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At least Herbert got his revenge with one of the best and pettiest burns in all of sci-fi literature

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Reading Diane Lacey's open letter about the (self-)censorship scandal of the Hugo Awards, the impetus of collusion/slating from Chinese publishers stood out. zionius actually dug further and presented evidence that the guilty party appeared to be Science Fiction World, which was involved in the Worldcon. So I thought I'd type up something adjacent to the matter.

SFW as a publication had been declining in quality for some time – the typical Chinese SF reader will remember their editors' failures to catch plagiarism while circlejerking pointless filler – and at one point actually blamed the planning of the Worldcon for taking up too much of their time. But this was far from the most mismanaged they had been, as one former employee exposed many more problems.

General incompetence

Chi Hui's relationship with SFW began with submitting short stories to the magazine Science Fiction World, eventually becoming an editor at the magazine when it already entered its period of decline, before departing about four years ago.

Due to the Worldcon 81 being highly-commodified and interest in the sci-fi industry, she took the opportunity to write an effortpost that delved into what it was truly like in industry. The gist of it was that as opposed to an actual "sci-fi industry", what investment went into it just made it a "Liu Cixin industry" — as much as a decade ago she noted the same about this "fairy ring", and now the "supply chain" is just as broken. Other authors in attendance, such as Han Song, concurred with this view.

Additional points in that initial post included specific details about the lazy and myopic initiatives at her former workplace such as:

  1. SFW defaulting to the assumption that its consumers are primarily young men without doing any readership surveys. They attempted to imitate the packaging of For Him Magazine, also popular among young men, only to fail thanks to the costs of printing in full-colour.
  2. SFW defaulting to the observation that its consumers are probably voracious readers, and since Zhihu and Qidian have young people that are voracious readers, SFW content should match Zhihu/Qidian webnovels. This project is still ongoing.
  3. Due to the popularity of web literature, SFW planned to create a site to host short stories and novellas. To increase engagement they planned to add gambling elements, except this fell through due to the illegal nature of the ideas.
  4. Since everyone wants to make SF movies, and successful western movies began from space opera, they wanted to fund IP development of space opera novels, except they had no budget to actually do this.
  5. Again without doing any readership surveys and assuming that its primary consumers are young men, SFW defaulted to the assumption that young men must like pretty ladies, so promoted and still are promoting attractive women authors for this reason.
  6. Without conducting any market investigations, and due to the scarcity of novellas, arriving at the conclusion that the market must clearly need sci-fi novellas. There continues to be heavy push to promote novellas while disregarding that no matter the length, they would have to be rewritten for an adaption.

Conversations among industry peers also involved them discussing:

  • They're not profitable
  • Having no work they can even commercialize aside from authors' names
  • Nothing that will sell in print
  • Intentionally leaning into works despised by actual SF fans but might attract more readers

Work environment

Yang Guoliang (aka La Zi) is a current editor at Science Fiction World, Chi's former boss, and previously defended SFW's deteriorating standards. He started making statements heavily implied to be directed at her that she "neglected and sullied" the efforts of everyone in the industry with her "impudent lies" and sought to sow division among writers.

In a follow up, Chi thought the accusations absurd, dissected Yang's arguments, and speculated perhaps she was too restrained in her criticism. She drew up an extensive list of her first-hand experiences of total unprofessionalism from 2017–2023 demonstrating which side exactly "neglected and sullied" the industry. Examples include:

  • Yang threatened that she wouldn't be allowed out his office unless she submitted to his demands
  • Relaxing editorial standards to publish a novel that had ripped off Liu Cixin, because Liu himself stopped writing
  • 20% of the staff's annual bonus were transferred to a random bank account to budget for event planning the following year and not reported to finance
  • Openly discussing Chi's bust size, and harassing other attractive female co-workers
  • Ordering editors to work on superiors' personal businesses on company time
  • Threatening to blacklist an author for publishing at rival Eight Light Minutes
  • A new employee had already finished working on an issue but hasn't been paid in 3 months, and after seeking payment, had her name removed from all articles she was credited on
  • A female employee's executive editor credit ended up going to a male employee and she wasn't given even a passing mention
  • Storing porn on company computers

That's just a sampling, and there were instances of toxic drinking culture, belittling women writers, blaming the SF community for poor performance that Chi also touched on. Implied was such an unreasonable workload that mental and physical health of workers were affected, such as requiring therapy or blood pressure medication.

So I guess this slots into the related discussion of writing SF, hope there's some illumination into the inner workings of one of the entities related to the scandal.

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"The Terminator" star Linda Hamilton says she's humbled to work on "Resident Alien" with Alan Tudyk because of his comedic talents.

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The Oscar-nominated French director ('I Lost My Body') premiered his live-action genre bender in Berlin’s Panorama sidebar.

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Tired of the same old sci-fi story? Then you'll want to check out this trailer for The Beast, a unique take on the genre.

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The test involved IVO's quantum drive, a reactionless drive that supposedly doesn't need propellant to generate thrust

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'Repo Man 2' isn’t technically the first 'Repo Man' sequel. Here's your guide to the "Repo World" ahead of 'Repo Man 2: The Wages of Beer.'

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What my colleague and co-author Jason Sanford and I are going to outline in this lengthy report will most certainly not be the final word on the extraordinary events and actions surrounding the 2023 Hugo Awards that were adjudicated and presented by the 81st World Science Fiction Convention held in the city of Chengdu in China in October of 2023.

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Bleecker Street has picked up the U.S. rights to Mikael Håfström's sci-fi thriller Slingshot, which stars Casey Affleck, Laurence Fishburne and Emily Beecham.

Bleecker Street plans a 2024 wide theatrical release for the film about an astronaut struggling to retain his grip on reality on a possibly fatally compromised space mission to Saturn's moon, Titan.

The ensemble cast include Tomer Capone and David Morrissey. R. Scott Adams and Nathan Parker (Moon) penned the screenplay for Slingshot, and Astral Pictures produced in association with Bluestone Entertainment, Széchenyi Funds Ltd. and Filmsquad.

Bluestone Entertainment, Hungarian investor Széchenyi Funds Ltd. and Filmsquad are behind writer-director James Vanderbilt's Nuremberg, set to star Russell Crowe, Rami Malek and Michael Shannon, and with cameras to roll later this month in Hungary.

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Doctor Who senior art director Crissy Howes may have hidden a robot from another sci-fi franchise someplace under the Doctor's nose.

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LGT a list of old Bandai toys - what were your favorite scifi-related toys? I had Star Wars guys and Transformers.

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Hi folks -

Someone (okay, it was a web page) reminded me that we haven't done an online intro thread in a while. Tell us about you - where do you come from? Why are you here? What do you hope to gain from your fellow scifi Red Shirts?

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Sci-fi fans of all ages were devastated when Paramount+ canceled Star Trek: Prodigy in the summer of 2023, but now the series is back with an unexpected new home. Netflix secured a deal to stream the show after it was dropped from Paramount+, with the chance to produce new episodes if it did well. According to a report by The Wrap, as the streamer announced 20 new episodes premiering later in 2024.

Star Trek: Prodigy premiered in October of 2021 on Paramount+ and Nickelodeon, targeting younger audiences in the hopes of creating new fans for one of the most enduring franchises of our time. The show aired one season consisting of 20 episodes, and while there were reports of a second season in the works it was sadly canceled in the summer of 2023. It was also dropped from the Paramount+ catalog all together, leaving fans with no access to the existing episodes. Netflix licensed the show which meant it would at least have a new streaming home, but the company also issued a press release with showrunners Alex Kurtzman, Dan Hageman and Kevin Hageman not long after.

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No, not that one.

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It's in PDF ...

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Straight from PlayStation's latest State of Play event, here's the second look at Ghost Story Games' riff on the familiar formula, new mystery included.

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Francis Ford Coppola has at last revealed our first look at his dream project, Megalopolis, starring Adam Driver.

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Science fiction, when revisited years later, sometimes doesn’t come across as all that fictional. Speculative novels have an impressive track record at prophesying what innovations are to come, and how they might upend the world: H. G. Wells wrote about an atomic bomb decades before World War II, and Ray Bradbury’s 1953 novel, Fahrenheit 451, features devices we’d describe today as Bluetooth earbuds.

Perhaps no writer has been more clairvoyant about our current technological age than Neal Stephenson. His novels coined the term metaverse, laid the conceptual groundwork for cryptocurrency, and imagined a geoengineered planet. And nearly three decades before the release of ChatGPT, he presaged the current AI revolution. A core element of one of his early novels, The Diamond Age: Or, a Young Lady’s Illustrated Primer, is a magical book that acts as a personal tutor and mentor for a young girl, adapting to her learning style—in essence, it is a personalized and ultra-advanced chatbot. The titular Primer speaks aloud in the voice of a live actor, known as a “ractor”—evoking how today’s generative AI, like many digital technologies, is highly dependent on humans’ creative labor.

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This site posts some good short sci-fi stories from time to time

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In Star Trek: Section 31, Yeoh will reprise her role as Emperor Philippa Georgiou – a character she played in Star Trek: Discovery’s first season – who joins a secret division of Starfleet. Tasked with protecting the United Federation of Planets, she also must face the sins of her past.

In addition, it’s been announced that Omari Hardwick (Power), Kacey Rohl (Hannibal), Sam Richardson (Ted Lasso), Sven Ruygrok (One Piece), Robert Kazinsky (Pacific Rim), Humberly Gonzalez (Ginny & Georgia) and James Hiroyuki Liao (Barry) have joined the cast of the original movie event.

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'Dune: Part Two' hit early tracking with a projected box office opening in the U.S./Canada of $80M+

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Community discussion time! How would the /m/scifi community like to be addressed?

SomethingAwful had Goons
4Chan had janitors

What do we call ourselves?

So far I have:

  • Mooks
  • Grunts
  • Carabiners (what I think of every time I hear 'Kbin')
  • Mob
  • Weirdos
  • Misfits
  • Nerds
  • Geeks
  • None of the above?

Feel free to recommend your own, or should we not worry about this at all?

#scifi

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AppleTV+ is adapting Blake Crouch's book "Dark Matter" into a 9-episode TV show, and the first look promises a faithful adaptation.

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Science Fiction

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This magazine is aimed at fans and creators of sci-fi and related media of all kinds. It includes all content related to the sci-fi genre and only content related to the sci-fi genre. The goal is to build a community for everyone who enjoys science fiction and related topics. This includes the obvious books, movies, and TV shows, but also original writing, the discussion of writing SF, futuristic art and designs, and the science and technologies that inspire the sci-fi genre. **Team Top 20**

founded 2 years ago