Awards:
The Dragon Awards were announced at DragonCon September 2, 2018. Winning works included: Artemis, by Andy Weir, best SF Novel; Oathbringer, by Brandon Sanderson, best Fantasy Novel, Sleeping Beauties, by Stephen King and Owen King, best Horror Novel; Children of Blood and Bone by Tomi Adeyemi, best YA Novel. File 770 has a list of all the winners.
Kacey Elzell won the Baen Award for Best Military Fiction for her short story “Family Over Blood.” The award was announced at DragonCon.
The Sign for the Museum of Pop Culture Marvel Universe Exhibit.
Conventions:
A local station in Atlanta provided a story on DragonCon, especially the DragonCon parade. This is far too many people for me to be comfortable around, but it does look like fun.
DragonCon cosplay fans are so loyal that many of them costume themselves in the pattern of a carpet the Marriott Hotel had removed years ago when it refurbished. No, seriously, they do. And, apparently, carpet swatches of the colorful old carpets appear magically for a brief time, like a ghost ship appearing out of the mist in the Bermuda Triangle.
Locus reports on ReaderCon 29.
The Seattle Public Health Insider provides some common-sense steps to avoid Con Crud.
Internet:
The first Saturday of September was World Beard Day (and before you ask, no, I don’t know why there is a world beard day). In, um, honor…(?) of the day, Haggard Hawks shares some vital beard facts –things you can add to your it’s-an-awkward-moment-I-need-some-small-talk repertoire.
In memoriam to Aretha Franklin, the British Army Band of the Welsh Guard played “RESPECT” outside Buckingham Palace. Thanks to Jezebel for the video.
TV and Movies:
Ten shows that got cancelled abruptly, and never resolved.
Entertainment Weekly interviews Domhnall Gleeson, the star of the upcoming film The Little Stranger. This film is an adaptation of one of the most frightening ghost stories I’ve ever read. I can’t wait to go see it and scare myself silly.
The Antman and the Wasp exhibit — it’s about 12 inches tall.
EW also recaps Castle Rock for us here. (The show streams on Hulu.) Spoilers, obviously. I haven’t seen the show but reading this makes me think it’s one where every single Stephen King character shows up at least once.
And… EW reviews a new Netflix offering, The Innocents. EW was a goldmine this week!
Books and Writing:
Is Neil Gaiman nominated for the Novel Prize in Literature? No, not exactly. The Swedish Academy, which chooses the Nobel winners for literature, is so mired in scandals and allegations of misconduct, including financial irregularities, that it announced that there would be no prize awarded in 2018. (They no longer have a quorum to select a winner.) There was talk of making two Nobel announcements in 2019 (although it’s hard to believe they will have fully weathered their storm by 2019 either). Into the mix stepped a new group, called the New Swedish Academy, with plans to give a new award in 2018, which they are calling the New Prize. They are using crowdfunding to fund it, so I don’t know if it will happen, but Gaiman is a finalist along with Haruki Murakami, Maryse Conde and Kim Thuy. In 2015, regarding the Hugos, David Gerrold coined the idea of an “asterisk year” for that award; if Gaiman wins the New Award, he will be the first fantasist, and also the first writer whose work is substantially represented in comic book form, and the first writer to win a “substitute Nobel.” That’s kind of asterisk event too. Perhaps the New Prize could be called Not-the-Nobel?
Greg van Eekout’s post in The Big Idea, about his new book, brought tears to my eyes and made me want to go read it right now.
The curse of the mansplainer: Syfy FanGrrls dissect some woman superheroes from the 70s, 80s and 90s, and dissect the role of the male c
Museum of Pop Culture (MoPOP) Cosplayers a the Mini-Maker Faire.
haracters who usurped page space.
Take a listen to Episode 2 of the Locus SF Across the Gulf podcast. Karen Burnham and Karen Lord discuss Edgar Mittleholzer’s My Bones and My Flute, a 1950s ghost story that fits well in the canon of Caribbean speculative fiction. The entire podcast is about one hour and ten minutes long. Here’s a little more about the book.
Lightspeed celebrates reaching 100 issues with a jumbo-sized magazine, illustrated by Galen Dara. (H/T to File 770.)
At Book Smugglers, Fox Meadows talks about WorldCon 76, fan entitlement and some fans’ sense of genuine ownership of a fictional work, and the broader sense of entitlement that leads some to believe that if they want an award they should get it, just because.
The Society of Illustrators is highlighting EC Comics in an exhibition in New York beginning this month.
Gaming:
At Seattle’s PAX West, Ars Technica shares a preview of two new games.
At PAX, Cory Barlog discussed how to make a good Superman game.
Science and Tech:
It sounds like it’s out of a movie but it’s not; vibration and motion can cause a granular bulk solid load to liquify, and if it’s on a cargo ship, it can cause the ship to sink. It’s science at its most interesting and scary.
Photos:
Gather round, children, and I’ll tell you about the olden days. When I was a kid, people went on vacation and they took photos on this medium called “film.” They had the pictures put into a form called “slides”, mounted the slides in circular storage containers, then invited the neighbors over for dinner or snacks, after which they “showed” their “slides.” This ritual was the origin of the expression of the term “slide show.”
While I have not fully re-created that antique experience for you here, I have become the person who is showing you her vacation pictures. These photos are from a recent visit to the Seattle Museum of Pop Art, affectionately known as MoPop.
The DragonCon fans and their hilarious ongoing tributes to the old Marriott hotel carpet made my morning!
The carpet thing is simply wonderful.