Brianna Wu / John Walker Flynt - "Biggest Victim of Gamergate," Failed Game Developer, Failed Congressional Candidate

Kind of makes me wonder if Frank's been telling Brianna that he's not funding this campaign idea of hers and this is her way to take it out on him.
 
Quasar said:
Based on the reviews of his previous submission...

Pro: Nice concept: alien stranded on earth gains control of ants and gets them to return it to space.

Con: Unfortunately, the story is riddled with editorializing, info dumps, POV shifts, etc. The characters are never very important to the story, and toward the end it's nothing but pages of pure narration. The final result--that the alien was from the moon--is really hard to believe knowing what we know about the moon.

A premise that at first will remind the elderly among readers of the classic “Leiningen Versus the Ants”. But these are not normal ants. And although the text is packed full of neat myrmecology neep, attempts to read it as science are bound to fail. There’s no normal way that normal ants could have evolved instantaneously to behave as the story describes them. Readers will need to shift protocols; this is science fantasy with its roots in perhaps the oldest scientific romance, although executed in contemporary scientific terms.

I found it quite engaging, but I really wish the author had left it at that; alas, instead we have a gratuitous human-interest subplot added, with a love story between two of the scientists. It’s not convincing, it requires backstory that just isn’t present, and it isn’t necessary.

Ants are behaving strangely in Australia. They are forming large swarms with several species working together in an unprecedented manner. A pair of scientists are studying them and trying to defeat the apparent threat. The ants travel to autonomous areas governed by aborigines. There they start to build something. The story starts pretty well, but seems to decay towards the end. It is too hurried and eventually very implausible. The romance parts felt pretty awkward, but the participants were awkward people.

Most of the stories were fairly decent this issue - with notable exception so bad it lowered the rating for this issue: Frank Wu's novelette, "Season of the Ants in the Timeless Land". Wu's story starts out alright, but the ending? Maybe if this tale had been published in an early issue of "Astounding Stories" or in a current issue of "The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction" it might have been received better. But in today's "Analog"? A publication noted for leaning towards hard science tales? The ending to Wu's "Season of the Ants" is so.. bizarre, the novelette might as well have an of EC's "Weird Science" comic book title. The rest of the stories found in the November 2015 edition of "Analog Science Fiction & Fiction" weren't too bad, with one or two highlights ("Baby Steps" and "Evangelist". But those stories aren't good enough to raise the rating nor overcome how crappy Frank Wu's entry is.

I'd say lack of talent is probably his worst detriment as a writer. Although being married to Brianna certainly can't help (with anything)
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Well I went and actually read his stories and yeah, I have to agree. I think I give Frank way too much sympathy on account of his somehow living with Brianna. He's got that habit of adding just enough science to his idea to make it sound "scientific" when actually it may as well just be magic. This really comes across when you look at that book that came with the Rev60 SE. It's like he gets an idea and then makes up the science to explain it away rather than taking the science and making a story around it, which is what good sci-fi is. I wonder how much influence he had on the Rev60 story, since the "satellite goes adrift over China" sounds like the sort of thing he'd say. Or maybe he was just filling in the gaps in Brianna's crap with pseudo-science.
 
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SteelPlatedHeart said:
Wu thread. Now.
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...something, something peer pressure.
NobodyKnows.jpg
 
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David_cadbury said:
https://twitter.com/NETIZENSfilm/status/809114549328744449

Nu Wu content
Not sure when this was filmed.
It has footage of her riding a motorcycle.
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She talks about women never being the hero in video games...yet off the top of my head I can name two Metroid and Tomb Raider. Hell the Resident Evil series has a bunch of female player characters who get to play the hero. None of these series are even that recent with Metroid coming out around the 80s or so and Tomb Raider and RE being released in the 90s.
 
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