WWWednesday: May 30, 2018

Influential editor Gardner Dozois shaped modern SFF. He passed away on Sunday.

Haggard Hawks provides this week’s word for Wednesday. It’s the verb intermicate, and it means “to shine between.” It was first recorded in the dictionary Glossographia in 1656. Its roots are Latin, from “inter” (between) and “micare”, to shine or gleam. Paul of HH notes that that the adjective micant, meaning “shining” is criminally neglected in current use.

Obituary:

“To write good SF today…you must push further and harder, reach deeper into your own mind until you break through into the strange and terrible country wherein live your own dreams.”

Gardner Dozois, influential editor and powerful writer, passed away on Sunday. (Thanks to Serial Box for the quotation.)

Conventions:

A convention, a sexual harassment scandal. Who would have thought? The co-director of Salt Lake City, Utah’s comic convention FanX is stepping away from the September event because his comments regarding an investigation of harassment have proven to be “a distraction.”

Books and Writing:

This newsletter drive contains a great giveaway; twelve hardcopy books signed by the authors. It runs through June 25, 2018.

Unfair robot deaths? Tor.com gives us a bunch of them, or, if they’re not unfair, they are at least gratuitous. What do you think? Did they miss any?

Victor LaValle reviews Stephen King’s latest for the New York Times.

In a guest post in Locus, Cat Rambo discusses the “whatever works” approach to writing.

Publishers Weekly says overall book sales were slightly down last week compared to the same week in 2017. The cause is a softening in adult sales. Once again, young people saved the day with a boost in YA sales.

On Mary Robinette Kowal’s blog, Charles Soule talks about his favorite bit in The Oracle Year.

Nicholas Sansbury Smith brings unique expertise to the apocalyptic thriller, because he used to work for Emergency Management in Iowa. He has some good insights into disasters.

TV and Movies:

Is it now official that Amazon has picked up The Expanse for its streaming service. (h/t to File 770.)

The world is very strange to me. The Sesame Street studio is suing the distributor of Melissa McCarthy’s raunchy R-rated movie starring puppets, The Happytime Murders. The director of the movie was Brian Henson, son of Jim Henson who created… the Muppets, stars of Sesame Street. The Sesame Street studio is concerned that Happtyimes’s drug-using, potty-mouthed, sexually active puppets will damage the Sesame Street brand, and since the comedy’s tagline is “No Sesame. All Street,” and with the name Henson in the credits, it’s hard to disagree. A hundred years ago I saw the episode of Joss Whedon’s show Angel where the villains were children’s show puppets, so I am immunized against outrage.

Puppets suing puppets isn’t the weirdest thing in movies. This is; there is a Guillermo del Toro action figure.

Games:

Ars Technica reviews Detroit: Become Human and finds it somewhat lacking in both humanity and plausibility.

Science and Tech:

Students competing in EcoCar 3 converted a Camaro into a high-performance sport hybrid.

In New York City, ten city wifi kiosks suddenly started playing a jingle from an ice cream truck company called Mr. Softee – only they played the tune in a slowed-down, jerky rhythm. The kiosk company insisted they were not hacked and rebooted the kiosks. Sounds like a plotline from a Ghostbusters movie.

Weird Stuff:

Wow, this article on fava beans is not only interesting, it puts the famous Silence of the Lambs line about eating someone’s liver “with some fava beans and a nice Chianti” in a whole new light.

Earth:

Giant Rock in Landers, California, has a herd of interesting stories attached to it.

Search for traces of the Lock Ness Monster continues, this time by sampling water to find Nessie DNA – it sounds cool, high tech and still just a tiny bit silly.