WWWednesday: March 10, 2021

Yes, We Have Some Bananas. Image courtesy of Atlas Obscura

Awards:

Nghi Vho’s The Empress and Salt and Forture won the IAFA’s Crawford Award.

C.J. Cherryh won the 2021 Heinlein Award.

Writers, Writing, Reading, Books:

Crime Reads looks at the fine art of dopplegangers and imposters.

In consultation with the publisher, the estate of Dr Seuss decided to let six underselling books of the children’s book author go out of print, prompting a frenzy of anguished screams of “cancel culture.” Two of the books haven’t sold in years, and one sold 5,000 copies in the last year.

File 770 devoted an article to variant covers of several prominent Marvel comic books.

The Author’s Guild released an open letter to the Department of Justice urging them to reject the proposed merger of Simon & Schuster with Penguin Random House.

At least once a year LitHub provides a roundup of bad covers. This year they have much to be proud of, delivering inappropriate and terrible, and terribly inappropriate covers of classic works in the public domain.

On Mary Robinette Kowal’s blog, Juliette Wade discusses her new book Transgressions of Power, specifically how our world (and Wade’s love of caves) helped inspire and create the world of Varin.

John Varley has been released from the hospital following heart surgery. His partner posted an update on Varley’s site. (h/t to File770.)

LitHub Introduces Bad Covers

On Whatever, John Scalzi celebrates Jane Yolen’s 400 published books.

Con-Tinual’s Hot Off the Press Panel tonight includes me. I have no idea how good it is, but I really liked the other writers on it with me. I’ll link to it as soon as it goes live.

Science:

New fossils!

Space:

NASA named the Perseverance landing site on Mars after Octavia Butler.

Internet:

Forbes devoted an article to a Twitter dust-up between Patton Oswald and Scott Baio. This seems like a strange article fori, but some of the tweets are funny, so here it is. John Scalzi gets a mention further in. (The story may fall behind a payroll for some viewers.)

This link from 2018 will help you in your search for the perfect banana.

Earth:

In case you were running out of things to worry about, let me introduce you to the exploding gas craters of Siberia. In spite of a typo in the first line (should it be “peninsula?”) it’s pretty interesting.

Apologies if I’ve already provided this update; expert conclude that the animals photographed in Tasmania were not thylacines but most likely pademelons.

Scientists in Antarctica found life where there was no reason to expect to. My favorite line in this article is, “Not to tell life its business, but it had no right being here.”

We’re heading into our second pandemic spring, and even if lockdown is modified in 2021, you might find a renewed interest in gardening this year (just like you did last year). Atlas Obscura offers you heirloom seed companies and a chance to experiment with your produce.