Category Archives: Ask The Bureau

The ChiZine Controversy: An Overview

ChiZine Publications made a name for themselves for quality horror, dark fantasy, and SF. They earned that, through the books they produced, which include works by Nancy Baker, Ellen Datlow, Nick Cutter/Craig Davison, Ed Kurtz, Livia Llewellyn, David Nickle, Douglas Smith, Paul G. Tremblay, George A. Romero (R.I.P.), and many others. They threw great parties at SF Cons. Aspiring authors aspired to join their roster.

Things slowly turned dark, culminating last month in a story of scandals and allegations that has not yet ended.

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Populate the Villain tournament

This year’s tournament will be about finding the greatest science fiction villain in movies, television, and video games. (Comic books, novels, and fantasy characters will have their own future tournaments.) Zocalo had a great idea: you can look at the current roster here, and submit new ideas with this form. The first question is required, but all others are optional, so you can submit several at a time.

Greatest Science Fiction Hero Tournament results

In the final round, our readers have determined that the greatest hero in screen science fiction is Jean-Luc Picard from Star Trek. I did not point out statistical upsets during the voting this time in case in biased the results, but it is interesting to compare the brackets to the order the characters fell into in round one, shown below. Note that only one of the initial “top four” actually made it into the final “top four.” In the comments, please point out the villains who should appear in our next tournament.

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