Ran

I'd assume HBO Max, just as Superman and Lois. I was wondering at possible budget, and apparently S&L is suppose to be in the $3.5-$4.5 million range, per episode. Other shows The CW are less, but hard to imagine B5 being done for anything under $3M.

I saw JMS hinting that there may be B5 news. I supposed it should not be a surprise that it's a reboot rather than a continuation, but.. the CW is not the place I'd have wanted it to be at. Yes, they are very genre-heavy, lots of Arrowverse shows and the like, but the budgets are constrained and the "house style" of most of their shows is aimed at a younger crowd. Still, great for JMS, and hope it works out!

I assume it is this one, from August 2017. Here's an example of the sort of answer that I think people were not amused by:

I think Kal's views are most concisely found here, where he cited Bakker promising answers and payoffs to things that were not, in fact, answered and paid off, with the implication I think that Bakker was deliberately lying in interviews and forums. Now, I can't recall whether Bakker later claimed, or whether supporters did on his behalf, that in fact the reader's efforts to divine deeper truths and developing grand theories was deliberately encouraged and ultimately thwarted by Bakker as a way to highlight a philosophical or thematic point regarding the biases of our meat-ware brains, trying to impose order and hierarchy on things where there are none. Per Solo, the opinions of Bakker and his supporters do not actually matter: that's like, their opinion, man, but it need not be yours just because they say it.

Kal: Bakker set out to troll his readers and this negatively impacted his writing. Solo: Quoth the Derrida, "The author is dead." Because you cannot ever truly know the intentions of an author (or indeed anyone else), you can judge the work by what is in the book and not by what you construe of the author's intentions outside of it.

This was news I never expected to see: Matt Wagner's Grendel to be adapted by Netflix, in an 8 episode order. I don't expect they will delve into the various iterations of Grendel, but Hunter Rose should provide story enough.

Gildor's remarks about not being able to give advice because of Frodo's cageyness, and his concern of meddling in the affairs of Gandalf, strike me as the answer to it: while he knew the situation was serious, he believed that had his help been wanted it would have been asked for. So while he makes sure to send word out -- word that ends up helping them, ultimately -- he and his companions go on their way.

Isildur was definitely recognized as High King, and Valandil his son used the title of High King in Arnor, as distinct from his cousin Meneldil, who was King of Gondor. The only thing Valandil didn't seem to do is attempt to press the point that the high kingship meant that Meneldil should consult with him and whatnot.

Right. Though worth noting that the claim was rejected under a false premise, namely that Isildur was not High King after his father’s death. As Tolkien wrote, the Steward and Council of Gondor refused to respond when Arvedui pointed out that fact.

Except the President of France doesn’t have it as part of their official role to await the return of an heir of Charlemagne to be a true king. It’s explicit that the Stewards in general, and Denethor in particular up until his despair (as recounted by Faramir’s recollection of Boromir questioning his father) saw their awaiting the return of the rightful king to be a foundational aspect of their role.

Travelling ATM, but I will look into it when I can. Those are quite rare, and are a security thing if your ISP has had spam/bot issues, as I understand it.

Thank you! Couldn’t find it in any Rick and Morty entry on spotify. “For the Damaged Coda” is the title of the song. It’s a good one. ETA: The song from the penultimate episode, "Borrowed Time", is by Tennis, for those wondering. Liked that one as well.

Terrific final pair of episodes, especially the finale, I thought. Music was on point for that episode, particularly the brain recorder playthrough and then Evil Morty’s escape from the Central Finite Curve (though I’m sure that one has been used before).

If you go to Amazon and search the kindle preview, that section of the book is part of the preview. Essentially Tolkien says that descendants of the royal house of Númenor were beardless because of the elven blood in their lineage. Húrin, the First Steward, was a kinsman of King Minardil, and so he and his descendants also had ties to the royal line. Denethor was something of a throwback to the old royal line, hence no beard (but this implies this wasn't necessarily the case for all the Stewards), and of course Faramir and Boromir's mother provides another tie to elven blood because she was the daughter of Prince Adrahil of Dol Amroth, whose ancestry includes a legendary marriage to one of Nimrodel's companions.

An issue I noted while the tree was in production, so the absence of the sons may also be related to that. I don't recall if GRRM made any remark on it. Entirely possible they are bastards or from a previous marriage, yes, given the time line, but ultimately we just don't know.

Based on that, it sounds like a mostly-faithful remake that isn't shot-for-shot and maybe inserts some new material in any gaps.

We had relatively little to do with the creation of the trees. Off hand, the only thing I can say is that sometimes decisions were made on the basis of space limitations. George's Stark and Targaryen trees also had him noting he was not going to create details about off-shoots from marriages of daughters to men of other houses, and their off-spring in turn, etc. While we know Jast has sons, I don't think George felt like inventing names for them, so that may be why the graphics designer left them off.

Lord Brax is also among the lords Jaime says are escorting Tywin's remains to Casterly Rock in AFfC. Tytos Brax must have been ransomed, and the ASoS appendix entry is incorrect, a holdover from ACoK that slipped through the gaps. Perhaps he was one of the people the Freys traded in return for some of their own prisoners at Harrenhal? Arya did not necessarily witness every prisoner exchange. That's probably the best solution. I'll make a note about having the ASoS appendix updated.

Per IMDB, they are basically "Characters created by" credits. There's no way WGA would allow a collective to get a normal writing credit.

Keiko Nobumoto, who wrote all the episodes and the movie, isn't involved, as far as I understand it. I know Shinichiro Watanabe is a creative consultant, but IMO without Nobumoto it's just going to be Americanized pastiche and that's not interesting to me.

Faye Valentine is a bit less pneumatic, one must admit. They've not yet revealed Ed. Not sure if they're saving her for the last episodes or if they've decided to keep her for a possible second season. I'm only interested in the soundtrack, personally, since Yoko Kanno is involved. Live action makes zero sense to me, but de gustibus non est disputandum.

Count the awards they have. Add in the Writers Guild of America awards -- multiple of them, for someone who allegedly wrote only some" descent" scripts -- and the Edwards and the Bram Stokers. And go ahead and find someone with a modicum of sense who'll argue that any one of this Hugos for short fiction were not in the same class as any other nominee in those years -- you won't find them, because they absolutely were. "'Repent, Harlequin!' Said the Ticktock Man", "I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream", "The Beast Who Shouted Love at the Heart of the World" are classics of the genre. Google's Ngrams viewer, which tracks the presence of phrases across their catalog of millions of scanned publications, is helpful to give some sense of just who was written about in various years -- I've included a few of the contemporaries besides Ellison and Le Guin. Ellison was someone who was in the conscience of the genre, of the literary and popular world, about as much as Le Guin for a long time. His personal faults overshadowed his career in its late stage at the same as health issues reduced his output while Le Guin was still going strong, but the idea that you can say he had only "slight" literary achievement remains absolute BS. He was one of the most notable and influential writers in the genre at his height. Le Guin was a much nicer person. She never courted controversy. But I'd put the best of her short fiction against Ellison's best short fiction any day and say that it would be purely personal preference as to who had the better oeuvre (and if we want to talk simply versatility, Ellison was definitely a much more experimental writer.) Neil Gaiman credits Ellison with making him the writer he is today. But what does he know? No doubt Gaiman, too, will one day only be a footnote in the history of the genre. I think JMS doesn't have to worry about Ellison's reputation -- the things he did wrong cannot be changed retroactively, and most people who know anything about the history of the genre know the body of work he left behind and its place in the history of the genre. I think JMS is publishing it because it's a way to honor Harlan, by getting out some version of the great white whale that he had struggled with for decades.

"A lot of his contemporaries" would have to include hundreds of forgotten authors. If you then mean only "top-tier contemporaries", I also think this is untrue -- how can one of the most award-winning authors in the history of the genre have only "slight" success? He's in the same ballpark as Ursula K. LeGuin, for Pete's sake! This view of his reputation is entirely predicated on the fact that he was not a novelist, near as I can tell. It's wrongheaded. It's ahistorical. He was widely known and read. He was in Who's Who in America alongside politicans, business leaders, world-famous artists and atheletes, etc. He appeared on prime time television to national audiences. He wrote influential TV scripts and influential TV criticism.

I enjoyed it, but then I've never met a GGK book I did not like (well, except for A Song for Arbonne the first time I tried to read it, for some reason). That said, River of Stars is not among my favorite GGK books, whereas I'd say Under Heaven probably is. So... I don't know, I guess it depends on whether you liked Under Heaven. If yes, no harm trying River of Stars.

I think JMS has a point on this. Seems to be a lot of pressure in publishing to get shorter books out, and not surprised if this covers collections.