Monthly Archives: January 2016

Neil Clarke Picked As SFWA Bulletin Editor

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Congratulations to Neil Clarke on his hiring by Science Fiction Writers of America as permanent editor of The Bulletin. He has been acting as interim editor since John Klima’s departure last summer.

SFWA President Cat Rambo said, “I was overwhelmed by the talented applicants that applied for the position, and I’m happy that Neil was one of them. His editorial talents are rock-solid, he’s a congenial perfectionist, and I’m looking forward to having him as a more permanent part of the internal team. I expect great things for The Bulletin in 2016 and 2017.”

Neil Clarke is best known as editor of Clarkesworld Magazine, launched in 2006, three-time winner of the Best Semiprozine Hugo, as well as a World Fantasy Award. He is also a three-time nominee for the Best Editor (Short Form) Hugo.

After graduating from Drew University with a degree in Computer Science, Clarke entered the educational technology field where he has worked at both the higher education and K-12 levels for the last twenty-seven years.

Since 2014 he’s published a crowdfunded cyborg anthology, introduced Chinese translations as a regular feature in Clarkesworld, and launched Forever, a reprint magazine. His next anthology is The Best Science Fiction of the Year which will be published by Night Shade Books this June.

Members and non-members interested in writing for the Bulletin should send a short pitch on their proposed topic, along with a bio of relevant experience, to [email protected]. The guidelines can be found here.

Questions, suggestions, and comments on the Bulletin may be directed to SFWA Bulletin Editor Neil Clarke at [email protected], or Kate Baker at [email protected].

Pixel Scroll 1/24/2016 I Saw The Best Scrolls Of My Generation Destroyed By Pixels, Filing Hysterical Numbered

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(1) THE FINNISH. Finland hosts the World Science Fiction Convention in 2017 — but if you can’t make it to Helsinki, hit the library: more and more Finnish speculative fiction authors are getting English translations, as NPR reports in “Finnish Authors Heat Up The Speculative Fiction World”.

In the middle of Johanna Sinisalo’s novel The Core of the Sun, the reader is interrupted by an ad. It’s for Fresh Scent, a personal fragrance available from the State Cosmetics Corporation of Finland. It’s marketed to woman, although “marketed” is an understatement. In Sinisalo’s nightmarish, alternate-reality vision of her homeland, a tyrannical patriarchy splits women into two classes — docile “eloi” and undesirable “morlocks,” terms cheekily drawn from H. G. Wells’ The Time Machine — as part of an oppressive national health scheme that crosses insidiously over into eugenics.

The ad for Fresh Scent is just one of the novel’s many fragmentary asides. In additional to its more conventional narrative, which centers on Vanna, a woman with an addiction to chili peppers (it makes sense a skewed sort of sense, really), The Core of the Sun is made up of epistolary passages, dictionary entries, article excerpts, transcripts of hearings, scripts for instructional films, homework assignments, folk songs, and even fairytales that exist only in Sinisalo’s twisted version of the world. Chillingly, one passage concerning the social benefits of human sterilization is taken from a real-world source, a Finnish magazine article from 1935.

There’s a streak of scathing satire to the book’s fragmentary science fiction, and in that sense it sits somewhere between Margaret Atwood and Kurt Vonnegut — but Sinisalo crafts a funny, unsettling, emotionally charged apparition of the present that’s all her own.

(2) SPEAKING OF COLD PLACES. The New York Times captioned this tweet “A Wookie Chills in Washington (Not Hoth)”

(3) AN ALARMING INSIGHT.

(4) DEATH OF A GOLDEN AGE. Saladin Ahmed’s Buzzfeed article argues “Censors Killed The Weird, Experimental, Progressive Golden Age Of Comics”.

In the 1940s, comic books were often feminist, diverse, and bold. Then the reactionary Comics Code Authority changed the trajectory of comic book culture for good.

The comics themselves exhibited wild stylistic variety. A single issue of Keen Detective Funnies could contain one story with gorgeous Art Nouveau-ish illustration, and another with glorified stick figures. The comic books of the Golden Age were also significantly more diverse in terms of genre than today’s comics. On newsstands across America — in an era when the newsstand was an urban hub and an economic juggernaut — comic books told tales of True Crime, Weird Fantasy and Cowboy Love, Negro Romance, and Mystery Men. And Americans bought them.

Even as Amazing-Man and Blue Beetle were rescuing helpless, infantilized women, badass superheroines like the Lady in Red, the Spider Queen, and Lady Satan were stabbing Nazis and punching out meddlesome, sexist cops.

(5) NOW THAT SHE HAS OUR ATTENTION. Kristine Kathryn Rusch’s post “Business Musings: Poor Poor Pitiful Me Is Not A Business Model” actually is not a rant telling writers to buck up, it’s a discussion of the true levers of culture change. But it begins with a rant….

Granted, in the recent past, the major publishing companies were the only game in town. But they are no longer the only game in town. A major bestselling writer can—and should—walk from any deal that does not meet her contractual and business needs.

Hell, every writer should do that.

But of course most writers won’t. Instead, an entire group of them beg for scraps from the Big All-Powerful Evil Publishers, proving to the publishers that writers are idiots and publishers hold all the cards.

I already bludgeoned the Authors Guild letter last week, so why am I going back to the same trough? Because this poor-poor-pitiful-me attitude has become the norm in the publishing industry right now, and I’m really tired of it.

The big battles of 2014 and 2015, from all of the fighting over the meaning of Amazon in the past few years to the in-genre squabbling over the Hugo awards that science fiction indulged in last year to the hue and cry indie writers have treated us to over the various changes in Kindle Unlimited since its inauguration have all had the same basic complaint.

Someone—be it a publisher (that Amazon is Evil argument) or a writer (the rest of it)—believes they’re entitled to something, and when they don’t get that something, they complain loudly, on social media or in traditional media or via group letter or through (in sf’s case) hateful spiteful posts about the opposing parties.

Only a handful of people take responsibility for the situation they’re in—if, indeed, they are responsible. Only a few actually analyze why the situation exists.

(6) HIGH PRAISE. The first line in David Barnett’s review of Charlie Jane Anders’ All the Birds is —

Imagine that Diana Wynne Jones, Douglas Coupland and Neil Gaiman walk into a bar and through some weird fusion of magic and science have a baby. That offspring is Charlie Jane Anders’ lyrical debut novel All The Birds In The Sky.

Do you think that’s a lot to live up to?

(7) TODAY IN HISTORY

  • January 24, 1888 — Typewriter “copy” ribbon patented by Jacob L. Wortman. Harlan Ellison still uses one.
  • January 25, 1984 – Apple’s Macintosh computer went on sale. Price tag: $2,495.

(8) TRI ROBOT. Mickey Zucker Reichert, the author of To Preserve, is a working physician and the author of Isaac Asimov’s I, Robot Trilogy (To Protect, To Obey, To Preserve). The third book will be published in hardcover by Roc in February.

Nate, has been Manhattan Hasbro Hospital’s resident robot for more than twenty years. Nate’s very existence terrified most people, leaving the robot utilized for menial tasks and generally ignored. Until one of the hospital’s physicians is found murdered with Nate standing over the corpse.

As programmer of Nate’s brain, Lawrence Robertson is responsible for his creation and arrested for the crime. Susan Calvin knows the Three Laws of Robotics make it impossible for Nate to harm a human. But maybe someone manipulated the laws to commit murder.

(9) DOUGH-REY. Kip W. pays tribute to characters from that billion-dollar movie The Force Awakens.

Poe, a flier; a fast male flier
Rey, who scavenges a bit,
Maz, a host who knows the most,
Finn, a white shirt drone who quit,
Snoke, a hologram quite tall,
Ren, a very angry joe,
Beeb, a droid head on a ball,
Which will bring us back to Poe. Poe, Rey, Maz, Finn, Snoke, Ren, Beeb, Poe!

(10) FLEXIBILITY. Nick Osment analyzes the benefits of reading science fiction in “What We Can Learn From a Time Lord: Doctor Who and a New Enlightened Perspective” at Black Gate.

If tomorrow you stepped inside a time machine and found yourself standing in the yard of this man who is separated from being your neighbor only by the passage of a century, then suddenly his opinions would become somewhat more relevant because now you would actually have to interact with him. But they would not become any more credible to you just because you were now hearing them face-to-face. You would still hear them from the vantage of having come from the future.

Now imagine your life today not as if you were living in your own time but as if you were visiting from a hundred years in the future. The weight given by proximity, i.e., these people are my neighbors, is leveled off, much the way that visiting that long-dead neighbor would be. Detach yourself from all the noise of the television and the Internet and your workplace, your college, your local pub. See it from a more objective position — of not being of this time, with the knowledge that this time, too, will pass, and all these people who are speaking right now; they all, too, will be dead and most of them forgotten.

(11) BIGGER ON THE OUTSIDE. 11.22.63, the eight-part event series based on Stephen King’s 2011 novel, premieres Presidents Day, February 15 on Hulu.

11.22.63 is a thriller in which high school English teacher Jake Epping (James Franco) travels back in time to prevent the assassination of President John F. Kennedy — but his mission is threatened by Lee Harvey Oswald, falling in love and the past itself, which doesn’t want to be changed

 

(12) LONG TAIL OF SALES. Fynbospress summarizes the impact of streaming on the music business, and explains the parallels in book publishing to Mad Genius Club readers in “The Importance of Being Backlist”.

In summary, if publishing continues to mirror music, then streaming will continue to increase, but frontlist sales may continue to fall, and it become harder and harder to get discovered in the initial release period. However, backlist volume is growing, and people are discovering their way through the things that have been out there a while. So, while you can and should do some promotion of your latest release – if it fails to take off, don’t despair. Instead, write the next book, the greatest book you’ve written yet. Sometimes you make your money on the initial release surge, and sometimes, it’ll come in having a lot of things out there all bringing in an unsteady trickle.

(13) TWO COMIC CONS MAY SETTLE. A settlement may be at hand in the San Diego Comic-Con’s suit against the Salt Lake Comic Con for for trademark-infringement. The Salt Lake Tribune reports that on Thursday, attorneys for both conventions asked the judge to extend a procedural deadline so that they could work “diligently” on a settlement. The conventions have scheduled a meeting with Adler on Wednesday in San Diego.

Drafts of the agreement have been exchanged,” according to the Thursday court filing requesting the extension, “and the parties hope to soon reach agreement as to all terms.”

San Diego Comic-Con is a trademarked name, and lawyers have argued that the similarity of “Comic Con” in the name of the Salt Lake City event has confused people into thinking the event is somehow associated with San Diego’s convention.

As Salt Lake’s organizers have seen it, the legal battle isn’t just between them and the flagship convention; it’s a threat to the dozens of other comic book conventions around the world that also use “comic con” in their names. Salt Lake Comic Con co-founder and chief marketing officer Bryan Brandenburg previously asserted that if San Diego wins the case, the precedent will allow it to do this to other organizations.

(14) RING OF POWER. Jim C. Hines snapped this photo at Confusion:

[Thanks to JJ, John King Tarpinian, Andrew Porter, and Will R. for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Jim Henley.]

L. Neil Smith Wins LFS Lifetime Achievement Award

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L. Neil Smith

L. Neil Smith

The Libertarian Futurist Society has selected L. Neil Smith to receive a Special Prometheus Award for lifetime achievement. Time and place of the ceremony to be announced.

Smith is the fourth author recognized by LFS for lifetime achievement. Previous winners were Poul Anderson (2001), Vernor Vinge (2014) and F. Paul Wilson (2015).

He has been recognized by the LFS many times during his career, winning four Prometheus Awards — for The Probability Broach (1982), part of his seven-book North American Confederacy series, Pallas (1994), The Forge of the Elders (2001), and a Special Award given to him and illustrator Scott Bieser for The Probability Broach: The Graphic Novel in 2005.

Smith, was the creator of the Prometheus Award – originally conceived as a one-off award when it was given for the first time in 1979. In 1982, the Libertarian Futurist Society was organized by other fans to continue the Prometheus Awards program.

With 28 books to his credit, Smith may be most widely-known for three Star Wars novels featuring Lando Calrissian.

Including their Lifetime Achievement awards, Anderson, Vinge, Wilson and now Smith have all been recognized five times with various Prometheus Awards.  (The only author to receive more awards from the LFS was Robert Heinlein (1907-1988), with a grand total of six.) Visit LFS.org to see a comprehensive list of Prometheus Award recipients.

The full press release follows the jump.

Continue reading →

Axanar Lawsuit Update

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Alec Peters as Axanar's Garth of Izar .

Alec Peters as Axanar’s Garth of Izar .

Alec Peters, Excecutive Producer of the fan-made Star Trek movie Axanar, now being sued by Paramount and CBS for copyright infringement, has posted an update on Facebook.

Only the first question in his “Official Lawsuit Q&A” is not about donating money —

1) Have you formerly responded to the lawsuit?

Paramount/CBS lawyers granted us a 30 day extension. So we are working towards that due date of Feb. 22nd with our new attorneys at Winston & Strawn.

Peters has hired the Winston & Strawn firm as legal counsel.

Representing Axanar Productions and Peters will be attorneys Erin Ranahan and Andrew Jick from the firm’s Los Angeles office.  Winston & Strawn have agreed to represent Axanar Productions and Alec Peters on a pro-bono basis.

The suit, filed by CBS and Paramount on December 29, 2015, seeks to stop Axanar Productions from producing a fan film set in the Star Trek universe. The suit also asks for damages from the production company, its chief executive Alec Peters and a host of unnamed defendants who were involved in the production of the short film PRELUDE TO AXANAR.

“We’re pleased to have our case taken up by Winston & Strawn,” said Peters. “The knowledge, credibility and reputation they bring to this matter will certainly help us work things out with CBS and Paramount in a professional manner and, we hope, to a mutual benefit so we can go on and make a Star Trek film fans have told us they want to see.”

Peters says Axanar Productions suspended fund-raising activities for the feature production, but is still taking “retroactive” pledges to Prelude to Axanar. Principal photography also has been delayed “until the fate of the lawsuit can be discussed in more detail with counsel.”

Axanar already raised more than $1 million on Kickstarter and Indiegogo.

[Thanks to David K.M. Klaus for the story.]

Hartwell Memorials Planned

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David Hartwell’s funeral will be held January 28 in Marshfield, MA at the MacDonald Funeral Home. More details at the link.

Kathryn Cramer has asked that those planning to attend RSVP her so she can know the number coming.

Cramer wrote online she plans to be at Boskone and the ICFA (International Association for the Fantastic in the Arts) convention, March 16-20, in Orlando, and other conventions to memorialize Hartwell.

Tor Books is also planning a memorial in New York City at a later date, to be announced.

[Thanks to Andrew Porter for the story.]

2016 Lunacon Chair Filled

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Little Loonie LunariansThe 2016 Lunacon chair position, vacant since Mark Richards resigned at the end of December, has been filled by a three-member Executive Committee of former Lunacon chairs: Mark L. Blackman, Stuart C. Hellinger and John William Upton.

The New York Science Fiction Society (Lunarians) board of directors’ announcement explained, “This way, the remaining management work will not be a burden on any one individual and we will be able to rely on their knowledge and experience.”

The directors also announced the deadline for convention pre-registration from February 22 to February 29.

The convention is scheduled to take place March 18-20 at the Hilton Westchester in Rye Brook, New York.

The Lunarians skipped the 2015 edition of the con in order to reorganize and address financial issues.

Pixel Scroll 1/23/16 Farmer In The Tunnel In The Dell In The Sky

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chronicles-of-narnia-silver-chair-book-cover-357x600(1) BACK TO NARNIA? According to Evangelical Focus, a fourth Narnia movie – The Silver Chair — could be ready in 2016

The story happens decades later. In Narnia, King Caspian is now an old man. Eustace and Jill will be asked to find Caspian’s son, Prince Rilian, with the help of Aslan.

Scriptwriter David Magee (“Life of Pi”, “Finding Neverland”) is writing the film adaptation, which will be released five years after the previous movie, “The Voyage of the Dawn Treader.”

Collider says the next film will be the start of a new franchise entirely – one where The Walden group, makers of the earlier movies, will not be involved.

The rebooted angle doesn’t come as a total surprise. The Mark Gordon Company and The C.S. Lewis Company took over the rights from The Walden Group back in 2013, when they first announced plans for a Silver Chair adaptation, so it’s not surprising that the production companies would want to build something new instead of relying on the foundation of a franchise that was ultimately always a bit of an underperformer.

Collider also asked about casting.

Given the plot of The Silver Chair, the fourth book in the series, which takes places decades in future from where we last saw our heroes in 2010’s Voyage of the Dawn Treader, I also asked if we would see any of the original cast reprising their roles in the new film. The answer is a hard no.

[Mark Gordon] No, it’s all going to be a brand new franchise. All original. All original characters, different directors, and an entire new team that this is coming from.

If the phrase “original characters” causes your hair to bristle, don’t worry, I asked him to clarify if these were entirely new character creations or existing characters in the Narnia mythology that have yet to get the movie treatment, and he confirmed the later. The new characters will come “from the world” of Narnia.

The IMDB FAQ has more information about what characters will be included:

Will we see characters from earlier Narnia films?

Not necessarily. We should see Eustace Scrubb as a main character, along with Aslan. But Silver Chair, the novel, does not include his Pevensie cousins, Lucy, Edmund, Susan and Peter. Other returning characters who may or may not be included are Trumpkin (PC), King Caspian (PC, VDT), Ramandu’s Daughter (VDT), and Lord Drinian (VDT).

(2) IDEA TO HONOR GERRY ANDERSON. Some of his admirers have launched a “Campaign for blue plaques in honour of Kilburn creator of Thunderbirds”. (via Ansible Links.)

Gerry Anderson, who attended Kingsgate Primary School, is most famous for the cult 1960s series Thunderbirds, which featured iconic characters including Scott Tracey, Lady Penelope and Parker.

The Historic Kilburn Plaque Scheme (HKPS) is looking to raise £2,500 to mark his contribution with two plaques: one on his old school in Kingsgate Road, and one on the Sidney Boyd Court estate, on the corner of West End Lane and Woodchurch Road, where he used to live.

Mr Anderson lived with his parents in a large detached house on the site of the estate from 1929 to 1935 before the area was bombed in the war.

(3) AND WE’RE STILL MAD. “Seven TV Finales That Went Out of Their Way to Anger Fans” at Cracked. Number six is Quantum Leap.

In the last episode, Sam somehow leaps into his own body in some kind of odd purgatory-like dimension that looks like a bar — which, as far as purgatory dimensions go, ain’t half-bad. Also, a guy who is implied to be God is there, working as a bartender. If the fact that even God had to have a part-time job in the early ’90s doesn’t disprove Reaganomics, what will?

(4) IS THIS CHARACTER THAT POPULAR? Suvudu’s Matt Staggs reports “Poe Dameron to Have Monthly Comic Book”.

He was only on screen for a few minutes, but Star Wars: The Force Awakens Resistance pilot Poe Dameron turned out to be one of the film’s biggest breakout characters. (Well, maybe next to TR-8R.) This week, Lucasfilm Ltd. and Marvel Entertainment announced that he’ll be the star of his own comic book: Star Wars: Poe Dameron. The new ongoing series will be written by Charles Soule (Lando, Obi-Wan and Anakin) and illustrated by Phil Noto (Chewbacca).

(5) UNDER-REMEMBERED AUTHORS. David Brin, in a post that begins with a tribute to the late David Hartwell, also names some forgotten authors – who should not be.

A fun little conversation-starter? On Quora I was asked to name “forgotten” sci fiauthors.  Other respondents were citing Roger Zelazny, L. Sprague de Camp, Ursuala Le Guin, Lester del Rey, A.E. VanVogt, Fritz Lieber, Clifford Simak, Harlan Ellison and Theodore Sturgeon. Well, of course Zelazny and Farmer and Ursula and those others should never be forgotten.  But would any reasonably well-read person say they are?  Or Walter Miller or Iain Banks?  No, not yet on any such list!  And I hope never.

For my own answer I dug deeper. From Robert Sheckley and Alice Sheldon (James Tiptree Jr.) and William Tenn, the greatest of all short story writers to lamented classics like John Boyd’s “The Last Starship From Earth.”

(6) CALL FOR PAPERS. The MLA 2017 session “Dangerous Visions: Science Fiction’s Countercultures” seeks papers that probe the following topic –

In the introduction to the chapter on “Countercultures” in his edited volume The Oxford Handbook of Science Fiction (2014), Rob Latham asserts that “Science fiction has always had a close relationship with countercultural movements” (383). The alternative worldmaking capacities of SF&F, in other words, has long had resonances in the sub- and countercultural movements of the past few centuries, “especially,” as Latham qualifies and expands, “if the allied genre of the literary utopia [and, we might add, the dystopia] is included within” the orbit of SF.

The convention will be held in January 2017 in Philadelphia. Papers proposed to the panel … might address the countercultural forces of the following topics, broadly conceived, or take their own unique direction:

  • pulp magazines
  • SF and the Literary Left
  • the New Wave (American or British)
  • cyberpunk
  • British Boom
  • contemporary/world SF
  • postcolonial SF
  • (critical) utopias/dystopias
  • SF as counterculture
  • SF beyond “science fiction”
  • SF comics, films, television

(7) TODAY IN HISTORY

  • January 23, 1957 – Machines at the Wham-O toy company roll out the first batch of their aerodynamic plastic discs–now known to millions of fans all over the world as Frisbees.

(8) SOME GOOD OLD DAYS. The Traveler at Galactic Journey in “20,000 Leagues Over The Air!” is among the very first in 1961 to review Vincent Price’s performance in Master of the World.

Every once in a while, my faith is restored in Hollywood, and I remember why I sit through the schlock to get to the gold.

My daughter and I sat through 90 minutes of the execrable, so bad it’s bad Konga because we had been lured in by the exciting posters for Master of the World.  It promised to be a sumptuous Jules Verne classic a la Journey to the Center of the Earth, and it starred the inimitable Vincent Price to boot.

It was worth the wait–the movie is an absolute delight….

(9) TIME TRAVELING IN STONE. On Book View Café, Steven Popkes tells about a road trip that combined “Fossils and Atomic Testing in Nevada”.

It was also a different perspective to see how people in Nevada viewed such things. I was living in California most of that time. We ducked and covered in the classrooms in case war came. But, in Las Vegas, people saw the flash. There were hundreds of tests in Nevada, many above ground. Every time an above ground test happened, it was seen across much of the state. In California, we were scared of something amorphous. In Nevada, they saw it every few months.

Then, back to the hills and looking for rocks and fossils.

We ended up with about 100 pounds of rock holding down every counter in the hotel room. Fifty pounds were our addition to the adjacent rock garden but the remaining 50 pounds needed to be shipped. We ended up purchasing a sturdy suitcase in Walmart and paying $25 for a check on. We heard, “what do you have in here? Rocks?” more than once. We just smiled and gave them our credit card.

(10) TROUBLE MAGNET. Lela E. Buis shares her ideas about “The dangers of Internet activism”.

However, some of these activists have run afoul of public opinion and suffered for it. Jenny Trout was dropped by her publisher after the Fionna Man episode. Ann Rice, Kevin Weinberg and Marvin Kaye suffered from their efforts to counter some of these attacks. Sarah Wendell received a lot of negative attention after Vox Day featured her comments on his conservative blog. And Day is a prime example himself. Everyone in the SFF community should know his name after last year’s Hugo debacle, but most of the press is so negative that it leads people to discount his viewpoints.

(11) TERMS WITHOUT ENDEARMENT. Did Steve Davidson just refuse John C. Wright’s surrender?

[Davidson] Response: “Publicly repudiate slates and campaigning. Don’t participate; let your readers know that you don’t endorse slates and have requested that your works not be included on them.”

[Writer left unnamed in article] “Done! I accept your offer, I have posted a notice on my blog eschewing slate voting, and you must now perform your part of the deal, and forswear putting my works, should any be nominated, below ‘No Award.’”

[Davidson continues] And now for the analysis.

First, note that in the first quote from PP we have this “assuming it wins the nomination”.

This whole thing is about the nominating process and the final voting, not just the final vote.  PP has very carefully tried to thread a needle here by entirely ignoring the fact that slates and campaigning are pretty much a done deal by the time we get to the final ballot.

So, PP.  No.  Your assumption about what you’ve agreed to do is meaningless because the assumption is wrong – and I think deliberately so.

Moving on:  We’ve been through this in detail for over two years now.  You may have made a statement on your blog – but I see no requests you’ve made to have your works removed from slates.

[Thanks to Andrew Porter, and John King Tarpinian for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Daniel Dern.]

File 770 Destroys Poetry

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File 770 commenters changed rhymes sublime and took a beater to the metre in yesterday’s spontaneous parody party.

ULTRAGOTHA bites This Is Just To Say

This Is Just To Say
I have consumed
the pixels
that were in
the scroll

and which
you were probably
posting
for news

Forgive me
they were delectable
so interesting
and so bold

RedWombat plucks The Raven

Once upon a laptop blurry, while I pondered, weak and bleary,
Over many a quaint and curious pixel of forgotten scroll—
While I nodded, nearly Skyping, suddenly there came a typing,
As of some one faintly sniping, sniping at the pixel scroll.
“’Tis some commenter,” I muttered, “sniping at my pixel scroll—
Only this and nothing mo’.”

Ah, distinctly I remember it was the month after December;
And each separate dying ember of a flame war guttered forth fifth.
Reluctantly I saw the morrow;—vainly I had sought to borrow
More time for reading’s surcease of sorrow—sorrow for the loss of myth—
For the rare and radiant Hugo whom the fans award to myth—
No award for pups and kith.

Bruce Baugh capitalizes on e. e. cummings

pity this busy monster, fanunfandom,

not. Blogging is a comfortable disease:
your victim (news and comfort safely beyond)

plays with the postness of his his blogness
— electrons deify one new item
into a mountainrange; pingback extend
unwish through curving wherewhen till uncomment
returns on its unself.
A world of made
is not a world of born — pity poor blogger

and dragons, poor brackets and reviews, but never this
fine specimen of hypermagical

ultraomnipotence. We commenters know
a hopeless case if — listen: there’s a hell
of a good blog next door; let’s go

Jim Henley destroys a Basho haiku

Vile hive
A scroll drops in
Without a pixel

Kip W changes the stripes on The Tyger

Pyxel! Pyxel! Scrolling fast
In the hives of columns past!
What dread buttons, what dread fans,
Dare dight the thoughts your maker scans!

RedWombat dismounts a Kobayashi Issa haiku

O Pixel!
Climb Mt. File 770
But slowly, slowly.

bloodstone75 carries off The Red Wheelbarrow

So much depends
upon

a fine scrolled
pixel

glazed with troll
nonsense

beside the cruel
brackets

Kip W disassembles Naming of Parts

Today we have scrolling of pixels. Yesterday,
We had spaceship coveting. And to-morrow morning,
We shall have several cascades of puns. But to-day,
To-day we have scrolling of pixels.

Bruce Baugh condenses Prufrock

In the dealer room the SJWs come and go
Speaking of Scalzi and of Hugo
I do not think they will vote for me.

Jonathan Edelstein sabers The Charge of the Light Brigade

Half a scroll, half a scroll
Onward to destiny;
All in the valley of trolls
Wrote the sev’n seventy.
“Essays by Beale I spy!
Time for some snark,” say I:
Into the valley of trolls
Wrote the sev’n seventy.

Puppies are here to stay:
Greet they that with dismay?
Not though they see today
Months more of enmity:
Theirs not to look for sense,
Theirs but to make defense,
Guarding an art immense,
Into the valley of trolls
Wrote the sev’n seventy.

Puppies to right of them,
Puppies to left of them,
Puppies in front of them
Thunder’d unpleasantly:
Storm’d at with insults vile
Stood they with wit and style,
Into the culture wars,
There at the Hugos’ doors
Wrote the sev’n seventy.

Flash’d all their keystrokes swift
Flash’d as they gave short shrift
To those who spurn’d the gift
Cleaning the slate of them
And then, incredibly,
Once silent, they were now
Join’d by a common vow;
Sads and the Rabids
Reel’d from the ballots cast
Driven to entropy:
They were not overwhelmed
Not the sev’n seventy.

Puppies to right of them,
Puppies to left of them,
Puppies behind them
Thunder’d unpleasantly:
Label’d and curs’d apace
Stood they with wit and grace:
They that had won the race
Came thro’ with no awards
Back to the art’s embrace
Now even more of them
More than sev’n seventy.

When can their glory fade?
O the defense they made!
And again presently:
As Rabids now crusade
Honor the fan brigade:
Noble sev’n seventy!

Cally fires a clip at Hiawatha, on the way to Jerusalem

By the shores of the Pacific,
By the shining Big-Sea-Water
Scroll the pixels of Mike Glyer
Host of File 770, Glyer.

***

And did those scrolls in pixeled times
Talk about Fandom’s hopes and dreams?
And were the fans, and authors too,
On Worldcon’s pleasant panels seen?

And did the Hugo winners float
The rest of Worldcon on a cloud?
And Hugo losers truly say
The nomination made them proud?

Bring me my nomination form!
Bring me my list of what I love!
Let no one tell me how to vote;
My socks will orbit up above!

I will not yield to childish taunts,
Nor let a slate make choices less.
And we shall celebrate the works
That Worldcon fans think are the best!

Jim Henley destroys The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam

Some for the pixels of this scroll; and some
Sigh for the bracket tournaments to come;
Ah, take the filk and let the facecloths go,
Nor heed the rumble of the slates to come.

–From The Rubaiyat of Camestros Felapton.

ULTRAGOTHA immures Mending Wall

Something there is that doesn’t love a Hugo,
That sends the frozen-distain to destroy it,
And scoffs at the stories writ by Other,
And misconstrues even clear basic prose.
The work of puppies is another thing:
I have come after them and made repair
Where they have left not one word upon a word,
But they would beat the dinosaur with a tire iron,
To please the yelping dogs. The awards I mean,
Puppies have not created them or helped them become,
But at spring nominating-time we find them ripped apart.
I let my neighbor know beyond the hill;
And on a day we meet to read the stories
And love the prose within covers once again.
We share the books between us as we go.
To each the narrative joy that has fallen to each.
And some are flash and some so nearly epics
We have to use a spell to set them right:
‘Stay as you are until our backs are turned!’
We wear our eyes sore with reading them.
Oh, just another kind of well-loved game,
With no sides. It comes to little more:
There where it is we do not need the Hugo:
He is all Fantasy and I am Military Fiction.
My Ray Guns will never fire across
And lay waste the magic in his books, I tell him.
He only says, ‘Good genre make good neighbors’.

Ultra Frost

Camestros Felapton toots Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came

Childe Pixel to the Dark Scroll Came – with apologies to Robert Browning

MY first thought was, he lied in every word,
That hoary blogger, with malicious eye
Askance to watch the working of his lie
On mine, and mouth scarce able to afford
Suppression of the glee, that pix’ld and scroll’d
Its edge, at one more victim gain’d thereby.

What else should he be set for, with his posts?
What, save to waylay with his lies, ensnare
All fannish-readers who might find him posting there,
And ask the net? I guess’d what skull-like laugh
Would break, what crutch ’gin write my epitaph
For pastime in that dusty cyberwar,

If at his counsel I should turn aside
Into that ominous tract which, all agree,
Hides the Dark Scroll. Yet acquiescingly
I did turn as he pointed: neither pride
Nor hope rekindling at the end descried,
So much as gladness that some end might be.

For, what with my whole world-wide-web wandering,
What with my search drawn out thro’ years, my hope
Dwindled into a ghost not fit to cope
With that obstreperous joy success would bring,—
I hardly tried now to rebuke the spring
My heart made, finding failure in its scope.

There the filers stood, ranged along the hill-sides, met
To view the last of me, a living frame
For one more comment! in a sheet of flame
I saw them and I knew them all. And yet
Dauntless the slug-horn to my lips I set,
And blew “Childe Pixel to the Dark Scroll came.”

Camestros Felapton plows under Gray’s Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard

An Australian’s Elegy on a US Blog Comment Section (with apologies to Thomas Gray)

The Glyer scrolls the pixel of the parting day,
The filking herd wind slowly o’er the lea,
The comments homeward plod their weary way,
And leaves half the world to darkness and to me.

Kyra rolls up The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

The Lovescroll of J. Alfred Pixel

Let us scroll then, you and I,
Where the pixels are spread out before the eye
Like a screenshot rasterized in nested tables;
Let us link to certain half-demented posts,
And make nostalgic toasts
To restless nights in three-night con hotels
And xeroxed RPGs with broken spells
(Spells that always cause a tedious argument
About authorial intent
And lead you to an underwhelming session —
So do not ask, “How’s that work?”
Just accept it’s mostly hackwork.)

In the scroll the pixels come and go
Talking of Attanasio.

The shallow blog that made a linkback to the Windows screen,
The shallow troll that tried to puzzle out the Windows screen,
Flicked its post into the corners of the comments,
Lingered so it could afterwards complain,
Attempted to backtrack the statements it had uttered,
Slipped in an insult, made a sudden pounce,
And seeing that it was trapped in moderation,
Snarled once about the host, and did a flounce.

After that, there is downtime
From the shallow troll that slides along the blog,
Rubbing its ick upon the Windows screen;
There will be time, there will be time
To prepare a post to meet the filers that you meet;
There will be time to edit and create,
And time for all the filks for all the fans
That lift and drop a poem on your plate;
Time for you and time for me —
Five minutes for a hundred indecisions,
And for a hundred visions and revisions,
Before the finish of the post you see.

In the scroll the pixels come and go
Talking of Sergey Lukyanenko.

And indeed there will be time
To wonder, “Did that rhyme?” and, “Was that worse?”
Time to look back and to soundly curse
At the lame spot in the middle of my verse —
(They will say: “How the verse is past its prime!”)
My meter and my word choice hewing strictly to the rhyme,
My subject apropos with substitutions made at fitting times —
(They will say: “A self-indulgent waste of time!”)
Do I dare
Disturb this classic verse?
In five minutes there’s no time
For decisions and revisions, and past that there’s no reverse.

For I have scrolled them all already, scrolled them all:
Have scrolled in evenings, mornings, afternoons,
I have measured out my energy in spoons;
I have seen attack ships dying with a dying flare
Above the shoulder of a larger meme
(And glittering C-beams.)

For I have read the books already, read them all—
Books that transfix you with a fascinating phrase,
And when I am fascinated, reading through LeGuin,
When I am pinned and marveling at it all,
Then how should I begin
To spit out all my counterfeit and skim-milk filk?
And how should I presume?

And I have seen the films already, seen them all—
Films that are magical and finely wrought
(But in the daylight, full of holes in plot.)
Are there spoilers I have seen
Disguised in rot13?
Films that spin a timeless fable with a slanted starting crawl..
And should I then presume?
And how should I begin?

Shall I say, I have gone at dawn through SF brackets
And watched the votes that come out with the gripes
Of grumpy fans with Feelings, raving about God Stalk? …

I should have banned anthologies, because.
I should have crowdsourced long before round three.

And the pixel scroll, the comments, blog so peacefully!
Smoothed by Mike Glyer,
Relaxed … soothing … or do they tire,
Stretching the page, typed out by you and me.
Do I, as I feel my zeal diminish,
Have the strength to force this filking to the finish?
For though I have tried to keep myself inspired,
Though I have seen my rhymes (grown slightly weak) grow longer with each posting,
I am no poet, and make no great boasting;
I have seen the moment of my bedtime nearing,
And I have seen a comfy blanket temptingly appearing,
And in short, I’m really tired.

bloodstone75 multiplies Sonnet 18

Sonnet 770

Shall I compare this to a nutty tale?
Thou art too pink and poofy in thy prose.
Oh dear, thy hero isn’t even male;
Why must thee push thy dogma up my nose?

Sometime too loud the message fiction shrills
And often is thy plotting sadly dim
In service to thy listing of the ills
That needs must always stem from He and Him.

No, thy eternal grievance shall not fade
Nor wilt thou cease from ruining the gen’re,
‘Til ev’ry con and imprint you invade
Be stripped of fun and manliness and hon’r.

So long as men can type, thine eyes will frown,
And thou wilt work to keep the straight man down.

Kip W. tackles Tichborne’s Elegy

My scroll of pixels is but a flash of suns,
My slate of tales is but a mess of mutts,
My hive of wits is but a mash of puns,
And all my squirreling is but food for nuts;
The game is on, yet I did not pass Go,
And now I tell you what I do not show.

My thread is over, but yet it was not run,
My bows were taken, yet no curtain fell,
My jokes were told, but only half in fun,
And my Farmers did not come from Dell;
The game runs still, over top and below,
And now I tell you, and now you know.

I sought for life and found it on the page,
I looked for laughs and found them in the posts,
I tried to rhyme, for it was all the rage,
And now I’m haunted by great poets’ ghosts;
The glass is crack’d, and out the verses flow,
You’ve told me yours; here’s my quid pro quo.

Jim Henley plays Abbot to Elvis Costello

Welcome to the Pixel Scroll

Now that your fifth is in the roundup being SFnally admired and you can
troll anyone that you have ever desired
All you gotta tell me now is why why why why

Welcome to the pixel scroll
Oh I know that we file ya
because we are vile yeah
Welcome to the pixel scroll
The way it’s dated maybe grated
but at least it’s not slated

We wish our favorites somehow could have survived
Hartwell and Bowie maybe both might still arrive
along with Alan Rickman, and give us all high fives

Welcome to the pixel scroll
Oh I know that we file ya
because we are vile yeah
Welcome to the pixel scroll
The way it’s dated maybe grated
but at least it’s not slated

I heard you sayin’ even Puppies are fine
if they talk about their favorite books
Spend all your money on your TBR
cause you can’t resist the impulse to look

Sometimes I wonder who is really a Trufan
Why’d I break your bracket-heart when I
Rejected miniseries out of hand

Welcome to the pixel scroll
Oh I Welcome to the pixel scroll

Pixel Scroll 1/22/16 Raindrops On Scrollses And Pixels On Kittens

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(1) IT’S A WRAP. Tom Cruise will star in Universal’s reboot of The Mummy, now scheduled to arrive in theaters on June 9, 2017. This version will be set in the contemporary world. Cruise is not playing the title role, trade outlets are referring to his character as a former Navy SEAL.

So who is The Mummy?

Sofia Boutella, best recognized as the badass beauty with swords for legs in Kingsman: The Secret Service, will be playing this new version of the Mummy.

Who’s directing it?

Alex Kurtzman will be calling the shots. The only feature film he’s directed to date is People Like Us, but he’s best known for being a writer on a ton of big blockbuster movies, like Transformers, The Island, Mission: Impossible III, and J.J. Abrams’ Star Trek series. It currently has a script from Jon Spaihts (Prometheus).

(2) TRACING FIREBALLS TO THEIR SOURCE. In “A Precursor to the Chainmail Fantasy Supplement” Jon Peterson of Playing at the World identifies Leonard Patt as a forgotten influence or source on Gary Gygax, whose Chainmail (a collaboration with Jeff Perren) was the first game designed by Gygax sold as a professional product. It included a heavily Tolkien-influenced “Fantasy Supplement”, which made Chainmail the first commercially available set of rules for fantasy wargaming.

Patt, should he still be with us, would surely be unaware of how Chainmail followed his work, let alone the profound influence that concepts like “fire ball” and saving versus spells have had on numberless games over the decades that followed.

…In the early, pre-commercial days of miniature wargaming, the environment was very loose and collaborative, and these kinds of borrowings were not uncommon – but attribution was still an assumed courtesy. Gary Gygax has something of a reputation for adapting and expanding on the work of the gaming community without always attributing his original sources. The case of the Thief class is probably the most famous: the first draft of Gary’s rules do note their debt to the Aero Hobbies crowd, but as the published version of the rules in Greyhawk (1975) did not, the obligation of the Thief rules to Gary Switzer and the others at Aero Hobbies long went unacknowledged. Regarding Chainmail, Gary in late interviews says nothing to suggest that concepts like fireball were not of his own invention; Patt’s rules compel us to reevaluate those claims. Nonetheless, we must acknowledge that Gary had a singular gift for streamlining, augmenting and popularizing rules originally devised by others: certainly we wouldn’t say that Patt’s original rules could have inspired Blackmoor, and thus Dungeons & Dragons, without Gary’s magic touch and the elaboration we find in the Chainmail Fantasy Supplement.

But if you ever vanquished an enemy with a fireball in Dungeons & Dragons, or Magic: the Gathering, or Dragon Age, and especially if you ever made a saving throw against a fireball, thank Leonard Patt!

(3) LIGHTNING STRIKING AGAIN AND AGAIN. The Kickstarter appeal for People of Colo(u)r Destroy Science Fiction has raised $20,192 as of this writing – 400% of its original goal. Another special issue of Lightspeed, it will be guest-edited by Nalo Hopkinson and Kristine Ong Muslim, in partnership with section editors Nisi Shawl, Berit Ellingsen, Grace Dillon, and Sunil Patel, who are assembling a lineup of fiction, essays, and nonfiction from people of color.

Lightspeed’s Destroy series was started because of assertions that women, LGBTQ, and POC creators were destroying science fiction. The staff of Lightspeed took that as a challenge. Building on the astounding success of Lightspeed’s Women Destroy Science Fiction! (and Horror, and Fantasy) and Queers Destroy Science Fiction! (and Horror, and Fantasy), POC Destroy Science Fiction! brings attention to the rich history and future of POC-created science fiction and fantasy.

Like the previous Destroy issues, this campaign has the potential to unlock additional special issues focusing on Horror and Fantasy as well.

(4) DOUBTFUL. Breitbart.com’s Allum Bokhari dishonestly represents a commenter’s statement as a File 770 news item in “SJWs Are Purging Politically Incorrect Sci-Fi Authors From Bookstores”.

(5) BAKKA PHOENIX REPLIES. Yet he is getting the clicks he wants. One Toronto bookstore owner was intimidated into making a public denial — “A Question Worth Answering”.

We are Bakka Phoenix, a different bookstore entirely. We’re not going to comment on a rumour about XXX’s activities: that way lies madness and a lot of silly Twitter feuds. You might want to contact them directly (their website is XXX). Also, please note: from a Canadian perspective, Breitbart looks more like an outlet for the borderline-lunatic fringe than a credible news source.

But if you were wondering, we can assure you that we ourselves carry many books we find personally or politically reprehensible. Let’s face it, your left wing is somewhere off to our right, enough so that we’d have trouble even agreeing on the definition of ‘conservative’. Frankly, we find a lot of US political posturing completely unhinged.

But… so what? We’re in the business of selling books. Good books. Bad books. Titles some people love; titles others hate enough to throw across the room. Some books will transform readers minds and lives and be remembered for decades. Others will be forgotten immediately upon reading (or even partway through). We don’t have to like a book, its author, or its message in order to sell it. To suggest otherwise merely proves that the suggester spends very little time in actual bookstores.

The many wonderful independent booksellers I’ve met feel the same way. Independent bookstores exist for precisely that reason: to ensure that readers have the widest choice possible. So we — all of us — stock books we think our readers might be interested in, personal taste bedamned.

(6) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS

  • Born January 22, 1934 – Bill Bixby, of My Favorite Martian and The Hulk.
  • Born January 22, 1959 – Linda Blair, of The Exorcist.

(7) BUTTER WOULDN’T MELT. Kate Paulk wrote a post educating her readers about the Best Editor Hugo categories.

Both these categories have seen controversy since their introduction: first the lobbying to split Best Editor – the whispers say this was so that a specific individual could receive an award instead of always playing second fiddle to a very prominent (and very skilled) magazine editor, the apparent hand-off of both through much of their history between an extremely small number of people – so much so that it appears a group of Tor editors considered the Long Form award to be their property (just look at the list of winners…).

The first comment, by Draven:

“yeah well, you know who we say for long form…”

The second comment, by Dorothy Grant:

“Hmmm, Maybe, maybe not. This year will be the last year David Hartwell will be eligible. (He edited L.E. Modesitt & John C. Wright, among others.) The industry lost a good man, and a good editor, yesterday. Granted, he’s won three, but these things do happen in tribute.”

The third comment, by Kate Paulk:

“They do indeed, and David Hartwell is certainly a worthy nominee.”

(8) BRUSHBACK PITCH. Clayton Kershaw, the best pitcher in the National League, also has a less well known claim to fame – his great-uncle Clyde Tombaugh discovered Pluto. That explains his loyalty to the diminutive world, and his recent contradiction of NASA on Twitter.

(9) SINBAD. The Alex Film Society will screen The 7th Voyage of Sinbad (1958) on Thursday, April 28 at the Alex Theatre in Glendale.

(10)  A SCI-FI KID REMEMBERS. Film fan Steve Vertlieb has compiled his memories about meeting genre stars into one extravaganza post:

After some forty seven years of writing about films, film makers, and film music, I thought that I’d take a moment to remember the glorious moments, events, and artists who have so generously illustrated the pages of my life, and career, over these many remarkable years.  Do return with me now to Those Thrilling Days of Yesteryear when artistry and grandeur populated the days of our lives…days when gallant souls courageously rescued their leading ladies from screen villainy…days when culture and dignity proliferated the screen, television, radio, and the printed page.  Look for it only in books, for its sweet reflection of gentle innocence is but a faded memory…a  tender, poignant whisper of grace and wonder that, sadly, has Gone With The Wind.

Those memories are also the driving force of his autobiographical documentary Steve Vertlieb: The Man Who “Saved” The Movies. The director keeps an online journal of their progress.

A FILM DIRECTOR’S JOURNAL #3…THE PHILADELPHIA “SHOOT”

Whew!  It would be a bitch of an exhausting marathon, because we had lots of LITERAL ground to cover in Center City, hopscotching from one locale to another blocks away; then to another, then to another; finally finishing up on the “high steel”, the center of the city’s Benjamin Franklin Bridge, stretching from Philadelphia across the Delaware River into Camden, N.J.  But everyone agreed.  And our “Philadelphia Marathon” was off and running.

The documentary film will wrap in February, 2016, with film festival screenings planned for this Spring.

(11) ALAN RICKMAN. Today Star Talk Radio site revisited Neil deGrasse Tyson’s 2012 conversation with Alan Rickman.

So what does astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson ask him about? Failing physics in high school, of course. They also talk a little about acting, including how Alan chooses and prepares for his roles, from researching the heart surgeon in Something the Lord Made to the wine-tasting scene in Bottle Shock. You’ll hear Alan explain his sense of responsibility to his audience and what he describes as “the mysterious mechanism of acting and theatre and storytelling.” Neil and Alan also get philosophical about the limits of human perception, the flocking behavior of birds, and the interaction of sound and memory.

(12) MARTIAN HOP. Tintinaus has a great addition to The Martian musical, based on Kenny Rogers’ “The Gambler.”

Every Martian knows that the secret to survival,
Is solving the next problem,
And then the problem after that.
‘Cause every day’s a winner
Even if you’re gettin’ thinner,
And the best that you can hope for
Is growing tates in your crewmate’s scat.

 

You gotta know when to sow ’em
Know when to hoe ’em
Know when to harvest
For a bumper yield
You never count sauce satchels
‘Cause that would be depressing.
Knowing how long ungarnished taters
Will be your only meal.

[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, and Martin Morse Wooster for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Kyra.]