Home/Links: 2015This page is the final repository for 2015 links from the ever-scrolling sidebar column at the right of the Ansible Links page. The editor has no intention of running regular checks on their continued validity.
December 2015
• "Sir Terry Pratchett remembered by his daughter, Rhianna Pratchett"
• US Star Trek stamps in 2016; Paramount and CBS move against crowdfunded fan film Axanar
• Cli-fi, so dramatically different from boring old sf
• "Tor.com Will Be Closed to Unsolicited Short Fiction Submissions"
• HTTP error [Fahrenheit] 451 now official
• Almond Press: not a class act
• Peter Dickinson 1927-2015
• Author who stalked and attacked a reviewer now jailed
• BSFA Award nominations close 31 December
• 2016 TAFF voting begins; online ballot form
• The horror of fake Star Wars toys: will there be an Emperor Daft Serious in your Christmas stocking?
• Peter Beagle's lawsuit; some background; the full complaint; fan support site; another
• Could this be the same Nottingham-based games company that laid claim to the term "space marine"?November 2015
• Whither Eastercon? The questionnaire is back
• 2024 UK Worldcon bid? Discussion begins
• New awards named for the late Bill Kunkel
• Call for new World Fantasy Award design; Artists Beware! says John Picacio
• Society of Illustrators Hall of Fame: Beatrix Potter, Richard Powers
• The Man in the High Castle – still controversial!; likewise on the New York subway
• 2016 Hugo Award Base Competition
• New imprint: John Joseph Adams Books
• World Fantasy Awards Winners 2015; goodbye to the controversial HPL trophy; S.T. Joshi has hissy fit; new trophy poll!; Guardian
• LOTR film music wins all-time popularity poll again
• Strange doings at Samhain Publishing
• Judge Dredd uncensored at last
• Crossed Genres to close
• TAFFWorld #4 with fuller details of the 2016 TAFF race (nominations now open)
• Jon Langford Wins Book Cover Design Award, Fails To Tell Ansible; also in The Bookseller
• How to Win Friends and Influence Editors, part 5,271,009October 2015
• Hallowe'en Crossword: Linus and the Great Pumpkin
• Wired on Puppygate (again)
• "The Owners of the Real House The Conjuring Is Based on Are Suing Warner Bros."
• 2015 British Fantasy Awards
• Tolkien's annotated Middle-earth map
• TAFF race East to West in 2016
• David Mitchell on Earthsea; also Salon interview
• Wanted: Barbican assistant curator with SF knowledge (though not of books)
• "Buck Rogers and the Copyright Trolls"
• "John Carpenter Wins Plagiarism Case Against Luc Besson Over 'Lockout'"
• Big sellout story!
• 2016 GUFF result
• "Game of Thrones sex scenes are 'sexplanations' to distract from boring exposition", says disinterested author behind rival series
• SF/fantasy prosthetic hands for children
• "Star Wars composer John Williams to receive film honour"
• Princess Leia slave bikini auctioned for vast sum; and original Tintin artwork for vaster sum
• False Captain Kirk detected
• "Beano domain name to be handed to DC Thomson"
• Tom Purdom hospitalized
• Gender Discrimination in SFF AwardsSeptember 2015
• James Sallis "quits over loyalty oath"
• The Red Potato of Mars
• The Future of Eastercon
• Don West (1945-2015); his illustrations for Ansible; cartoon sequence on the joy of fanzine publishing in Twll-Ddu 18; memorial group on Facebook
• Blade Runner sequel title revealed, or not
• Women, it is asserted, can't write space opera
• Bill Finger to get official Batman credit at last
• Oh dear, Star Wars stamps
• SF² Concatenation Autumn 2015 Newscast
• US National Medal of Arts for Stephen King; more after presentation
• "Hitch in Sasquan Nominating Data Turnover"
• C-3PO on The Force Awakens: "The secrecy has been ludicrous"
• Christopher Eccleston: "I never watched Doctor Who when I was a child... I never watched myself as Doctor Who!"August 2015
• Pissing on Pratchett; a response in the same paper on the same day; Chris Priest comments
• Suzette Haden Elgin's Papers
• Hugo Ceremony Video Posted
• Other Awards Presented at the Hugo Ceremony; 2015 Black Hole Awards
• 2015 Hugo results; as-it-happened commentary at File 770; "Memories of Tonight’s Hugo Ceremony"; Locus; detailed voting statistics [PDF]; "What the alternate Hugo Ballot would likely have been"; similarly, "Alternate Timeline Hugo Awards"; looking at the statistics; "The Hugo Awards, and Some Thoughts Thereon"; "What The Complete Puppy Shutout Means And Doesn’t Mean"; Wired; Wall Street Journal; io9; NPR; The Mary Sue; Guardian; Guardian again; Blastr; "Being a Jerk About the Hugos: Not as Effective a Strategy as You Might Think"; LA Times; "The Hugo Results—Don’t Be A Dick"; Slate.com; Charlie Stross; "Talkin’ About The Puppies"; George R.R. Martin Caught!; GRRM "Hugo Aftermath"; Alexandra Erin; Gary K. Wolfe/Chicago Tribune; Ann Leckie; "Who Really Runs the Hugo Awards?"; New Republic; James Worrad; Amazing Stories news and links; Melinda Snodgrass; Eric Flint on "The Divergence Between Popularity and Awards in Fantasy and Science Fiction"; Craig Engler; Lawyers, Guns & Money; io9.
• Helsinki Wins 2017 Site Selection Vote; the convention name is Worldcon 75
• "The Hugo Awards ceremony drinking game"
• No zombies on the Underground
• A.L. Kennedy on the Doctor's gender
• Sidewise Awards winners
• Game of Thrones child names infest UK
• Yes! magazine on Puppygate
• "The Whispering Swarm by Michael Moorcock – digested read"
• Pixels copyright trolling
• Gemmell Awards: 2015 Winners
• Brian Aldiss interviewed
• Lou Antonelli, major fuckwit (see also File 770; again; more fallout; a summary; Antonelli not banned from Worldcon)
• Mythopoeic Awards: 2015 Winners
• Record-breaking Hugo voting figuresJuly 2015
• GUFF 2016 voting is now open
• US fugitive caught after starring in horror film
• "Was Pixar's Inside Out inspired by The Beano?"
• "Are You Going to the WSFS Business Meeting? "
• Stephen Baxter interviewed
• New Statesman Moorcock interview; Our man's afterthoughts
• "George R.R. Martin's turn to die horrifically"
• British Fantasy Awards shortlist
• "Sympathetic Sci-Fi" (New Yorker)
• "Star Wars themed Amy Schumer GQ shoot 'not approved'"
• Sidewise Awards shortlist
• New UK sf magazine: Shoreline of Infinity
• George Lucas honoured
• "Nosferatu director's skull believed stolen"
• "Even Obama is upset about Jon Snow's death"
• "Disney wins starwars.co.uk net domain battle"; appeal follows
• Welsh Klingon UFO Politics
• World Fantasy Awards shortlist
• World Fantasy Life Achievement: Ramsey Campbell, Sheri S. Tepper
• Rhysling Awards winnersJune 2015
• Locus Awards winners
• WSFS New Business (with anti-slate Hugo fixes!); Best Saga proposal revised
• Chesley Awards finalists
• Christopher Lee (1922-2015)
• 2014 Nebula winners
• Mythopoeic Awards shortlist
• GUFF 2016: nominations deadline extended
• Deadmau5/Disney dispute settled
• Gemmell Awards shortlists
• Inscribed Hobbit first edition fetches lots at auction; proves to have been wrongly describedMay 2015
• As Others See Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
• Margaret Atwood and Future Library
• John Scalzi? Big deal
• Tanith Lee (1947-2015)
• Cheryl Morgan on "The Wages of Sin"
• "Conan Doyle Estate Sues Miramax Over 'Mr. Holmes'"
• SWFA election results
• 2015 Hugo Voter Packet Download
• Free ebooks at the TAFF site
• John W.Campbell Award finalists
• Sturgeon Award finalists
• Bram Stoker Awards
• Shirley Jackson Awards finalists
• Simon Pegg worries about superhero blockbusters
• Clarke Award
• Locus Award finalists
• Talking George R.R. Martin Doll
• Ursa Major Awards (furry)
• Doctor Who at Durham cop shopHugo shortlist; Amended Hugo Shortlist; two late withdrawals; Re-Amended Hugo Shortlist; another withdrawal, but too late; and yet another; Hugo voting page; Hugo Voter Packet Download.
How it all worked out at Sasquan, and after: 2015 Hugo results; as-it-happened commentary at File 770; Hugo Ceremony Video Posted;"Memories of Tonight’s Hugo Ceremony"; Locus; detailed voting statistics [PDF]; "What the alternate Hugo Ballot would likely have been"; similarly, "Alternate Timeline Hugo Awards"; looking at the statistics; "The Hugo Awards, and Some Thoughts Thereon"; "What The Complete Puppy Shutout Means And Doesn’t Mean"; Wired; Wall Street Journal; io9; NPR; The Mary Sue; Guardian; Guardian again; Blastr; "Being a Jerk About the Hugos: Not as Effective a Strategy as You Might Think"; LA Times; "The Hugo Results—Don’t Be A Dick"; Slate.com; Charlie Stross; "Talkin’ About The Puppies"; George R.R. Martin Caught!; Alexandra Erin; Gary K. Wolfe/Chicago Tribune; Ann Leckie; "Who Really Runs the Hugo Awards?"; New Republic; James Worrad; Amazing Stories news and links; Melinda Snodgrass; Eric Flint on "The Divergence Between Popularity and Awards in Fantasy and Science Fiction"; Craig Engler; Lawyers, Guns & Money; io9; Wired on Puppygate (again).
The long back-story: File 770 has further posts and link roundups; more 11/4; 12/4; 13/4; 14/4; 15/4; 15/4; Final Hugo Ballot Adds Novel, Short Story 16/4; 16/4; Measuring The Slates' Impact on the Final Hugo Ballot 17/4; 17/4; 18/4; Black Gate Withdraws 19/4; Hugo Ballot Is Locked 19/4; 19/4; 20/4; 21/4; 22/4; 23/4; 24/4; 25/4; 26/4; Edmund R. Schubert Withdraws 27/4; 27/4; 28/4; 29/4; 30/4; 1/5; 2/5; An Account of Juliette Wade's Withdrawal from Sad Puppies 3, 2/5; 2/5; 3/5; 4/5; 5/5; 6/5; 7/5; 8/5; 9/5; 10/5; 11/5; 12/5; 13/5; 14/5; Wall Street Journal on Sad Puppies 15/5; 15/5; 16/5; 17/5; 18/5; 19/5; 20/5; Voting Expert Asks Help To Attend Sasquan 21/5; 21/5; 22/5; 23/5; 24/5; 25/5; 26/5; 27/5; 28/5; 29/5; 30/5; 31/5; 1/6; Tracks of the Puppy 2/6; 2/6; 3/6; 4/6; 5/6; 6/6; 7/6; 8/6; 9/6; 10/6; 11/6; 12/6; 13/6; 14/6; 15/6; 16/6; 17/6; 18/6; 19/6; 20/6; 21/6; 22/6; 23/6; 24/6; 25/6; 26/6; 27/6; 28/6; 29/6; 30/6; 1/7; 2/7; 3/7; 4/7; 5/7; 6/7; A Puppy Epilogue 6/7. Starting again after the Hugos: 25/8 "Talkin’ About The Puppies"; 25/8 "Puppies In Perpetual Motion"; 26/8 "Enriching Your Puppy Vocabulary"; 27/8 "Dogs With A Blog"; 28/8 "When The Puppies Come Marching Home"; 29/8 "Chapter Five Esk 8/29 Ancillary Doghouse"; 30/8 "Need Less Bow, More Wow"; 3/9 "Sad Puppies 4 Begins"; 7/9 "Hitch in Sasquan Nominating Data Turnover"; A Proposal for a New Award with Protection against Voters Who Vote Wrong.
Guardian; io9; Adam Roberts; Salon; Telegraph; Scott Edelman, Strange Horizons; Atlantic; Foster on Film; Mary Robinette Kowal; Nicholas Whyte; Kari Sperring; Daily Beast; Daily Kos; Connie Willis; Jason Sanford; Eric Flint; New Republic; New Statesman; Guardian again and again; Alastair Reynolds; Obsidian Wings; Philip Sandifer; Cheryl Morgan; Melinda Snodgrass; Jim C. Hines; New York Review of SF; io9's "Eight Books You Need To Know About To Understand The Hugo Awards Snafu".
Various proposed remedies emerge; Bruce Schneier on possible rules changes; a fervent endorsement of the No Award response; "we’d better all be ready to go to the business meeting"; a parody site; proposed anti-slate reform "E Pluribus Hugo: Out of Many, A Hugo"; E Pluribus Hugo: final polishing, FAQ etc; WSFS New Business: proposed Hugo changes.
Sad Puppies Speak (see also Failfandomanonwiki); What Puppies Most Hate; Mr Business Meeting.
George R.R. Martin: "Puppygate"; "Me and the Hugos"; "Tone"; "Blogging for Rockets"; "Where's the Beef?"; "What Now?"; (comment at Independent); "Hatespeech"; "Reading for Rockets"; "A Reply to Larry Correia"; "Meanwhile, Back at the War"; "Larry Correia, Once Again"; "On the Darkling Plain"; "Joining Sasquan"; "Once More, Into the Kennels"; "Black Gate Withdraws"; "Fanageddon"; "Puppy Whines"; "No On NO AWARD"; "More Hugo Musings"; "Reading for Hugos"; "Wars, Woes, Work"; "Hugo Voting Continues"; "Buy Tor Now"; "Speaking of Awards ..."; "A Family Reunion"; "Six Days Left "; "Sasquan and Beyond"; "Worldcon: Winning and Losing"; "Handicapping the Hugos"; "Handicapping the Hugos, Part the Second"; [After Worldcon:] "Hugo Aftermath"; "The Hugo Losers Party"; "What's It All About, Alfie?"; "The Alfies"; "Next Year’s Hugos"; "Awards, Awards, and More Awards".
Post-File 770 (whose heroic daily roundups ceased on 6 July): Pups all bark, no bite as Tor boycott fails, 11/7; Adam Roberts; Lou Antonelli, major fuckwit (see also File 770; again; more fallout; a summary; Antonelli not banned from Worldcon); Map of the 2015 Puppy Kerfuffle; Yes! magazine; io9: "How The Hugo Awards Saboteurs Actually Disproved Their Own Best Argument"; "The Hugo Awards ceremony drinking game"; see "How it all worked out ..." above; Adam Roberts, on the day of the Hugo ceremony, looks back.
April 2015
• "Malcolm Edwards to step down at Orion"
• The New Yorker on Gene Wolfe
• 2017 Worldcon site selection
• 2015 Prometheus shortlist
• "Lost Pages of A Wrinkle in Time Unearthed"
• Goldie Awards shortlist (see genre categories)
• 2016 GUFF nominations announced – with FAQ
• 2015 ESFS Awards
• K.J. Parker = Tom Holt
• Ramsey Campbell, Jolly Good Fellow
• "Flesh eating plant named after Alien creature creator H R Giger"
• SF² Concatenation Summer 2015 Newscast
• "Top Ten Most Common Short Story Names"
• TAFF result and figures
• Gemmell Awards longlists
• Arthur C. Clarke Award shortlist
• Tiptree Award
• BSFA Awards
• Philip K. Dick Award
• Ditmar Awards
• Terry Pratchett tribute graffiti
• SFWA Solstice Awards
• Foolery: Nature; National Trust; Charlie Stross; "Hobbits are all bastards, claims Daily Mail"; CERN researchers confirm existence of the Force; Wonder Woman’s Invisible Jet Now on Display; A Good ThingMarch 2015
• Pre-Hugo shortlist rumblings; more
• Clarke Award: full submissions list
• Writer Beware on Omni Reboot "rights grab"
• John Scalzi, Prognostication Master
• Rowling on Dumbledore yet again
• The Bookseller YA Book Prize
• W. Heath Robinson saved for the nation
• Coming soon: Triffid Alley, London
• Holly Lisle: "Open Letter to SFWA Upon My Resignation"
• Ursa Major Awards voting opens
• Terry Pratchett (1948-2015); Guardian; Telegraph; New York Times; The Register; more links in SF Encyclopedia post
• Justina Robson: "Women, give science fiction a chance"
• Kazuo Ishiguro strikes back: "I am on the side of the pixies and dragons"
• Lambda Awards SF/Fantasy/Horror shortlist
• "Sigourney Weaver slams the Oscars: Sci-fi films don't get enough respect "
• The Pope recommends SF
• British Library: The Gothic (archived)
• Ursula K. Le Guin on Kazuo Ishiguro
• SFWA Grand Master: Larry Niven
• A new home for the VATMOSS horror pageFebruary 2015
• Leonard Nimoy (1931-2015)
• "Dracula deserts Shropshire"
• More about L. Ron Hubbard
• First Edition Fever: The Iliad
• Bram Stoker Awards shortlist
• Nebula Awards shortlist
• Grand Master William F. Nolan
• BSFA Awards shortlist
• Kitschies shortlist
• Arthur Machen Collection update
• "SFWA Welcomes Self-Published and Small Press Authors!"
• 2014 Locus Recommended Reading ListJanuary 2015
• After Colleen McCullough's death: how would your Australian obituary read?
• George Lucas confesses
• The new editor of F&SF
• More Lovecraftian disputation
• Sasquan (Worldcon 2015) membership rates to rise on 1 February
• 2016 Cardiff Eastercon bid withdrawn
• Hugo Award nominations are open
• SF² Concatenation Spring 2015 Newscast
• 1926 vision of London in 2026
• Philip K. Dick Award shortlist
• FAAn Awards voting is open
• Loncon 3 post-mortem: final attendance, very very small surplus
• What J.G. Ballard's drafts looked like
• 2015 TAFF race opens: vote here; PDF ballot form
• "The Virtues of Know-Nothing Criticism"