Pixel Scroll 1/31/16 May the Pixels Be Ever in Your Scroll

richard-gaitet-avait-attaque-en-disant-vouloir-realiser-la-ceremonie-la-plus-courte-de-l-histoire-parce-que-tout-le-monde-a-envie-d-aller-boire-des-coups-et-da(1) A COMIC DISGRACE. A few weeks ago The International Festival of Comics (Angoulême) embarrassed itself by issuing a set of nominees for its awards with zero women among them. Several were added in response to a threatened boycott.

And at the awards ceremony on January 30, what the organization covered itself with was not glory. “Angouleme organizers criticized for presenting fake awards” reports Robot 6.

As if this year’s Angouleme International Comics Festival hadn’t been plagued by enough controversy, the organizers decided to play a practical joke at the closing ceremony that a lot of people didn’t find very funny.

The ceremony began with comedian Richard Gaitet, clad in a neon-blue suit and red bow tie, announcing, “This will be the shortest ceremony in history, because all we want to do is drink and dance.” He proceeded to present nine awards in rapid succession, including the award for best series to Saga, best comic for young people to Aaron Renier’s The Unsinkable Walker Bean, and the Fauve d’Or, the big prize, to Arsène Schrauwen, by Olivier Schrauwen. And then two women appeared and said, “Bravo Richard, for that joke about the false fauves [awards] and the size of the Grand Prix. We laughed a lot, but now we must go.” And then they presented the real awards because that first set? That was fake.

(2) SELF-DOUBT. That first item is just one more of the zillion reasons people identify with Aidan Doyle’s “The Science Fiction Writer’s Hierarchy of Doubt”. Here’s his introduction, and the first few entries on the scale.

Even if you’ve had a successful writing year, there’s always going to be another writer who achieved more. Sure, I had a few short stories published last year, but none of them ended up on recommended reading lists. No matter what level of writer you are, there’s always something to worry about. Take consolation in The Science Fiction Writer’s Hierarchy of Doubt.

Why don’t I have any ideas?

Why haven’t I written anything?

Why haven’t I written anything good?

Why won’t anyone publish my stories?

(3) NEW CAMPBELL REQUIREMENTS. On the other hand, last year’s Campbell Award winner Wesley Chu sounds pretty confident. He just announced the next new writer to win it will have to go through him.

(4) BEFORE DAWN. What if the Batman v Superman Dawn of Justice film was made in 1966 starring Adam West and George Reeves?

The makers also produced a video showing scene-by-scene how they parodied the official Batman v Superman Dawn of Justice trailer.

(5) TIP OF THE DAY. “Things Your Writing Teacher Never Told You: Pro-Tip From Carlos Hernandez” at Black Gate.

A Few Words on Structure, Point of View, and Discovery

I once told Delia Sherman that one of the great pleasures of reading her work is the same pleasure I would have purchasing an antique grandfather clock. Maybe I bought the clock because it is gorgeously carved and imbued with history, but then I am delighted to discover over a period of months that it keeps perfect time.

“Perfect time” in that conceit is structure, the mechanics of storytelling. It is, to my mind, the absolute hardest aspect of writing. I can write a funny line or a mordant or trenchant one, but how many of those may I keep and still preserve the pace and measure of the whole? It’s an impossible question to answer in advance of writing, and maybe just plain impossible.

(6) SHATNER COVERS ALL THE BASES. William Shatner does his usual first-rate narrating job on the Major League Baseball Network’s new documentary, The Colorful Montreal Expos, about the National League team that existed from 1969 to 2004 (before moving to Washington D.C., and becoming The Nationals.) Shatner, of course, was born in Canada….

It debuted this week, and should be repeated frequently. Here’s the trailer.

(7) SOURCES OF LOVECRAFTIAN LANGUAGE. Jeffro Johnson has an exposition on “Lovecraft on Lord Dunsany and the King James Bible” at Castalia House blog whose theme is —

So… Lovecraft doesn’t merely encourage writers to study the King James Bible for its “rich and forceful English.” He points out that that Lord Dunsany was among the best (if not the best) because of assimilation of its style– and that lesser writers suffered from not being familiar with it! Given how his politics and beliefs tend to be portrayed, this is liable to be a surprise.

(8) MORE LOVECRAFT ADVICE. Maria Popova’s “H.P. Lovecraft’s Advice to Aspiring Writers: Timeless Counsel from 1920” was Johnson’s inspiration. There are several more interesting quotes in her post.

Much like Jennifer Egan did nearly a century later, Lovecraft stresses the vital osmosis between reading and writing:

No aspiring author should content himself with a mere acquisition of technical rules. … All attempts at gaining literary polish must begin with judicious reading, and the learner must never cease to hold this phase uppermost. In many cases, the usage of good authors will be found a more effective guide than any amount of precept. A page of Addison or of Irving will teach more of style than a whole manual of rules, whilst a story of Poe’s will impress upon the mind a more vivid notion of powerful and correct description and narration than will ten dry chapters of a bulky textbook.

(9) FINLAY OBIT. SF Site News reports actor Frank Finlay (1926-2016) died January 31.

One of his earliest roles was in the six-episode sf series Target Luna (1960). (He did not appear in the three sequels.)

Fans probably know him best as Porthos in Richard Lester’s The Three Musketeers, The Four Musketeers, and The Return of the Musketeers.

(10) TODAY IN HISTORY

  • January 31, 1936The Green Hornet made its radio debut.
  • January 31, 1961 — NASA launched a rocket carrying Ham the Chimp into space.

(11) ARCHIE ON TV. Jackson McHenry of Vulture spins the announcement of Greg Berlant’s new Riverdale series this way — “The CW Orders an Archie Pilot That Will Finally Answer the Question: What If Everyone in Riverdale Were Really Hot?”

According to Variety, Riverdale will offer a “surprising and subversive take on Archie, Betty, Veronica and their friends, exploring the surrealism of small town life — the darkness and weirdness bubbling beneath Riverdale’s wholesome façade.” Substitute “Riverdale” for “Lumberton” and this is also the plot of David Lynch’s Blue Velvet.

(12) A FOURTH HELPING OF DOGS. Jim C. Hines returns to a subject he has studied closely in “Puppies, Redux”, but I’m compelled to ask — if a Middle-Earth blogger wrote, “So far the new ringbearer has been doing a better job,” would you feel reassured?

Predictions:

I don’t know for certain what’s going to happen this year. My personal opinion, for whatever it’s worth, is that there’s been so much hatred and nastiness surrounding Sad Puppies that it’s all but impossible to run a “clean” recommendations list under that brand. That said, SP4 seems to be genuinely trying for openness and to escape last year’s nastiness. Props to the organizers for that, and I hope it continues.

Given everything that went down in 2015, I don’t expect the Sad and Rapid Puppy groups to have as much influence on the final ballot. I imagine they’ll get some nominees from their lists onto the ballot, but it won’t be the same kind of shutout we saw in 2015.

(13) YEP, THAT’S MY PUBLISHER. G. Willow Wilson, the writer of Ms Marvel, talks about the whole Marvel CEO-donating-to-Trump thing that was on yesterday’s scroll.

In an ordinary election cycle, I’d say that when the CEO of an entertainment company supports a conservative candidate while also fostering diverse creative talent within his company, it is a sign of a healthy democracy. Being a Republican is not a crime. However, this is not an ordinary election cycle, and Trump is not an ordinary Republican. The irony that Ms Marvel was launched on Perlmutter’s watch–while Donald Trump would like to prevent Muslims from even entering the United States–was not lost on the mainstream media, nor on me.

(14) NEWS IN THE REAR VIEW MIRROR. Let me be the last to report that William Shatner played the role of Mark Twain in an episode of Murdoch Mysteries aired in October 2015 on Canadian television. Here’s the behind-the-scenes preview.

When Twain’s life is threatened after a controversial speaking engagement at the Empire Club of Canada in 1903 Toronto, Detective Murdoch (Yannick Bisson) and his colleagues must protect the esteemed writer.

 

[Thanks to Soon Lee, lurkertype, snowcrash, John King Tarpinian, and James H. Burns for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Kurt Busiek.]

Rowling Unveils New Wizarding Schools

Four major international wizarding schools have been added to the canon by J.K. Rowling. Pottermore made the announcement on January 29 in tweets that link to introductory material penned by the author.

Discover new and exclusive writing from the pen of J.K. Rowling. Today we feature exclusive writing that explores the wizarding schools around the world…

 

Brand new writing by J.K. Rowling has revealed more information about the other schools of witchcraft and wizardry, and that the North American magical school’s name is Ilvermorny….

As for Ilvermorny… All of you eagle-eyed fans had an inkling that word was going to mean something special, and Pottermore will bring you more writing by J.K. Rowling on this magical school soon…

 

The fabulous castle appears to be a ruin to the few Muggle eyes that have ever fallen upon it (a trick shared by Hogwarts; opinion is divided on who got the idea from whom). Castelobruxo is an imposing square edifice of golden rock, often compared to a temple. Both building and grounds are protected by the Caipora, small and furry spirit-beings who are extraordinarily mischievous and tricky, and who emerge under cover of night to watch over the students and the creatures who live in the forest.

 

The only address ever given is ‘Mountains of the Moon’; visitors speak of a stunning edifice carved out of the mountainside and shrouded in mist, so that it sometimes appears simply to float in mid-air. Much (some would say all) magic originated in Africa, and Uagadou graduates are especially well versed in Astronomy, Alchemy and Self-Transfiguration.

 

While day students, wizarding children are flown back and forth to their homes every day on the backs of a flock of giant storm petrels. The ornate and exquisite palace of Mahoutokoro is made of mutton-fat jade, and stands on the topmost point of the ‘uninhabited’ (or so Muggles think) Volcanic island of Minami Iwo Jima.

Pixel Scroll 1/30/16 In Scrolladu Did Kubla Khan A Stately Pixel-Dome Decree

(1) SAG AWARDS. Genre productions were virtually absent from the 2016 Screen Actors Guild Awards except in the stunt work categories.

FILM:

Stunt Ensemble in a Motion Picture: “Mad Max”

TELEVISION:

Stunt Ensemble in a Comedy or Drama Series: “Game of Thrones”

(2) GUARDIANS SEQUEL.  “’Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2’: James Gunn Says He’s Cast the Villains and Star Lord’s Father” at Collider.

James Gunn is killing it on social media. The Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 director has made himself unusually accessible to fans, especially considering he’s at the helm of a massive franchise for a studio known for its secrecy. But Gunn can pull it off because he’s managed to find the fine line between satisfying fan curiosity without actually giving anything away.

 

(3) FLIPPING BATMEN. Adam-Troy Castro has a very funny idea for “Making Batman Say, ‘Uhhhhhh, What?’”.

You know what would be really, really grotesque?

Switching Batmen and their Gotham Cities.

Imagine plopping Adam West’s Batman down in the dark and corrupt Gotham of, among other creators, Frank Miller, where half the cops are on the take and all the villains are not just colorful lunatics but mass murderers; imagine him fighting, for instance, the Joker of Scott Snyder’s DEATH OF THE FAMILY, or the one played by Heath Ledger.

Conversely, imagine the grim and militaristic Batman of ALL-STAR BATMAN AND ROBIN in the Gotham of Lorenzo Semple Jr., where all the crimes are whimsical and campy and Commissioner Gordon has all the competence of a turtle lying on his back.

This would lead to some fun scenes.

FRANK MILLER BATMAN: “There’s nothing about you I can’t fix, Joker…with my hands…”

CESAR ROMERO JOKER (Disconcerted): “Umm, what?”

or

ADAM WEST BATMAN: “I’m just an ally of this fine city’s fine, upstanding police force!”

BURT WARD ROBIN: “Gosh, Batman! You’re right!”

JIM GORDON: (Disconcerted) “Ummm, what?”

And Castro continues…

(4) LE GUIN DOCUMENTARY SEEKS FUNDING. Worlds of UKL is doing fundraising for a prospective documentary about Ursula K. Le Guin.

Jayn, who sent the link, mischieviously swears, “I have no connection with the production beyond also thinking that Le Guin deserves a documentary about her (and possibly also a Nobel Prize for Literature and the throne of an Empress.)” Well, who doesn’t agree with that?

Director Arwen Curry wrote on Facebook about a Kickstarter appeal that begins soon.

As I announced a while back, the NEH recently awarded Worlds of Ursula K. Le Guin a major production grant. We’re so excited to finish filming and get into the edit room. But the NEH won’t release the funding until we raise the rest of the budget. On January 31, we will do a “soft launch” of a Kickstarter campaign, inviting friends and family to help support this important film. We hope to have a respectable sum when the press announces the campaign to the public on February 1. Can you help now by reaching out to your reading groups, your Facebook pages, and your best geek pals and asking them to ‘like” Worlds of Ursula K. Le Guin? Thank you!

(5) STOKER BUST. Neil Gaiman is supporting Bryan Moore’s campaign to have a bust of Bram Stoker created in time for World Dracula Day.

As we previously reported, noted sculptor Bryan Moore has launched a Kickstarter Campaign to help fund his latest project, a gorgeous bronze bust of DRACULA author Bram Stoker, a project formed in collusion with the Dublin Writer’s Museum and geared to tie into World Dracula Day on May 26th, 2016.

And now, author and dark visionary Neil Gaiman, the man behind such works as SANDMAN, CORALINE and AMERICAN GODS is among the project’s most famous backers.

“We’re incredibly grateful for Mr. Gaiman’s kindness and generosity” says Moore, the sculptor who has successfully crowdfunded efforts to place busts of H.P. Lovecraft at the Providence Athenaeum Library in Rhode Island and Edgar Allan Poe in Massachusetts at the Boston Public Library

With 10 days left, The Bram Stoker Bronze Bust Project has raised $7,270 of its $30,000 goal.

Bram Stoker bronze bust project poster COMP

(6) WOMEN HORROR WRITERS. A few days ago I linked to Nina Allan’s “Where Are We Going? Some Reflections on British Horror, Present and Future” at Strange Horizons, about another British horror anthology predominantly filled with male writers.

The anthology’s editor Mark Morris posted a response on Facebook. He begins with this argument:

Keeping with this morning’s theme of British horror, there’s an interesting article here on the state of British horror by Nina Allen, in which she raises, yet again, the subject of gender parity. With regard to THE 2ND SPECTRAL BOOK OF HORROR STORIES, I’d like to say this:

First of all, it’s not a ‘Best Of…’ anthology, as she claims, but an anthology of original horror fiction.

Secondly, she criticises the book – and by implication my editorship of it – by pointing out that of its nineteen stories only three are by women.

I’ll answer this observation by stating what I’ve stated several times before – for me, the most important thing when editing an anthology is to get the *best stories possible* for it. I don’t care whether those stories are by men or by women. I’m not driven by having to fulfil particular quotas as regards sex, race, level of fame or anything else. All I’m interested in is selecting the very best stories out of all the ones that are sent to me. And if the twenty best stories (in my opinion) were all written by men one year, or were all written by women, then those are the ones I would select. (And would no doubt be damned for it).

(7) TODAY IN HISTORY

  • January 30, 1933 — The Lone Ranger debuts on Detroit radio.
  • January 30, 1991 — Jonathan Demme’s The Silence of the Lambs premieres.

(8) NO DAY IN HISTORY, EVER. At Ancient Origins, which thrives on such things, an architect has presented a radical new theory about Stonehenge.

Could the prehistoric Stonehenge megaliths once have been the support for a wooden, two-storey roundhouse, a venue for feasting, speakers and musicians? That’s the theory of an English landscape architect who designed a small model of what she has in mind and is looking for money to build a 1:10 scale model of the structure.

Sarah Ewbank says the fact she is not an archaeologist has freed her from preconceived notions and allowed her to approach the matter in a fresh way.

 

(8) TODAY’S CHEERY SCIENTIFIC THEORY. More sound and therefore more depressing is Scientific American’s report about emerging evidence for a transmissible Alzheimer’s theory.

For the second time in four months, researchers have reported autopsy results that suggest Alzheimer’s disease might occasionally be transmitted to people during certain medical treatments—although scientists say that neither set of findings is conclusive.

The latest autopsies, described in the Swiss Medical Weekly on January 26, were conducted on the brains of seven people who died of the rare, brain-wasting Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease (CJD). Decades before their deaths, the individuals had all received surgical grafts of dura mater—the membrane that covers the brain and spinal cord. These grafts had been prepared from human cadavers and were contaminated with the prion protein that causes CJD.

…Neither study implies that Alzheimer’s disease could ever be transmitted through normal contact with caretakers or family members, the scientists emphasize. And no one uses cadaver-derived preparations in the clinic anymore. Synthetic growth hormone is used for growth disorders, and synthetic membranes are used for patching up in brain surgery.

(9) A FEW BRICKS MORE. “Beautiful LEGO: Wild!, a New Book Exploring Natural Brick Wonders” at This Colossal has a gallery of photos.

LEGO-based artist, author, and curator Mike Doyle (previously here and here) has collected another impressive set of LEGO masterpieces in his lastest book Beautiful LEGO: Wild! by No Starch Press, a book that explores natural wonders from undersea landscapes to a family of sea otters produced from over 3,500 LEGO pieces. Unlike Doyle’s last book which featured sculptures depicting sci-fi horrors and ghoulish nightmares, this book collects the works of several dozen artists who capture natural scenes from our planet’s Animal Kingdom and beyond.

One of Doyle’s own pieces that appears in the book is a new piece titled Appalachian Mountaintop Removal (2015), a work composed of more than 10,000 pieces that directly references the act outlined in its title. Mountaintop removal is a form of coal mining affecting the Appalachian Mountains that levels mountains, poisons aquifers, and damages surrounding wildlife indefinitely. You can learn how to help the destruction of these natural resources as well as view more of Doyle’s massive lego sculptures on his blog here.

 

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(10) GRRM ON HUGO NOMINATIONS. George R.R. Martin encourages people to nominate for the Hugos at Not A Blog.

What you nominate is, of course, entirely up to you.

But please, NOMINATE. I have been beating that same drum for a decade, and this year it behooves me to beat it even louder. Nominate the stuff that you enjoyed best last year. Let your own individual voice be heard.

Yes, I have recommended some stuff I liked, in older posts below. And I will be doing more of same in the near future. But remember, that’s just me saying, “hey, I liked this, you might like it too, take a look.” No one should ever nominate anything just because someone else tells them to.

(11) VOX DAY ON HUGO NOMINATIONS. On the other hand, Vox Day told Vox Popoli readers when they can expect his Rabid Puppy list.

The Rabid Puppy List of Recommendations That Is Most Certainly Not a Slate, Much Less a Direct Order From the Supreme Dark Lord of the Evil Legion of Evil will be posted in February.

(12) PREMATURE VICTORY PARADE. Meanwhile, Randy Henderson may have been up late scrying his crystal balls, judging by his post “Important Update: All the Awards I’m Going to Win in 2016!”

It’s award nomination time!  AND THANK GAWD, I don’t need to ask you fine folks to nominate or vote for me or anything, because I already know all the awards I’m going to win this year.  The people behind the people behind the scenes have told me I’m a shoe-in.  So here’s the list.  Don’t be jealous.

2016 Hugo for Best Novel Idea about Use of a Hugo: “Condom demonstration prop in sexual education class for cyborgs“, submitted by Randy Henderson, author of Finn Fancy Necromancy

And after that, he plans on winning every other award in the field….

[Thanks to Will R., Jayn, James H. Burns, and John King Tarpinian for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day ULTRAGOTHA.]

Happy 75th Birthday Greg Benford!

Young Greg (left) and Jim (right) Benford war with the descendants of dinosaurs, er, chickens.

Young Greg (left) and Jim (right) Benford war with descendants of dinosaurs, er, chickens.

Best wishes to Greg and Jim Benford, twin brothers born this day in 1941, renowned scientists, sf fans, and authors.

They discovered fandom in the 1950s while their father was in the Army and stationed in Germany. There, jokes Greg, he and his brother both had to learn a foreign language: “I had to learn English – because I’m from Alabama.” The two began Void, one of the zines most closely identified with the iconoclastic spirit many remember as the best thing about fandom in those days. Also, Greg attended his first convention in 1956.

Greg and Jim in Germany in 1956.

Greg became a Professor of Plasma Physics and Astrophysics at the University of California, as well as one of the most accomplished hard sf writers. He’s a two-time Nebula winner, and has been nominated for the Hugo 13 times. A new collection of his short fiction, The Best of Gregory Benford, edited by David G. Hartwell, was published last July.

Greg Benford and David G. Hartwell sitting in President Taft's chair.

Greg Benford and David G. Hartwell sitting in President Taft’s chair.

Jim and Greg have worked on a number of things together, such as the concept of “Benford beacons”, theorizing that an alien civilization striving to optimize costs and make its signaling technology more efficient, would prefer signals that are pulsed, narrowly directed and broadband in the 1-to-10-gigahertz range.

In 2013, they helped organize the Starship Century Symposium where participants asked, “Is this the century we begin to build starships? Can we? Should we?”

The brothers Benford hope “Yes” is the answer to all three questions.

Jim and Greg at Tri Alpha Energy, a company doing advanced work in magnetic field-reversed containment methods, with the goal of developing fusion power.

Greg and Jim at Tri Alpha Energy, a company doing advanced work in magnetic field-reversed containment methods, with the goal of developing fusion power.

Pixel Scroll 1/29/16 Purple Pixel Eater

(1) IMMEDIATE FEEDBACK. CBC reports a Twitter uproar ensued after a Marvel exec made a big contribution during the broadcast of a Trump charity event.

‘Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump announced at a fundraiser Thursday night that Marvel Entertainment CEO Ike Perlmutter would donate $1 million US to his charitable foundation, and comic book fans took to Twitter in reaction.’

Taral, who knows how fans think, says, “I can imagine a lot of Marvel readers and viewers being horrified and contemplating a boycott for almost 3/10s of a second before lining up to see Antman for the fourth time.”

(2) A DIFFERENT GIVING OPPORTUNITY. George Takei is the draw in a new Omaze donation drive — “Charity Share: Inspire Change Broadway”

Oh myyy! Social media aficionado and former helmsman of the Starship Enterprise, George Takei is offering one lucky Omaze winner the opportunity to “Takei over NYC” with him. Just $10 gets you the chance to have a private dinner with George, sit VIP at his Broadway musical Allegiance, and go inside the stage door to meet the cast! And it all supports Inspire Change Broadway.

Launched in 2009, Inspire Change Broadway provides communities across the tri-state area with subsidized tickets and round-trip transportation to Broadway productions….

…Thanks to donors from around the world and Inspire Change Broadway, 10,000 students who may have been unable to afford tickets got to experience the Tony Award-winning musical Memphis.

Now the foundation hopes to do the same for Allegiance, which is set during the period of Japanese-American internment in World War II and inspired by events from George Takei’s own childhood experience. Learn more here! 

(3) ANIMATED JUSTICE LEAGUE. DC’s Justice League will return to the Cartoon Network in 2017, with fan favorites providing some of the voices.

Well, DC’s top superteam is returning to TV in the upcoming Justice League Action. The new series will star DC’s classic triad of Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman along with rotating guest stars and its episodes will be 11 minutes long, similar to Teen Titans GO! Speaking of which, Justice League Action will be executive produced by Sam Register, who also producers Teen Titans GO!

…it’s set to feature the return of Kevin Conroy and Mark Hamill. Conroy and Hamill put their indelible stamps on Batman and The Joker in the original Batman: The Animated Series, but they’ve been phased out in recent years…. Both of them returning is a real treat for longtime fans of Warner Bros. Animation’s superhero cartoons. The show will also feature James Woods as Lex Luthor.

(4) THIS JOB AIN’T THAT EFFIN’ EASY! Fansided’s Leah Tedesco, who writes for Doctor Who Watch, tells what it’s like to face the forbidding temporal desert of a show’s hiatus in “Doctor Who: On Writing for a Fan Site”.

When you write for a fan site of a television program, the off season can be a particularly tricky period. Oh, there is a trickle of news, but the big stories are few and far between. Until Doctor Who returns with the 2016 Christmas special, we at Doctor Who Watch have been tasked with the challenging endeavor of continuing to generate at least the minimum number of articles each month for almost an entire new-episodeless year. I imagine that madness will soon ensue… well, more madness than is already involved.

(5) CAREER COUNSELING. At Black Gate, Violette Malan’s “You May Be A Writer” begins with a humorous hook —

Do you enjoy planning? When you want to give a party, do you start making lists? Thinking about the menu? Who to invite? When there’s a trip coming up, are there lists? Are you usually the first one packed? Or have you at least given considerable thought to your packing?

Is organizing an event almost more fun than the event itself? Then you may be a writer.

Do you think planning’s for squares? Do you decide at 6:00 pm to have a party and let people know via Twitter? Are you rushing through the airport at the last minute with your passport in one hand and a pair of (mismatched) socks in the other?

Are you all about the spontaneity? Seizing the moment? Then you may be a writer.

Of course, what I’m talking about here is process: every writer has one, and it’s likely to be different from yours, or mine.

(6) EXPANSEAPALOOZA. “’The Expanse’ Authors Talk Space Epic Size and Crazy Sci-Fi Tech” at Space.com.

Space.com: What’s the coolest technology you have developed for the series?

Franck: In the book series, when we were coming up with the visuals for the ships and stuff, I was talking to a guy I know who works out of Los Alamos Labs. I was talking to him about the fact that the primary weapon on our ships is railguns — those big, electromagnetically fired weapons. And he said you can extend the length of a railgun barrel [by blowing] this plasma out, and you run electricity through the plasma.

“Turning a Sci-Fi Series into a TV Epic: Q&A with ‘The Expanse’ Authors”, from Space.com.

Space.com: I’ve read that the initial concept for the books was actually a video game. Is that right?

Ty Franck: The fleshed-out version of the idea started out as that. I’d had the idea before that, but when a friend of mine asked me to help her come up with a pitch for a video game is when I really sat down and put more flesh on the bones of this idea that I had. It existed before that, but it was sort of nebulous. The video game thing is what really kind of solidified it.

But as soon as they realized how expensive making an MMO [massively multiplayer online game] was, they sort of backed away quietly.

Space.com: What happened to the story next?

Franck: It went from a video game to a pen-and-paper RPG [role-playing game] setting because I wanted to keep playing around with it. And then Daniel did the rest.

Daniel Abraham: I was in Ty’s tabletop game, and I saw the amount of work that he’d done with the background and world building. And I’d written probably six or seven novels at that point, so my pitch was, “Look, you’ve already done all the hard work; let’s just write it down, and it’ll be a book.”

(7) RAFTERY OBIT. SF Site News reports British filker Joe Raftery died January 29.

Raftery debuted his first filk song at the 1979 Worldcon in Brighton before gafiating until 2000, when he attended FilkContinental. Following his reintroduction to fandom, Raftery became a regular at filk meet ups and was nominated for the Pegasus Award in 2007 for his role in the n’Early Music Consort.

Farah Mendelsohn credited his behind the scenes design work on Loncon3’s Exhibit Hall with enhancing accessibility:

If our accessibility was so good, it’s because Joe designed the corridors, the seating areas, the shapes of booths and the spaces between boards. We couldn’t have managed the intricacies of the exhibits without him.

He is survived by his wife Gwen Knighton Rafter and his children Anna Raftery and Emily January.

(8) TODAY IN HISTORY

  • January 29, 1845 — Edgar Allan Poe’s The Raven was published.

(9) SPEAKER TO GENIUSES. Today Mad Genius Club featured “Hugo History – A Guest Post by Ben Yalow”. It’s fascinating to watch an accomplished fanpolitician at work, but — Why is Yalow working the Mad Genius Club? And he makes an interesting choice to discuss Hugo history as something “we” did — will MGC regulars feel included or excluded? Consider the way Yalow phrased the rules changes that produced the semiprozine category.

When it became clear that, during the late 70s, we had three fanzines whose circulation was many thousands, while most fanzines were having circulations in the low hundreds (when you’re printing and mailing physical fanzines, and generally they were available for free, there were real limits on circulation, depending on people’s budgets), we split out semiprozines, just to get them out of the fanzine category. And we tweaked the rules somewhat, so that there were more contenders than just the three that we moved out of fanzine; if it were only that, then semiprozine wouldn’t be a viable category. We were starting to see the beginnings of small run fiction magazines, and serious academic small circulation magazines, and the semiprozine rules put those into the new category, so it was a category offering reasonable choices.

(10) HAD ME GOING. It turns out Sigrid Ellis’ “Best Brussel Sprouts” post is a recipe, not an idea for a new Hugo category.

Okay, these are not the BEST Brussel sprouts. I am pretty sure the BEST ones are cooked with bacon. But these are pretty good.

(11) MORE RECOMMENDATIONS. Nerds of a Feather continues its recommendations in “2016 Hugo Longlist, Part 4: Nonfiction and Institutional Categories”.

This time we are looking at what are, for lack of a better term, the “nonfiction and institutional categories”: Best Related Work, Best Semiprozine, Best Fanzine and Best Fancast. Now, those who follow this blog know how cranky I can get on the subject of certain categories and their bizarre eligibility guidelines–and we’ve got two of them today (Best Semiprozine and Best Fancast). Nevertheless, I will do my best to stay calm and stick to the rules, frustrating as they can be. I reserve the right, will, however, get a little snarky and passive-aggressive in the process.

(12) ANOTHER ELIGIBILITY POST ADVOCATE. Abigail Nussbaum has a few thoughts about the opening of the 2016 Hugo nominations.

The announcement that Hugo nominations are open (as well as the nominating periods for several other awards, such as the BSFA and the Nebula) is usually accompanied by authors putting up “award eligibility posts,” followed by a discussion of whether this is a good thing or whether it makes the entire process into a PR effort.  I’ve already said my piece on this subject, so at the present I’ll just repeat what feels to me like the most important point from that essay, which is that my problem with award eligibility posts is less that they’re crass and commercialized, and more that for their stated purpose, they are utterly useless.  I don’t want to trawl through an author’s blog history to find the list of works they published last year.  What I want is a bibliography–easily found, up-to-date, and ideally sorted by publication date and containing links to works that are available online or for purchase as ebooks.  If you haven’t got one of those on your website, I have to question how seriously you want my vote.

(13) THAT MAKES EVERYTHING OKAY. Antonelli reminds himself (and the internet) that John Clute said nice things about his writing.

After spending most of 2015 – the period from April 4 until August 22 – being told I was an worthless hack writer and overall loser by the s-f literary establishment because I was a Sad Puppy nominee for the Hugo awards, I sometimes go and read my entry in the Science Fiction Encyclopedia by John Clute to remind myself I sometimes rise to the level of occasional competency:…

(14) MASSIVE MULTI-LAWYER ROLEPLAYING. Motherboard explains how “Sony’s Greedy Attempt to Trademark ‘Let’s Play’ Was Shot Down”.

Gaming is a hugely popular category for video content on the internet. It’s why Amazon acquired the video game streaming platform Twitch for $1 billion, and why the most famous creator of “Let’s Play” videos Pewdiepie has the most popular channel on YouTube with 41 million subscribers. Basically, if Sony managed to register this “Let’s Play” trademark, the company would be in a good position to sue any YouTuber or Twitch streamer who used the term to promote their videos, even though the term has been commonly used in the gaming community for roughly a decade.

The USPTO said it would likely reject Sony’s application in its initial form, but gave Sony six months to address its concerns, namely that Sony’s application is too similar to an existing trademark called “LP Let’z Play.”

(15) SAVORY TWEETS. The connoisseurs at Fantasy Faction bring you “The Top 15 Tweets & Top 7 Blog Posts of Robert Jackson Bennett”.

The Twitter-feed of Robert Jackson Bennett is a wondrous, but dangerous place to spend time. If you follow Robert in addition to another 1000 or so people, the normality and reason of the masses will likely dilute the strangeness and zaniness of Robert’s feed to the extent there will be no lasting damage or changes in personality from what you consume. If you spend time looking through Robert’s Tweets on a Tweet-by-Tweet basis though, as I was asked to do by Jo Fletcher Books for this feature, there may be some lasting damage…

Here is their comment about Bennett’s 2009 blog post “Finished.”

Link: http://robertjacksonbennett.com/blog/finished

I love this blog post because, as someone who writes, it is a reminder that not everything you write is publishable or even good; in fact, ‘80% of your output will be unacceptable shit, even if you polish it.’ I’ve spoken before about my thoughts that too many novelists of 2016 are too quick to use Amazon direct publishing as an alternative to admitting their work isn’t ready to be published and that they need more practice. Robert’s ability to take the good and learn from it combined with a willingness to ‘toss the rest and start all over again’ is undoubtedly the reason his books have gotten better and better.

It’s interesting to note the book The Long Wake of which Robert says ‘I like it. I really like it a lot.’ has not been published yet (i.e. it became another, unexpected, learning experience). You can read about that here and here.

[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, JJ, Andrew Porter and Steven H Silver for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Soon Lee.]

Top Sales of 2015 at AbeBooks

AbeBooks, an online listing service for dealers in vintage books, publishes an annual list of the volumes it sold for the highest prices.

The most expensive item sold through AbeBooks in 2015 was Storia naturale degli uccelli trattata con metodo e adornata di figure intagliate in rame e miniate al naturale. Ornithologia methodice digesta atque iconibus aeneis ad vivum illuminatis by Saverio Manetti, a famous Italian ornithology book from 1765 that went for $191,000.

That sale also set a new mark as AbeBooks’ most expensive ever. The firm’s dual record holders before that were two books which each sold for $65,000 in 2003 — a 1937 first edition of The Hobbit and a 1644 copy of Areopagitica, John Milton’s defense of press freedom.

Works of genre interest AbeBooks sold for top dollar last year were —

charlie-and-the-chocolate-factory

  1. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl – $25,000 A first edition from 1964 that had been signed and inscribed by the author with the words “For Jane and Alex with much love Roald Dahl October 1964.” The bookseller was Raptis Rare Books located in Brattleboro, Vermont. Published in September 1964 by Knopf, just 10,000 copies of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory were published and they sold out within a few weeks. This copy is by far the most expensive Roald Dahl book to sell via AbeBooks and probably the most expensive Dahl book to ever be sold.
  1. Lord of the Rings trilogy by J.R.R. Tolkien – $19,492 Three volumes comprising The Fellowship of the Ring (signed by the author), The Two Towers, and The Return of the King, published in 1954, 1954, and 1955 respectively. All first editions.
  1. The Astronauts: The Story of Project Mercury, America’s Man-in-Space Program by Martin Caidin – $18,500 Project Mercury was America’s first mission to put men into space. First edition published in 1960 and signed by all seven of the project’s astronauts – Scott Carpenter, Leroy Cooper, Alan Shepard, Deke Slayton, John Glenn, Wally Schirra, and Gus Grissom. The project ran from 1958 and culminated in 1962 when Glenn made three orbits of the Earth.
  1. (tie) Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick – $15,000 1968 first edition signed and inscribed by Dick. The book served as the basis for the Blade Runner movie. The plot is set in a post-apocalyptic world where a bounty hunter is tasked with destroying six escaped androids.

A couple of other genre works outside the top 15 that were mention in AbeBooks’ roundup —

  • The Colour of Magic by Terry Pratchett – $9,633 A 1983 first edition of the first book in the Discworld series that had a print run of just 506 copies, most of which disappeared into the library system. Sadly, Pratchett died in March 2015.
  • A Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams – $2,480 A signed 1979 first edition of one of the funniest books ever written.

Here are links to File 770’s coverage of AbeBooks’ sales roundups from the past couple of years.

Top Sales of 2014 at AbeBooks

  1. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll & illustrated by Salvador Dali – $20,000 The 1969 Maecenas Press/Random House edition, signed by the artist. The seller described the book ‘as new’ and its leather Solander box as ‘fine’. Only 2,500 copies were produced, containing 12 memorable illustrations from the surrealist.

AbeBooks Most Expensive Sales of 2013

  1. Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone by J.K. Rowling – $20,000 First edition from June 1997 – one of the 500 copies printed.

[Thanks to Michael J. Walsh for the story.]

Back In The Sunlight

Actress Caity Lotz, who plays White Canary. Photo by Michael Buckner.

Actress Caity Lotz, who plays White Canary. Photo by Michael Buckner.

By James H. Burns: If you’re of a certain age, it’s rather extraordinary to discover that a new super hero TV series, one on at 8:00 p.m. and aimed, to some extent, at kids, features a super heroine, who’s also a lesbian…

Or who at least has Sapphic tendencies, as White Canary shows, in the first episode of DC’s Legends of Tomorrow on the CW.

Which somehow reminds me:

Did I ever tell you about what made me support gay marriage?

Science fiction, at least incidentally, held a strong role…

I was certainly never against gay marriage. I just kind of fell into that stand-up comedian’s line about why would anybody want to bother?  But as my closest gay friends today have pointed out to me, while it may have been disappointing to them that I wasn’t an activist on this particular issue, I also recognized that ultimately, it wasn’t really my business what people wanted to do, as long as it only involved themselves, and no harm…

A stance I’ve held on many social situations!

But then, some years ago…

I have the perhaps unusual habit, at times, of checking out what happened to old friends, by using the internet. Before Face Book, a Google search could present some surprising, and often pleasing results.

One night, late, I looked up a young woman I had kind of sort of dated, back when I was a teen.

She was brilliant, and a beauty. An Upper West Side of Manhattan kid who, oddly enough, I had met at a Lunacon, the New York Science Fiction Convention.  She looked like an even prettier, and far sexier version of Jodie Foster. We automatically took to each other. But she thought I was older, as most folks did back then…  And when I told her the truth, that I was fourteen…  Well, to a sixteen year old, that made all the difference in the world!

I thought…

We had a get-together, or two:   one, at a Chinese restaurant recommended to me by the late Duffy Vohland, an editor at the time up at Marvel Comics, and — coincidental to this story — one of my first close, gay friends.  Afterwards, the young lady and I went over to the park near Gracie Mansion. As we talked, I rued the fact that she was bugged by what I perceived was the age factor…  She said it wasn’t that, but that she had a secret.

A secret she wasn’t ready to tell me yet.

We’d talk on the phone occasionally, and she tried to begin a correspondence, when she soon went off to college; Vassar, I think. (That summer, I believe, she was also in a summer stock theatre program, one that co-featured Chris Elliot!)

But my ego led me, unfortunately, over being what I perceived as being turned down, to let the friendship pass.

Thirty years later, I discovered that the native New Yorker had moved to Vermont.

Because she had developed a fatal cancer, in her forties, and before she died, she wanted to marry her life partner.

(I cried for more than a few moments. My last image of my friend had been with a smile on her face, framed by the trees, as the summer sun danced.)

It hit me rather simply, That if two people were in love, and a particularly young one was dying, she shouldn’t have to leave her home, in her final days, to gain one of her final wishes.

I still think the road to all this could have been made much simpler, twenty years ago, by adopting a “roommates law,” one which gave anybody the right to assign a “partner,” to help any legal, financial or medical issues.

(Intriguingly, I know older straight roommates of many years, now in their sixties or seventies (some of whom have been long-time members of fandom), who could conceivably face all the same sorts of hospital visitation and other rule obstacles, if one of them gets in trouble–the identical problems that once could beset gay couples.)  Such a co-habitation law would have removed the politics from the gay marriage scenario, and possibly paved an easier path to its realization.

But ultimately, of course, who is anybody to stand in the way of someone’s happiness?

Pixel Scroll 1/28/16 Groundhugo Day

Enterprise taken apart

(1) QUITE THE MODEL KIT. “USS Enterprise Conservation Begins Phase II” at The Smithsonian’s Airspace Blog gives full details.

The final painting of the Enterprise model will begin in April, using newly discovered reference photos from our appeal to Trek fans in the fall. The team will also build new nacelle domes with LED lights to mimic the spinning effect seen on television. For reference, they will first build a 1:1 mock-up of the original mechanism, which utilized mirrors, motors, nails, and Christmas lights. Conservator Ariel O’Connor explains, “Although the original nacelle dome lights did not survive, we can replicate the original effect in a way that is safe to install on the model.  The LED lights can be programmed to match the original VFX footage while eliminating the burnt-out bulbs, extreme heat, and motor problems that troubled the original lights. It is a wonderful solution to re-light the nacelles while ensuring the model’s safety and longevity.”

(2) OCTAVIA BUTLER. Radio Imagination celebrates the life and work of Pasadena science fiction writer Octavia E. Butler (1947–2006). Organized by Los Angeles-based arts nonprofit Clockshop, the program centers on ten contemporary art and literary commissions that explore Butler’s archive at the Huntington Library. New work will premiere alongside performances, film screenings, and literary events throughout the year.

(3) THERE IS NO NUMBER THREE. The Guardian link to a news item about 500 new fairytales being discovered in a German archive proved to be infested with some kind of code that could not be seen with the text editing tools at my disposal, but overwrote the rest of the post with a busted survey question….! After deducing which entry was causing the problem, I chopped it out. And I’m ready to be done for the night!

(4) WALTON SEMINAR. Out of the Crooked Timber is hosting a “Jo Walton Seminar” using her books The Just City and The Philosopher Kings. (A third book in the sequence, Necessity, comes out in June).

Several posts are already online.

One of the great appeals of the Thessaly series is the implicit invitation: join us in Socratic dialogue beneath the lemon tree, arguing practical philosophy with the best company from all of history.  But I am not a philosopher king, and definitely not a Gold of the Just City. As evidence, between the first and second sentences of this paragraph, I took ten minutes to reassure a baby who’d pinched her finger in a dresser drawer. Over the past couple of days I’ve engaged in crafts and cleaning, cooking and political argument and snarky write-ups of old horror stories.

All of which speak to my soul, and all of which feel like part of The Good Life even if I sometimes wish the temporal ratios were different.

“It was the most real thing that had ever happened.” – Jo Walton, The Just City

Thanks to Jo Walton for writing an SF novel in which people, including a pair of gods, try to realize Plato’s Republic. (I’ve only read the first Thessaly novel, The Just City. So if what follows is premature? That sort of thing happens.)

This is an experimental novel. Succeed or fail, you learn from an experiment. But even well-constructed experiments can be failures. That’s the risk.

Logically such a thing should exist. A novelization of Plato’s Republic, I mean. How can no one have written this already? But can such a damn thing be written ? Surely it will fail as a novel, somewhat, at some point. But how? Only one way to find out.

So Walton’s literary endeavor might be said to parallel Athene’s serene, mortal-bothering, bookish Utopian progress, in the novel. Like Athene, Walton doesn’t crack a smile. (There are some cracks at the end – in Athene’s exterior – but let’s leave those out. Don’t want to spoil the ending.)

Walton’s work is a mash-up: of genres, most obviously, with elements of science fiction (time travel and robots), fantasy (gods), historical fiction (recreation of past society) and the novel of ideas – but also of temporalities. Time-travelling Athene gathers together a bunch of dedicated Platonists from across the following 2500-odd years, helps them collect children and works of art from a more restricted period (unaccountably, no one bothers collecting some Canova or Alma-Tadema), gives them some robots from the future for the heavy work, and dumps the whole lot back in the bronze age, where (in theory) they’re not going to disturb anyone else. In theory (again), this farrago will be held together by a shared dedication to the ideals of Plato’s Republic, whether voluntary (the generation of Masters brought together from across time and space) or instilled (the Children and their descendents). In practice…

One of the reasons this is a neat trick from the novelist’s point of view is that it side-steps most of the boring questions of authenticity that bedevil most fictional engagements with the classical world.

More to come from  Ada Palmer, Leah Schnelbach, Sumana Harihareswara, and Crooked Timber bloggers Maria Farrell, Henry Farrell, and Belle Waring.

Crooked Timber’s past seminars on genre literature have been —

And in May 2015, Crooked Timber organized a seminar on the work of Ken MacLeod with contributions from Farah Mendlesohn, Cosma Shalizi, Sumana Harihareswara, Jo Walton, and Henry Farrell, with a response by Ken MacLeod.

(5) MINI INTEGRAL TREES. Have you seen the Air Bonsai?

Great if you’re wanting to recreate The Hallelujah Mountains from “Avatar” (or a Roger Dean painting) as a diorama.

(6) THE FUTURE IS BACK. Following years of waiting, the DeLorean car made memorable by Back to the Future has returned to production.

After more than 30 years, the DeLorean Motor Company will resume production of the iconic 1982 model DeLorean, made famous by the “Back to the Future” film trilogy.

This marks the first time that the car will be manufactured in America, according to an NBC affiliate.

The car company was previously prohibited from producing the famed model because the futuristic designs belonged to John DeLorean’s estate and not the auto business, which went bankrupt in 1982.

The company was revitalized by CEO Stephen Wynne and moved to Humble, Texas, in 1987. The company operated as a refurbishment facility, repairing and replacing parts for older DeLorean models for consumers around the world.

(7) ZICREE CLASS. Marc Scott Zicree, is running a one-day Supermentors Class – Life Lessons from Rod Serling, Ray Bradbury & Guillermo Del Toro.

Many of you know that with my books The Twilight Zone Companion and Guillermo del Toro’s Cabinet of Curiosities and my friendship with Ray Bradbury, I’ve had some of the greatest mentors who ever worked in film, TV and books.

Life Lessons From Rod Serling, Ray Bradbury & Guillermo Del Toro — a One-Day Class I’ll be teaching Sunday, February 21st, both in person here in L.A. and via Skype and audio download, drawn from what I’ve learned from my great mentors. Just $99 (normally $199) if you sign up by the end of the month. Log onto www.paypal.com and indicate you want to pay [email protected] Here’s a video describing the class.

 

(8) MUMY OUT AS OSCAR VOTER. Actor Billy Mumy says he has been purged as an Academy Awards voter under the new rules, and his ”to whom it may concern” protest letter has been posted online.

Like so many other Academy members who have a long history in the film industry, you are now punishing me for a lack of consistent employment, when it is beyond my own ability to cast myself or even find representation who can get me into the meetings and auditions these days for quality roles and films in the first place.

I have careers in music and writing and I chose to stay home for several years when my two children, who have both worked as actors in major studio feature films, were young. I don’t see why that should now render my vote unworthy.

I’m deeply saddened and disappointed by the actions the Academy has taken, without any discussion first amongst the members, to capitulate to a handful of whiners who threaten to “boycott” by not dressing up, walk the red carpet and sit in the audience because they feel the actors branch didn’t do our jobs of nominating candidates for Oscars this year to their personal satisfaction.

The nomination process is not racist. Surely you realize that members of the Academy don’t get together in clandestine meetings to discuss who they’re going to nominate or not nominate. Personally, I was shocked that neither Michael Caine or Harvey Keitel received a nomination for their excellent work in “Youth”, but I certainly don’t consider it a deliberate slight because they’re senior citizen Caucasians.

(9) TODAY IN HISTORY

  • January 28, 1813 Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen was published.
  • January 28, 1977 – Stephen King’s The Shining is published.
  • January 28, 1986 – The space shuttle Challenger blew up shortly after launch, killing all seven crew members: Christa McAuliffe, a New Hampshire high school teacher, Ronald McNair, Hughes Aircraft Co. satellite engineer Gregory Jarvis, commander Francis “Dick” Scobee, pilot Michael Smith, flight engineer Judy Resnik and Ellison Onizuka.

Soon afterwards, Ray Bradbury discussed the disaster with Nightline host Ted Koppel.

 

Neil deGrasse Tyson tweeted a poetic memorial.

https://twitter.com/neiltyson/status/692776305411096577/photo/1?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw

A memorial service was held today at the Kennedy Space Center. The “Time of Remembrance” will mark the 49th anniversary of the 1967 Apollo launch pad fire that killed Virgil “Gus” Grissom, Ed White and Roger Chaffee on Jan. 27, 1967; the 30th anniversary of Challenger’s loss on Jan. 28, 1986; and the 13th anniversary of the Columbia shuttle disaster on Feb. 1, 2003, that killed commander Rick Husband, pilot William McCool, Kalpana Chawla, Laurel Clark, David Brown, Michael Anderson and Israeli flier Illan Ramon.

(10) NEITHER SNOW NOR SLEET. “How ‘Arrow’ Actor Stephen Amell And His Costars Handled A Canceled Convention”

The “Arrow” cast knows how to make the best out of a bad situation. The snowstorm forced Heroes and Villains Fan Fest to cancel the Saturday portion of their event, but many people were already at hotels near the Meadowlands Convention Center in Secaucus, New Jersey — including several celebrity guests. Cast members from “Arrow” and “The Flash” were nearby, so they didn’t let the snow stop them from meeting with fans.

In the afternoon, the stars wandered down to the lobbies of their hotels to meet their snowed in fans. John Barrowman (Malcolm Merlyn on “Arrow”) posted a video on Facebook with fans in his hotel and said that he and Stephen Amell (Oliver Queen on “Arrow”) were doing the same thing at separate hotels.

(11) WHO SAID THAT? “The Voice Actors of The Force Awakens” identifies the actors’ specific contributions. SPOILERS PROBABLE.

You may have seen a section in the credits of The Force Awakens titled “Additional Voices,” with some familiar names listed. But who or what did all those familiar names play? I’m happy to finally reveal everyone below, running through the film chronologically. (There are also a couple of actor cameos in there that shall remain nameless (for now).)

(12) BE ON THE LOOKOUT. Kate Paulk told Mad Genius Club readers “The List” will be out in March. She also previewed a coming attraction:

Tune in tomorrow for a guest post by the fascinating Ben Yalow with more information about the history of the Hugo categories.

(13) KNOW THE SHADOW. Ricky Whittle of “The 100” has been cast as Shadow in Starz TV’s adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s American Gods.

Gaiman said in a statement, “I’m thrilled that Ricky has been cast as Shadow. His auditions were remarkable. The process of taking a world out of the pages of a book, and putting it onto the screen has begun. ‘American Gods’ is, at its heart, a book about immigrants, and it seems perfectly appropriate that Shadow will, like so much else, be Coming to America. I’m delighted Ricky will get to embody Shadow. Now the fun starts.”

(14) HOLY CERTIORI! “Supreme Court asked to consider Batmobile copyright case” reports Comic Book Resources.

A manufacturer of unlicensed Batmobile replicas has petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court to determine whether Batman’s signature vehicle is indeed protected by copyright.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, Mark Towle of Gotham Garage filed a writ of certiorari today asking the justices to review his nearly five-year-old dispute with DC Comics.

Towle, who produced replicas of  the 1966 and 1989 Batmobiles that sold for as much as $90,000 each, was sued in 2011 by DC, which claimed copyright and trademark infringement, trademark counterfeiting and unfair competition.

[Thanks to Brian Z., Martin Morse Wooster, John King Tarpinian, JJ, Soon Lee, and Steven H Silver for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Will R.]

Online Nominations Open for 2016 Hugo Awards

MidAmeriCon II, the 2016 Worldcon, is now accepting online Hugo nomination ballots. Also at the link are downloadable Hugo and Retro Hugo ballot forms which can be printed and used for mail-in voting.

The deadline to submit nominations is March 31.

Eligible to cast nominating ballots are those who are members of MidAmeriCon II or Worldcon 75 (Helsinki, 2017) by January 31, and those who were members of Sasquan (Spokane, 2015).

You will need your membership number and a Hugo PIN number to nominate online. According to the committee, Hugo PINs are being emailed between January 27–February 5 to MAC II members who elected to receive electronic publications, and members of the other eligible Worldcons. They recommend that if you have not received your Hugo PIN by February 5, email a request to [email protected].

MAC II members who are receiving paper publications will find their PIN on the envelope in which Progress Report 2 was mailed. The MAC II has a lookup tool for its own members (only).

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