ash” here.
Vox.com takes a look at fandom, transformative fandom in particular. I don’t know if I agree with all their conclusions, but they know how to make a point. I stopped cold in the middle of this article when I read this sentence: “The Gilmore Guys, the fan-run podcast that does three-hour analyses of every Gilmore Girls episode, have said on their show that ‘fan fiction goes too far.’” And I laughed.
From the New York Times, writers in the Middle East are embracing fantasy, speculative fiction and dystopian fiction to deal with real-world concerns in the wake of Arab Spring.
Lady Business invited Jenny from Reading the End to discuss unreliable narrators. I love her chipper British tone!
Self Portrait by Leonora Carrington. (c) Leonora Carrington
Joshua Glenn, editor and SF historian, has completed a project close to his heart, to bring fiction from what he calls “the Radium Age” back into the light. Before the Golden Age of SF, Glenn posits that there was a time when stories were wilder, weirder and more fantastic. He has created a list of the 100 best stories from the Radium age, 1904-1933. Here is a link to the article, thanks to Ryan, and here is a link to the list. To no one’s surprise, Sandy’s already reviewed a few of these.
Amazon has gotten serious in its crusade to end fake or purchased reviews, and stepped up its efforts this week by suing, not the providers of the fake reviews but the sellers themselves. None of the products in question were books, but this is an interesting road the online megastore is marching down.
Movies and TV:
BBC’s Orphan Black is one of my favorite shows on TV right now; maybe the favorite. And the Alison Hendrix Community Theater Musical Number is always one of my favorite things, and this week it was… Jesus Christ, Superstar. For. The. Win. Tor.com ruminates on this week’s episode in a spoiler-intensive column.
Warcraft opens on Friday. Here’s the trailer. Indiewire is brutal in its review of the film, but it sounds like fan-faithful should be pleased with it. Variety shares the film’s international box office so far.
Michele Gomez announced that Doctor Who’s nemesis and BFF, Missy, will be returning in Season 10, according to CinemaBlend. In a few interviews, Stephen Moffat has now said that they tried to cast a black actor to play the Doctor before Matt Smith, but it didn’t work out. There’s been lots of speculation, but could Chiwetel Ejiofor have been selected? I hope this is true, and I really wish that at some point in the near future his schedule will allow him to take the role.
The Star Wars movie Rogue One has brought on Jason Bourne director to provide help with the some reshoots and inserts. And a day later IO9 reported that the studio brought on still more help.
Giveaways:
Check here for our active giveaways, and follow us on Twitter to find out when winners have been announced.
Quisiera Ser Pajaro by Leonora Carrington (c) Leonora Carrington
Comments:
As you know, we use a one-to-five star scale for an at-a-glance opinion of a book we’ve reviewed. Now you can share your rating with us. The comment section of each book review will allow commenters to rate a book from one to five, with half-stars as an option. We’re eager to see how you all like this.
Art:
“You are trying to intellectualize something, desperately, and you’re wasting your time.” Leonora Carrington, surrealist artist, schools her British cousin in this 10-minute film about Carrington’s journey as a woman and an artist. Carrington sounds like a rebel from childhood; after being a debutante, she eloped with a surrealist painter and went to Paris, where she became a painter herself. You can learn more about her, her art and her philosophy at the Leonora Carrington Foundation site. There is a translation button on each page if you need it.
Space:
Pluto may or may not be a full-fledged planet, but it has its own US stamp!
Earth:
They’ve matched DNA and found that Peter Quill’s father really is Star Lor… oops, sorry, wrong story. They’ve matched chemical signatures and found the meteorite that an iron dagger of King Tut’s was forged from.
They’re our best friends, according to the old saying, and this Ars Technica article shows that our relationship with dogs is more complicated that we first thought. It appears that dogs were domesticated twice, thousands of years apart, and in different part of the globe.
Last, Atlas Obscura shows us places that inspired stories, poetry and songs.
I love this quote from Indiewire’s Warcraft review: ‘“Warcraft” unfolds as though a Dungeon Master were narrating a very expensive episode of “Drunk History.”’ So many aspects of my entertainment world, colliding in one sentence, made me laugh out loud!