Eruditorum Press

Ideas may be bulletproof, but nobody’s tried plasma rifles

Elizabeth Sandifer

About Elizabeth Sandifer

http://www.eruditorumpress.com

Elizabeth Sandifer created Eruditorum Press. She’s not really sure why she did that, and she apologizes for the inconvenience. She currently writes Last War in Albion, a history of the magical war between Alan Moore and Grant Morrison. She used to write TARDIS Eruditorum, a history of Britain told through the lens of a ropey sci-fi series. She also wrote Neoreaction a Basilisk, writes comics these days, and has ADHD so will probably just randomly write some other shit sooner or later. Support Elizabeth on Patreon.

Posts by Elizabeth Sandifer:

Podcasting about the Hugos

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Jack Graham (of Shabogan Grafitti) asked me Sunday morning if I could spare time to cut a podcast with him and Andrew Hickey (of Sci-Ence! Justice Leak!) on the Hugos. I could, as it happens. The results are here. Other than the frankly miserable subject matter, it was a good time, with the requisite meandering tangents and me probably talking over everybody because I’m a terrible person.

One amendment to the podcast. After recording it, while talking to Jill, I mentioned a quote that came up in it from Brad Torgensen, organizer of the more moderate (and less successful) Sad Puppies slate of nominees, in which he attempted to justify why it was necessary to engage in cheap ballot stuffing to try to shut out progressive voices in science fiction. The quote follows:

A few decades ago, if you saw a lovely spaceship on a book cover, with a gorgeous planet in the background, you could be pretty sure you were going to get a rousing space adventure featuring starships and distant, amazing worlds. If you saw a barbarian swinging an axe? You were going to get a rousing fantasy epic with broad-chested heroes who slay monsters, and run off with beautiful women. Battle-armored interstellar jump troops shooting up alien invaders? Yup. A gritty military SF war story, where the humans defeat the odds and save the Earth. And so on, and so forth. 

These days, you can’t be sure. 

The book has a spaceship on the cover, but is it really going to be a story about space exploration and pioneering derring-do? Or is the story merely about racial prejudice and exploitation, with interplanetary or interstellar trappings? 

There’s a sword-swinger on the cover, but is it really about knights battling dragons? Or are the dragons suddenly the good guys, and the sword-swingers are the oppressive colonizers of Dragon Land? 

A planet, framed by a galactic backdrop. Could it be an actual bona fide space opera? Heroes and princesses and laser blasters? No, wait. It’s about sexism and the oppression of women. 

Finally, a book with a painting of a person wearing a mechanized suit of armor! Holding a rifle! War story ahoy! Nope, wait. It’s actually about gay and transgender issues. 

Or it could be about the evils of capitalism and the despotism of the wealthy. 

Do you see what I am trying to say here?

Jack, Andrew, and I skewer this quote in a variety of ways, but none of us as succinctly and on-point as Jill, who, upon hearing it, observed that it is literally a grown man whining about how he just can’t reliably judge a book by its cover anymore.

In any case, here’s the podcast link again.

Oh yeah, and fuck the fascists.

…

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A Brief Treatise on the Rules of Thrones 1.09 (Baelor)

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State of Play

The choir goes off. The board is laid out thusly:
Direwolves of King’s Landing: Eddard Stark, Sansa Stark, Arya Stark
Direwolves of the Twins: Catelyn Stark, Robb Stark
The Lions, Jaime Lannister and Tyrion Lannister
Lions of King’s Landing: Cersei Lannister, 
Dragons of the Dothraki Sea: Daenerys Targaryen
Bears of the Dothraki Sea: Jorah Mormont
Mockingbirds of King’s Landing: Petyr Baelish
Direwolves of the Wall: Jon Snow
Kraken of the Twins: Theon Greyjoy
Stags of King’s Landing: Joffrey Baratheon
Dogs of King’s Landing: Sandor Clegane
The episode is in eleven parts. The first runs four minutes and is set in King’s Landing. The first shot is a very slow fade in on Ned Stark’s face in the darkness. 
The second runs five minutes and is set at the Twins. The transition is by image, from the flickering torchlit frame of Ned Stark’s cell to a window, and by family, from Ned to Robb and Catelyn. 
The third runs four minutes and is set on the Wall. The transition is by hard cut, from Walder Frey to the elevator crank at Castle Black. 
The fourth runs two minutes and is set at the Twins. The transition is by family and dialogue, from Jon Snow talking about his brother to Robb. 
The fifth runs four minutes and is set on the Wall. The transition is by family, from Robb Stark to Jon Snow. 
The sixth runs two minutes and is set in the Dothraki Sea. The transition is by family and dialogue, from Jon Snow and Maester Aemon talking about his family to Daenerys Targaryen. 
The seventh runs four minutes and is set in the Lannister camp. The transition is by hard cut, from Daenerys leaning over Khal Drogo to an establishing shot of the camp.
The eighth runs eight minutes and is set in the Dothraki Sea. The transition is by image, from Tyrion’s tent in the Lannister camp to an establishing shot of the Dothraki camp. It features the death of Qotho, who has his throat slit in combat by Jorah. 
The ninth runs eleven minutes and is set in the Lannister camp. The transition is by image, from the door to Khal Drogo’s tent to the interior of Tyrion’s. 
The tenth runs three minutes and is set in the Stark camp. The transition is by dialogue, from Tyrion and Tywin talking about Robb and his men to Robb and his men, and by family, from Tyrion and Tywin to Jaime. 

The last runs five minutes and is set in King’s Landing. The transition is by family and dialogue, from Robb talking about how they have not yet freed his sisters or his father to Arya and her father’s judgment. The scene features the death of Lord Eddard Stark, decapitated by Ser Illyn Payne on the orders of Joffrey Baratheon. The final shot is of Arya as she realizes her father has gone to Mornington Crescent. 
Analysis

In more ways than one, this is what the entire first season has been building towards.
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The Day Fandom Ended

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The Hugo Award Nominations have just been successfully hijacked by neofascists.

I want to pause, before I make any comments on the implications of that statement, and make it unambiguously clear that this is what happened. There were, this year, two organized and overlapping slates of proposed nominees – the Sad Puppies, promoted by Brad Torgersen, and the Rabid Puppies, promoted by Theodore Beale, who writes under the pen name Vox Day. Of these slates, the latter was the more successful and influential, with 87% of its proposed nominees ultimately getting nominated, forming 68% of the total Hugo nominations. Every single work nominated in the categories of Best Novella, Novelette, Short Story, Related Work, and Editor (both long and short form) came from those two slates, including two nominations for Theodore Beale himself, one in each editor category.

Theodore Beale opposes women’s suffrage, saying, “the women of America would do well to consider whether their much-cherished gains of the right to vote, work, murder and freely fornicate are worth destroying marriage, children, civilized Western society and little girls.” He believes that black people are less human than white people, saying of a black woman that “genetic science presently suggests that we are not equally homo sapiens sapiens.”

I admit that these two quotes leave me slightly uncertain as to what to say. They are, obviously, preposterously vile things to say. But they are so vile that they defy the usual rhetoric with which we respond to loathsome views. They are not positions or claims that polite society is really equipped to engage with. They are so far outside the bounds of what is socially acceptable in 2015 that it is difficult to imagine many forums in which they would even be permitted to be aired. I’d go with something glib like “even Fox News would sack someone who publicly expressed those views,” but even that seems insufficient. Truth be told, I have trouble thinking of any mainstream groups or organizations where someone who publicly espoused those views would not be ostracized.

Except, apparently, orthodox sci-fi/fantasy fandom, in which Theodore Beale has sufficient clout within orthodox sci-fi/fantasy fandom to select 68% of the Hugo Award nominees.

The question of how this happened is simple enough – the Hugo nomination process is fairly easy to game if you’ve got a bit of organization and followers willing to splash out a bit of cash. It only took about 250 people to stuff the ballot box to this effect – about 12.5% of the overall people who sent in nominations, though closer to 25% in some of the smaller categories.

More significant is the question of what this means.

To be frank, it means that traditional sci-fi/fantasy fandom does not have any legitimacy right now. Period. A community that can be this effectively controlled by someone who thinks black people are subhuman and who has called for acid attacks on feminists is not one whose awards have any sort of cultural validity. That sort of thing doesn’t happen to functional communities.…

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Saturday Waffling (April 4th, 2015)

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This edition of Saturday Waffling is brought to you by Nathan Brownback, one of my backers on Patreon, who has picked the indisputably worthy Alexandria-Arlington Coalition for the Homeless as his link of choice, the sort of choice that I assume would get him dismissed as a “sjw” by certain people.

Speaking of those people.

So, yesterday I used the #gamergate hashtag on Twitter to ask about an argument made by supporters of the movement that puzzled me, namely the one that suggests that contributing to a Kickstarter for something and then reviewing it is a conflict of interest, since there does not seem to be any comparable view that buying something in a store and reviewing it creates a conflict of interest. (The answer seems, unsurprisingly, to be that the argument is stupid beyond belief, with multiple people arguing that not only is supporting a Kickstarter or a Patreon a conflict of interest, but that receiving free review copies of things is not.)

In any case, based on twenty minutes or so of mildly adversarial engagement entirely over this point, here’s some highlights of the tweets I got.

Magic Villages (The Last War in Albion Part 90: The Hogben Stories, Steve Parkhouse)

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This is the first of a currently unknown number (ten-ish?) of parts of The Last War in Albion Chapter Ten, focusing on Alan Moore’s Bojeffries Saga. An omnibus will be available as soon as possible – probably by next Friday, but the world is full of surprises. 

The Bojeffries Saga is available in a collected edition that can be purchased in the US or in the UK.

Previously in The Last War in Albion: Among the many things that The Bojeffries Saga has been compared to is the work of the alternative comedy scene of the early 80s, particularly The Young Ones, a TV series that featured, among others, Alexei Sayle, who was vocally leftist in his politics, and saw alternative comedy as a vehicle for advancing those politics, occasionally leading him to butt heads with other members of the scene.

“See, this is my point. It’s like all the small towns up here all think they’re magic villages.” -Warren Ellis, Blackcross

Figure 686: Ade Edmonson as Vyvyan Basterd in The Young
Ones.
Sayle’s shock is not entirely fair (and it should be stressed that Sayle is clearly poking fun at his own political intransigence as much as he’s offering a serious history of the alternative comedy scene, describing how, upon turning up at the studio to discover the guest stars, he “railed at the writers,” saying, “The whole point of what we were doing was surely to challenge the smug hegemony of the Oxford, Cambridge, public-schoolboy comedy network, as well as destroying the old-school working men’s club racists,” to which, in his telling, the writers replied “that was just you, we never subscribed to your demented class-war ravings”). It is, after all, not as though the alternative comics were by and large from less privileged backgrounds than their similarly transgressive predecessors in Monty Python. Rik Mayall (who wrote for the series and played the entitled anarchist asshole Rick) was born to a pair of drama teachers, while Ade Edmonson (who played the sociopathic punk Vyvyan Basterd) had an international upbringing living, among other places, in Bahrain, Cyprus, and Uganda before attending a private school, and both attended the University of Manchester, as rigorous an academic institution as exists in the UK. 
All the same, the cultural differences between the University of Manchester and Cambridge are genuine, and speak to a larger difference in approach between The Young Ones and Monty Python. The Young Ones is not, by and large, a show that concerns itself at all with the notion that there might be such a thing as the sane world. Its conflicts are generally between equally absurd figures, such as the eternal hatred between Rick and Vyv. Indeed, this gets at the heart of the comedy in The Young Ones, which is often about the ruthless mockery of the excesses and pretensions of the very left-wing politics that animate it. Instead of being a show that pokes fun at the absurdity of the larger world, it is a show that pokes fun at the absurdity of its own audience, skewering the punks and hippies that the show appeals to.
…

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Comics Reviews (April 1st, 2015)

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From worst to best of what I voluntarily paid money for.

Cyclops #12 (aka The Black Vortex Chapter 10)

Once upon a time, Greg Rucka wrote this book. Now it’s a book in which a major plot twist is “Cyclops was just imagining his father’s voice in his head, but it was really his own self-belief.” And then the entire series ends with a heroic shot of Cyclops, who has submitted to the Black Vortex, flying off, ready to save some planets, because apparently the book has decided to celebrate April Fool’s Day and decide this is a good thing.

The Amazing Spider-Man #17

I admit, I think I’m just bored of the ultra-traditionalist Spider-Man as served up by Dan Slott. He’s been the major writer on Spider-Man for eight years now, and I think it’s probably time for a change. This is perfectly fine, but I found myself completely unable to formulate any sort of meaningful investment in any characters in it.

Blackcross #2

Oddly paced, with an ending that had me looking through the house ads at the end because I wasn’t confident there wasn’t another page. Effectively moody, but this looks set to be a very minor Warren Ellis work.

Avengers: Ultron Forever #1

Odd timing for this – it’s a book that clearly just exists because of the movie. But that means it’s doing “mash up alternate timeline Avengers in a big smashy book” right in sync with Secret Wars, which is not a great time to be doing that. But Al Ewing and Alan Davis are a fun pair, and it’s hard to fault things like the last reveal, or casually decapitating the Hulk. Or sassy Vision. Very much a silly Marvel book, but enjoyable.

Spider-Gwen #3

A weak issue here, long on fights and short on character, although the detail of Gwen being unmasked (but not, seemingly, recognized) is interesting. Not bad, certainly, but not particularly entrancing either. Still, even mediocre Spider-Gwen is a treat.

Avengers #43

It’s easy to like the return of Tony Stark to the plot, his absence having been a tangible lack in the Time Runs Out story. This is on the one hand clearly deliberate, but with so much of Hickman’s Avengers hinging on the Tony/Steve dualism, it’s also made every issue feel like shuffling pieces around the board waiting for payoff, which is already a problem with a “countdown to EVENT” storyline. In any case, Tony’s back, and it’s kinda marvelous.

The Dying & The Dead #2

Hickman’s working with tight, effective characterization, on a story that’s long on scope but still narrow enough to feel focused and deliberate, and it’s frankly marvelous two issues in. There’s a whole lot of hand still to tip, but thus far, at least, this is the most I’ve enjoyed a new Hickman series in… erm… ever?…

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A Brief Treatise on the Rules of Thrones 1.08 (The Pointy End)

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As always, thanks to my backers on Patreon. By the way, you do all know I post updates a week early there, right?

State of Play

The choir goes off. The board is laid out thusly:
Direwolves of King’s Landing: Eddard Stark, Sansa Stark, Arya Stark
Direwolves of the Eyrie: Catelyn Stark
Lions of King’s Landing: Cersei Lannister
Dragons of the Dothraki Sea: Daenerys Targaryen
Bears of the Dothraki Sea: Jorah Mormont
Mockingbirds of King’s Landing: Petyr Baelish
Direwolves of the Wall: Jon Snow
Direwolves of Winterfell: Robb Stark, Bran Stark
Kraken of Winterfell: Theon Greyjoy
Stags of King’s Landing: Joffrey Baratheon
Dogs of King’s Landing: Sandor Clegane
And the Lion of the Eyrie, Tyrion Lannister
The episode is in thirteen parts. The first runs eight minutes and is set in King’s Landing. The opening shot is of Arya and Syrio sparring. It features the death of most of the Starks’ guard, killed by the Gold Cloaks, Septa Mordane, killed by the Gold Cloaks, an unknown stableboy, stabbed by Needle, and presumably Syrio Forrell, killed by Meryn Traint. The cliffhanger is resolved five minutes in when Varys visits Ned Stark in his cell. 
The second runs three minutes and is set on the Wall; the transition is by family, from Ned Stark to Jon Snow.
The third runs two minutes and is set in King’s Landing; the transition is by family and dialogue, from Jon Snow talking about his sisters to Sansa. 
The fourth runs two minutes and is set in Winterfell; the transition is by family and causality, from Sansa beginning to write a letter to Robb to Robb reading the letter.
The fifth runs six minutes and is set in the Eyrie. It is in two sections. The first is two minutes long; the transition is by family and image, from Robb reacting to the news of what has happened to Catelyn doing the same. The second is four minutes long; the transition is by hard cut, from Catelyn to Tyrion.
The sixth part runs three minutes and is set on the Wall; the transition is by hard cut, from Tyrion to Jon and other men of the Night’s Watch preparing a meal.
The seventh runs six minutes and is set in the Dothraki Sea; the transition is by family and image, from Jon Snow setting a wight aflame to the fires as the Dothraki sack a village before Daenerys’s eyes. It features the death of Mago, killed by Khal Drogo in combat. At the episode’s halfway point, Daenerys is being called to explain her actions in preventing the rape of the captured women.
The eighth runs six minutes and is set in Winterfell; the transition is by hard cut, from Mirri tending to Khal Drogo’s wound to the bannermen in Winterfell. 
The ninth runs one minute and is set on the Wall; the transition is by dialogue, from Osha talking about the coming White Walkers to the burning of the wight.
The tenth runs four minutes and is set in the North; the transition is by image, from the Wall to a smaller keep as Catelyn arrives at Robb’s camp.
…

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Saturday Waffling (March 28th, 2015)

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This week’s Saturday Waffling is sponsored by Jed Blue, who has a new book out called The Very Soil: An Unauthorized Critical Study of Puella Magi Madoka Magica that you should go check out.

Meanwhile, over here, I find myself working on the Super Nintendo Project in amidst finishing up the Bojeffries Saga chapter of Last War in Albion. So, as I work on that, what are your memories of the Super Nintendo? Or, if you were from the other side of that generation’s console wars, of the Sega Genesis?…

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Only Dreaming In His Tank (The Last War in Albion Part 89: The Bojeffries Saga)

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This is the first of a currently unknown number of parts of The Last War in Albion Chapter Ten, focusing on Alan Moore’s Bojeffries Saga. An omnibus will be available as soon as possible.

The Bojeffries Saga is available in a collected edition that can be purchased in the US or in the UK.

Previously in The Last War in Albion: In Warrior, the doomed but influential comics magazine published by Dez Skinn, Alan Moore got his first two regular strips as a writer, and in the process established himself as the most striking and vibrant voice in British comics. The first was V for Vendetta, his anarchist dystopian sci-fi noir with David Lloyd, and the second was Marvelman, his postmodern reinvention of a half-forgotten British superhero comic. 

“He’s only dreaming in his tank. Anyway, now that you’ve chosen to stay and take part in our little experiment, you may be wondering how much of what you’re about to experience is real.” – Grant Morrison, Multiversity: Ultra Comics

Figure 677: Hunt Emerson’s “Stir Crazy” was one of several humor strips
published over the course of Warrior. (From Warrior #8, 1982)
There is, however, one more detail of Moore’s engagement with Warrior to cover – a pair of two-part stories published under the title The Bojeffries Saga. These are in many ways something of a curious footnote to Moore’s Warrior-era career. They constitute a total of twenty-four pages of comics, and are arguably most notable for being the answer to the mildly challenging trivia question “alongside V for Vendetta and Marvelman, what’s the third series Alan Moore created for Warrior.” Much of this is down to the fact that The Bojeffries Saga is markedly out of keeping with the general tone of Warrior. This is often ascribed to the fact that it is overtly a comedy, as opposed to an action-heavy adventure strip, but this does not really capture the full story. From the start, comedy was a part of Warrior – the first issue, in fact, featured a two-page comedic bit by Steve Moore and Dave Gibbons called “A True Story?” and firmly in the mould of Tharg’s Future Shocks from 2000 AD, and other overtly comedic stories like Hunt Emerson’s “Stir Crazy” and Laser Eraser and Pressbutton always had a consciously humorous streak to it, especially on the occasions when it was replaced with a Zirk strip. Nor can The Bojeffries Saga’s status as a comedy explain its marginal status within Moore’s overall career. Yes, Moore’s serious work is generally the material that attracts the most critical attention, but it’s hardly as if D.R. & Quinch, to take the most obvious example, is a relatively ignored and minor part of Moore’s career – indeed, if anything Moore’s ultra-violent alien miscreants get somewhat more attention than they deserve, despite clearly being a comedy.
Figure 678: A slave revolt in the Ninth Dimension. (From
“A True Story?,”
…

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The Mind Robber Commentary

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I’m pleased to announce that the second of my Doctor Who commentary tracks, on the classic Patrick Troughton serial The Mind Robber, is now available. Thanks to Jack Graham for joining me for the fun once again.

These commentary tracks will continue through the eleven stories promised by the Kickstarter, and will continue past that assuming the Patreon is over $300 a week by that point.

The tracks are available here, in a zip file containing commentaries for all five episodes. Please enjoy, and do let me know how you like them.…

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