Forbes on The Folio Society

A gushing Forbes article on the importance and elegance of deluxe books:

When Joanna Reynolds first became CEO of The Folio Society in 2016, the London-based publishing company known for its beautifully illustrated hardcover editions of classic books had been steadily losing money for a decade and was on the verge of being sold. “It kind of lost its way,” Reynolds, a veteran of Time Life Europe and Reader’s Digest, tells me over Zoom. From its post-war inception in 1947, Folio operated as an annual book club, with members signing up to receive four titles a year. “That model everywhere had kind of died, really,” adds Reynolds. “So we [made] a complete change.”

That 21st century innovation not only required the phasing out of an obsolete business model, but also the expansion of what Folio could publish in terms of genre (i.e. moving into science fiction, fantasy, and children’s content), the number of books it could release a year (from four to between 40 and 50), and how those books were marketed to the public.

Most important, however, is maintaining a brand associated with handcrafted beauty and elegance. Every deluxe edition put out by Folio is made with the intention of having the resultant tome occupy prime real estate on a book lover’s shelf for years to come. Such commitment to visual sophistication attracts acclaimed authors, artists, and even fellow publishers like Marvel Entertainment.

Still, I couldn’t help noticing that the Forbes article left out one rather significant element that one would think would have been both timely and relevant.

Neil Gaiman has been removed from UK agent Casarotto Ramsay & Associates’ client list after the Good Omens writer has faced a string of sexual misconduct allegations over the past six months. The change to Casarotto Ramsay’s client list comes amid a wave of creative partners severing ties with Gaiman and his work. Anansi Boys publisher Dark Horse Comics has dropped the once-celebrated writer, while a UK stage production of Coraline was canceled this week.

The Terry Pratchett Estate has now cut ties to Gaiman as well. Apparently pTerry’s heirs have had their fill of Gaiman attempting to trade on a close friendship that was, at the very least, greatly exaggerated, if not entirely fabricated. A one-time co-writing experience is seldom indicative of being bestest buddies, especially when one of the co-writers a) did most of the work and b) is observably disinclined to ever repeat the experience.

Below is a screenshot of the Folio Society’s website from this very morning, only six months after the beginning of #GaimanGate. The reason all the novels by other authors are on the list of 32 (!) Gaiman-related books is because Folio asked Gaiman to provide their deluxe editions with forewords and introductions, although what a mediocrity like Gaiman could possibly have to say about Gene Wolfe defies belief. Now, doesn’t it seem a little odd that Forbes didn’t even ask Folio about this apparent contradiction between their oft-expressed social justice values and the particular authors they choose to feature?

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37-Zip

A dialogue at Kash Patel’s confirmation hearing:

Senator Kennedy: My colleague and friend Senator Durbin called you a conspiracy theorist. Do you remember that?

Kash Patel: I do senator.

You were instrumental in revealing that the Trump-Russia election collusion hoax was a hoax, weren’t you?

Yes sir, I was the lead investigator.

Sounds to me like we need to get some new conspiracy theories because all the old ones turned out to be true. Conspiracy theorists are up something like 37-0.

The correct response to anyone calling you “a conspiracy theorist” is “why, thank you!” Because at this point, it’s tantamount to describing you as a modern prophet or the Kwisatz Haderach. And it’s probably a good idea to ask your accuser why they believe being a complicity theorist is preferable to being aware of acknowledging the various conspiracies that obviously exist and are actively conspiring today.

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Cathedra – One More Day

Tomorrow is the last day you can subscribe to CASTALIA CATHEDRA without a catchup payment being required for your subscription. Since we’re doing just two books per year for this line, it’s only $20 per month to pick up a #1 first edition of the first volume in the series, THE EVERLASTING MAN by G.K. Chesterton. We’re well ahead on the production, so it will be expected to ship soon after the subscription period ends in July.

And thanks to NDM, you can even sport the Cathedra logo in four different colors, black, blue, green, and maroon. The shirts also have the “open book” logo on the back. A Ladies t-shirt is also available.

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Peter Thiel Guts Baen Books

Fandom Pulse reports that Peter Thiel tried to buy Baen Books, was rebuffed, and responded by poaching their top authors and editors for a new science fiction and fantasy publishing house.

Baen Books has fallen into the trap of a lot of mainstream publishing, not building up a stable of modern talent to come up as the next generation… Enter Peter Thiel, founder of PayPal and Donald Trump Advisor with his giant venture capital fund. While he’d been in publishing before, he came to Baen Books with an offer to buy the company and inject capital to modernize it and preserve Baen for the next generation. Fandom Pulse spoke with multiple industry insiders who confirmed this buyout offer. While the details of the offer are not known, Toni Weisskopf, Editor in Chief of Baen Books, reportedly declined, but that didn’t stop Thiel’s hunger to enter the science fiction and fantasy space.

One Baen Books author who asked to be anonymous told Fandom Pulse that the company has a “kill switch” clause in every author contract that would make such a buyout impossible. Fandom Pulse was told that in the event the company sells, rights to books automatically revert to authors. This effectively prevents a sale of the company from occurring, as it would be worthless without the contracts of its top authors in place.

Thiel and his investment group were not deterred but decided to take over genre fiction themselves in a move that would take a lot of Baen’s top remaining talent with them.

Ark Press was formed as Thiel and his investors began a new publishing company to run in tandem with Passage Press, whose face became former Baen author D.J. Butler. Butler had been rumored to be on the shortlist to take over Baen Books once Toni Weisskopf retired and is well-liked in author circles, best-known for his book Witchy Eye, which was highly promoted by his long-time friend Larry Correia.

Fandom Pulse reached out to Butler to confirm Thiel’s investment group involvement and he said, “we’re in the same corporate group [as Passage Press]. Ark has separate editorial and management from Passage. We wish those guys well, and we hope they feel benevolently disposed toward us.”

With the announcement of Ark Press came word that Larry Correia would be penning a new modern fantasy series in the vein of Monster Hunter International for the budding company. It appears that Thiel’s investment group, unable to procure Baen and the Monster Hunter series, decided to take the talent from Baen and directly compete as the Monster Hunter series is still under Baen’s contract.

Fandom Pulse learned that Correia pitched the new series to Baen Books and that Baen Books passed on the series. We reached out to Toni Weisskopf for comment on this and the purchase offer, but she has not responded as of this writing.

Thiel’s move didn’t stop with Baen talent D.J. Butler and Larry Correia, but he also brought Tony Daniel, one of Baen’s former top editors who had previously left for Regency as editor-in-chief of the new company, as well as Baen editor David Afsharirad.

It should be interesting to see how this plays out over time. Ark Press may or may not elect to cooperate with Castalia in the future, but even if they don’t, it’s not as if Baen, or Tor, or anyone else in our space ever has. Passage Press is competent, so I don’t see any reason to assume the Ark Press team won’t be as well. JDA says it’s game-changing, and given the feeble state of Tor Books and the rest of SF/F publishing, he may well be right.

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Conspiracy Theory: Presidential Model

The recent crash of a military helicopter into American Airlines flight 5342 is sparking a lot of doubts about the idea that it was simply a tragic air accident:

Wild conspiracy theorists are pushing unsubstantiated claims that the deadly crash that saw a Army Black Hawk helicopter collide with a passenger jet was deliberate. American Airlines Flight 5342 was approaching Washington’s Reagan National Airport around 9pm Wednesday when the military chopper and plane collided in mid-air, before both falling into the Potomac River. The airplane held four crew members and 60 passengers, and the helicopter carrying three soldiers on a ‘training flight’.

Officials have not said how many people died in the accident but the bodies of 30 people reported to have been recovered so far. Authorities have suggested that there may be no survivors.

The Army and Defense Department has launched an investigation into the crash as many question how a plane with modern collision-avoidance technology and nearby traffic controllers could collide with a military aircraft over the nation’s capital. Conspiracy theorists have rushed to social media to place uncorroborated blame on the US government, suggesting the collision must have been intentional because ‘military helicopters don’t fly into planes’. Some allege the helicopter appeared to ‘chase’ the Bombadier plane as it approached for landing, comparing the scene to a ‘1970s-style assassination’.

Among those “wild conspiracy theorists” is the Commander in Chief of the US Armed Forces, the 47th President of the United States.

The airplane was on a perfect and routine line of approach to the airport. The helicopter was going straight at the airplane for an extended period of time. It is a CLEAR NIGHT, the lights on the plane were blazing, why didn’t the helicopter go up or down, or turn. Why didn’t the control tower tell the helicopter what to do instead of asking if they saw the plane. This is a bad situation that looks like it should have been prevented. NOT GOOD!!!

Fortunately, with President Trump in charge, there is at least a chance that the investigation into the crash will be a legitimate one. And the vital question may not be who was on the plane, but rather, who was on the helicopter.

The Blackhawk apparently did NOT have its transponder on, and was designated as a “PAT” (Priority Air Transport) which means that there was a very high ranking Military Official on board the helicopter.

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Little Black House on the Prairie

There are just so many ways this is almost certain to go very, very wrong:

Little House on the Prairie fans are voicing their concern after Netflix revealed plans to release a new take on the beloved Western series, which aired from 1974 to 1982. On Wednesday, the streaming giant announced they were working on a ‘fresh adaptation’ of Laura Ingalls Wilder’s series of American children’s novels.

It has been more than 40 years since the original, long-running series wrapped its final episode after nine seasons in 1984.

In a statement, obtained by The Hollywood Reporter, Jinny Howe, vp drama series for Netflix, revealed that the reboot will be a ‘fresh take on this iconic story.’

Fresh take = Pa is going to be an escaped slave, Ma is going to be a strong, independent Jewish feminist, Mary will be crippled by polio because she didn’t get vaccinated, and Laura and Nellie will have an ambiguously lesbian relationship.

There is some real Rings of Power potential for disaster here.

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Wruh-Wroh, Wrexham

Those Hollywood millions may be flowing out of Wales even more quickly than they flowed in after Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney bought the team. Lady C, who usually knows what’s going on behind the scenes, explains why Reynolds and Lively appear to be heading for defeat in court, as well as, she suspects, a divorce.

Here’s the story. Reynolds has form in hijacking movies from their originators and not only taking credit for them, but taking the profitability as well. When he and Lively realised that “It Ends With Us” was going to become a huge hit – and Baldoni, who was not only the male lead but also the brains behind the film, the producer, director, script writer and held the option to a sequel, had control of the project – they set about wresting control of the movie frmom him.

However, to achieve their objective of supplanting Baldoni, they had to obtain the rushes and edit the movie themselves. And that’s where things derailed… Ryan Reynolds became increasingly unsettled (to be polite) when he witnessed the unbridled attraction his wife was displaying towards Baldoni… So what does Lively do? Ever the pastmistress of deflection, she denies behing attracted to Baldoni, spins her overt acts of attraction into victimhod, and blames her co-star for taking advantage of her. Remember, at this point, neither Lively nor Reynolds appreciated that Baldoni had footage with sound which could disprove her accusations.

Now, it all made sense to me except one thing. How could publicly destroying the man guarantee them the control over the sequel that they were allegedly pursuing? Did they think he would grant it to them in a settlement, when the movie did $350 million globally? That seemed… improbable.

Well, it’s been reported that there was a clause in his original purchase of the IP that would strip him of the right to use them for the sequel if he was accused of sexual harassment. Which, to me, tends to tie the whole thing together.

It’s entirely possible that this scenario isn’t exactly correct, and even if it is, it’s at least theoretically possible that everyone involved takes a deep breath, steps back, and realizes that letting bygones by bygones and making nice in public would be a win-win-win for everyone. But where sex, pride, and lawyers are involved, people are seldom rational about their interests.

Anyhow, I hope for the sake of the town and team of Wrexham that the vagaries of celebrity ownership don’t wreck what has been a very good thing for everyone, including our community and our FC.

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Boxing Itself In

Mike Florio will tell you that he doesn’t believe that NFL games are scripted. Unless, of course, he does.

When the Superdome last hosted the Super Bowl 12 years ago, the game between the 49ers and Ravens was marred by an in-stadium blackout. Officials in New Orleans have confidence that it won’t happen again.

Given that it already happened once during a Super Bowl, the powers-that-be are on even greater notice about the importance of making sure it doesn’t happen again.

Unless, of course, the script calls for it.

Look, everyone with a three-digit IQ who pays regular attention to NFL football knows the score. And we can’t even complain that it’s not, to a certain extent, justified. One calculation by a SGer estimated that the NFL lost $16 million in revenue due to the 13 million fewer viewers who watched the NFC Championship blowout this year than either a) the year before or b) the AFC Championship game.

Can you honestly say that if you were the NFL Commissioner, you wouldn’t keep a ready thumb to put on the scale, just to keep the games close enough to keep the viewers involved for that kind of money? I wouldn’t seek to alter the outcomes, but once the outcomes were settled organically, I can’t honestly say that I wouldn’t permit some level of interference in order to prevent viewer disinterest.

After all, the fans are literally voting with their eyeballs. If they prefer intervention and close games to honest blowouts, that’s on them. The NFL is merely honoring a very respectable service-provider philosophy: the customer is always right.

The problem, of course, is that the seeds of failure are sewn by the harvest of success. The temptation to ensure that a large market team makes it to the Super Bowl, or that Taylor Swift will be there cheering on her ostensible romantic interest, is more difficult to resist once the league is already intervening in the games.

Anyhow, it appears the greater scrutiny the NFL is under is methodically removing some of the methods for their manipulations.

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Confirmed: Vaccination Causes Autism

It was always obvious that childhood vaccines cause both a) SIDS and b) autism. There are almost certainly a whole host of other adverse effects, but those are the two concerning which the pharmaceutical industry, corrupt scientists, guilty parents, and grieving relatives have been most heavily in denial. And it was always inevitable that the industry’s greed, and the expanding vaccine program, would eventually reveal the truth of the causal relationship between the vaccines and the adverse effects.

Background: Vaccinations required for school attendance have increased nearly threefold since the 1950s, now targeting 17 infectious diseases. However, the impact of the expanded schedule on children’s overall health remains uncertain. Preliminary studies comparing vaccinated and unvaccinated children have reported that the vaccinated are significantly more likely than the unvaccinated to be diagnosed with bacterial infections, allergies, and neurodevelopmental disorders (NDDs). The objective of this study was to determine the association between vaccination and NDDs in 9-year-old children enrolled in the Medicaid program. The specific aims were to test the hypothesis that: 1) vaccination is associated with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and other NDDs; 2) preterm birth coupled with vaccination increases the odds of NDDs compared to preterm birth without vaccination; and 3) increasing numbers of vaccinations are associated with increased risks of ASD.

Methods: The study population comprised children born and continuously enrolled in the Florida State Medicaid program from birth to age 9. Vaccination uptake was measured by numbers of healthcare visits that included vaccination-related procedures and diagnoses. Cross-sectional analyses were performed to calculate prevalence odds ratios (Aims 1-2). A retrospective cohort design was used to compute relative risks specifically of ASD (Aim 3).

Results: The analysis of claims data for 47,155 nine-year-old children revealed that: 1) vaccination was associated with significantly increased odds for all measured NDDs; 2) among children born preterm and vaccinated, 39.9% were diagnosed with at least one NDD compared to 15.7% among those born preterm and unvaccinated (OR 3.58, 95% CI: 2.80, 4.57); and 3) the relative risk of ASD increased according to the number of visits that included vaccinations. Children with just one vaccination visit were 1.7 times more likely to have been diagnosed with ASD than the unvaccinated (95% CI: 1.21, 2.35) whereas those with 11 or more visits were 4.4 times more likely to have been diagnosed with ASD than those with no visit for vaccination (95% CI: 2.85, 6.84).

Conclusions: These results suggest that the current vaccination schedule may be contributing to multiple forms of NDD; that vaccination coupled with preterm birth was strongly associated with increased odds of NDDs compared to preterm birth in the absence of vaccination; and increasing numbers of visits that included vaccinations were associated with increased risks of ASD.

Of course, it’s not merely the children born preterm who are suffering the adverse effects of childhood vaccinations. This is just one of the various populations who have been deleteriously affected.

The shills, propagandists, grifters, and guilty parties can do their damndest to discredit and deplatform the scientists who are courageous enough, and sufficiently dedicated to proper science, to pursue the truth of the matter. But logic and observation are more reliable than science anyhow, and it’s entirely beyond obvious that the vaccines are the only credible culprit.

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Mailvox: A Tale of the Tubcuddler

A reader writes to share her experience of Neil Gaiman as a teenage fangirl.

I met him when I was in college at his book reading of one of his books: The Ocean at the End of the Lane, and after meeting him, that was the last book of his I ever had any desire to read. It took me a month to read his American Gods book. I had to keep putting it down. At the time, I attributed it to some deficiency in my own ability to crack into his prose, but given what we know now, it was my brain’s way of informing me that I was reading shit. For comparison, I was able to read War and Peace in a week.

But I was a sixteen year old goth girl at the time, so I dutifully brought a copy of that goddamn awful book along for him to sign. The red flag of an unoriginal mind was that he signed every copy of AG with the tagline of “Believe,” and all copies of Sandman with something along the lines of “never stop dreaming.’

When I reached the man himself, things just got worse. I noticed too his preferential treatment of female fans. I was a big B5 nerd at the time, and wanted to discuss the screenplay he had written for it; it became evident during our very brief conversation he had NEXT TO NO IDEA what was in the script. The script he purportedly wrote. I had assumed he’d be happy to discuss a script that was the ONLY episode from seasons 3 to 5 to be written by anyone other than the showrunner. He, on the other hand, sought to change the subject as quickly as possible, and was a complete wet blanket to my projected hopes of mental stimulation with a man up until that point I had respected. He signed me quickly and I was on my way.

There is more at r/NeilGaimanMemes if you’re interested. She also added this:

By the time my cohort reached him (we were a group of four) he was complaining about his sore wrists. I had time to read his entire little shitty novella, in the auditorium he had given a self-congratulatory speech, because of the hold-up for him to rest his wrists for stretches of time. Now, my friend was an osteopath and offered Neil Gaiman full access to his services for free. He gave him his number, which Gaiman behaved as if he was extremely grateful for, and he promised he would avail my friend of his services.

You already know that my friend never heard from the pervert. I thought it was due to the vagaries of the parasocial contract, but now I know better:

He just wasn’t tubcuddly enough!!!!

I have to admit, I find it both ironic and amusing that certain people still, to this day, pine over a parasocial predator like Neil Gaiman, while simultaneously attempting to deplatform, ban, and otherwise ostracize me, an author who rejects both parasociality and social predation, disdains all public appearances, and whom even my die-hard critics in the media have admitted to be gracious, polite, and impeccably well-behaved.

Which is to say I have now been banned by X, YouTube, Blusky, r/NeilGaimanUncovered, and r/NeilGaiman. And I will wager that not one of those places have banned Neil Gaiman despite the gravity of the sex crimes he is credibly accused to have committed. Note that despite what has been publicly reported about his alleged behavior in the presence of his young son, still no one has even begun to investigate any link between that and his obvious association with his co-editor Ed Kramer, the convicted SFWA pedophile.

Contemplate the significance of that, if you will.

UPDATE: The BBC reports that Coraline: The Musical has been cancelled.

A new musical based on Neil Gaiman’s book Coraline has been scrapped following sexual misconduct allegations against the author. The show had been due to open at Leeds Playhouse in April before being staged at Edinburgh’s Royal Lyceum Theatre, the Birmingham Rep and Manchester’s Home. In a joint statement, the theatres said: “After careful consideration, we feel it would be impossible to continue in the context of the allegations against its original author.” It was announced last May and had been due to be a major production for the four theatres, but its cancellation will leave a major hole in their schedules and finances. However, the theatres said they had no option after further allegations emerged in recent weeks.

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