WWWednesday: March 23, 2021

Image courtesy of the NY Times.

Writers, Writing, Reading, Books:

Nineteenth century SF writers imagined global warming, and this article take a look at a few examples.

File770 provides a tally of the Hugo nominating votes and it’s a small number indeed. This is worrisome because in 2015, this allowed a special interest group to control the nominations. On the other hand, we’ve had other things on our minds this year that nominating for awards. We’ll have to see what happens.  The good news is, while 2020 was a terrible year, it was a year many great books came out.

John Scalzi revealed the title of the novel he just completed for Tor, along with a few (a very, very few) details about the contents.

Here is the week’s top-10 list in SF, and fantasy, from Publishers Weekly. Scroll past the “Subscribe” button to see the ten.

N.K. Jemison and Stacey Abrams held a conversation with each other at the SXSW (South by Southwest) conference. This short article focuses on writer, community organizer and politician Stacy Abrams. (I’ve read two of her romance novels. I liked them and I don’t even read the genre.)

Well, splash me with holy water and call me Vampirosa, the Lord Ruthven awards, for best vampire content, have been announced.

Movies, TV and Streaming:

This article seems confusing unless you follow the show and know that Ruby Rose, who played Batwoman originally, left the show after one season. Rather than recast Kate Kane/Batwoman, they created a new character, Ryan, to be the Batwoman. She’s taken the character in a very different direction and it’s a compelling one. But Kate, who was presumed dead, is going to come back, played by a different actor. Okay, I follow the show and this still seems confusing even to me.

American Gods finished up Season Three with a set of events that mirror the book, including an awesome cliffhanger. Entertainment Weekly interviewed Neil Gaiman about his thoughts (he’s still an executive producer) and his hopes for the (as yet unconfirmed) Season Four. IGN’s reviewer found the season finale unsatisfying. I disagree completely with this review, but I’m including it because I like to include different perspectives.

Rosenheim Masion. Image Courtesy of Atlas Obscura

Internet:

The prototype of H.R. Giger’s Alien goes up for auction on April 28, 2021, in case you need a birthday gift for someone in your circle. (h/t, File770.)

I had just figured out that Substack was (apparently) a newsletter app when I found Annalee Newitz’s article. She presents the argument that Substack is a publisher, not an app, and an unethical one due to its lack of transparency (and some other troublesome signs!)

This rich article looks at race, disability and privilege in tabletop RPGs. It’s worth more than one read.

A guy on Tik-Tok takes climactic/dramatic scenes from movies and reimagines the music. The Mary Sue put together a collection of them. Pretty fun.

If this place looks familiar to you, it’s because you’ve probably seen it on TV.