Pixel Scroll 11/30/17 Go Not To The Filers For Counsel, For They Will Say Both Scroll And Pixel

(1) IT GETS WORSE. Amal El-Mohtar tweeted about her horrendous experience at the hands of TSA while trying to enter the U.S. to attend a retreat. Begins here —

She missed her flight, needed to get rebooked, had to go through Customs a second time (another bad experience), and spent long hours at the airport waiting for the next flight. Here are a couple of the tweets from that thread:

There was an outpouring of sympathy, support, and indignation, for example:

(2) BEWARE. David Gerrold shared this warning on Facebook:

A friend has sent me a cautionary note not to do business with Atomic Network. (I wouldn’t anyway, I’m currently involved in a much more promising effort.) But the advice is appreciated. I won’t repeat the long explanatory message here, the language is a little blunt and might cross a couple lines, but the evidence presented is damning enough on its own merits. The point is that SF content creators and investors would probably not be happy with the track record of the CEO and his previous ventures. Consider this a Writer Beware warning.

I believe this is the website for Atomic Network.

(3) MORE CON TRADEMARK LITIGATION. Two Boston anime conventions are going to court: “Anime Boston sues to block similarly named event in Hanover”.

The New England Anime Society of Somerville, which puts on the annual Anime Boston show at the Hynes, this week sued two of its former volunteers, who are using the phrase “Boston Anime Fest” to promote their own show at the Hanover Mall, which is somewhere south of Boston.

In addition to trying to stop the organizers from associating themselves with the show that’s actually in Boston, in a trademark lawsuit filed in US District Court, New England Anime has filed a request for a temporary restraining order to try to block the Hanover show, schedule for Dec. 8 and 9.

Although the main name of the Hanover show is the Boston SouthCoast Comic Con & Collectibles Extravaganza, its Web site, with a URL of www.bostonanimefest.com, prominently features a Boston Anime Fest logo.

New England Anime says the branding is likely to confuse anime fans into thinking it has something to do with the Hanover show, which it does not. That the new show’s organizers, Fantastic Gatherings, Inc. – founded by the two former Anime Boston volunteers – and Interactive Meet and Greet Entertainment, initially linked their social-media accounts to Boston Anime, is also an issue.

(4) BOOKSELLERS LOVE IT. Philip Pullman’s La Belle Sauvage has been named the Waterstones book of the yearThe Guardian has the story.

Pullman pronounced himself delighted to have won an award chosen by booksellers, which he called “the most important channel between the publishers and the public”.

“Writers are at one end of a complicated network that includes editors, reviewers, designers, printers, and many other real people – as well as phantoms such as the writer the readers imagine and the readers the book seems to expect,” he said. “Part of this great living network or ecology of the book world is the ancient and distinguished profession of bookselling, which I respect and value very much.”

(5) BEST SFF OF 2017. And The Guardian thinks it none too soon for Adam Roberts to tell his picks for “The best science fiction and fantasy of 2017”.

A year ago, Amitav Ghosh usefully stirred things up with his rebuke to “realist” modes of writing. Where, he asked, is all the fiction about climate change? Well, it turns out that the answer is science fiction. Genre writing has been exploring the possible futures of climate change for many years, and 2017’s three best novels engage in powerful and varied ways with precisely that subject. Kim Stanley Robinson is the unofficial laureate of future climatology, and his prodigious New York 2140 (Orbit), a multilayered novel set in a flooded Big Apple, is by any standard an enormous achievement. It is as much a reflection on how we might fit climate change into fiction as it is a detailed, scientifically literate representation of its possible consequences.

Just as rich, though much tighter in narrative focus, is Paul McAuley’s superb Austral (Gollancz), set in a powerfully realised near?future Antarctica transformed by global warming. Jeff VanderMeer’s vividly weird Borne (4th Estate) takes a different, neo-surrealist approach to the topic. You won’t soon forget its star turn, a flying bear as big as a cathedral rampaging through wastelands….

(6) NABORS OBIT. Actor and singer Jim Nabors (1930-2017), best known for playing Gomer Pyle on two TV series, died November 30. I didn’t know he had any genre-related connections beyond his character’s tendency to say “Shazam!” in place of an expletive, however, SF Site News notes that his credits include

…the Saturday morning children’s show The Lost Saucer with Ruth Buzzi. He also made appearances in an episode of Knight Rider and provided voicework for Off to See the Wizard.

 

(7) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS

  • Born November 30, 1937 – Ridley Scott
  • Born November 30, 1985 — Kaley Cuoco

(8) CAPTAINS OUTRAGEOUS. You’ll all be thrilled to know — “William Shatner ends Star Trek feud, unblocks Jason Isaacs on Twitter”.  According to Entertainment Weekly:

Shatner never publicly said why he blocked the Star Trek: Discovery star in the first place, but we’re pretty sure it had something to do with an interview that arguably mischaracterized Isaacs as saying he would never want Shatner to be a guest star on the new series

(9) SIR JULIUS. The Science Fiction and Fantasy Association of New Zealand (SFFANZ) declares that nominations for the 2018 Sir Julius Vogel awards are open.

Nominations for the 2018 Sir Julius Vogel awards are now being accepted. The nomination period will close at 8.00 pm on 2 February 2018.  The awards recognise excellence and achievement in science fiction, fantasy, or horror works created by New Zealanders and New Zealand residents, and first published or released in the 2017 calendar year.

…Anyone can make a nomination and it is free! To make a nomination, go to http://www.sffanz.org.nz/sjv/sjvAwards.shtml  and fill out the web-based nomination form.

Get busy reading NZ authors and watching NZ movies to find work to nominate. We have a list of New Zealand works that may be eligible for nomination here.

(10) LE GUIN. Arwen Curry, who’s making a Kickstarter-funded documentary about the writer, worried that Ursula K. Le Guin’s home might have been threatened by the recent Northern California fires. All is well, writes Curry: “In Thanks for Houses”.

We were also worried for Kish, Ursula K. Le Guin’s family ranch in the Napa Valley. Thankfully, it was spared. After the air cleared, we drove up to capture some of our film’s final images, of the land where she spent the long summers of her childhood, and the setting for her 1985 masterwork, Always Coming Home. We filmed the buzzards circling, the wild oaks, the river beginning to swell, the sunset-colored vineyards, “the blue hills on the left and the blue hills on the right.”

(11) LIVE-ACTION MULAN MOVIE. The Guardian tells how Disney has avoided controversy with a Mulan casting decision: “Liu Yifei gets starring role in Mulan, as tide turns against ‘whitewashing'”.

A Chinese actor will play the title role in a live-action remake of Disney’s Mulan, a move seen as a victory for Asian actors in Hollywood after repeated controversies over “whitewashing”.

Liu Yifei, who also uses the name Crystal Liu, was picked to star in the film after a worldwide search that screened nearly 1,000 candidates. The 30-year-old actor has appeared in more than a dozen films in China and began her career in television.

The decision to cast a Chinese actress was widely praised on social media after a series of controversies over whitewashing and follows Beyoncé’s casting in the upcoming Lion King remake.

Hollywood has attracted widespread criticism for casting white actors to play Asian characters. Tilda Swinton, Scarlett Johansson and Emma Stone have all played characters who were Asian in the source material.

(12) SHAPE OF THINGS TO COME. The Los Angeles Times speculates whether The Shape of Water will earn Guillermo del Toro an Academy Award. Video at the link.

Is this the year that Guillermo del Toro — close friends with Cuarón and Iñárritu since the ’90s and, like them, one of Mexico’s most acclaimed and successful filmmakers — wins his Oscar?

Del Toro stands as a strong contender for directing “The Shape of Water,” a lavish, deeply felt love story involving a pair of outsiders — a mute cleaning woman (Sally Hawkins) and an Amazonian water creature (frequent Del Toro collaborator Doug Jones).

(13) CAN I GET A WITNESS? NPR reports “Arkansas Prosecutors Drop Murder Case That Hinged On Evidence From Amazon Echo”.

Arkansas prosecutors have dropped their case against James Bates, whom they had charged with first-degree murder partly with the help of evidence collected by an Amazon Echo smart speaker. On Wednesday, a circuit court judge granted their request to have the charges of murder and tampering with evidence dismissed.

The prosecutors declared nolle prosequi, stating that the evidence could support more than one reasonable explanation.

The move marks a curious end to a still more curious case, which had revolved around the role played by a personal assistant device that’s supposed to begin recording as soon as someone says its wake word — “Alexa,” in this case — in its presence.

… At the time of Victor Collins’ death, the Echo had been out on the market in the U.S. for only several months, and the search warrant issued for the device’s recordings prompted some fears that the new technology was opening another battlefield over personal privacy protections.

(14) FETCH! From NPR — “Scientists Train Bacteria To Build Unnatural Proteins”:

One feature of this new system is that these germs need to be fed the precursors for the X and Y components, as well as synthetic amino acids, which are the building blocks for the artificial proteins.

“There’s actually an advantage of having to do it this way,” he says, and that’s safety.

“I think synthetic biology by its very nature scares a lot of people, because you’re sort of playing with life and trying to optimize it to do new things. And people say, ‘Hey, wait a minute — that could be dangerous. What if they escape into nature?’ And I think that’s a significant concern. I think people should be worried about that kind of thing.”

But because his organisms need to be fed man-made starting materials, they can’t survive outside the lab, he says.

(15) CROWDSOURCED SCIENCE. Sometimes you do need a weatherman…. The BBC tells about the “Huge weather rescue project under way”.

It is shaping up to be a mammoth citizen science project.

Volunteers are wanted to digitise early 20th Century weather records covering the UK and other parts of Europe.

The temperature, pressure, rainfall and wind observations are in handwritten tables and need to be converted to a form that computers can analyse.

The data comes from the Met Office’s “Daily Weather Reports”, which were started by Robert FitzRoy shortly after the agency was founded in 1854.

If this old information is recovered, it can then be used to reconstruct past conditions.

That will put more context around some of the changes now occurring in our atmosphere, says Prof Ed Hawkins, from the National Centre for Atmospheric Science and Reading University.

“Whenever we have big weather events today we need to ask ourselves, have we seen them before? And if we go further and further back in time and don’t recognise such big storms or such heavy rainfall, then we can be more confident that the changes we’re seeing today really are the result of shifts in the climate system,” he told BBC News.

(16) DIAGNOSING NARRATIVE DISORDER. Malka Older’s Null States, sequel to Infomocracy, inspires a discussion of the writer’s imagined society: “’Patchwork Futures’: Sci-fi meets the political thriller” in Harvard Magazine.

In the future imagined by Malka Older ’99, author of Infomocracy and its new sequel, Null States, the inability to distinguish narrative from reality has become a medical diagnosis, officially codified as “narrative disorder.” Older describes the condition as a rewiring of the mind in a world shaped by shared narratives. “On the one hand, there’s an addiction to narrative content, to wanting to distract ourselves with stories,” she says. “But this is also changing how our brains work. We’re changing our expectations of what’s going to happen and the way people act and the kinds of characters we’re likely to meet, and by changing those expectations we end up changing reality, because people act on those expectations.”

(17) THE VILLAIN’S RIDE. “Epic Star Wars Build Test: Colin Furze x X Robots” comes courtesy of British eBay, and features Colin Furze who decided to build a full-size fighter of the sort Kylo Ren uses, and then tested it in front of some kids from the Peterborough Star Wars Club.  The kids are happy and there are lots of fireworks.

[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, JJ, Mark Hepworth, Steven H Silver, David K.M .Klaus, Darnell Coleman, Martin Morse Wooster, Chip Hitchcock, NickPheas, Cat Eldridge, Andrew Porter, and Carl Slaughter for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Niall McAuley.]

Erin Roberts Wins SLF’s 2017 Diverse Writers and Diverse Worlds Grants

Erin Roberts

Erin Roberts is the recipient of the Speculative Fiction Foundation’s 2017 Diverse Writers Grant and 2017 Diverse Worlds Grant. The two $500 awards support any purpose that a writer recipient chooses to benefit their work. Both awards are intended to foster the creation of speculative fiction work rich in diversity by facilitating completion of new, in-progress work, rather than recognizing already-published work.

Roberts said, “Winning an award for writing about diverse worlds as a person of color is a special honor for me because I know that one of the reasons that I am drawn to and able to tell the stories that I do is that because I am a black woman in America.  I love filling my stories with the type of people I grew up with, that I am friends with, that I live and love and laugh with, with all their joys and sorrows and quirks and flaws.” She writes the stories that she does, “because of who I am.” Her website is Writing Wonder.

  • The $500 Diverse Writers grant is “intended to support new and emerging writers from underrepresented and underprivileged groups, such as writers of color, women, queer writers, disabled writers, working-class writers, etc. — those whose marginalized identities may present additional obstacles in the writing/publishing process.”
  • The $500 Diverse Worlds grant is “intended for work that best presents a diverse world, regardless of the writer’s background.”

Erin Roberts’ work has been published or is forthcoming in Podcastle and The Dark. Her non-fiction has been publishing in Tor.com and in People of Colo(u)r Destroy Fantasy, People of Color Take Over Fantastic Stories of the Imagination, and Cascadia Subduction Zone. She is an MFA candidate at Stonecoast and a graduate of the Odyssey Writing Workshop and is a writer or editor for Zombies, Run!, Stonecoast Review, and Escape Pod.

Roberts says, “I have always been drawn to things beyond the world we see around us.” She says she writes stories of outcasts, and about “of the burdens placed on people by the societies they live in, of the ones who get left behind when technology takes a step forward.”

In 2016, there were 12 applications for the grants, which are awarded by a volunteer jury based on merit. This year’s jurors were led by Managing Director Malon Edwards.

The Honorable Mentions for the Diverse Writers grant were Lindsay Wong, Nibedita Sen, Maria Isabel Alvarez, and Julie Steinbacher, while the Honourable Mentions for the Diverse Worlds grant were Nia Davenport, LA Davis, and Julie Steinbacher.

The 2015 winner of both grants was author Carmen Maria Machado, whose short fiction collection, Her Body and Other Parties: Stories, was a finalist for the National Book Award. The 2016 winners were Gabriel Thibodeau and Eden Royce.

Founded in January, 2004 to promote literary quality in speculative fiction, the all-volunteer Foundation is led by Mary Anne Mohanraj and 30 other volunteers. The Foundation maintains a comprehensive website offering information for readers, writers, editors and publishers of speculative fiction, develops book lists and outreach materials for schools and libraries, and raises funds for redistribution to other organizations in the field, as well as four awards made annually to writers.

[Based on the press release.]

Rocket Stack Rank Issues Apology, Hullender Off Locus Panel

Rocket Stack Rank has answered “An Open Letter With Respect to Reviews Published on Rocket Stack Rank” with an apology and commentary. The open letter was coauthored by Brooke Bolander, Indrapramit Das, Ada Hoffmann, Keffy R.M. Kehrli, Rose Lemberg, Sunny Moraine, Suzanne Palmer, Charles Payseur, A. Merc Rustad, K.M. Szpara, Bogi Takács, and JY Yang, and has been cosigned by well over 100 others since it was posted yesterday.

Rocket Stack Rank’s “Apology & Open Letter Responses” begins:

We apologize to all readers and authors we’ve harmed and offended. Greg [Hullender] has withdrawn from the Locus Recommended Reading List panel.

We apologize for offending non-binary and trans people who use “they” as their pronoun. Our criticism of fictional non-binary characters in stories hurt real people who read and identify with those characters. What we’d previously dismissed as differences of personal preference or as “neutral” linguistic arguments, actually exposed a major blind spot.

We also apologize for trying to “explain” trans people to a cis audience in two reviews (The Black Tides of Heaven & The Red Threads of Fortune). It is not our place to do that no matter how much history Greg had in the LGBT movement, and we should have known that.

Moving forward, we will no longer single out the use of “they” as pronouns for non-binary characters as a Pro or Con of a story. We will treat non-binary characters the same way we treat gay, lesbian, bisexual, and trans characters. For existing reviews, we will update each with a correction and comment that links to this post. In general, if people tell us about errors in pronouns or gendering, we’ll thank them for their feedback and correct the errors.

We continue to listen and to learn, and we will do better.

The apology is followed by a paragraph-by-paragraph response to the Open Letter, accepting some of the criticisms, disagreeing with others, for example —

We do not promote ourselves as the one-and-only authority on short fiction, as evidenced by the search link we provide with every story that lets readers find reviews written by people with very different tastes from RSR, as well as direct links to recommendations from prolific reviewers where available.

Other parts of the response vary between accepting the criticisms and making further apology, explaining measures being taken to avoid similar problems in the future, and trying to document the inaccuracy of a few specific criticisms.

Meanwhile, Locus, which has been under pressure to drop Hullender from the Recommended Reading List panel, has issued this statement:

[Editor’s note: I have been covering this story in the Scroll, however, I did not want to delay reporting these developments for eight or ten hours til the Scroll is ready to post.]

Pixel Scroll 11/29/17 I Have Discovered A Truly Marvelous Pixel, Which The Margin Of This Scroll Is Too Narrow To Contain

(1) ALL OVER BUT THE SHOUTING. A week ago Bleeding Cool reported “Adult-Themed Site Cosplay Deviants Has Trademarked Cosplay is NOT Consent”.

An explosion of chatter has erupted online as people have taken notice that the cosplay-themed porn website Cosplay Deviants trademarked the phrase “Cosplay is NOT Consent.”  The idea that this particular site is positioning itself as the “champion” or “leading edge” of the effort to have more conventions implement and post harassment policies has taken the community by surprise…

Additionally, there have been comments online to the effect of Cosplay Deviants CEO Troy Doerner approaching conventions attempting to get royalties for using the Cosplay is not Consent trademark.

In the face of negative public reaction, Troy Doerner says he has now legally abandoned the trademark.

So here’s the thing: I will continue to work to combat harassment of cosplayers in the fan community hourly, daily, and yearly until I retire from all of this. Cosplay is NOT Consent is a phrase that carries weight, impact, and meaning for those that listen to the message and not just read the words.

I have no intention of stopping my work supporting this vital movement in fandom.

I have, however, decided to legally abandon the trademark… a process which was finalized just prior to this post. There have been a number of valid points made regarding securing it, and (even if it was for the right reasons) doing so isn’t a simple solution to a very complicated topic. We’ve heard the community and we will continue to be a part of this discussion, but this just seems like the best course of action.

So thank you to everyone that professionally shared your opinions and feedback with me to help lead to this decision. It wasn’t an easy conclusion to come to, but that’s the best part of being a part of this business: the opportunity to learn, evolve, and finding new ways to grow.

Online records show the trademark surrender was received November 28.

(2) RSR. Keffy and several coauthors have written “An Open Letter With Respect to Reviews Published on Rocket Stack Rank”. This is just one of a number of points:

The reviewer, who is not trans and/or non-binary, makes judgments about the validity of pronouns and identities, and decides which author “makes good use of [transness]” and which authors do not. This is problematic and hurtful. This is a way of saying “you do not belong.” A way of saying “stories about you don’t belong.” When reviews specifically cite pronouns of characters as justifications for rating a story down, a line is crossed. A line where not only writers but readers may find their identity questioned, belittled, and willfully misunderstood. A line that RSR crosses often and with seeming impunity.

Over a hundred people have cosigned the letter in comments.

(3) FAKE NEWS. CBR.com reports the deception continued for over a decade: “The Strange Tale of CB Cebulski’s Time as Akira Yoshida”.

The comic book world was rocked today by news that new Marvel Editor-in-Chief, C.B. Cebulski, has admitted that he wrote under the pseudonym “Akira Yoshida” for two years from 2004-2005 while he was an editor at Marvel Comics.

The first work by “Akira Yoshida” was published at Dark Horse Comics in early 2004, but then he debuted at Marvel with an Elekta miniseries.

… Finally, today, Cebulski admitted to Rich Johnston that he was, in fact, “Akira Yoshida,” telling Johnston:

I stopped writing under the pseudonym Akira Yoshida after about a year. It wasn’t transparent, but it taught me a lot about writing, communication and pressure. I was young and naïve and had a lot to learn back then. But this is all old news that has been dealt with, and now as Marvel’s new Editor-in-Chief, I’m turning a new page and am excited to start sharing all my Marvel experiences with up and coming talent around the globe.

(4) WHALEFALL. Ursula Vernon’s Hugo acceptance and sea life speech, “An Unexpected Honor”, has been posted by the B&N Sci-Fi & Fantasy Blog.

Well. This is an unexpected honor. My fellow winners have said some very meaningful things up here on the stage tonight.

I want to talk to you about dead whales….

(5) WHERE’S MY CAR AT. The internet vote on this was so close they almost had to throw it to the House of Representatives.

(6) NO TURKEYS HERE: Jason, at Featured Futures, gives out a list of, and some comments on, some of the month’s fiction he was most thankful to read with the “Summation of Online Fiction: November 2017”.

As I mention in the relevant recommendation, I belatedly discovered that the SFWA had added the flash zine Grievous Angel to its list of pro markets, so I caught up on it. Even with its intermittent microfiction help, this was a light month in which I read about 134K words from thirty-four of thirty-six November stories. This month’s recommendations and honorable mentions, especially for science fiction, are also fairly light. There were still several good stories, though, and the 238th number of Beneath Ceaseless Skies was especially noteworthy.

(7) WRITING ADVICE. Author Susan Triceratops invites you to “Ask A Triceratops” at Camestros Felapton’s blog:

So would I include a love story in a zombie survival novel? You betcha! A group of survivors learning how to be tough in a world full of remorseless yet stupid predators? That’s practically soap-opera for a triceratops. You may not believe this but your average T-rex was either an idiot or a drunk or both.

(8) VESTIGES. It makes me glad to know someone has preserved this sort of thing, although I could not afford to own it: “The Bugle Which Sounded Taps for Lincoln”. The bid is up to $80,000. And come to think of it, if I had that money I wouldn’t be spending it on a collectible.

According to a June 17, 1923, article in the Columbus Dispatch, “the historic bugle has been located in Columbus and will be used in blowing the assembly call in the ‘Pageant of Memories’ which will be given at the state G.A.R. encampment June 26. The bugle is the property of H. M. Cook, who inherited it from his father, Hiram Cook, who was a member of President Lincoln’s bodyguard.”

The historic bugle has remained in the Cook family ever since. In 1973, it was loaned to the Smithsonian Institution as part of an exhibit of artifacts of slain presidents, and displayed alongside the bugle which sounded taps for President Kennedy. A photograph of the Smithsonian display accompanies the bugle, along with as letter of thanks from the Associate Curator of the Division of Political History. It has been consigned for auction by a direct descendent of Hiram Cook whose notarized affidavit accompanies the lot.

(9) FLASH EXEC PRODUCER FIRED. Variety reports “‘Flash,’ ‘Arrow’ EP Andrew Kreisberg Fired Amid Harassment Allegations”.

Andrew Kreisberg has been fired from his role as executive producer on superhero dramas “The Flash,” “Arrow,” “Supergirl” and “Legends of Tomorrow” amid multiple allegations of sexual harassment.

“After a thorough investigation, Warner Bros. Television Group has terminated Andrew Kreisberg’s employment, effective immediately,” said the studio in a statement.

…Warner Bros. Television, which produces the DC Comics-inspired dramas for the CW, suspended Kreisberg Nov. 10 from both productions and launched an investigation into multiple claims of sexual harassment on the series. Berlanti and Schechter met with the casts and crews of their series in the days after the allegations surfaced in a Variety report.

In a piece published Nov. 10 at the time of Kreisberg’s suspension, 19 women and men who worked on the Warner Bros.-Berlanti shows described being subjected to or witnessing incidents  similar incidents of inappropriate touching and endemic sexual harassment. The sources spoke with Variety on condition on anonymity. Kreisberg has denied the allegations.

[Hat tip to SF Site News.]

(10) KEILLOR FIRED. The former Prairie Home Companion host has been canned, too. “Garrison Keillor Fired for ‘Inappropriate Behavior’ 1 Day After Defending Al Franken”Jezebel has the story.

Garrison Keillor, the former host of National Public Radio weekend staple, A Prairie Home Companion, has been fired by Minnesota Public Radio for “inappropriate behavior.”

In a statement to the Associated Press, Keillor confirmed that he had been fired over what he cryptically described as “a story that I think is more interesting and more complicated than the version MPR heard.” MPR confirmed Keillor’s termination to the AP, writing in a statement that it is, “terminating its contracts with Garrison Keillor and his private media companies after recently learning of allegations of his inappropriate behavior with an individual who worked with him.” MPR added that it will no longer re-air episodes of Prairie Home Companion where Keillor is the host. “The program’s current iteration hosted by Chris Thile will get a new name,” the AP reports.

(11) FEELING BETTER. The Harvard Business School’s Working Knowledge blog explores “How Independent Bookstores Have Thrived in Spite of Amazon.com”.

Here are some of Raffaelli’s key findings so far, based on what he has found to be the “3 C’s” of independent bookselling’s resurgence: community, curation, and convening.

  • Community: Independent booksellers were some of the first to champion the idea of localism; bookstore owners across the nation promoted the idea of consumers supporting their local communities by shopping at neighborhood businesses. Indie bookstores won customers back from Amazon, Borders, and other big players by stressing a strong connection to local community values.
  • Curation: Independent booksellers began to focus on curating inventory that allowed them to provide a more personal and specialized customer experience. Rather than only recommending bestsellers, they developed personal relationships with customers by helping them discover up-and-coming authors and unexpected titles.
  • Convening: Independent booksellers also started to promote their stores as intellectual centers for convening customers with likeminded interests—offering lectures, book signings, game nights, children’s story times, young adult reading groups, even birthday parties. “In fact, some bookstores now host over 500 events a year that bring people together,” Raffaelli says.

(12) INSIDE JOB. B&N Sci-Fi & Fantasy Blog recommends these “10 Fiendishly Clever Sci-Fi Locked Room Mysteries”.

The locked room whodunnit is a stalwart of the mystery genre—the seemingly impossible crime committed inside a sealed-off room. Agatha Christie had several famous locked-room mysteries, including Murder on the Orient Express, the latest cinematic adaptation of which is currently chugging through a successful theatrical run. But locked room mysteries aren’t just Poirot’s home turf—more than a few SFF authors haven’t been able to resist the lure of the format, crafting fiendish puzzles in science-fictional contexts (locked rooms beget locked spaceships easily enough). The 10 books listed here offer fantastic sci-fi mysteries that rival anything in Christie’s oeuvre.

First on their list:

Six Wakes, by Mur Lafferty
A locked-room mystery nestled comfortably inside a big-idea sci-fi premise, Lafferty’s latest is a interstellar page-turner that puts an innovative twist on cloning tropes. Societal and climate collapse drives humanity to send 2,000 cryo-frozen people to a distant, Earth-like planet on a ship crewed by six criminals who volunteer to be cloned again and again as they shepherd their precious cargo to its final destination. Every time the crew is cloned, they maintain their collective memories. When they wake up at the beginning of the novel, however, their former bodies are dead—brutally murdered in various ways. The ship is in shambles (the gravity is off, the controlling artificial intelligence is offline, and they’re off-course); and their memories (and all other records) have been erased. The six have to clean up the mess—but they also have to figure out who killed them and why, and how to survive within a paranoid pressure-cooker of a ship.

(13) THE BARRICADES. Cat Eldridge sent the link along with the advice, “Do read the comments — there’s a lot of hate for the show which is actually quite good. I think too many haters of Discovery were the same ones who hated Enterprise in that both shows deviated in major ways from the so-called canon of the now fifty-year old TOS.  A show that at times was perfectly horrid.” — SyFy Wire’s Swapna Krishna discusses “The problem of gatekeeping in Star Trek fandom”.

…Some, like me, love it. Others don’t. Still others are angry about the delivery method. Whatever your feelings on the show are, they’re your business. No show is perfect, and no show is for everyone, and that’s okay.

That being said, there’s been a disturbing trend among the ranks of Star Trek fandom that has turned its back on the show. It’s not enough that they don’t like it; they’ve decreed that anyone who enjoys the show isn’t a real Star Trek fan. And they’ll pop up in Facebook comments, in Twitter mentions, everywhere they can to make sure you know it.

I’ve been called a lot of things because of my vocal support for Star Trek: Discovery, from a fake Star Trek fan to a shill for CBS. The words don’t bother me. The mindset behind them, the gatekeeping of what a “real” fan is, does. The fact is that some people, mainly men, are trying to tell those of us who are enjoying the show that we aren’t “real fans” of Star Trek. And it just so happens that the bulk of these fans are women and people of color.

(14) BEYOND THE PAPER CRANE. This news will do more than lift your spirits: “Robot Muscles Inspired By Origami Lift 1000 Times Their Weight”.

The delicate art of paper folding is playing a crucial role in designing robotic artificial muscles that are startlingly strong. In fact, the researchers say they can lift objects 1,000 times their own weight.

The researchers say the muscles are soft, so they’re safer compared to traditional metal robots in environments where they would interact with humans or delicate objects, and they can be made out of extremely low-cost materials such as plastic bags and card stock. Their findings were published this week in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

(15) BAG YOUR TRASH. Space junk mission “”RemoveDebris” prepares for launch”.

A mission that will test different methods to clean up space junk is getting ready for launch.

The RemoveDebris spacecraft will attempt to snare a small satellite with a net and test whether a harpoon is an effective garbage grabber.

The probe has been assembled in Surrey and will soon be packed up ready for blast off early next year.

Scientists warn that the growing problem of space debris is putting spacecraft and astronauts at risk.

It is estimated that there are about half a million pieces of man-made rubbish orbiting the Earth, ranging from huge defunct satellites, to spent rocket boosters and nuts and bolts.

(16) LEAP YEAR. Not quite Mark Watney’s jump — but this doesn’t use special effects: “Daredevils jump from a mountain into a plane”. Video at the link.

Fred Fugen and Vince Reffet from France jumped from Jungfrau mountain into a moving plane.

It was to celebrate the 20th anniversary of Patrick de Gayardon’s achievement in 1997, when he jumped from an aircraft into a moving plane

(17) LUNARBABOON. Huffington Post profiles online comic creator Chris Grady: “Dad’s Sweet Comics Promote Empathy, Tolerance And Love”. Some of the examples in the article use genre references.

As Lunarbaboon gained a bigger following, [Chris] Grady decided to use his popularity for good. He often draws comics with positive messages that touch on social justice, gender issues, xenophobia and more.

“I think it is impossible not to be influenced by the world around you. There is a lot of bad things happening in the world, but there is also a lot of good,” he said. “I try to find the good or humorous in the difficult things that happen to us every day.”

(18) BLUE MARBLE. Video taken during a spacewalk: “Footage of Earth from the International Space Station”.

NASA astronaut Randy Bresnik filmed his maintenance mission outside the International Space Station. The mission took Mr Bresnik and astronaut Joe Acaba six hours and 39 minutes.

(19) BACK TO THE CANDY-COATED FUTURE. Adweek covers what happened next in “21 Years Later, M&M’s Unwraps a Sequel to Its Classic Christmas Ad”.

For over 20 years we’ve watched Santa and Red faint on Christmas Eve. Now find out how Yellow saved Christmas that fateful night and showed everyone the true meaning of the holidays.

 

[Thanks to Chip Hitchcock, JJ, mlex, John King Tarpinian, Cat Eldridge, Hampus Eckerman, Carl Slaughter, and Andrew Porter for some of these stories, Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Patrick Morris Miller.]

Jeanne Gomoll Wins 2017 Rotsler Award

The 2017 Rotsler Award has been given to Jeanne Gomoll, of Madison, Wisconsin.

The award, established in 1998 and named for the talented, prolific artist Bill Rotsler (1926-1997), is for long-time artistic achievement in amateur publications of the science fiction community.  The winner receives a plaque and an honorarium of US$300.

Gomoll (“go-MOLL”) was a Guest of Honour at the 72nd World Science Fiction Convention, held at London, England, in 2014.  She created the covers for its Pocket Programme Guide.  The 24th issue of the amateur magazine Chunga had covers by her, with a discussion in Chunga 25 (February 2017).  She has been praised for illustration, graphic design, and focus, in monochrome and color.

She was twice a finalist for the Hugo Award (Best Fanartist, 1978, 1980).  She created the logos for the Tiptree Award, and for the fanzine-interest convention Corflu.  She did covers and interiors for many issues of Janus, which she co-edited with Janice Bogstad.  Janus won two Fan Activity Achievement Awards and was three times a Hugo finalist (Best Fanzine, 1978-1980).

Gomoll co-founded Wiscon, the leading feminist S-F convention, and served on the board of its sponsoring organization for almost forty years.  She was elected the Trans-Atlantic Fan Fund delegate in 1987 and was sent to the 45th Worldcon, held at Brighton, England.

She worked for the State of Wisconsin, then started her own firm Union Street Design, serving State-agency clients and others.

The Rotsler is sponsored by the Southern California Institute for Fan Interests, a non-profit corporation which has produced the World Science Fiction Convention three times.  Current judges are Sue Mason, John Hertz, and Mike Glyer.  The Rotsler is announced at Loscon, the annual Los Angeles SF convention, sponsored by the Los Angeles Science Fantasy Society, a non-profit corporation.

This year Loscon XLIV was held November 24-26 at the Los Angeles International Airport Marriott Hotel.  A display of Gomoll’s work was in the Art Show.

Marvel Studios’ Avengers: Infinity War Official Trailer

Avengers: Infinity War. In theaters May 4.

As the Avengers and their allies have continued to protect the world from threats too large for any one hero to handle, a new danger has emerged from the cosmic shadows: Thanos. A despot of intergalactic infamy, his goal is to collect all six Infinity Stones, artifacts of unimaginable power, and use them to inflict his twisted will on all of reality. Everything the Avengers have fought for has led up to this moment – the fate of Earth and existence itself has never been more uncertain.

 

[Thanks to IanP for the story.]

Worldcon, NASFiC and Smofcon Bidder Questionnaires Released

Smofcon 35, the convention for conrunners, taking place December 1-3 in Boston, asked Worldcon, NASFiC and Smofcon bidders, and seated Worldcon committees to answer a questionnaire. The responses have been posted at Smofcon’s website under Fannish Inquisition.

There will also be a Q&A session at the con – publishing these questionnaires in advance helps keep that time from being taken up with basic information. If you want to submit a question, see the information at the end of this post.

Smofcon Bids

Worldcon Bids

Seated Worldcons

NASFiC Bids

Submitting Questions to the Fannish Inquisition

At the Fannish Inquisition, all questions will be asked by the Inquisitors. The Inquisitors welcome your questions. They will ask them (possibly edited and combined), leaving you anonymous. Before the convention, E-mail questions to [email protected]. At the convention, there will be a drop-off point in the con suite.

Pixel Scroll 11/28/17 Peering Into The Scrolloscope, I Perceived The Pixels of Mars

(1) COLD TRUTH. Rudy Rucker was a Windycon 44 GoH – and he confesses what was going through his mind at the time.

…Despite the good moments, I did have a very strong flash of “What am I doing here?” when I awoke on each of my three mornings at the con. It’s usually like that. And then I feel guilty and ungrateful for tiring of these dear and all-too-human souls. This annual event is their source of joy, their gay holiday of fun and magic, and they look forward to it, and work on it, and plan for it, and make all the pieces come together, and I, the aloof interloper, I have grave doubts. So I’m a horrible person. What a payoff.

“Why can’t you just relax, Rudy?” says my wife’s voice in my head. “Be happy for them that they’re having fun. They’re touching. Love them.” Well, maybe my wife wouldn’t go that far. Maybe that’s Jesus’s voice, or the Buddha’s, or the White Light’s…

…Well, okay, I was nice to everyone except for a fellow panelist on a “What are your fave books? panel. It was all the GoHs on the panel: GoHs for science, art, videogames, writing, cosplay, and signing (in the sense of translating talks into sign language in real time).

The panelist sitting next to me wouldn’t shut up about some dipshit fantasy books, lavishing cliché praises upon them, trading heartfelt hosannahs with a another motor-mouthed fellow panelist, who claimed to be the “moderator.” And they get onto William Goldman’s Princess Bride (a fine work but, I would humbly submit, not the greatest novel ever written).

And I manage to break in and mention that Goldman wrote a good coming-of-age novel called The Temple of Gold and that it was, in a way, a bit like Catcher in the Rye. And the panelist next to me cries: “The Temple of Gold is SO much better than Catcher in the Rye!” And I’m like, “Well, they’re different.” And the panelist is like “No, Catcher in the Rye is whiny garbage!” And, without turning my head, I deliver what is, for me, the mild-mannered math prof / SF writer, a withering put-down. “And you’re an…English teacher? Hm.”

(2) SEEKING AUTHENTICITY. The Washington Post’s Michael Cavna, in “How Pixar’s ‘Coco’ became a huge box-office hit”, looks at the ways that Disney/Pixar worked with Mexican consultants on Coco, which not only solved cultural sensitivity problems, but made for a better story.

The company was about two years into the making of “Coco” when it committed a significant PR blunder. For its marketing, Disney in 2013 applied to trademark “Día de los Muertos” — the Mexican holiday the movie centers on — sparking a backlash from prominent Latino voices.

Mexican American cartoonist Lalo Alcaraz (“La Cucaracha”) helped give image to the outcry. Alcaraz, who had tweeted that trying to brand the holiday came across as “awful and crass,” created the Mickey Mouse-spoofing cartoon “Muerto Mouse,” with the caption: “It’s coming to trademark your cultura.”

According to Jason Katz, the story supervisor on “Coco,” the backlash to the Southern California parent company’s trademark attempt was tough to take in the Bay Area, where Pixar’s Emeryville studio is located.

“Working at Pixar, you’re in a little bit of a bubble. We’re removed from the machine to a certain extent,” Katz told The Post’s Comic Riffs while in Washington. “[We were] trying to be as genuine and authentic as you can. It wasn’t something we were expecting. We were all just disappointed and sad.”

The incident, though, led to a realization. “We needed to make sure that even though we were reaching out to folks, we needed to make this movie differently than any other movie we’d made…”

(3) BY DESIGN. Ada Hoffman’s series of tweets begins with a swing at Rocket Stack Rank, but it’s also a thought experiment about building an sff review site:

Here’s one of her thoughts:

(4) EVERYONE’S A CRITIC (OR COULD BE). Likewise, Vajra Chandrasekera — critic, author, fiction editor at Strange Horizons, and one of this year’s Shadow Clarke jurors – blasts away at Rocket Stack Rank in a set of tweets you enter here. Apart from that, he is thought-provoking on the issue of awards-driven reviews and criticism.

(5) GONE GUY. New tech issues, new “solutions”: “Foiled! Electrician Used A Snack Bag As A Faraday Cage To Sneak Off The Job”.

For a while, Tom Colella had found his escape at the bottom of a bag of crunchy corn snacks. But it was not to last.

Earlier this month in western Australia, the Fair Work Commission, a workplace tribunal, found that the electrician — who was fired last year — had indeed been fired for good cause: He had been ditching work while on the clock, the commission concluded, and had hidden his whereabouts from his employer by MacGyvering a Faraday cage out of an empty bag of Twisties.

But let’s back up a step: A Faraday cage, named for 19th century scientist Michael Faraday, blocks electromagnetic fields. Faraday found that an enclosure — or, in this case, the foil-lined interior of the cheesy corn snack bag — can keep these charges out if there’s enough conductive material.

It appears Colella, 60, had slipped his company-mandated, GPS-enabled personal digital assistant into the bag to block the signals that enabled the device to track his movements.

(6) FROM CARD COUNTING TO GEIGER COUNTING. Another tech trick: “Berlin police find radioactive iodine on playing cards”.

Police raiding a Berlin restaurant have discovered playing cards which had been laced with a radioactive substance.

Detectives believe players could wear a hidden detector on their bodies allowing them to recognise certain cards, giving them an advantage.

The scheme was discovered when a routine check at a waste treatment facility uncovered an increased level of radioactivity in a rubbish truck.

Police managed to trace the vehicle to a restaurant in Berlin.

(7) CONSPIRACY THEORY? Visit Ingolstadt, “The birthplace of the Illuminati”.

The idea that clandestine Illuminati gatherings could be taking place in the small Bavarian city may seem far-fetched, but Ingolstadt does have a history of them. The city is the birthplace of the infamous secret society that has become part myth, part historical truth, and the foundation of countless conspiracy theories.

(8) GROUND SHORTAGE. “The buildings designed to house the dead” — Chip Hitchcock says, “Not exactly Silverberg’s urban monads, but a vertical solution to a different kind of population problem.”

In the last 50,000 years, it’s been estimated that around 101 billion people have lived and died on planet Earth. Like it or not, everyone alive today – and that’s more than seven billion of us – is likely to join them within the next century. So what will we do with all the bodies?

As human populations continue to expand and flood into crowded cities, traditional methods of handling bodies after death are coming unstuck. The issues range from a shortage of vultures in India – which has led the Zoroastrian community to abandon the ancient practice of sky burials in favour of dystopian “solar concentrators” instead – to the 40-year old corpses in Germany that remain mysteriously fresh after decades in the ground. In many European countries, it’s normal to re-use graves after 15-20 years. But recently some of their inhabitants have been refusing to rot.

(9) LEGO IDEA. BrickBros UK’s “Tron Legacy Light Cycle” has been selected as the next LEGO Ideas set.

The tron light cycle is based on the Disney : Tron Legacy film and consists of a tron light cycle with a user minifigure Sam Flynn it also comes with a Grid base to mount the light cycle on for display.

The light cycle allows a minifigure to easily fit into and clip onto the handles, the light cycle its self has a console in front of the user, two handle bars and detailing down the sides, there is also a power stream behind connected to the light cycle. The Sam Flynn minifigure comes in a tron suit with helmet and disc connected on the back of the minifigure for added detail. The light cycle can easily be mounted on to the Grid base with two connection points and the base has the Grid effect with black and trans-blue tiles creating a tron feel and has a medium azure trim for finish.

(10) POLITICAL FOOTBALL. Vox Day blogged something that reminded Camestros Felapton he hadn’t finished critiquing the new anti-SJW book: “Reading Vox Day So You Don’t Have To: I forgot this was a series”.

Vox is engaged in a similar exercise in extreme ontology to divide each and every fuss about something into either an example of

  • whiny SJWs being whiny and destroying civilisation because they are so evil and lefty…or….
  • a valiant struggle of brave souls against the forces of SJWs even if it doesn’t seem much to do with them.

Unhappy with how Marvel is directing it’s comic books? Well, the great fascist sorting hat says that is an anti-SJW crusade regardless of what your opinion is or that you are objecting to how a major corporation is acting.

Unhappy with the choice of coach for a college football team because of his past association with a convicted child abuser? Well, the great fascist sorting hat says that is lunacy and you must be one of them evil SJWs.

You can retrospectively sort of work out why one and not the other but it is hard to spot in advance.

(11) THE NOT-SO-NEWBORN KING. The Bangor Daily News wants to simplify your shopping — “Eight holiday gifts for the Stephen King fanatic in your life”.

Overlook Hotel keychains

You can let fellow Constant Readers know you’re a fan in a low key kind of way (pun intended) with these cool, retro-looking keychains inspired by various locations in King’s novels. Places like the Overlook Hotel in “The Shining,” Room 1408 in the Dolphin Hotel in New York, and a keychain from Darnell’s Auto Repair from “Christine.” Speaking of “Christine,” how about this fun replica of the famed 1958 Plymouth Fury from both the book and the movie?

(12) LEIVA. In 2010, Steven Paul Leiva created and organized Ray Bradbury Week in Los Angeles. Steven’s novel Made on the Moon has just been published as an ebook by Crossroad Press. For $3.99 you, too, can be made on the moon. Find it on Amazon here.

(13) BRADBURY PRESERVED. The Indiana University Foundation wants to crowdfund $5,000 for the work done by “Students Preserving the World of Ray Bradbury”. They’ve raised $1,139, with 32 days left in the campaign.

Students help preserve over 100,000 papers of correspondence, documents, and photographs in the collection at the Center for Ray Bradbury Studies. Their work has just begun and we need your support.

…Graduate interns and research assistants are important to helping preserve Bradbury’s collection of books, literary works, artifacts, correspondence, manuscripts, photographs, and so much more. Hear these students tell what they do in the Center for Ray Bradbury Studies and what this work means to them.

 

[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, Cat Eldridge, JJ, Carl Slaughter, Martin Morse Wooster, Chip Hitchcock, Hampus Eckerman, and Andrew Porter for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Steve Davidson.]

Stathopoulos Portrait Wins Prize

Nick Stathopoulos has won the 2017 Black Swan “People’s Choice Prize” worth $5,000 for his portrait of Sudanese refugee and lawyer, Deng Thiak Adut titled “Deng 2.”

The Black Swan Prize is a set of three cash awards for portrait art associated with the City of Perth’s showcase at the Art Gallery of Western Australia. The People’s Choice Prize is determined by popular vote.

Stathopoulos is a long-time fan, 10-time winner of the Australian NatCon’s Ditmar Award, and a past Hugo and Chesley Award nominee.

His previous portrait of Deng Adut was a runner-up for the 2016 Archibald Prize.

Sudanese refugee and lawyer Deng Adut came to the attention of Nick Stathopoulos through an advertisement for Western Sydney University, where Adut was a graduate. It movingly documented how he came to Australia following life as a child soldier in Sudan and how he put himself through law school, becoming a formidable refugee advocate and community leader.

See other Black Swan prize-winning art at the link.

Ault and Stathopoulos with Archibald entry in 2016.

2018 Grammy Awards Nominees

The nominees for the 60th Grammy Awards have been announced. The awards will be presented at New York’s Madison Square Garden on January 28 and televised on CBS.

Neil Degrasse Tyson, Carrie Fisher, and the music from sff productions like ArrivalGuardians of the Galaxy 2, Game of Thrones, Hidden Figures and Moana are all up for the award.

Here are the categories with nominees of genre interest:

SPOKEN WORD FIELD 

Best Spoken Word Album (Includes Poetry, Audio Books & Storytelling):

  • Astrophysics For People In A Hurry — Neil deGrasse Tyson
  • Born To Run — Bruce Springsteen
  • Confessions Of A Serial Songwriter — Shelly Peiken
  • Our Revolution: A Future to Believe In (Bernie Sanders) — Bernie Sanders And Mark Ruffalo
  • The Princess Diarist — Carrie Fisher

MUSIC FOR VISUAL MEDIA FIELD 

Best Compilation Soundtrack For Visual Media:

  • Baby Driver — (Various Artists)
  • Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol. 2: Awesome Mix Vol. 2 — (Various Artists)
  • Hidden Figures: The Album — (Various Artists)
  • La La Land — (Various Artists)
  • Moana: The Songs — (Various Artists)

Best Score Soundtrack For Visual Media:

  • Arrival — Jóhann Jóhannsson, composer
  • Dunkirk — Hans Zimmer, composer
  • Game Of Thrones: Season 7 — Ramin Djawadi, composer
  • Hidden Figures — Benjamin Wallfisch, Pharrell Williams & Hans Zimmer, composers
  • La La Land — Justin Hurwitz, composer

PACKAGE FIELD 

Best Boxed Or Special Limited Edition Package:

  • Bobo Yeye: Belle Epoque In Upper Volta — Tim Breen, art director (Various Artists)
  • Lovely Creatures: The Best Of Nick Cave And The Bad Seeds (1984 – 2014) — Tom Hingston, art director (Nick Cave And The Bad Seeds)
  • May 1977: Get Shown The Light — Masaki Koike, art director (Grateful Dead)
  • The Voyager Golden Record: 40th Anniversary Edition — Lawrence Azerrad, Timothy Daly & David Pescovitz, art directors (Various Artists)
  • Warfaring Strangers: Acid Nightmares — Tim Breen, Benjamin Marra & Ken Shipley, art directors (Various Artists)