#UKSFFBookBargains Absolution, book 4 of the Southern Reach trilogy is a daily deal. That's the whole series popping up at 99p, one a week. I approve. Let's have more whole series. www.kobo.com/gb/en/ebook/... Also on Kindle www.amazon.co.uk/Absolution-S...

Whilst I appreciate this is a quote from someone else, this event promotional text seems to me (a) a bit cheeky, and (b) an interesting choice to translate to English whilst leaving the rest of the text untranslated. Source: weibo.com/ttarticle/p/... (English version via Chrome's translator)

This Chinese box set of Asimov's Foundation series looks very nicely done, but I'm a bit bemused why there's a jigsaw of an off-brand Imperial Star Destroyer. Source: www.bilibili.com/opus/1111706...

Amazon ebook deal: Days of Shattered Faith (Tyrant Philosophers #3) by Adrian Tchaikovsky - £1.99 www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0CZVQC6FR/ (Not reduced on Kobo) // cc @nickpheas.bsky.social

Interesting commentary in a report on the Japanese natcon from a Chinese translator, cf concerns about greying fandom in the West/Anglosphere, and also maybe some of the atypical-for-a-Worldcon content at Chengdu in 2023. Source: weibo.com/1923185037/Q...

Interesting contrast with the Western complaints about streaming services (especially Netflix) having short seasons with multi-year gaps between them. www.sixthtone.com/news/1017505

2025 Hugo Award stats have been released. seattlein2025.org/wsfs/hugo-aw...

Trailer for Chinese CG adaptation of Alfred Bester's The Stars My Destination (aka Tyger Tyger) www.bilibili.com/video/BV1gvh... (via x.com/HONGKONG0001... )

没有中国人？ seattlein2025.org/program-and-...

Wonder if this has ever been used in an alt-history or future-based story as part of the worldbuilding? www.theguardian.com/education/20...

First of this year's raspberries from the back garden

Just put some food outside, and got a (slightly) unwanted visitor

Amazon UK have made a fair few negative changes to their UI of late, but not showing prices on their recommended products seems particularly boneheaded. (Not having the title or author of these books - which is a slightly older UI regression - also strikes me as very bad from an accessibility POV.)

Vaguely apropos of other current discourse about using AI to vet prospective panelists at Worldcon, here's the AI part of a Google search request I did a couple of days ago, that makes a very dubious statement right at the end.

I'm not going to dignify it with a link, but the Daily Mail has a particularly bizarre "review" of the Sky Arts SF documentary, largely ignoring the content of the programme in favour of a weird take on one book by an author the "reviewer" interviewed, who doesn't actually appear on the programme.

UK people: just noticed this starts on Sky Arts (free-to-air channel) at 8pm tonight: "Science Fiction in the Atomic Age" - first of a four part documentary series Seems to feature talking heads from a number of well-known UK critics, academics and authors [Some links to follow]

Note that it looks like this will affect Kindle ebook editions globally if Bloomsbury (or one of their imprints) have global rights. e.g. (and IIRC) several Adrian Tchaikovsky books like Dogs of War, Bear Head, Cage of Souls and the Tyrant Philosophers series. www.thebookseller.com/news/amazon-...

Great to see that the two Chengdu Hugo co-Administrators received equal levels of ostracism at the Glasgow Worldcon... /s

Note: I suspect there was more than just "Finalist A" involved in shenanigans. I need to spend more time to write this up, but see this timeline chart of supporting membership counts over the past few weeks. Note how China and later Scotland are different from other countries.

Comment I just posted on File 770 speculating about possible means and motive for how and why CBD might want to try to buy a Hugo for Discover X aka Hugo X. file770.com/2024-hugo-aw... NB: I stress that this is *speculation*.

What a surprise - not. Finalist A = Discover X aka Hugo X

What a surprise - not. Finalist A = Discover X aka Hugo X

A final push for this list of my recs. There have been a few additions & expansions of the commentary, linked examples etc, since the original release from a few days ago, so if you're hunting for names to fill out noms in some of the lower-profile #HugoAwards categories, please take a look.

A personal recommendation list of Chinese SF-related works and individuals from 2023, covering fan writing, fanzines, fan art and non-fiction. sf.ersatzculture.com/chinese_sf_2... Please note that this page is still rough and incomplete, but I wanted to get it out there ASAP, for reasons.

I probed a little more into the Chinese Hugo23 nominations that are less discussed up to now. prograft1.wordpress.com/2024/02/24/m...

Well, I too was looking, and am really glad I had the foresight to archive the (Chinese language only) bid team page. Apologies for crappy machine translations on the EN versions. web.archive.org/web/20220313...

Here's a very crude word frequency analysis of some of the topics discussed at the Smofcon "What can we learn from Chengdu panel?", using the (machine generated?) subtitles. I think we can see what things they were most interested in talking about, and there was little to no pushback on this.

I see some of yesterday's Weibo posts have disappeared overnight. It would be such a shame if someone happened to have made copies of them, and they happened to get back into wider circulation somehow... (Will wait for an OK from the original poster before doing that though.)

Because they are both fucking idiots. You know that the guy they quote as speaking on behalf of Chinese fandom appears to be one of Dave McCarty's best buds, per FB posts? Wonder why they didn't mention that?

"Every word I spoke was chosen with care and I meant every single one. I always do." (Belatedly spotted whilst skimming through these looking for something else.)

I'd add - if people are looking to nominate work and people for the 2024 Hugos consider fans from China. Look to the 2023 fan categories & some of the Chinese fans who are doing amazing things. We, in the collective sense, (McCarty in the individual sense) did badly by Chinese fans.

Chinese fans were sidelined repeatedly by the Chengdu committee who valued business interests above fans. They were screwed over in the Hugo Awards. There are credible reports of the VENUE making people ill and their chance to put Chinese sci-fi fandom on the world stage is now mired in scandal

Maybe if you two brains brothers had ever bothered to write about all the other shit that was pulled on Chinese fans at Chengdu, then *perhaps* they might be more willing to talk now? But no, Merkins missing out on silver rockets is all that matters to you lot, so you get what you deserve.

@glasgow2024.bsky.social Sooooo…as the “winner” of a Hugo now rendered pretty damn tarnished by the actions of a group including Kat Jones, what do y’all plan to do about her?

What's even worse is that the 2024 Hugo Admin, Kat Jones, was a participant in the censorship and then released a statement complaining about the fact that it became public. @glasgow2024.bsky.social needs to throw her out on her ass.

Zero Gravity SF Issues #14 and #15 Released file770.com/zero-gravity...

哈哈, my @file770.bsky.social post about the top search results on Baidu for (the Chinese version of) "Hugo Awards Babel" has now become the top result for that search, sort-of disproving the claim I made in that post.

Screengrab from a Bilibili video, with a Google Translated version. 'Now I understand the familiar smell' 'Traditional "telephone guidance"' 'An obviously ineffective reply' (Will be submitting this with other stuff to @file770.bsky.social, but might not make today's Scroll)

Looks like the automated notification posts to social media have failed again, but there's a really good piece by an anonymous author about the infamous Tianwen Program just gone up at File 770: file770.com/decoding-the...

"The Hugo Pope" Who told those rubes that there is such a person? Literally the only searches for that term show up with the Sad Puppies talking about there being a shadowy figure who decides who wins hugos Is it possible one of the Esquire sources is a Sad Puppy? www.google.com/search?q=%22...

Re. Chengdu Worldcon, just copying here a reply I made to Charlie Stross a few days ago on Mastodon: "I wrote this (and much more WTFery) all up - specifically using a quote from one of the con's co-chairs - for File 770 way back in Nov., but no-one was paying attention." file770.com/pixel-scroll...

Yes, I just wanted to point out you haven't been alone in addressing the way the people who took over the con screwed Chinese fandom.

I wanna say here that it was only because of ErsatzCulture transmitting voices from Weibo to File770 that I thought to check over there! NGL as a diaspora Asian I was like, “I feel embarrassed about my language skills so I’m scared to navigate Weibo,” but seeing EC do it was a big inspiration

Can't say I'm terribly impressed by the news report that's just gone out, quoting numerous people who all got their information via my work over months, but never actually naming or crediting me for my efforts. Not the first time he's got stuff wrong about me, mind.

Any native speakers (or native-level) of Chinese have any thoughts on this theory about the infamous "the rules we must follow"? Sounds plausible to me, but my skills are way too poor to have any useful opinion.

Any chance of some reposts on the post below please? It bothers me my posts about censoring & big biz dodginess get a fair bit of engagement, but stuff about the human impact of all the f**kery get much less traction - and Chinese fans suffered far worse injustices than just the Hugo shenanigans

(Traditional) Chinese language coverage of the Hugo controversy from Yahoo Hong Kong. The piece itself looks to just contain the same material as was in The Guardian a couple of days ago, but it seems that the news is creeping closer to home. hk.news.yahoo.com/%E9%9B%A8%E6...

With the news that has subsequently broken, I fear this item that I submitted to Mike will get overlooked. Please remember that there are many, many more victims of this mess, and who don't have large followings on English-language social media to hear their anguish.