Saturday Waffling (March 12th, 2016)
I got a request on Tumblr to bring back Saturday Waffling, so here it is. First off, and totally unrelated to anything, there’s a Comixology sale on Gillen and McKelvie’s work that means WicDiv collections are going for $5 a pop. If you haven’t read WicDiv yet, I am jealous of the things you get to experience for the first time.
Let’s see. Vague update on things. The Patreon has undergone the slight deflation that it always does over a few months to where I stopped breaking even on the site expansion again. Not a huge deal – it’s not like we’re bleeding money or things are unsustainable or anything. But it’d be nice to get back to that threshold, so I spruced things up a bit over there, including redoing the milestones to reflect Patreon’s decision to base everything on net income instead of pledged income. And there’s a goal now for Game of Thrones S6 reviews, if you’re into that kind of thing. Anyway, if you can spare a buck a week or whatever, that’s here.
The next Last War in Albion chapter continues to be like pulling teeth. Consider this my wry joke about massive delays as an in hindsight inevitable consequence of going “let’s mirror Watchmen.” Anyway, the opportunity to knock off some one-off pieces to fulfill Patreon requests, which I was lax on for a while anyway, is nice. Hoping to have that going by the 25th.
Further out, I’m currently expecting the Neoreaction a Basilisk Kickstarter to be in May, and Last War in Albion Volume 1 to be in July.
As for discussion, I’ve not really touched the Retro Hugos part of my nominating ballot beyond joking that the Puppies should be able to find lots of German sci-fi to their liking from 1940. So what actually is eligible and worth nominating there?
March 12, 2016 @ 11:06 am
Hmm, Retro Hugos. My first thought is to check if any of Lovecraft’s posthumous works were published that year; but it looks like nothing major came out then. (If they do Retros for 1941 or 1943, some interesting items show up.)
So, let’s look at what Astounding published that year. Heinlein had 5 stories; Requiem is probably the best of that particular lot. But Heinlein has enough Hugos already; even if 1940 was the year he really broke through. The last part of the Grey Lensman serialization came out in January; I can’t imagine that not being at least considered. (Lensman hasn’t aged terribly well, in my opinion; but it certainly was the high point of that sort of Space Opera.)
Continuing on, Hubbard had several stories in 1940. Very much not a fan, but worth mentioning as he does have his share of supporters. (I’m not sure ‘fans’ is the right word. (Or ‘fen’, for that matter.)) Harry Bates had ‘Farewell to the Master’ in October, but I suspect that’s better known as the answer to the trivia question “What story was ‘The Day the Earth Stood Still’ based on?” rather than actually read by people these days. Still, it might get some attention. (I really do need to read it myself at some point.)
van Vogt had ‘Slan’; which is a story that had quite a bit of name recognition at one point, but I’m not sure how well remembered it is. Broadly speaking, I’m seeing a lot of creators I do recognize writing stories that I don’t recognize looking through the titles. 1941 would really be a more interesting year than 1940 for this game, but of course this isn’t the year to do that.
March 12, 2016 @ 2:18 pm
Would it be better to get the bundle of individual issues, or the trade paperbacks?
March 12, 2016 @ 5:07 pm
No real difference.
March 12, 2016 @ 9:12 pm
Erm, B-sides? Get the bundles.
March 12, 2016 @ 9:36 pm
Ha. I’d just assumed she meant WicDiv.
March 13, 2016 @ 6:53 am
I think there’s b-sides there too? Dunno, they might have put those in the trades too, but I had it in my head they weren’t going to. (I’ll likely get hardcopy trades at some point, but in electronic form the singles are the way to go.)
March 13, 2016 @ 2:34 pm
Ah, this is just a bundling of electronic copies?
March 13, 2016 @ 8:14 pm
The WicDiv B-sides are included in the Commercial Suicide trade paperback (or at least the Videogames are; I presume that’s what you’re talking about).
March 13, 2016 @ 8:58 pm
Ah, that’s good to hear. In that case, no difference. And yeah, the Videogames bits are the B-sides for Commercial Suicide.
March 12, 2016 @ 2:48 pm
Were Patreon backers supposed to get copies of the most recent books? Because I haven’t.
March 12, 2016 @ 5:07 pm
Shoot me a message on Patreon and I’ll look into it.
March 13, 2016 @ 11:15 am
Reading about your continuing struggles with the next chapter of Last War in Albion (best of luck with writing it, by the way), I’m starting to suspect that it’s going to be one giant palindrome.
March 13, 2016 @ 2:42 pm
I made a private joke a couple of whiles ago, which I’m now sharing for the first time, that the best way for him to mirror the structure of “Fearful Symmetry” would be to use the structure of “The Demon Regent Asmodeus”. I didn’t make that joke public before because I was afraid it’d inspire him to attempt just that. Now I’m afraid that me not making the joke has prevented him realising the facial absurdity of the attempt.