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Baen v Tor…at the Library
Today’s Pixel Scroll had an interesting article on how hard it is to get data about book sales: https://www.publicbooks.org/where-is-all-the-book-data/ One data source listed that I didn’t know about was Seattle Public Libraries. They share a data set of all their checkouts. Sure, that’s a very geographically limited sample and of a distinct group of readers […]
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A Worldcon Election in 2015
Kevin Standlee has an interesting article at File 770 on the future of Worldcon governance https://file770.com/guest-post-standlee-on-the-future-of-worldcon-governance/ There is a lot to the post but the guts of his idea is to replace the Business Meeting with a representative committee that would pass initial rule changes. The ratification of those changes would happen in the following […]
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Could you rewrite the Lord of the Rings as a techno-thriller?
Despite my attempt to resolve forever the difference between fantasy and science-fiction, apparently, my typography-based typology has yet to catch on and the never-ending discourse continues. I have mentioned before that while we make conscious attempts to define categories by sharp rules, our brains do weird things with them. One model (disputed) for the underlying […]
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Familiar arguments with a different spin
A cautionary post… A tricky issue to navigate when looking at discourse in science fiction spaces is who to talk about. I’m interested in both bad and unusual arguments more than I am in personalities but talking about somebody obscure, even critically, elevates the attention that person gets.
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On site selection
There is a lively discussion at File 770 on an open letter from a long list of authors objecting to the 2023 Worldcon being held in Chegdu, China on the basis of China’s human rights abuses. http://file770.com/sff-authors-release-open-letter-condemning-china-as-host-of-2023-worldcon/ I thought Hampus’s comment was very relevant: “Any metric regarding the Uyghurs would also have stopped US from […]
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A graph for reference
This is for the next Debarkle chapter. I haven’t been including images of any kind other than the banner image because they are pain to deal with when reformatting. However, I made this graph so I could make a general comment in the next chapter (along the lines of ‘the number of articles increased’). The […]
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Googles are from Mars, N-grams are from Venus
Some more graphs on the same topic of Mars versus Venus in popular culture following from my earlier post. (https://camestrosfelapton.wordpress.com/2020/07/29/martians-are-more-popular-than-venusians/) In the comments to the last post, Andrew suggested “Venerians” is another term that was used for hypothetical beings from Venus. I’ve changed my Venus search term to Venusians+Venerians. Here’s the full span 1800 to […]
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Martians are more popular than Venusians
I thought this comment at File 770 was interesting http://file770.com/pixel-scroll-7-28-20-we-have-pixelsign-the-likes-of-godstalk-has-never-seen/#comment-1204307 However, I realised that the Google n-gram site would provide a neat empirical confirmation of Mars bias in popular culture. I did a search on Martians and Venusians, choosing the inhabitants rather than the planets to avoid hits about astronomy or the gods. I cut […]
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Tying up old plot lines
There is a lot of noise amid the right-SF social media sphere currently. It’s very free form and the broader cause is that in mainstream SF&F communities there has been the recent cases of some very prominent and well connected men being held accountable for the way they have been treating other people (earlier coverage). […]
Camestros Felapton
Two Time Hugo Award Finalist
Camestros Felapton 