tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14241539.comments2024-03-14T12:11:59.554+02:00Asking the Wrong QuestionsAbigail Nussbaumhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08562462228380637583noreply@blogger.comBlogger6887125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14241539.post-71437001934300267702024-03-11T00:42:39.000+02:002024-03-11T00:42:39.000+02:00Thank-you as always for the unique insights and cr...Thank-you as always for the unique insights and critical thinking in your reviews. It's probably worth considering the time in which the Dune novel was published, as I'd suspect any existential questions reflect that era (the 1960s). I'm excited that with Villeneuve's films the Dune series will expand to cover later novels, and the eventual return of the Thinking Machines (which is so far down the line of novels I may never see it in film, :). One of the questions Dune is asking, for me, is how do you reconcile the individual, an independent mind, from the culture that constrains them, and by extension Paul's struggle with his powers of precognition, and tragedy of knowing one's fate? The evolution of the human species, what constitutes power vs wisdom, are other aspects Dune explores. For example, I found it interesting that the Fremen want to make Dune into a paradise, but later novels show how this undermines what it means to be Fremen, as the struggle to survive in a harsh environment and co-exist with the great worms is central to their culture.<br /><br />As for how much of Dune's story is universal, or to be taken on its own merits vs reflecting the times we live in today, I'd offer that Hollywood is under enormous pressure to not challenge the power centers of our society. For example, "the spice must flow" is analogous to the "oil must flow", and given the contention over what's happening in Gaza, the Dune films could be used to great effect to talk about how spice/oil affects our development, our politics and our wars. I won't speak further on Gaza, except to say that the dominance of Western values are being challenged. Hollywood blockbusters can hint at problems in our society, but it's hard for films outside independents to really challenge our power structure, especially capitalism. Deanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16430236521052479132noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14241539.post-75219761908739260242024-03-07T13:04:49.795+02:002024-03-07T13:04:49.795+02:00@homunq, I believe Villeneuve is of the view that ...@homunq, I believe Villeneuve is of the view that the Director's Cut is the cut the director delivers to theaters, which I think is good, as a first principle! <br />It does seem to ignore that DVD/streaming is a slightly different medium to cinema, more suited to extended editions, but I think I heard him in an interview explaining that he felt even having the option of an extended edition clouded judgements in the editing room. Johnhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01095600503605085567noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14241539.post-53455152220369966662024-03-07T12:44:14.203+02:002024-03-07T12:44:14.203+02:00Release the Director's Cut!
Seriously: doesn&...Release the Director's Cut!<br /><br />Seriously: doesn't it seem entirely possible that this could solve many of your critiques? Even as it stands, the movie starts with the voice of what seems like a spacer...<br /><br />Except of course that "brave (but not when it counts)" undermines itself.homunqhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15539994035167878969noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14241539.post-38472965115338287282024-03-06T22:00:05.738+02:002024-03-06T22:00:05.738+02:00As always, glad to read your review. They always s...As always, glad to read your review. They always seem so clear and to-the-point.<br />There seems to be a typo though.<br />"[[[In the novel]]], when Paul kills the Fremen Jamis in a duel the reaction of the community is to calmly accept him, and hand over Jamis's possessions (which include his wife and two young sons) according to their custom. [[[In the novel]]], Paul is greeted with dismay and hostility by Jamis's friends and family."Василь Керімовhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18231289059404589176noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14241539.post-56387665635418311802024-03-06T21:59:21.578+02:002024-03-06T21:59:21.578+02:00This comment has been removed by the author.Василь Керімовhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18231289059404589176noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14241539.post-90485212301008805092024-03-06T17:28:07.949+02:002024-03-06T17:28:07.949+02:00Always interesting to read your take.
This seems ...Always interesting to read your take. <br />This seems a classic question of whether the thornbush has roses or the rosebush has thorns. <br />I was just delighted to see that the story was delivered as a classic tragedy, where Paul's ascent to power was both inevitable, thrilling and *bad*. Managing to smuggle relatively complex ideas about the thrill and danger of charismatic leadership & the inevitability of evil into a mainstream blockbuster (which simultaneously does its core blockbuster work really well) seems like a great achievement, and I thought the changes to Chani and Jessica were essential in making those ideas accessible to a large audience. But I was sorry that an extra 10-15 minutes wasn't taken to foreground many of the things you mention - the ecstatic, orgiastic nature of Fremen religion, the death cult many of the have, and especially the importance of spice. (the scenes on Giedi Prime were very striking and showed that there was profit to be made by pushing the 'alien-ness' of this universe a bit more).Johnhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01095600503605085567noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14241539.post-73378702801004616132024-03-06T07:37:54.502+02:002024-03-06T07:37:54.502+02:00Miles *has* gone through a foundational loss of an...Miles *has* gone through a foundational loss of an uncle figure. In the first movie, his uncle Aaron was killed right in front of him.Danny Sichelhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11971434976870500075noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14241539.post-67864248525664886772024-02-27T20:13:12.295+02:002024-02-27T20:13:12.295+02:00Just stumbled on this. What an amazing write-up, c...Just stumbled on this. What an amazing write-up, couldn't agree more!Veenhondhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01438516237242557348noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14241539.post-71868303819325489292024-02-25T09:39:05.395+02:002024-02-25T09:39:05.395+02:00Thank you.Thank you.Margrethttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03812878039191949205noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14241539.post-41096303744594706342024-02-25T08:55:44.898+02:002024-02-25T08:55:44.898+02:00Margret:
The most significant change made post-Pu...Margret:<br /><br />The most significant change made post-Puppy was E Pluribus Hugo, a method of counting the nominating ballots that would undermine the power of a large group of voters who all voted the same way down the line (a explanation can be found here: https://www.worldcon.fi/wsfs/hugo-new/). In addition, although each nominator is allotted five nominating slots, there are six nominees in each category. <br /><br />Beyond that, there is also a much more vibrant community of recommendations, which seeks to raise awareness of little-known work and make the nominating ballots more diverse. The Hugo Award spreadsheet (https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/13nJN6c8oo6CSTaotXM5EYqQdEa-3b7JPEDPeuhrI2UA/edit#gid=0) is one such example.Abigail Nussbaumhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08562462228380637583noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14241539.post-24112429569396513522024-02-25T00:15:02.736+02:002024-02-25T00:15:02.736+02:00"Many changes that have been made to the coll..."Many changes that have been made to the collation of Hugo nominating votes, and measures taken to raise awareness of eligible work, were intended to dilute the effect of slate voting." I was vaguely aware of the Sad Puppies controversy at the time (I was mostly dealing with health issues) but I haven't kept up on what's been done to protect from similar attacks in the future. Can you provide some links?Margrethttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03812878039191949205noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14241539.post-87338456339793907582024-02-22T17:22:04.903+02:002024-02-22T17:22:04.903+02:00Actually, Babel does not "ha[ve] a Chinese tr...Actually, Babel does not "ha[ve] a Chinese translation forthcoming" but was already published by a state-owned publisher around October 2023 (I suppose timed for the Chengdu Worldcon, however it is hard to verify whether they made it). See https://csfdb.cn/works/44386?lang=en-US or https://file770.com/pixel-scroll-1-30-24-oceans-elven/ second sub-item of (6)Jan Vaněk jr.https://www.blogger.com/profile/03256146935449557982noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14241539.post-14881566682675481062024-02-22T13:21:14.074+02:002024-02-22T13:21:14.074+02:00Anne:
Yes, the absence of rules like that definit...Anne:<br /><br />Yes, the absence of rules like that definitely feels like a gap that should be closed. Even without centralizations, there can be more streamlined requirements for each convention about which software they can use to collect and compile nominations results, and how they should keep the data during the award process and after it. I've also been wondering whether a "Hugo comptroller" might be a feasible idea, someone whose job it is to review the convention's work and validate it. There are people who know a lot more about all these issues in this community, and I'm sure they could offer some expertise.Abigail Nussbaumhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08562462228380637583noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14241539.post-67236599156579050182024-02-22T05:55:57.743+02:002024-02-22T05:55:57.743+02:00This whole situation also begs the question of wha...This whole situation also begs the question of what if anything we are doing to archive and safeguard the "raw" nominations and voting data, so as to have an auditable process. <br /><br />Anne Grayhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10626738103624396810noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14241539.post-79723376428290642122024-02-21T09:55:01.817+02:002024-02-21T09:55:01.817+02:00Kitty:
The focus on slates stems from the Sad Pup...Kitty:<br /><br />The focus on slates stems from the Sad Puppy/Rabid Puppy debacle of 2014-2016, in which a group of right-wing writers (including some who were very far-right) tried to brigade the award in response to a supposed "takeover" by women and POC. They compiled recommendation lists and got large numbers of supporters to vote for them down the line, which overwhelmed the more dispersed votes of regular Worldcon members.<br /><br />The problem with this situation is that compiling a recommendation list and voting is not against Hugo rules, and discarding hundreds of identical or nearly-identical ballots is not supposed to be permissible (in fact, in one of the Puppy years the Hugo administrator was Dave McCarty). Many changes that have been made to the collation of Hugo nominating votes, and measures taken to raise awareness of eligible work, were intended to dilute the effect of slate voting. Removing votes en masse has never been considered as a viable response, but it seems to have been undertaken last year.Abigail Nussbaumhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08562462228380637583noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14241539.post-13698111892844635462024-02-21T07:07:50.428+02:002024-02-21T07:07:50.428+02:00I am just an ordinary SF/F fan, appalled at what&#...I am just an ordinary SF/F fan, appalled at what's happened to the Hugos, and am confused about parts of this report. Could someone please explain the concept of slates, why they're thought to matter or not, or why they are purported to be bad? Much appreciation and thanks.Kittyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04658541471651825313noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14241539.post-82581312964504142642024-02-21T03:19:46.977+02:002024-02-21T03:19:46.977+02:00I've previously made the point that, based on ...I've previously made the point that, based on the stated criteria, the fact that I had a photo of Hong Kong Harbor on social media plus the fact that my husband (Rick Moen) is open about having gone to school in British Hong Kong would have made both of us ineligible under McCarty's censorship. Which is, frankly, both infuriating and inane.<br /><br />FWIW, I first heard of McCarty's being a missing stair in 2012.Deirdre Saoirse Moenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00485588430368394604noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14241539.post-50732685210301336792024-02-21T00:06:28.183+02:002024-02-21T00:06:28.183+02:00Thanks for the clarification, Chris. And just to c...Thanks for the clarification, Chris. And just to clarify on my end, I should have made the point that the criticism I was passing was in the context of my appreciation for the work you and Jason did in bringing this information forward.Abigail Nussbaumhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08562462228380637583noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14241539.post-80881088033768954682024-02-20T22:43:15.247+02:002024-02-20T22:43:15.247+02:00Chris M. Barkley here:
Your criticism of the scop...Chris M. Barkley here: <br />Your criticism of the scope of our report is wrong in one respect; Jason and I were concentrating on unveiling the tip of the iceberg of this scandal, NOT the whole iceberg. <br /><br />And, since we we working under a hard deadline when one of the subjects leaked the existence of reporting to other subjects involved, there was a frenzied effort to push it out several days before our scheduled publication date. <br /><br />And YES, we did realize the spreadsheets provided by Diane Lacey were important but that sort of analysis is not our area of expertise. In fact, other fans have taken up this thread of evidence and are running with it. <br /><br />As we pointed out in the report, we both emphasized that we hoped this was just the start of a full blown investigation of this debacle, not the end point. We hope that with each passing day, more will be discovered and made public. <br /><br />We acquired the information and we conveyed what we knew. That's the job.Unknownhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06617723177538077276noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14241539.post-60695201954237505262024-01-26T21:54:35.075+02:002024-01-26T21:54:35.075+02:00I wish I were more surprised that the go-to soluti...I wish I were more surprised that the go-to solution everyone seems to be opting for is "let's make the Hugos less democratic and more exclusionary".Abigail Nussbaumhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08562462228380637583noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14241539.post-55988643248839913622024-01-26T19:57:19.438+02:002024-01-26T19:57:19.438+02:00Alison, punishment of those who did not make decis...Alison, punishment of those who did not make decisions could be inappropriate if they were entirely unaware of what was going on. However, awareness is sufficient -- anybody aware the awards were being corrupted should have resigned.<br /><br />There should be some sort of reaction. The primary goal of the reaction should be to deter this from happening again. This could include special recognition for the excluded works (alas, no, you can't extend their eligibility not just for logistic reasons but because it would be unfair to the works of the next year which would then be excluded because we would be eager to vote for them.) Domestic admins may have felt they had no choice. Foreign admins it would seem did have a choice, though they obviously did not feel they did and further feel they don't have a choice on explaining why they had no choice.<br /><br />Not that a rule requiring exclusions to be explained is unlikely to work. The admins this year would have written, "These works were excluded due to the rules we must follow" which would then require a vote somewhere on whether that was an adequate explanation. One must play out just how a new rule would be applied and what happens if the new rule isn't followed. We thought we already had a set of rules to control elimination from the ballot and it implicitly was a complete enumeration of them, and it might help a little to explicitly say its complete, but does it solve this?<br /><br />It does seem a number of problems get solved if supporting memberships in WSFS are changed to only be available to those who have attended a convention in person, either ever, or perhaps in the last 10 years. Why should those who have never been members of the community be voting on the location of the convention, or the community's awards?Brad Templetonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06518625048611734018noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14241539.post-70068196577759069772024-01-26T16:54:34.534+02:002024-01-26T16:54:34.534+02:00(Um, I meant book-banning, of course. The right in...(Um, I meant book-banning, of course. The right in the US hasn't progressed as far as burning of books, not yet.)Nick Alcockhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06590610308528769844noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14241539.post-34466639719900599662024-01-26T16:53:54.857+02:002024-01-26T16:53:54.857+02:00I think what is relevant here is freedom of the pr...I think what is relevant here is freedom of the press and freedom of expression rather than any other particular freedom. The US is most unlikely to impose legal force requiring specific Hugo works to be removed from consideration, despite the increasing popularity of book-burning on the right. US Hugo administrators are most unlikely to second-guess a central censorship authority by removing works in advance of censorship, because the US has no functioning censorship authority (outside of film, anyway, and even there it is mostly a dead letter with little legal force). China... is the opposite: censorship is pervasive, second-guessing the censors to avoid getting in trouble is pervasive and deeply normalized. It's not exactly totalitarian (it doesn't *totally* control its citizens' lives) but you have to admit it's not exactly a bastion of free expression either. Every country has its problems -- Japan's 99.5% conviction rate for instance -- but China's are specifically around not publicizing opinions the government disagrees with, and it seems to me that that is deeply incompatible with running any sort of speculative fiction award.<br /><br />(One does wonder what would happen if a sad puppy work glorifying the Nazis -- because who else would write such a thing? -- got onto the ballot in Germany, where publication of such things is explicitly forbidden. I suspect there would be an uproar but that it would not be removed, because Germany forbids *publication* of such things, not having them win awards.)Nick Alcockhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06590610308528769844noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14241539.post-52485203618190852512024-01-25T22:38:12.100+02:002024-01-25T22:38:12.100+02:00Yes, everyone is well aware of any flaws in US dem...Yes, everyone is well aware of any flaws in US democracy precisely because it is a functional one with checks and balances, freedom of speech and any number of personal liberties and individual rights that the vast majority of chinese people are not granted by their government, which tries to supress all criticism of their policies through boycotts, outright violence and censorship like what happened at the Hugos. I'm sorry but there is no moral equivalency with an autocracy that controls every aspect of their citizens lives and has been for years commiting genocide against their uyghur population, and it's good to be reminded now and then, what with the way words like "fascism" have been banalized and robbed of real meaning, what a truly totalitarian state is and what it does to those who disagree. <br /><br />The kind of regime that Xi Jiping has established in China has been normalized by progressive westeners who either deny the blatant violations of freedom and human rights by the PRC or turn a blind eye to the humanitarian crimes that are commited by them - and it's symptomatic that your first impulse was to redirect criticism at the United States.Georgehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02941591387690782813noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14241539.post-28359008213541805452024-01-25T18:30:48.934+02:002024-01-25T18:30:48.934+02:00George:
The Worldcon site is selected by voters a...George:<br /><br />The Worldcon site is selected by voters at the Worldcon two years previous. These voters may be present onsite, or they may have voted online. In the case of the Chengdu bid, it's more likely that it was offsite Chinese voters who swung the vote towards Chengdu. This, to be clear, was an entirely democratic process. There was an attempt - spearheaded by the competing bid - to invalidate these voters by changing requirements after voting had already commenced. The people now crying that this should have been allowed to proceed seem to be under the impression that the only way to stop a bad guy from tampering with the vote is for a good guy to tamper with it first.<br /><br />There were, of course, concerns about holding a Worldcon in China. But though government censorship of the Hugos is something that is unlikely to happen in many Western countries, we should not pretend that there is currently any bastion of freedom and equality where the Worldcon can be held. In the United States, pregnant women are unable to access lifesaving medical treatment in many jurisdictions, while queer and gender nonconforming people may be criminalized. Tales of Worldcon members from the global south being unable to procure tourist visas to locations like Ireland and the US are by now routine. Perhaps the issue is less being unable to spot a dystopia, as failing to recognize it outside of one's own front door.Abigail Nussbaumhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08562462228380637583noreply@blogger.com