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Cathedrals of Science by Patrick Coffey

I picked it up because Wikipedia says Gilbert Lewis was nominated for a Nobel Prize 41 times and never won and I was like, there's gotta be a story there. I couldn't find a bio of Lewis, but I did find this, which is a group bio of Lewis and a cohort of physical chemists who revolutionized chemistry in the early 20th century. Lewis is joined in the main cast by Arrhenius and Nernst and Langmuir and Seaborg, all names I'd heard before but didn't really know.

Lewis had some Massachusetts blue blood, but he grew up in Nebraska before returning to attend Harvard and finishing his studies in Europe. And it seems clear that he was always a bit of a social oddball, even once he established himself as the king of chemistry at Berkeley.

The book has some serious parts when it covers the intersection of chemistry and the world wars, and Lewis's strange and tragic death, but mostly it's about how amazingly petty chemists are. I loved reading about how they kept stealing credit from each other for discoveries and doing backroom deals to keep each other from winning Nobel prizes.

To be clear, because I still don't understand how Nobel Prizes are awarded, it's not that Lewis was nominated in 41 years and never won. He received nominations from 41 people over a span of something like 25 years, for multiple discoveries and theoretical advancements in the field. He also devoted those 25 years, and the 20 before, to publically trashing the science of several of the people who decided who would win the prize, or had influence on the decides. Coffey digs up amazing documentary evidence of the coordinated campaign against Lewis, but also makes you think maybe you don't blame them for it.

Anyway, a long running theme in this journal is the way science doesn't move in a sphere of pure ideas but is instead a function of imperfect personalities in collision, and this was a brilliant illumination of that theme.

And if you just think Chemistry: The Soap Opera sounds fun, this is the book for you.

All secrets have been revealed!

Extra! Extra! Extra (6 words) by seekingferret
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: The Paper (TV 2025)
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Mare Pritti/Ned Sampson
Additional Tags: Fanvids, Instrumental
Summary:

Misadventures in the fourth estate

I don't have much to say about this year's Festivid. I like how it came out, but it's also very much the kind of vid when you sign up for Festivids and then almost immediately buy a house and just need to make some kind of vid.

Has anyone watched The Paper? It's one of those sitcoms whose first seasons make you think, well maybe this is promising. Some of those shows get more time and figure things out, most of them just get cancelled before they can figure those things out. Its connection to The Office is mostly a funny running gag that the accountant Oscar has not escaped the documentary crew from the Office as they make a new doc about a newspaper. But I liked the idea of making a show about the futility of trying to make a useful local newspaper in the year 2025. It's delightfully quixotic, and so as much as this is a ship vid I also wanted to make a vid celebrating that noble ambition of making the community better by giving people better information, waging war against the avalanche of slop.

Watch on YouTube

I did the other post on its own because I am kinda proud. I read all of the then extant Hugo winners when I was in college and had access to the NYU library for some of the more hard to source titles. I haven't entirely kept up since then, so when I was at Worldcon last summer I was inspired to read all the ones from the last decade I hadn't read. I don't think I was surprised by my response to any of the books I had missed: Nettle and Bone and Network Effect were fine but not entirely my thing, the Teixcalaan books were tremendous but required a lot of focus and attention. I've already written about Some Desperate Glory and The Tainted Cup in the last six months.

A Desolation Called Peace by Arkady Martine

It's very satisfying, the moments that suggest that I am not merely a reader, but a competent reader. The moment when Eight Antidote sneaks into the Ministry of War, I said, "I have never seen a more Cyteen-coded moment in anything I have ever read," and I googled it and found "
Also, everyone knows that Eight Antidote is my version of Ari Emory II, right? :".

Fer-de-lance by Rex Stout

Re-read, the first in the Nero Wolfe series, inspired by my enjoyment of The Tainted Cup. The book's introduction notes, and I agree, that it's a fascinating start to the series because so many serial elements are already in place and presented as established conditions: Archie has been working for and living with Wolfe for seven years already, Wolfe's staff and many of the consultants he periodically hires are maybe not fully realized as characters but are already present. I'm pretty sure when I previously read Fer-de-lance, I assumed it was a middle book in the series rather than Book 1.

What does make this distinctively the first book is its early 1930s vibes. The Depression is still lingering for the poorer and more economically vulnerable, Prohibition is a recent memory (Wolfe is trying out all of the newly available beers, in a hilariously unnecessary subplot that I kept wondering whether it would dovetail, Sue Grafton-style, with the main mystery), and Archie talks like Sam Spade sometimes. Later Nero Wolfe books, as I recall, adapt to post-war culture in many ways.

The Archie/Wolfe dynamic is so much fun from the get-go. Archie is basically competent on his own, and Wolfe affords him a lot of autonomy, but Stout knows that when Archie freelances a little too much he'll always run into trouble that requires Wolfe to bail him out. It's the glue that makes these mysteries distinctive, that the plot will always be complicated by Archie's mistakes and misunderstandings as well as the cleverness of the antagonist. That, moreso than the gimmick of Wolfe solving the mysteries from the comfort of his townhouse, is why I love these stories.

I Kissed Shara Wheeler by Casey McQuiston

I was reading and I thought, oh, cute, a queer take on John Green's Paper Towns, with a mysterious high school classmate of the main character disappearing and leaving a treasure hunt behind, and that was all well and good, I like that sort of Konigsbergian puzzle story, but it was not super-challenging as a read. Then I got to the resolution of the Paper Towns-style quest and... there was about a third of the book left. And I was like, what's going on? Is there going to be a Scouring of the Shire? And there was! And it involved a whole bunch of temporary queer found family ganging together to overthrow the social order of a small Southern town and it made the book way more interesting than I thought it would be.

The Goblin Emperor by Katherine Addison

I'm thinking of going back and reading more in this series so I went back and reread this. I don't have much to say, I liked it just as much on a reread.

Dungeon Crawler Carl / Carl's Doomsday Scenario by Matt Dinniman

I really kind of detested the first one, so I don't know why I went back for book two. I think it's because book one is basically competent at what it's doing, and they're quick reads, so I think I thought maybe it'd grow on me, but it did not. If you hated Ready Player One, you will hate this more. I didn't hate Ready Player One, but I just do not understand why Dinniman is doing the thing he's doing in the way he's doing it. His 'campaign setting' is alternately incoherent and morally upsetting, and the idea of a character cleverly LitRPGing his way through this nonsense world that commences with the murder of 99% of all human life makes me angry in a way I struggle to put in words.

The Incandescent by Emily Tesh

What can I say, I'm a sucker for magical pedagogy and I loved how this book represented the mundanities of guiding young people through a world full of supernatural dangers. The teacher perspective was incredibly sharp and convincing, and the unreliable narrator of it all was very effectively handled. An excellent book I flew through.

a Hugo Award for Best Novel meme

Bold if you've read it

2025 The Tainted Cup Robert Jackson Bennett
2024 Some Desperate Glory Emily Tesh
2023 Nettle & Bone T. Kingfisher
2022 A Desolation Called Peace Arkady Martine
2021 Network Effect Martha Wells
2020 A Memory Called Empire Arkady Martine
2019 The Calculating Stars Mary Robinette Kowal
2018 The Stone Sky N. K. Jemisin
2017 The Obelisk Gate N. K. Jemisin
2016 The Fifth Season N. K. Jemisin
2015 The Three-Body Problem Cixin Liu, translated by Ken Liu
2014 Ancillary Justice Ann Leckie
2013 Redshirts: A Novel with Three Codas John Scalzi
2012 Among Others Jo Walton
2011 Blackout/All Clear Connie Willis
2010 The City & the City China Mi�ville
2010 The Windup Girl Paolo Bacigalupi
2009 The Graveyard Book Neil Gaiman
2008 The Yiddish Policemen's Union Michael Chabon
2007 Rainbows End Vernor Vinge
2006 Spin Robert Charles Wilson
2005 Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell Susanna Clarke
2004 Paladin of Souls Lois McMaster Bujold
2003 Hominids Robert J. Sawyer
2002 American Gods Neil Gaiman
2001 Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire J. K. Rowling
2000 A Deepness in the Sky Vernor Vinge
1999 To Say Nothing of the Dog Connie Willis
1998 Forever Peace Joe Haldeman
1997 Blue Mars Kim Stanley Robinson
1996 The Diamond Age Neal Stephenson
1995 Mirror Dance Lois McMaster Bujold
1994 Green Mars Kim Stanley Robinson
1993 A Fire Upon the Deep Vernor Vinge
1993 Doomsday Book Connie Willis
1992 Barrayar Lois McMaster Bujold
1991 The Vor Game Lois McMaster Bujold
1990 Hyperion Dan Simmons
1989 Cyteen C. J. Cherryh
1988 The Uplift War David Brin
1987 Speaker for the Dead Orson Scott Card
1986 Ender's Game Orson Scott Card
1985 Neuromancer William Gibson
1984 Startide Rising David Brin
1983 Foundation's Edge Isaac Asimov
1982 Downbelow Station C. J. Cherryh
1981 The Snow Queen Joan D. Vinge
1980 The Fountains of Paradise Arthur C. Clarke
1979 Dreamsnake Vonda N. McIntyre
1978 Gateway Frederik Pohl
1977 Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang Kate Wilhelm
1976 The Forever War Joe Haldeman
1975 The Dispossessed Ursula K. Le Guin
1974 Rendezvous with Rama Arthur C. Clarke
1973 The Gods Themselves Isaac Asimov
1972 To Your Scattered Bodies Go Philip Jose Farmer
1971 Ringworld Larry Niven
1970 The Left Hand of Darkness Ursula K. Le Guin
1969 Stand on Zanzibar John Brunner
1968 Lord of Light Roger Zelazny
1967 The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress Robert A. Heinlein
1966 Dune Frank Herbert
1966 This Immortal Roger Zelazny
1965 The Wanderer Fritz Leiber
1964 Way Station Clifford D. Simak
1963 The Man in the High Castle Philip K. Dick
1962 Stranger in a Strange Land Robert A. Heinlein
1961 A Canticle for Leibowitz Walter M. Miller, Jr.
1960 Starship Troopers Robert A. Heinlein
1959 A Case of Conscience James Blish
1958 The Big Time Fritz Leiber
1956 Double Star Robert A. Heinlein
1955 They'd Rather Be Right Mark Clifton & Frank Riley
1953 The Demolished Man Alfred Bester

Current Mood: satisfied

Festivids Went Live Yesterday!

I got a really lovely Are You There God? It's Me Margaret vid that I entirely commend to everyone to watch.

[fanvid] Slipping Through My Fingers (0 words) by Anonymous
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Are You There God? It's Me Margaret (Movie 2023), Unspecified Fandom
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Barbara Simon & Margaret Simon, Margaret Simon & Sylvia Simon
Characters: Margaret Simon, Barbara Simon, Sylvia Simon
Additional Tags: Fanvids, Embedded Video, Subtitles Available, Song: Slipping Through My Fingers (ABBA), Growing Up, Puberty, Mother-Daughter Relationship, Grandmother-Granddaughter Relationship, Canon Jewish Character
Summary:

Do I really see what's in her mind? / Each time I think I'm close to knowing / She keeps on growing

Starship Troopers

Doing my periodic reread of Heinlein's Starship Troopers. I don't actually love the book, I mostly find it confounding. But it seems so seminal to SFF, it feels worth rereading every now and again to remember why SFF is the way it is. I've probably read it a half dozen times, it doesn't hurt that it's a quick read.

The discourse on Starship Troopers always surrounds the question of whether or not Heinlein is championing fascism. Heinlein describes a society where only soldiers can vote, where in one chapter an officer advocates beating dogs as part of a metaphor in defense of beating children, a society whose only values are power and loyalty. But is he defending this society? That's a little more unclear.

Contra many depictions in successive SF of Bugger-like races, Heinlein makes it clear from the get go that the Buggers are not a voracious race of mindless monsters but an industrial society not very different from that of the humans. The very first scene shows Johnny Rico down on a raid attacking not an enemy defense force, but shooting rockets at warehouses and other production infrastructure- the first thing Heinlein wants you to know about the Buggers is they have factories.

If the Roughnecks are not attacking civilians, it's not out of moral qualms but because it's not seen as militarily productive. Killing Workers is a waste of ammo, he literallysays. Never once does any theory of the rule of war come up in the book. The Geneva conventions are routinely flouted.

And whenever the Buggers's casus belli comes up, or whether the war could end, Johnny Rico is evasive. That's a question for the top brass, above his paygrade, he says, as if it weren't the whole point of the book that by serving in the army he will obtain the right to vote and participate in bigger picture decisions about the continuation of the war and its prosecution.

So the thing that is confounding about Starship Troopers is how easy it is to read it as self-undermining, how easy it is to wonder if the humans are the bad guys.

And in fact, you can imagine reading it as a sort of SFnal PT 109, another book about the making of a humble lieutenant who maybe aspired to more. The key scene where Rico describes being convinced to become an officer features a prediction that he will ascend to high rank. So we could say that maybe the book is full of transparent bullshit because it is, Watsonianly, pro-war propaganda by an older Juan Rico who is running for office or bucking for general and trying to raise his profile and defend his participation in the war.

Did Heinlein mean this? Who can say. But it's interesting to me that this reading is available.

Oy to the World

I did not have high expectations for this year's Hallmark Hannukah movie and this about lived up to my expectations.

When Jake, Rabbi's son, and Nikki, Reverend's daughter, were teenagers, they were inseparable best friends, until high school academics made them rivals and brought out a dysregulated competitive streak in both that ruptured the friendship.

As grownups, they both seem to live stunted lives. Nicki appears to have zero adult friends and works at her father's small church as children's choir director. Jake has spent 20 years playing tiny NYC rock clubs and chasing a label signing (in 2025!) and refusing to visit his henpecking mother.

When the temple has a fire the week before Hannukah, the church invites their Jewish neighbors to make use of the church space to celebrate Hanukkah. This soon bizarrely evolves into a joint Chrismukkah with combined sermon ("Both Hanukkah and Christmas are about love," natch) and combined choir concert, as Jake and Nikki are guilted and manipulated into co-choir directing by their pandering parents.

The Chrismukkah merger is eerily frictionless. The movie is not at all interested in interrogating the reasons why Hanukkah and Christmas are distinct observances or exploring how Jewish people and Christian people are different and approach the world differently. Religion is represented as a sort of universal fiber, with the different versions no different than a comic book with variant covers.

This lack of friction extends to the film's romantic chemistry. Jake Epstein and Brooke D'Orsay are charming actors and it's clear that their characters like each other, but because all their seeming differences resolve so simply, we don't see their relationship really deepen. Everyone in both families is on board with intermarriage, nobody discusses what religion future children will be raised in, everything is just easy. At worst, Nikki is briefly confronted at dinner eith the fact that if she marries Jake, her mother in law will be the worst version of a stereotypical Jewish mother in law, but this is quickly papered over. Even the inevitable, overforeshadowed moment where Jake has to miss the concert to go back to New York and meet with a label is resolved without any argument, and doesn't actually force Jake to compromise. Surprise! Turns out he can make it to the concert after all, without missing his meeting.

Hallmark really fooled us with Round and Round. The past two years have been a reversion to the nonsense we used to get in Hallmark Hanukkah movies. I will continue to watch them, of course, but I am back to watching them with gritted teeth.

The Grimoire Grammar School Parent Teacher Association by Caitlin Rozakis

This book, about the parents at an elite Connecticut private elementary school for magic users, was a blast to read. It had such a sharp sendup of the pressure for parents to make sure their young children are academically successful, and of parents playing pointless low stakes status games against each other.

I also enjoyed a couple of side digs directed at JKR. For all of its issues, the school in this book would make a much better place to send your mage-to-be or werewolf pup than that castle that shall not be named.

And I liked so many of the characters, this is a setting where I would definitely read further books about side characters... the badass werewolf matriarch, the vampire kindergarten teacher, the done with this shit former headmaster, the former warrior mage turned stay at home dad.

A Drop of Corruption by Robert Jackson Bennett

A worthy followup to The Tainted Cup, this offered another satisfying mystery and investigation, and deeper worldbuilding and exploration of the Empire and both its virtues and failings.

Lisa and Lottie Erich Kastner

The original source for the Parent Trap! This was adorable.

The House of Found Objects by Jo Beckett-King

Thirteen year old girls go on a treasure hunt in Paris! Delightfully low stakes puzzle adventure with reasonable, fair puzzles.

The Magician of Tiger Castle by Louis Sachar

Read for Jewish Science Fiction Book Group. Eh...I liked it better than others in the group, I thought it had some good Sachar humor, and the moral enigmas were straightforward but tense. But it wasn't super memorable.

The Midnight Library by Matt Haig

A piece of garbage. Do not recommend.

I read this year's Hugo and Nebula winning novels.

Someone You Can Build a Nest In by John Wiswell

I wasn't planning to read this until I saw Wiswell's presentation at Readercon, which went deeply behind the scenes and made this sound thoughtful and interesting.

I had a rant a while back about my growing frustration with the Minority as Monster metaphor, where in order to accept the premise of the story you have to accept that there is something monstrous about the minorities. I think maybe it was in my review of one of the Cadwell Turnbull books? In any case, this book is doing something subtler with this, but I kind of suspect that some readers are reading it in that Minority as Monster vein. The trick here is that Wiswell isn't asking you to empathize with that which is monstrous about Shesheshen. Shesheshen knows that eating people is wrong, and is ashamed that she eats people, but it has been a survival tactic in a world that persecutes her because of who she is. This lets Wiswell explore the monster metaphor in a much more satisfyingly moral way, with twists that flesh out the metaphor and profoundly ask the question of who in fact actually is a monster. But it's only profound and interesting if you don't read the ending as a happy ending, and I think that is a big ask because it does have such cozy vibes.

The Tainted Cup by Robert Jackson Bennett

skygiants said in her review "

genarti tells me Ana Dolabra is not a Holmesalike but a Nero Wolfe-alike" but I don't think that's quite right. It's true in the sense specifically that Ana stays inside and sends out her assistant Din to do the boots on the pavement investigating, and then Ana solves the mystery, and yes, that is the fundamental premise of the Nero Wolfe series. But Din is not an Archie-alike and the storytelling is not very Stoutlike at all, so I was thrown a bit in the first couple sections before I started to vibe with it.

Archie Goodwin's narration has very little explicit interiority. I mean, that's not fair, Archie is very open with you about when he is upset or amused or hungry, he wears surface level emotions on his sleeve. But Archie will never muse about the nature of justice, or bemoan the position of the detective in a city built on corruption. Not that he doesn't have opinions about those things, but you are left to infer them, Archie will never tell you. And Bennett hangs a lot of his story on Din doing precisely that, and asking what it means to be part of an Empire. Also Din is very bad at lying! Archie looks askance.

But I liked this very much, it is one of the fairest and most well-told fantasy mysteries I've ever read, the worldbuilding is compelling and suits a murder mystery extremely well. I have already checked out the sequel; I'll report back.

Hi Festividder!

Thanks for making a vid for me. My usual request is that I like to be surprised and I like to let people follow their own creative intutions. But I know that can be hard to get started, so here's some brief notes to guide you if you want guidance.

The Menu (2022) [SAFETY]

I found this movie mesmerizing. I love the way it uses the aesthetics of modern haute cuisine and twists them in monstrous directions.

Adam Savage's Tested (YouTube Channel)

I love Adam's enthusiasm for tools and making things, I love the way he lifts up other creators, I love how he explains things.

Women's Logrolling RPF [UMBRELLA]

The only canon I know here is the amazing defector article Earth’s Best Logroller Has Created Her Own Greatest Rival, and a few YT videos, and I assume you probably don't know much more than me so if you vid this, enjoy the adventure of discovery.

Jet Lag: The Game (Web Series)

By the time festivids is really going we'll probably know who won All-Stars, feel free to use the new source or not. Toby is my favorite guest player, I also love the Adam and Ben dynamics, and I love how they play off mastermind Sam.

Are You There God? It's Me Margaret (2023) [SAFETY]

We are in the Jews dancing part of this request list now. I liked how this movie balanced the grownups and the teens both going on journeys of self discovery.

Round and Round (2023) [SAFETY]

More Jews dancing. I thought this movie was shockingly good. I loved it as a sci-fi movie taking its premise seriously and I loved it as a movie about a Jewish family supporting each other through crisis.

הסודות | The Secrets (2007) [SAFETY]

More Jews dancing. This is my favorite movie about Kabbalah, I love how it takes the life and death stakes of God's secrets seriously while remaining in a more or less naturalistic posture.

Everyone Is Lying to You by Jo Piazza

I saw a recommendation for this a few months ago, but it's new and I didn't get it from my library until now. In the meantime, I read Piazza's The Sicilian Inheritance and didn't like it that much, so I wasn't sure how I would feel about this one. Fortunately, I thought this was much better.

It advertises as Gone Girl with tradwives, and... it does some cool inversion with that premise. Our narrator Lizzie is a magazine editor who lived in New York with her magazine writer husband until husband lost his job and they had to flee to the Philly suburbs, where he is pretending to write a novel. So they are very clearly a take on Nick and Amy, who have a very similar backstory of being failed NYC magazine people, but the book's first twist is that Lizzie and Philip have a solid marriage. It's not perfect, there are anxieties and conflicts that the book is very interested in, but Piazza sets you up to expect them to be the gone girl couple and then gives you a shocking normalcy. No, it is instead Lizzie's college roommate Bex, who lives on a farm with her husband and six children streaming tiktoks of chickens and homeschooling and #farmlife, who pulls a gone girl on us, a twisty tale of lies and misdirection and violence that ultimately ends up with a very Amy-like pseudofeminist girlboss victory.

I really liked the way the death of magazines here talks back to Gone Girl and speaks to a different, more continuous kind of attention economy. In place of the metronomic daily 10 o'clock news updates about the missing woman, there is the constant algorithmic thrum of tiktoks, complicated by the fact that as Piazza points out several times, influencer videos are typically filmed in batches and released to look timely. The takeover of our attention, so much more invasive than in 2009, is a deliberate campaign of time manipulation. Everyone is lying to you.

Piazza does a very good job of capturing the unreality of the influencer life style and butting it up against the fact that influencers still have human realities to navigate. I love the way she uses the setting of an influencer conference to establish this contrast, with the constant pressure to maintain an image set up against a cadre of savvy women who know all the tricks and aren't fooled. Cleverly, the conference hotel has its own agenda and is trying to craft and sell its own kind of luxurious unreality.

What Piazza's storytelling still lacks is a graceful way to provide exposition. The big reveal felt so awkward it left me cold. She is a gifted narrator of social details, but not a great mystery writer either here or in The Sicilian Inheritance . In Gone Girl, Amy's diary is functional, it's part of her plan, so it's not just a big infodump... and anyway, it's unreliable, so youhave to read against the diary account. The Bex exposition sections of this book don't have any of that exterior motivation. They solely exist because somehow Piazza needs to explain what happened and this is the best she has come up with. It's a shame, because with slightly better packaging this would have been an incredibly memorable story.

The House in the Cerulean Sea by TJ Klune

This was a sweet albeit kind of heavy handed story about magical orphans facing societal prejudice and an unfeeling bureaucracy and learning how to understand their own self worth, guided by an awkward trio of queer adults who are also struggling to get their shit together. The speech Linus gives DICOMY at the end is way over the top but otherwise the book makes its points reasonably well.

But I struggled to completely connect with it. Ironically, though many of the reviews I found online criticized it for blasphemy and anti-Christian ideology, I actually found it too Christian. One of the magical children is the son of Satan, purportedly the Antichrist, and is endowed with reality warping powers and internal voices urging him to destroy the world. The book's heroic characters insist he's merely an imaginative and sensitive 6 year old who if properly loved will not destroy the world, but I found that even taking a side on this question was too theological on a path I was uninterested in following the book to. Either Arthur and Linus are right and Lucy isn't actually the Antichrist but merely a potential Antichrist, or they're wrong and the pull of his fated destiny isn't about his choices but about the role the prophecy will force him into. Klune created the book's worldbuilding, he can pick his own answer to this question, but if you're not invested in Christian eschatology it's not really an interesting debate.

The Raven Scholar by Antonia Hodgson

This year's Book I Read Because Multiple People Raved About It in the Worldcon Discord. The first book in a secondary world fantasy series with lots of complicated political intrigue, the rave reviews were extremely enthusiastic but also quite vague. And now that I have read it, I understand the vagueness. It's a hard book to describe. It's constantly shifting and transforming, with twist after twist leaving you constantly unsure what the book is actually about and where it is going. But the twists are solid and well supported and never pull you out of the world of the book. But it was an exhilarating read and I highly recommend it.

from a member of my shul, and I think this is AWESOME

I am back from Worldcon! It was, as usual, A LOT.

I flew out of Boston Tuesday night, got to my hotel around 11PM, which in my head was 2AM. It was the start of a lot of long days where my East Coast brain would wake me early and my con-going heart would try to keep me awake late to see as much as possible. But I never did go to any of the evening parties.

DW People I saw included

gwyn,

beatrice_otter,

mecurtin,

wickedwords,

elf,

batyatoon, and probably more I am forgetting. I did not get to spend as much time talking to them as I wanted, but it was great to see so many people.

Wednesday morning I got my badge early, then I took a bus out to U-City to rent a bicycle for the next two days. It was a Kona hybrid, a nice aluminum framed bike with sturdy shifters and disc brakes. I liked it a lot more than my own current bike, I'm thinking of getting one.

Biking in Seattle was fun but the downtown sure is hilly. I biked about 25 miles over the two days I had the bike, and I also probably walked the bike up close to a mile of hills I didn't feel up to climbing. So I have mixed feelings about the plan, it was nice to have the transit speed and flexibility the bike gave me, but I definitely overtaxed myself and sapped energy that could have gone to other con activities. An ebike might have been the wiser choice.

I got back to the con only to realize I had lost my badge. I think when I left the con I took my mask and badge off simultaneously and the badge must have missed my pocket. I went to registration and after some being directed to different stations, found that some lovely person had found and turned in my badge. Whew!

I was on 4 panels about fanfic and they were all really fun to be a part of. I also attended a couple more panels on fanfic, there was so much and it was great that none of the panels had to be THE load bearing panel; there were a bunch of times when we could say, for more on that check out this other panel.

I did a workshop on making maps with watercolors. I'm not sure why I signed up for this other than just wanting some sort of crafty time, but it was fun even though I was not that good, and maybe I need to do more painting. The cool but frustrating thing about watercolors is how they surprise you and do things you didn't expect they would do on the page. I don't love the map I made, but I think I can get a D&D oneshot out of it.

There was a Jewish fan meetup, which was amazingly heterogeneous in perspective and yet had this lovely vibe of kindness and openness and comfort. Several people were saying it was the most comfortable they'd felt since October 7th, to be in a room of people who understood them as Jews and Fans. We also had fannish Kabbalat Shabbat (nusach arisia) with about 30 people, and 15 or so came back for a morning Shabbat service. We had a Lecha Dodi to an adaptation of the Firefly theme and a Jurassic Park Adon Olam.

Sunday morning I hosted a crossword meetup. We had about 15 people, which is pretty good for the morning after the Hugos. I announced that I was there to evangelize cryptic crosswords and we pulled together a group of about 5 people, 2 who were total cryptic newbies, to solve the latest Square Chase variety cryptic. Meanwhile the rest of the people solved various other American crosswords I brought.

Program highlights included Ada Palmer reading from Hearthfire, Brandon Sanderson reading from the new Mistborn series, academic panels on the evolution of robots in fiction from RUR to Murderbot, and on the monastic tradition in SFF, and Leigh Bardugo, Holly Black, Matt Ruff, Caitlin Rozakis, and Nicholas Binge talking about what it was like to have their books adapted for the screen.

I didn't do as much touristing as I wanted, but also I'd hit most of the most obvious Seattle sites I really wanted to see when I was here for the Spokane Worldcon ten years back. I did take a nice walk in the Olympia Sculpture Garden Shabbos morning, and I saw a lot more of the city, just qua city, because of the bike.

And then my flight home, which was already kind of precariously late to go to work the next day, was delayed an hour. I got home at 2:30 AM Monday and somehow dragged myself to work but I was a zombie who did no functional work that day.

Anyway, that was Worldcon. It was great but too much and so I'm thinking I'll skip LA next year and do more relaxing vacations.

Fantastic 4:First Steps

Jews do not dance in this movie. I have seen four Fantastic 4 movies and Ben Grimm does not dance in any of them.

Oh, I wanted to ask if anyone here will be at Worldcon? Let me know if you want to meet up!

I've done this exercise some past years (2020 2019, I've also written up a few Philcons, I think...), mostly to show how inadequate and silly the treatment of fanfic has been at past Worldcons. But here's the list of all of the fanfic panels at the Seattle Worldcon, and it's frankly incredible. It's such a diverse group of panel topics, covering history, technique, craft, culture, community. I'm excited to be on a couple of these panels myself, and to attend some of the others. The team who came up with them and got them onto the schedule deserves all the kudos.

Full Program for Seattle Worldcon

Fix-It Fic
The “fix-it fic” is a staple of the fanfic community, but why do we write it? What do we get out of it? What tropes are fix-it fic writers drawn to, and how can it be done well? What happens when the fanfic is better than the show, and how do small tweaks in canon lore to “fix” canon mistakes change everything?

Star Trek and Fanfic
The earliest modern fanfic arose in the mid-1960s, while the original Star Trek was still on the air. It’s often called the ur-fandom in fanfic communities, even though the roots of fanfic can be traced to Homer or earlier. What made Trek fanfic different from the earlier stories-about-stories, and what’s made it so enduring?

Filk and Fanfic: Two Great Tastes
Filk and fanfic cover some of the same ground: character studies, missing scenes, genre twists (from dramatic to funny or vice-versa), new stories in an existing universe, adding a sexy twist, or shifting the POV character. Sometimes, they don’t use a single character or event from the original, but everyone recognizes it as specific commentary. Come explore what else these two often-neglected types of fan works have in common.

Is That Fanfic?
Some books that might be “fanfic” aren’t called fanfic: Unauthorized spinoffs (Wicked, Wide Sargasso Sea, The Wind Done Gone), sequels by different authors (most comic books), and authorized books based on TV series. It’s not limited to text: Gaming mods for video games, role-playing games in licensed settings (Middle Earth, Call of Cthulhu), and fan-made games like Jumpchain also put a new spin on existing content. Are they types of fanfic? What else would we call “I made a story about someone else’s story?”

Building Writing Skills Through Fan Fiction
Before we write, we read, and often, it’s our favorite stories and characters that inspire us to be writers in the first place. Whether you stick with fan fiction or not, fan fiction is a place where young writers can play in a familiar sandbox, honing their skills and building their own authorial voice. Which fanfic writing skills translate directly to pro-writer skills—and what fanfic skills don’t connect to commercial markets at all?

ao3 mcu a:aou a.b.o. bdsm ot3 hs au pwp
Do you know what the title of this panel means? Come learn about the specialized vocabulary of fanfic: how and why the abbreviations and other terms get invented, and how that language works to build and sustain fanfic communities. (The kink tomato is not a food; dead dove is not a bird. Does “HS” stand for high school or Homestuck?)

Filing Off the Serial Numbers
Plenty of fanfic authors have “filed off the serial numbers” and republished their fic as mainstream stories. The most famous is Fifty Shades of Grey, but the Vorkosigan Saga began as Star Trek fanfic. What works, and what doesn’t? Is this a reasonable career-starter for new would-be pro writers? Are there any tips to make it work better or any traps to avoid?

What Is the OTW/AO3?
In 2007, Astolat blogged that fanfic writers need an archive of their own, not beholden to corporate interests and censorship. Eighteen years after the Organization for Transformative Works (OTW) started it, the Archive of Our Own (AO3) is going strong, with a Hugo Award in 2019, and now over 4 million users and 14 million works. Come find out how it happened, how it works, how you can find what you want to read—and, if you’re interested, how to get involved.

Fanfic as Therapy
Fanfic isn’t just writing practice or sharing ideas about what happens next when the series is over—it’s also used to explore personal emotions and reactions to trauma. Come discuss the therapeutic value of fanfic as both writers and readers in a moderated open discussion rather than a traditional panel.

What *Is* Fanfiction, Anyway?
What is fanfic, and why is it important to science fiction fandom? Panelists will discuss the history of fanfiction and its connections to SFF fandom, what makes it different from authorized spinoffs, and how the fanfic community perceives itself.

Licenced TTRPGs as Fanfic
TTRPGs have a long history of media-licensed game systems: Call of Cthulhu, Marvel Universe, Middle Earth Role-Playing, and dozens of lesser-known games for TV shows or movies. Panelists will explore the connections and differences between “Let’s play a game in this setting” and “I want to write a story in this setting.”

Fanfic Community as Gift Economy
The pros and cons of an artistic community with a strong non-economic, even anti-commercial, bias. How fanfic works outside of writing markets, and what happens when fanfic writers go pro. This will be a moderated group discussion, rather than a regular panel—everyone can participate.

Not Just Training Wheels
Fanfic is often claimed to be “good practice” on one’s route to becoming a professional author, but this is not the only reason people write fanfic. Panelists will discuss some of the others: bonding with a community, exploring story concepts with very niche appeal, enjoying a personal fantasy, and more.

Fanfic on Paper
From mimeograph with staples or comb-binding to small runs of offset printing and artisanal fanbindings with custom covers, fanfic has never been published like other literature. Find out how it used to be done, how it shifted to digital publishing, and how it’s shared on paper now. We’ll look at the history of fanzines and the current fanbinding hobby, the ethics of publishing in a niche community, and the controversies of commercialization.

Making It Gay… or Trans, Neurodivergent, BIPOC, and More
In a media world that too often does not represent women, queerness, BIPOC identities, neurodivergence, or people with disabilities, it’s no wonder we choose to represent ourselves and/or our desires in the fanfic we write. This panel isn’t about why we take cishet characters and make them gay, trans, or a dozen other things; it’s about why we should and the freedom and joy that goes with knowing we can.

The Absent S: (Fem)Slash and Sapphics
When most people hear slash, they think man-and-man (M/M), but in modern parlance the term actually applies to any “ship” that is same-sex. In some fandoms, femslash is the main “ship”! Let’s talk about the differences between F/F and M/M fanfic and fandoms, how femslash is often overlooked or looked down upon in fandom (even when it’s the main “ship” of certain fandoms!), and what femslash means to sapphics in fandom.

Dipping One Toe In: First-Time Fanfic
Have you never read fanfic or are a little interested but are not sure where to start? Come to this panel, where our set of talented and friendly experts will try to give you recommendations—suggestions on which fandoms, authors, and fics might be right up your alley.

Reclamation Through Fanfiction
Fanfiction often ignores the canon setting and relationships to tell stories the original creators never intended. But can it ignore the setting’s creator? From Lovecraft to Rowling to Gaiman, many authors of beloved works are later discovered to be prejudiced or predatory or both. Can fanfiction be used to take back some of these works and put distance between the author and the art?

Smut for Fun, Not Profit
Fanfic erotica is so famous that many believe it’s all of fanfic. Learn how the tropes and styles of kinky and erotic topics change when they are written by and for a shared community. Let’s discuss how kinky writing changes when there’s no potential of commercial activity and it’s all about what gets you hot and what gets your readers hot.

Starter Villain by John Scalzi

This was slight in the way Scalzi's books often are- he has good storytelling instincts but a reluctance to deeply interrogate his premises.

This has a similar premise to Hench, which I panned as 'morally bewildering.' The moral stakes are much clearer here, which made it easier to enjoy. Our hero inherits the family business, which his late uncle explicitly identifies as supervillainy, but the book doesn't expect you to sympathize with the ideology of supervillainy, merely the poor sadsack protagonist who must navigate this murky world and try to figure out where his own lines are drawn and how to make it out alive.

Assistant to the Villain by Hannah Nicole Maehrer

Continuing on the theme. This was pitched as The Office in a supervillain's fortress, and it mostly fits the brief, albeit laden down with a slow burn romance between the villain and his personal assistant that I could have done without.

Here there is no question that we are supposed to understand the villain as a Robin Hood standing up to an oppressive king, but that supposed to is doing a lot of work. Maehrer seems caught between prongs of her scenario- for Evie's defection to the villain to be a source of angst and happening at risk of communal alienation, the king needs to be popular in her village. For her to have the moral clarity and belief in her mission required to be an effective assistant to the villain, the king needs to be transparently a tyrant. Splitting the middle here doesn't quite land. I kept waiting for the substantive reasons for Evie's rejection of the king's law to become clearer, but probably we are just supposed to read it as the evolving consequences of her growing love for the villain rather than any sort of political awakening.

That said, the handling of the evil office politics is a delight and I particularly enjoyed a baffling set of small details about 'the interns' because Maehrer never explains why a secret lair has interns, just has them be there and causing trouble in the background. This book made me laugh and that's worth a lot.

Bad Shabbos

Jews do not dance in this movie.

But it was nonetheless an incredible movie and I loved it so much and I laughed all the way through.

The film is a farce in the vein of a Neil Simon play- a modern Orthodox Upper West Side family prepares for a Shabbos dinner made fraught by the fact that the Catholic parents of the son's fiancee (who is in the process of converting) are visiting from Wisconsin. This process becomes a lot more complicated when a dead body, that the family has to conceal, turns up.

I love a precise farce and this is an incredibly well composed one that manages to squeeze multiple jokes out of every setpiece through callbacks and reaction shots and brilliant use of the limited set. The whole audience was constantly laughing for the entire movie.

I especially loved the incredible Talmud jokes, which testified to a writing team that not only is familiar with the text of the Talmud but also its vibes. I still laugh every time I think of the challah.

And I loved that it is a movie about a family sticking together through thick and thin. I remember complaining about This Is Where I Leave You that for all the funny moments the inescapable truth at the end is that this family doesn't like each other very much, and I found that deflated my enjoyment a lot. In this movie, for all the family dysfunction and disagreement, when things go down they team up to be dysfunctional together.

Seeking Ferret

Full Life. Full Agonies.

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more book stuff

a very nerdy flex

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Books

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Festivids!

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Seattle Worldcon

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All the Fanfic Panels at Worldcon 2025

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February 2026

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