The World Fantasy Awards were announced. The Jasmine Throne by Tasha Suri took home the Best Novel award while Premee Mohamed’s And What Can We Offer You Tonight snagged Best Novella, and “(emet)” by Lauren Ring Best Short Story. The convention was held in New Orleans this year.
Neil Gaiman and Amanda Palmer are separating. Thanks to File 770 for this item.
John Scalzi presents a long but clear column on how you can attempt to verify who is tweeting, now that Elon Musk has rendered the blue check mark useless.
The Iliad Bookstore in North Hollywood, California, had to close for a few days because of an arson fire. Because of a strange flier left at the store, the owner fears the fire-setting may be the result of antisemitism.
In the wake of Westworld’s cancelation, Entertainment Weekly has thoughts.
Mary Robinette Kowal highlights When Franny Stands Up by Eden Robins.
What a difference a skull makes, especially this one. Giuseppe Villella’s skull was the springboard for a 19th century scientist to come up with a popular (and completely wrong) theory of a genetic cause for criminal behavior. In the 21st century, activists in southern Italy demand the skull be returned for burial and say the museum that houses it glorified genocide. The story is more interesting than that. Check it out.
Nerds of a Feather are going to help you prepare for the 2022 award season by compiling various long lists of recommended works. Here’s the column.
A federal judge has blocked Penguin Random House’s proposed merger with Simon & Schuster.
This eight minute animated film from the New Yorker is beautiful, funny and sad.
The image of Icelandic horses came from Atlas Obscura. They don’t relate to any column topic. I just liked them.
James Davis Nicoll posted on rec.arts.sf.written that he hit his 35th anniversary of being on Usenet earlier this year. That made me realize it’s been 37 years for me, or just a tad over half of my life now, connecting to the internet! Good grief. And the internet still seemed so promising (as a tool for democracy, knowledge sharing, etc.) for most of the first half of that stretch, instead of being a big contributor to the possible demise of humanity and much of the natural world that it has morphed into. We certainly were very naive in the beginning.
As quickly as humans seem to adapt to things, I don’t think we integrate “new stuff” into our societies very fast or very well. I also remember believing that this tech would improve understanding across cultures, politics and so on. And it still does–it’s hard to hear the signal over the constant noise.
But the ability of a few to pour obscene amounts of money into any system doesn’t help the rest of us.