Octothorpe

53: It Was John’s Idea

John has COVID, Alison wanted to do a podcast, and Liz had no better offers.

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Content warnings this episode: None

Find a text version of our answers to Cora’s questions here!

Cover art: Sue Mason

Theme music: Fanfare for Space by Kevin MacLeod (CC BY 4.0)

52: Who’s Robert Picardo?

John, Alison and Liz have been nominated for a BSFA Award! (Also, Liz is on holiday, naturally.)

Please email your letters of comment to octothorpecast@gmail.com and tag @OctothorpeCast when you post about the show on social media.

Content warnings this episode: None

• Letters of comment
  • Chris Garcia
    • The Flying Fantastical Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore
  • Peter Sullivan
    • Chris for TAFF
  • Kin-Ming Looi
  • Duncan MacGregor
  • Lori Anderson
• Hugo deadline is March 15th
  • We recommended some things on Cora Buhlert’s blog
  • Tears of the Anaren by C. W. Longbottom
• Eastercon: What do you want from your bids?
  • Liz:
    • Who’s running it and why?
    • Where and why?
      • Are there significant drawbacks?
    • Commitment to having code of conduct/access policies, even if they’re in progress
    • Why will it be particularly fun?
    • What bits of Eastercon tradition don’t you plan to implement (if any)?
    • What are your plans for hybrid/virtual content?
    • Do you have a good presentation that shows you have organisational nous?
  • Alison:
    • Expanding on who’s running the convention a little
    • Are you running at Easter? (See Eastercon tradition)
    • What about real ale?
    • What are your provisions for children?
  • John:
    • How much will it cost?
• Picks
  • Liz: The Fifty-Year Mission: The Next 25 Years: From The Next Generation to J. J. Abrams: The Complete, Uncensored, and Unauthorized Oral History of Star Trek (hardback, epub, Kindle)
  • John: Android: Netrunner (eBay)
  • Alison: I Didn’t Do the Thing Today by Madeleine Dore (paperback, epub, Kindle)
• The Jasmine Throne by Tasha Suri (paperback, epub, Kindle)
• Music credits
  • Our theme music is Fanfare for Space by Kevin MacLeod, used under a CC BY 4.0 license

51: Make TAFF a Four-Way Tie

John is a spoilsport, Alison is promoting and Liz might come to Eastercon.

Please email your letters of comment to octothorpecast@gmail.com and tag @OctothorpeCast when you post about the show on social media.

Content warnings this episode: COVID-19 (chapter 2), Spider-Man: No Way Home casting spoilers (chapter 6)

• Letters of comment
  • Chris Garcia
  • Ali Baker
  • Mark Plummer
    • TAFF ebooks
  • Geri Sullivan
    • TAFF administrators’ FAQ
• COVID-19
  • Reclamation are requiring vaccination for all attendees
  • Hotel bookings are open, and the booking code has gone out to members
• Podcast corner:
  • The Incomparable Gameshow
  • The Incomparable #600
  • Become the Teapot
• DisCon III Tweet from Mary Robinette Kowal
• The proposal for Game Hugo is out!
• Jason Sanford is doing a survey on SF&F magazines and the pandemic to compare to his pre-pandemic data
• Picks
  • Liz: Far from the Light of Heaven by Tade Thompson (paper, epub, Kindle)
  • Alison: Loki (Disney+)
  • John: Spider-Man: No Way Home (in cinemas)
    • tick, tick… BOOM! (Netflix)
• Music credits
  • Our theme music is Fanfare for Space by Kevin MacLeod, used under a CC BY 4.0 license

50: This is How Boxing Championships Work

John is exchanging, Alison is rekindling her sensawunda, and Liz is watching the builders.

Please email your letters of comment to octothorpecast@gmail.com and tag @OctothorpeCast when you post about the show on social media.

• We are fifty! That’s kind of unbelievable.
• Letters of comment
  • Bill Burns
  • Dave Coxon
    • You can follow us on:
      • BoardGameGeek (John, Alison)
      • Goodreads (John, Alison, Liz)
      • Letterboxd (John, Alison)
      • Untappd (John, Alison, Liz)
    • What’s our favourite beer style?
  • Chris Garcia
  • Peter Sullivan on Twitter
• Podcast corner:
  • Liz has been listening to the Caribbean SF Podcast
    • Brandon O’Brien Can You Sign My Tentacle?
    • Karen Lord The Plague Doctors
• Convention corner:
  • Redemption has been postponed by a year
  • Corflu Pangloss has been postponed by six months
  • The FAAn awards have not moved
    • The TAFF Free eBooks page
• TAFF voting is here
  • Alison says “Anders for TAFF!”
  • John is pro-Dill Chips (Fia)
• Professor Esther MacCallum-Stewart’s inaugural lecture is on Dungeons and Dragons and is being streamed online
• The BSFA Awards Long List
  • Thank you to whoever nominated us!
• The Vimes Boots index
• Picks
  • John: Leviathan Falls by James S.A. Corey (hardback, epub, Kindle)
  • Alison: The Actual Star by Monica Byrne (hardback, epub, Kindle)
    • Tweet
  • Liz: Elder Race by Adrian Tchaikovsky (paperback, epub, Kindle)
• Music credits
  • Our theme music is Fanfare for Space by Kevin MacLeod, used under a CC BY 4.0 license

49: Not Sufficiently Sassy

John is demanding, Alison joined a Discord, and Liz knows a lot about the WSFS Constitution.

Please email your letters of comment to octothorpecast@gmail.com and tag @OctothorpeCast when you post about the show on social media.

Content warnings this episode: Genocide and war (chapter 1), racism and capitalism (chapter 2), sexism (chapter 5)

• Letters of comment
  • Liquid of comment from This Never Happens (Cornish branch)
  • Jonathan Baddeley: “Tedious NPC” would make a great badge ribbon
  • Ali Baker
  • Dave Coxon
  • Chris Garcia
  • Kat Tanaka Okopnik says Nice is not bidding for 2026
  • Crying movies
    • Fran Dowd: Platoon
    • Farah Mendlesohn: Fried Green Tomatoes
    • Ang Rosin: Dead Poets Society
  • Alison very much appreciated this sponsor read on Podside Picnic
• Year’s Best African Speculative Fiction edited by Otherwise Award-winning author Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki
  • Kindle Direct Publishing took down Ekpeki’s account shortly before having to pay him royalties
  • File 770 reports on the eventual end of the saga
  • This is a continuation of Jason Sanford’s discussion of financial barriers to global authors
• The DisCon III Site Selection fiasco
  • Salon Futura’s write-up of DisCon III
  • File 770’s comment thread with a lot of inside baseball
  • Steve Cooper has set up a mailing list on groups.io to look at Electronic Site Selection
• Chicon 8 says:
  • “Hugo nominations will open later in January, and will run through mid-March. All members of DisCon III and anyone who joins Chicon 8 before the 31st of January 2022 will be eligible to nominate in this year’s Hugo Awards.”
  • Section 3.7.1 of the WSFS constitution, fact fans
• Awards!
  • Nicholas Whyte answers our questions
  • Nerds of a Feather has recused itself from the 2022 Hugo Awards
    • Commentary and interesting history courtesy of File 770
  • We listened to Hugo, Girl!, a fancast in which feminists read and discuss SF
  • The FAAn Achievement Awards 2022
    • The Incompleat Register 2021
    • “A ‘fanzine’, for our purposes, is defined as an immutable artefact, once published not subject to revision or modification. The fanzine might not exist in a physical form. A PDF, for example, is an artefact.”
    • “[A perzine is a] fanzine which typically has few, if any, contributors other than its editor(s).”
  • Alison has joined the Hugo Award Study Committee which is a Discord server
    • If you’d like to join then contact the chair, Cliff Dunn
    • Their last report was in 2018 at the San Jose Worldcon
• New Year’s resolutions
  • John: Publish more fanzines and make an app
  • Alison: Have at least one SFF book a month ready to talk about on Octothorpe.
    • Alison’s super nerdy iPad board game challenge
  • Liz: Read 80 books on Goodreads (maybe)
• Picks
  • Alison: Sinopticon: A Celebration of Chinese Science Fiction translated and edited by Xue Christine Ni (epub, Kindle)
  • Liz: She Who Became The Sun by Shelly Parker-Chan (epub, Kindle, hardback, paperback pre-order)
  • John: The Expanse (Amazon Prime)
• Music credits
  • Our theme music is Fanfare for Space by Kevin MacLeod, used under a CC BY 4.0 license

48: The Things You Nominate Are All Extremely Unpopular

John and Alison are watching cutting-edge TV, and Liz is hungry.

Please email your letters of comment to octothorpecast@gmail.com and tag @OctothorpeCast when you post about the show on social media.

Content warnings this episode: genocide (chapter 2); war and defence contracting (chapter 4)

• Letters of comment
  • Farah Mendlesohn asks “but what did you think of DisCon III?”
  • Doug Faunt asks about the opening ceremony’s Christmas music
  • Flick asks why we didn’t mention the Xinjiang region
    • UK House of Commons motion
    • Tahir Hamut Izgil writing at The Atlantic
  • We’re sorry to Ira Alexandre for mispronouncing their name in episodes 20 and 21
• Hugo Awards
  • Octothorpe was almost nominated for the Hugo Awards
    • Octothorpe was the last fancast to be eliminated from the ballot!
    • We were surprised and very thrilled and thank you so much for nominating us
  • E Pluribus Hugo
    • Helsinki’s explanation of how this works
  • Nicholas Whyte analyses the Hugo Awards in detail
  • Camestros Felaptron’s Hugo posts: 1, 2, 3
  • The Hugo Awards long list
    • It always has delights on it and this year is no exception
      • Best Series: Ben Aaronovitch’s Rivers of London
      • Best Related Work: The Hugo Spreadsheet of Doom 2021 (presumably it was actually 2020 that was nominated now that we think of it)
        • 2022 open for your suggestions now. Get those fanzines and fan writers and fan artists and fancasts that you think are absolutely great on there!
        • Direct link: https://bit.ly/hugoaward2022
      • Fanzines just below the line included Bill Bowers’ Outworlds, William Breiding’s Portable Storage and Chris Garcia’s The Drink Tank
• Sponsorship
  • Shaun Duke points out that Raytheon was one of the contractors that was employed in launching the James Webb Space Telescope
• NASFiC
  • File 770 reports that Winnipeg are pivoting to a 2023 NASFiC
  • Orlando in 2026 is also pivoting to a 2023 NASFiC
    • File 770
    • Official site
    • This leaves the 2026 field
      • Jeddah, Saudi Arabia
      • Los Angeles, CA, USA
      • Nice, France
        • Brice de Nice
• Glasgow has launched a lovely "move 500 miles poster
  • John can walk 804.672 kilometres
  • Earworm
  • A fantastic edit
  • Play along on Strava
• Picks:
  • Alison: The Expanse (Amazon Prime)
    • OK she is a bit behind but it is a 2022 Plan
  • Liz: Vita Nostra by Marina and Sergei Dyachenko, translated by Julia Meitov Hersey (paperback, epub, Kindle)
  • John:
    • Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Coco (Disney+)
• Music credits
  • Our theme music is Fanfare for Space by Kevin MacLeod, used under a CC BY 4.0 license

47: Authors Eating John

John is sleepy, Alison is talking to Chinese fans, and Liz went to the Hugos.

Please email your letters of comment to octothorpecast@gmail.com and tag @OctothorpeCast when you post about the show on social media.

Content warnings this episode: COVID-19 (chapter 2); racism (chapter 3); foreign policy and sexism (chapter 4)

• Letters of comment
  • Farah and Fran talking about masking at Novacon
  • A big discussion about BSFA
    • You can get by just NOT TELLING THE BSFA your address (DON’T TRY THAT WITH THE WORLDCON)
  • Chris Garcia
• Site selection at DisCon III
  • Chengdu in 2023 won
    • File 770’s reporting on the win
    • Chinese fans seem nice!
    • The livestream was good, and had 106,000 viewers
    • Lots of different Chinese university SF societies encouraging the bid; spot the flag in Gallifreyan and the monolith
  • WSFS Business Meeting
    • The video of the session we discuss
    • Kevin Standlee’s LiveJournal post about it
    • File 770’s reporting on the session
  • There are legitimate concerns about China
    • John found he generally agreed with these tweets from Jeannette Ng
      • Tweet
      • Thread #1
      • Thread #2
    • The guests are Liu Cixin, Sergei Lukyanenko and Robert J. Sawyer
      • A File 770 commenter outlines the issues with Lukyanenko
• Hugo Awards
  • If Fanzine had 53 fewer votes and Fancast had 42 fewer votes they would not have been awarded
• Picks
  • John: The Psychopath Club by Sandra Bond (paperback, Kindle)
  • Alison: Sibilant Fricative by Adam Roberts (paperback, Kindle)
  • Liz: The Witness for the Dead by Katherine Addison (epub, paperback, Kindle)
• Picks for Christmas song
  • Alison: Chiron Beta Prime by Jonathan Coulton
  • John:
    • California Christmastime by Crazy Ex-Girlfriend
    • Oh Santa! by Mr.B the Gentleman Rhymer
  • Liz: Bethlehem Down
  • Alison’s playlist of Christmas songs which do not presuppose God or Santa
• Music credits
  • Our theme music is It’s Christmas Time by Frank Schröter, used under the Simplified Filmmusic.io Standard License

46: Is My Head Extremely Solid, Or What

John is afraid, Alison is in Portugal, and Liz is an absolute unit.

Please email your letters of comment to octothorpecast@gmail.com and tag @OctothorpeCast when you post about the show on social media.

Content warnings this episode: COVID-19 (chapters 1 and 2, but particularly chapter 2)

Thanks to Stow Shirts for sponsoring this week's episode! Use code OCTOTHORPE for a 10% discount.

• No letters of comment this week, we will do them next week!
• Smofcon Europe
• COVID round-up
  • World Fantasy Convention
    • The person who got COVID Tweeted
  • Novacon
    • Alan Bellingham
    • Tony Cullen
    • Dave Lally
    • Caroline Mullan
    • Colette Reap
    • Nicholas Whyte
• Worldcon site selection
  • Deadline on 14 December for returning PDF ballots
  • PDF ballots are available here
  • Future Convention Q&As from Worldcon/Eurocon/Smofcon bids
• Join the BSFA
• Picks
  • Liz: Did Alison already have Hades or can I have Hades?
    • Roguelikes vs Roguelites
  • John: Playing board games with friends
    • Sushi Go Party!
    • Escape from the Aliens in Outer Space
    • Zombie Dice
    • EXIT: The Game: Advent Calendar: The Mystery of the Ice Cave
  • Alison: The Man in the High Castle (Amazon Prime)
    • Based on the Philip K. Dick book (paperback, ebook, Kindle)
• Music credits
  • Our theme music is Fanfare for Space by Kevin MacLeod, used under a CC BY 4.0 license

45: A Fistful of Dongles

John, Alison, and guest Marguerite Smith are live from Novacon 50!

Please email your letters of comment to octothorpecast@gmail.com and tag @OctothorpeCast when you post about the show on social media.

Content warnings this episode: women’s body shapes (we are very positive about all body shapes but we wanted to let y’all know we touch on it)

• Novacon
• Worldcon
  • DisCon III
  • Glasgow in 2024
  • Dublin in 2029
• Picks
  • John: Voting in the Hugo Awards because he’s insufferably smug about having done the reading
  • Alison: Daangerous Visions: A Faanfiction Faanthology, 1939–2009
  • Marguerite:
    • A book by Joseph Elliott-Coleman (and apologies that we got the surname wrong in the episode)
    • Burning Brightly: 50 Years of Novacon
• How to pronounce the word “grimace”
• Music credits
  • Our theme music is Rattlesnake Railroad by Brett Van Donsel, used under a CC BY 4.0 license

44: Quite a Lot of Big Buts

John might hire a camper van, Alison might wee twice before bed, and Liz might not plot enough graphs.

Please email your letters of comment to octothorpecast@gmail.com and tag @OctothorpeCast when you post about the show on social media.

Content warnings this episode: COVID-19 (chapter 4), sexism (chapter 5)

• We’re doing Octothorpe Live at Novacon at 1pm on Sunday!
• Letters of comment
  • Carved turnip
• Eastercon
  • Reclamation has a hotel
  • Tasha Suri is their new Guest of Honour
  • Zen Cho has sadly had to step down
• Eastercon in a post-coronavirus world
  • There was a thread on the future of Eastercon venues
    • UK Eastercon Community Group
    • Not to be confused with the old Future of Eastercon group
  • Eastercons may need to move beyond hotels
    • University accommodation
    • Camp sites such as Butlins or Pontins
      • Electromagnetic Field (EMF)
      • It was pointed out that this has issues with dates
        • Easter may be cold/windy/rainy
        • Bank holidays and warm weather are a busy time for these sites
      • SFX Weekender already does this sort of thing so it is feasible!
  • Some hotels have been asking for huge deposits
    • This is probably due to increased risk and not enough Government guidance
      • It might go away again when these change
      • Would a central Eastercon organisation help? (Probably not)
• Redemption 2022
• Picks
  • Alison: Dune (outside) and Black Widow (Disney+)
    • Liz’s comment on the Dune soundtrack
  • John: Unfathomable and the Ludoquist
  • Liz: The Empress of Salt and Fortune (epub, Kindle, paperback)
• Music credits
  • Our theme music is Fanfare for Space by Kevin MacLeod, used under a CC BY 4.0 license