2019 BooktubeSFF Awards Shortlists

The Booktube science fiction and fantasy community of YouTube announced the shortlist for its 2019 BooktubeSFF Awards on February 18.  

The community nominated its favourite works. Following a period devoted to readalongs and chats about the books, the winners will be voted on by the community and the judges during the first week in June, with the results of each vote revealed in mid-June.

Best Fantasy

  • Foundryside by Robert Jackson Bennett.
  • Grey Sister by Mark Lawrence.
  • Circe by Madeleine Miller.

Best Science Fiction

  • Record of a Spaceborn Few by Becky Chambers.
  • The Calculating Stars by Mary Robinette Kowal.
  • Vengeful by V.E. Schwab.

Best Young Adult Novel

  • The Cruel Prince by Holly Black.
  • Skyward by Brandon Sanderson.
  • Muse of Nightmares by Laini Taylor.

Best Middle Grade Novel

  • Aru Shah and the End of Time by Roshani Chokshi.
  • City of Ghosts by Victoria Schwab.
  • Wundersmith: The Calling of Morrigan Crow by Jessica Townsend.

Best Debut Novel

  • Children of Blood and Bone by Tomi Adeyemi.
  • The Poppy War by R.F. Kuang.
  • Trail of Lightning by Rebecca Roanhorse.

Best Graphic Work

  • Monstress Vol 3: Haven by Marjorie M. Liu & Sana Takeda.
  • The Adventure Zone: Here there be Gerblins by Clint McElroy, Griffin McElroy, Travis McElroy, Justin McElroy and Carey Pietsch.
  • Aquicorn Cove by Katie O’Neill

Best Short Work

  • Beneath the Sugar Sky by Seanan McGuire.
  • Binti: The Night Masquerade by Nnedi Okorafor.
  • Artificial Condition by Martha Wells.

Judges

[Via Locus Online.]

Pixel Scroll 3/31/19 Those Who Do Not Learn Their Pixel Scrolls Are Doomed To Repeat Them

(1) HARD SF FOR HARD MONEY. In a field where a lot of magazines release their content free, you wonder how they survive. Here’s one answer to that question.Compelling Science Fiction editor Joe Stech says “Compelling Science Fiction is going to a paid subscription model”.

I’m proud that over the last three years we’ve released 63 phenomenal stories and paid professional rates to 57 wonderful authors. However, over the last three years I’ve also spent a significant amount of money keeping the magazine afloat. Year one I spent a lot, and years two and three leveled out to almost break-even (but revenue stopped growing). Based on these numbers, I’ve decided that I need to go to a subscription-only model to keep the magazine strong and growing.

(2) ANNE BUJOLD ART. Lois McMaster Bujold wrote on Facebook –

Recently, the work of my daughter Anne Bujold, presently an artist-in-residence at the Appalachian Center for Craft, was showcased by the local TV folks. They did an excellent job, I thought. The segment is now up on YouTube:

(3) EXPLOSIVE TOPIC. Steve Davidson is peeved at anyone who would call A. Bertram Chandler’s books “popcorn” reading:

I don’t care what anyone says: A. Bertram Chandler’s works are not “popcorn”.
Popcorn does not win awards, except at popcorn festivals…

Two of his stories are the UR tales for “humans locked in an alien zoo (The Cage) and “mutated rats take over” (Giant Killer); both were frequently included in anthologies of SF through the 80s.

Harlan Ellison was so impressed with his short story Frontier of the Dark that he talked ‘Jack’ into expanding it into a novel; then, when Chandler admitted he didn’t have his own copy of the original manuscript, Ellison pulled his copy of Astounding and sent it off (and the novel was written)

He wrote about major social issues in the 60s, well before they became mainstream…

(4) A SOCIAL MEDIA POLICY. Eric Flint preceded a very brief political opinion with a long introduction about why he rarely talks politics on Facebook. (See the opinion at the link.)

I don’t usually post political comments on my Facebook page for the same reason I don’t use my novels to expound my own political philosophy.

In a nutshell, It’s false advertising. My novels (and other pieces of fiction) purport to be entertainment, not political screeds. If I want to write political screeds, nothing prevents me from doing so. In point of fact, I _have_ written political screeds. Plenty of them. If you were to compile my various political writings done in the quarter of a century or so when I was a socialist activist, they would add up to several volumes worth.

But I wasn’t trying to make a living from those political writings, and so I didn’t try to pass them off to the unsuspecting public as “entertainment.” I didn’t do it then, and I’m not about to do it now.

Albeit watered down, I feel somewhat the same way with regard to my Facebook page….

(5) GENRE INFERIORITY COMPLEX.The Guardian’s Sam Jordison convinces himself this is no longer an issue: “‘Screw the snobbish literati’: was Kurt Vonnegut a science-fiction writer?”

I’m willing to concede that people may see things differently. The New York Times obituary may have been fulsome in its praise for Vonnegut, but it also noted that publishing Slaughterhouse-Five helped him to “shed the label of science fiction writer”. Vonnegut was painfully aware of this stigma; in an essay called Science Fiction, he wrote: “I have been a soreheaded occupant of a file drawer labelled ‘science fiction’ … and I would like out, particularly since so many serious critics regularly mistake the drawer for a urinal.”

(6) KURT AND RAY. Open Culture remembers when they had TV shows on the same year — “Discover Ray Bradbury & Kurt Vonnegut’s 1990s TV Shows: The Ray Bradbury Theater and Welcome to the Monkey House.

…I never know exactly when to take Vonnegut seriously. He also calls TV everybody’s “rotten teacher” and says “I’m sorry television exists,” but he had long been a TV writer in its “so-called golden days,” as John Goudas put it in a Los Angeles Times interview with Vonnegut in 1993, when his seven-episode run of Kurt Vonnegut’s Monkey House, hosted by himself, would soon come to a close. Vonnegut found himself very pleased by the results, remarking of his stories that “TV can do them very well,” and especially praising “More Stately Mansions,” above, starring an irrepressible Madeline Kahn, whom he called “a superb actress.”

Another very direct, witty speculative writer in the same year’s issue of The Cable Guide, Ray Bradbury, appeared with Vonnegut as part of two “dueling, short features,” notes Nick Greene at Mental Floss, “under the auspices of promoting the authors’ upcoming cable specials,” Monkey House and The Ray Bradbury Theater. Bradbury was also an old media hand, having written for radio in the 50s, and seeing adaptations of his stories made since that decade, including one on Alfred Hitchcock’s Alfred Hitchcock Presents. Like Hitchcock, when it came time for his own show, The Ray Bradbury Theater in 1985, Bradbury introduced the episodes and became a public face for thousands of viewers….

(7) WHEN I’M (IN) ’64. Galactic Journey’s Victoria Lucas reacts to the adaptation of Jack Finney’s novel: “[March 31, 1964] 7 Faces and 7 Places (The movie, 7 Faces of Dr. Lao)”.

If you saw my review of Finney’s Circus of Dr. Lao back on June 16, 1962 you would know why I went to such (literally) lengths to see this movie.  It did not disappoint, but I did object to the interpolations of a soppy romance and a hackneyed Western takeover-the-town plot.  The “Circus” was filmed, according to sources, on the MGM back lots, although some of those Culver City hills must be pretty rough if that’s so.  My theory is that filming on location was out due to the many roles of Tony Randall, who plays Dr. Lao, the Abominable Snowman, Merlin, Apollonius of Tyana, Pan, The Giant Serpent, and Medusa.  All those makeup and costume changes (to say nothing of any other cast) must have needed the workshop of famed makeup artist William Tuttle and a large selection of MGM costumes, as well as (not credited) costumer Robert Fuca.

(8) SFF EVENT IN LISBON. Free admission to Contacto 2019 in Lisbon, Portugal on April 4-5.

Imaginauta (a literary publisher of speculative fiction), in partnership with the Library of Marvila and BLX, the Libraries of the Network of Municipal Library of Lisbon are pleased to present the 2nd Edition of Contact – Literary Festival of Science Fiction and Fantasy.

FREE ENTRY FOR THE ENTIRE FAMILY

Come live two days filled with activities for whom a world just is not enough.

– Book Fair

– Book Launching

– Sessions with Portuguese authors

– Thematic areas (Harry Potter, Star Wars, Steampunk)

– Board games and narratives

– Speeches

– Movie theater

– Stories Counters

– Exhibitions

– Live performances

– Stand-up comedy

– Medieval Bar

– Activities for schools

Come join the new generation of science fiction and fantasy!

(9) TODAY IN HISTORY.

  • March 31, 1969 — Kurt Vonnegut’s novel, Slaughterhouse Five, published.
  • March 31, 1987Max Headroom made his television premiere.

(10) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

  • Born March 31, 1844 Andrew Lang. To say that he is best known as a collector of folk and fairy tales is a bit of understatement. He collected enough tales that twenty five volumes of Andrew Lang’s Fairy Books  for children were published between 1889 and 1913. That’s 798 stories. If you’re interested in seeing these stories, you can find them here. (Died 1912.)
  • Born March 31, 1932 John Jakes, 87. Author of a number of genre series including Brak the Barbarian. The novels seem to fix-ups from works published in such venues as Fantastic. Dark Gate and Dragonard are his other two series. As  Robert Hart Davis, he wrote a number of The Man From UNCLE novellas that were published in The Man from U.N.C.L.E. Magazine. The magazine apparently only existed from 1966 to 1968.
  • Born March 31, 1934 Richard Chamberlain, 85. His first dive into our end of reality was in The Three Musketeers as Aramis, a role he reprised in The Return of Three Musketeers. (I consider all Musketeer films to be genre.) some of you being cantankerous may argue it was actually when he played the title character in Allan Quatermain and the Lost City of Gold which he did some years later. He listed as voicing the Jack Kirby created character Highfather on the superb Justice League: Gods and Monsters but that was but a few lines of dialogue I believe. He was in the Blackbeard series as Governor Charles Eden, and series wise has done the usual one-offs on such shows as Alfred Hitchcock PresentsBoris Karloff’s Thriller, Chuck and Twin Peaks
  • Born March 31, 1936 Marge Piercy, 83. Author of He, She and It which garnered won the Arthur C. Clarke Award for Best Science Fiction novel. Of course she also wrote Woman on the Edge of Time doomed to be called “classic of utopian speculative sf”. 
  • Born March 31, 1943 Christopher Walken, 76. Yet another performer whose first role was in The Three Musketeers, this time as a minor character, John Felton. He has a minor role in The Sentinel, a horror film, and a decidedly juicy one in Trumbull’s Brainstorm as Dr. Michael Anthony Brace followed up by being in Cronenberg’s The Dead Zone as Johnny Smith. Damn, I’d forgotten he was Max Zorin, the villain in A View to a Kill! H’h, didn’t know he was in Gibson’s New Rose Hotel but then I haven’t then I haven’t actually seen it yet. And let’s wrap this up by noting his appearance in The Stepford Wives as Mike Wellington.
  • Born March 31, 1960 Ian McDonald, 59. I see looking him up for this Birthday note that one of my favorite novels by him, Desolation Road, was first one. Ares Express was just as splendid. Now the Chaga saga was, errr, weird. Everness was fun but ultimately shallow, Strongly recommend both Dervish House and River of Gods. Luna series at first blush didn’t impress me, so other opinions sought. 
  • Born March 31, 1962 Michael Benson. 57. Author of Space Odyssey: Stanley Kubrick, Arthur C. Clarke, and the Making of a Masterpiece. His earlier book Beyond: Visions of the Interplanetary Probes featured an intro by Clarke. Benson is an artist and journalist who also mounts shows of astronomical art and who advocates for such things as keeping the Hubble telescope operating. His site is here.
  • Born March 31, 1971 Ewan McGregor, 48. Nightwatch, a horror film, with him as lead Martin Bell is his first true genre film.  That was followed by The Phantom Menace and him as Obi-Wan Kenobi, a role repeated in Attack of the Clones, Revenge of the Sith and The Force Awakens. His latest role of interest, well to me if to nobody else, is as Christopher Robin in the film of the same name.

(11) US AT A GLANCE. Camestros Felapton is back from the multiplex — “Review: Us (spoiler free)”.

So I like horror best in small doses. I like a taste of it, circumscribed by the way horror overlaps with other genres (thrillers, fantasy and science-fiction). So I probably shouldn’t have gone to see Us.

Jordan Peele’s first film Get Out, was just about the right ratio for me. Undoubtedly scary and tense but also full of interesting ideas. The final premise was knowingly absurd and tapped into that rich seam of conspiratorial mythology of secret societies and grand sinister designs of powerful people.

Us has all of that and quite a lot more. There are no shortage of horror movie tropes in the film, indeed at a given moment the film plays along with standard styles of horror movie but only for awhile and then it moves on….

(12) PERMAFROST. At Rapid Transmissions, Joseph Hurtgen reviews Alastair Reynolds’ Permafrost and finds the parallels with La Jetee — and 12 Monkeys by way of La Jetee — are hard to miss, and make the book enjoyable.

The book wrangles a great deal over the time paradox. The time paradox wrangling is enough to make your head spin and the characters in the novel throw up more than once as a result of time travel paradox complications.

Paradoxically, Reynolds never has the characters reflect on the absurdity of humans developing futuristic technologies–nuclear power, time travel, artificial intelligence–while persisting in myopia about their impact on the environment. Reynolds isn’t treading new material here, Asimov discussed the problem of science’s interest in doing science over and above environmental concerns in The God’s Themselves (1972). But Reynolds’ story is quick, fun, and is sure to give you the feels. 

(13) A WORD FROM SOMEBODY’S SPONSOR. Daniel Dern writes:

I don’t know if this qualifies as a “Meredith Moment,” but, via KinjaDeals via io9, you can get 2 months of Kindle Unlimited for $1/month, before it automatically goes to the normal $10/month — not as cheap as the free 1-month trial, but good for 2x as long. I’ll be giving it a try, soon. (The deal is available for another month or so, but I’ll probably sign up today or tomorrow)

More info at the post: “Turn Off the Internet and Read Some Damn Books – Kindle Unlimited Is $1 For Two Months”.

(14) MORE DC. As announced this weekend at WonderCon: “DC Universe Unveils Expanded Digital Comics Library, STARGIRL Suit, & More at WonderCon!”

At no extra charge or increase in the price of a subscription, DC Universe subscribers will be able to enjoy access to DC’s enormous digital comics library, starting in April of 2019. (Each of these comics will appear at least 12 months after it was first published). That’s over 20 thousand comic books!

Daniel Dern notes: “This brings DC/U closer to Marvel’s streaming offering, which is ‘many comics each week once they’re at least 6 months old’ and 25,000+ comics. I’ll know (somewhat) more once I log onto my DC/U account and browse.”

(15) PUT ON YOUR AVENGERS FACE. Yahoo! enthuses: “Ulta and Marvel Are Launching an Avengers Makeup Collection, and the Prices Are Heroic”.

The star of the collection is arguably the Eyeshadow Palette (above), which includes 15 colors — mostly shimmers with a few mattes thrown in — for just $20. Under a lid that reads “Courageous. Tenacious. Fearless. Legendary,” you’ll find the aptly named shades Hero Vibes (copper shimmer), Games Changer (burnished gold), Save The World (champagne shimmer), Amazed (cream matte), Gauntlet (burgundy shimmer), Super Charged (mauve taupe matte), Out Of This, World (khaki brown shimmer), Last Shot (vanilla shimmer), Cosmic (eggplant shimmer), Smash (olive green shimmer), Legend (dirty aqua shimmer), Reassemble (smoky navy matte, I’ve Got This (ivory shimmer), Built For Battle (peach nude shimmer), and Fearless (moss graphite shimmer).

(16) WE THE FUTURE PEOPLE. In “Sci-Fi Writers Are Imagining a Path Back to Normality”, WIRED touches base with contributors to the anthology A People’s Future of the United States, edited by Victor LaValle and John Joseph Adams

Tobias S. Buckell on metaphors:

Nora K. Jemisin was just saying on Twitter the other day that in science fiction we have this venerable tradition of using metaphor to dig at some of these problems—like race and power and structure and history—and that it’s been a mistake, because in the past we would always use the metaphor assuming that our fellow readers and fans of the genre were following along, getting the metaphor, and it turns out that they weren’t. In other words, you needed to be way more in-your-face and say, ‘This is what I’m trying to say.’ Because they were looking at a metaphor of an alien that is powerless and out on the fringes of society—and that that society was being racist toward, and things like that—and then when they were done with that story they’d say, ‘That poor alien,’ and they’d never make the implicit connection.”

(17) ARMSTRONG’S PURSE. Space.com shares a flock of photos as “Smithsonian Debuts Apollo 11 ’50 Years from Tranquility Base’ Exhibit”.

The Apollo 11 “50 Years from Tranquility Base” display case was installed on Monday (March 25) at the Washington, D.C. museum, opposite its Space Race gallery on the first floor. The exhibit offers a look at almost two dozen artifacts that flew on board the July 1969 Apollo 11 mission that landed Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin in the Sea of Tranquility on the surface of the moon.

“’50 Years from Tranquility Base: Humanity’s First Visit to Another World’ highlights some of the smaller artifacts the crew needed to live and work on their way to and on the moon. Of particular interest are Neil Armstrong’s Omega chronograph, which hasn’t been on public display for over 20 years at least, and some of the items found in Armstrong’s purse,” said Jennifer Levasseur, a curator in the space history division of the National Air and Space Museum.

(18) TIME LORD. Beautiful video: “The guardian of the sands of time”.

Adrian Rodriguez Cozzani has a passion for time, the way it flows and the way we keep track of it. For nearly 30 years he has been crafting beautiful hourglasses and sundials by hand in his small workshop in Trastevere, a colourful neighbourhood in Rome, Italy.

[Thanks to ULTRAGOTHA, Cat Eldridge, Joseph Hurtgen, John King Tarpinian, JJ, Chip Hitchcock, Mike Kennedy, Martin Morse Wooster, Mlex, Carl Slaughter, and Andrew Porter for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Darren Garrison.]

Spectrum 26 Awards Recipients

The Spectrum 26 Awards were presented at the historic Folly Theater in Kansas City, MO on Saturday, March 30.

Spectrum 2019 Grand Master
Donato Giancola

Spectrum 2018 Rising Star
Gawki

ADVERTISING CATEGORY

GOLD
Greg Ruth

SILVER
Valentin Kopetzki

BOOK CATEGORY

GOLD
Francis Vallejo

SILVER
Chase Stone

COMIC CATEGORY

GOLD
Alex Alice

SILVER
Jeffrey Alan Love

CONCEPT ART CATEGORY

GOLD
Abe Taraky

SILVER
Danny Moll

DIMENSIONAL CATEGORY

GOLD
Patrick Masson

SILVER
Paul Komoda

EDITORIAL CATEGORY

GOLD
Qiuxin Mao

SILVER
Leonardo Santamaria

INSTITUTIONAL CATEGORY

GOLD
Jesper Ejsing

SILVER
John Jude Palencar

UNPUBLISHED CATEGORY

GOLD
Konstantin Kostadinov

SILVER
Annie Stegg Gerard

Pixel Scroll 3/30/19 ///Pixel.Scroll.Comment Is In The Middle Of Nowhere In Australia

(1) CATS SLEEP ON $FF. Cat Rambo issues a warning about “Writing Contests and Fees”, and rebuts several arguments she’s heard trying to justify them.

Here’s one of her answers:

Charging a fee means better submissions. Great reason for editors and magazines; meaningless to writers and in fact, means people that self-reject will be even more likely to do so. It also ensures economically disadvantaged people don’t get to participate. The price of a latte for one person may be the next person’s daily food budget.

(2) PROBLEMS FOR JUDGE WHO ENGAGED KRAMER’S COMPUTER SERVICES. More revelations about the judge, from the Gwinett Daily Post. Recent news proves that not only did the judge know about Kramer, but that she was in phone contact with him. She currently is being asked to recuse herself following making false statements and recording the DA during a meeting without his permission or knowledge. “Gwinnett DA files motion for Superior Court judge to recuse herself from all criminal cases”.

Just days after a court filing alleged that Gwinnett County Superior Court Judge Kathryn Schrader expressly gave a convicted sex offender access to the county’s computer network, Gwinnett County District Attorney Danny Porter is calling for her to recuse herself from all criminal cases.

…In Friday’s filing, which included an affidavit, Porter said he confronted the judge about her computer being monitored, but “at no time during this meeting did Judge Schrader disclose that she had any direct knowledge of this monitoring, or that she had hired Ward, Karic and Kramer to do so.”

The judge also recorded the meeting “through a video on her phone without (Porter’s) knowledge or consent,” Porter wrote in the affidavit.

On March 15, when the GBI interviewed Schrader, she accused Porter of hacking her computer, Porter’s affidavit said.

“Because Judge Schrader has alleged that I committed a criminal offense against her, I have grounds to reasonably question her impartiality in any criminal case that my office handles before her,” Porter’s affidavit said. “This is further supported by the fact that Judge Schrader has surreptitiously recorded our private conversations without my knowledge or consent, while feigning ignorance of the very individuals she had employed and allowed to access the entire Gwinnett County Computer network.”

(3) AGED, BUT NOT GOLDEN. Is reviewer Christopher Priest so eager to lash out at a writer who died 30 years ago, or was this an irresistible opportunity to downcheck a favorite of some of his living American colleagues? He reviews Farah Mendlesohn’s The Pleasant Profession of Robert A. Heinlein for The Spectator: “Robert A. Heinlein: the ‘giant of SF’ was sexist, racist — and certainly no stylist”.  

…Mendlesohn describes how Heinlein, who when younger had made a well-earned name for himself as an author of serious and innovative speculative fiction, became a rotten writer in the second half of his career. He always told stories well, but his style was execrable. From Starship Troopers (1959) onwards, his books had an endlessly hectoring, lecturing tone, almost always phrased in long and unconvincing conversations full of paternalistic advice, sexual remarks, libertarian dogma and folksy slang. Reading one of his later novels produced the weird effect of meaningless receptivity: you could get through 20 pages at a gallop, but at the end you couldn’t remember anything that had been said, by whom or for what reason. The next 20 pages would be the same (but seemed longer).

… At the end of the war he began a series of juvenile novels, aimed unerringly at young readers but told in the same didactic voice. These novels, not published in the UK until years later when Heinlein was famous, had a profound effect on their American readers. There is still today a generation of middle- aged and elderly American science fiction writers for whom Heinlein is in a position of seminal influence, similar to Hemingway in other literary circles. Heinlein’s influence on modern American science fiction is not universal, but still detectable….

(4) SWATTER GETS 20 YEARS. On December 28, 2017 Andrew “Andy” Finch was killed when police officers in Wichita, Kansas responded to a 911 call about a hostage/murder situation. Tyler Barriss, who made the call, has now been convicted and sentenced: “20 years for man behind hoax call that led to fatal shooting”.

A California man was sentenced Friday to 20 years in prison for making bogus emergency calls to authorities across the U.S., including one that led police to fatally shoot a Kansas man following a dispute between two online players over a $1.50 bet in the Call of Duty: WWII video game.

U.S. District Judge Eric Melgren sentenced Tyler R. Barriss, 26, under a deal in which he pleaded guilty in November to a total of 51 federal charges related to fake calls and threats. The plea agreement called for a sentence of at least 20 years — well over the 10 years recommended under sentencing guidelines. Prosecutors believe it is the longest prison sentence ever imposed for the practice of “swatting,” a form of retaliation in which someone reports a false emergency to get authorities, particularly a SWAT team, to descend on an address.

(5) LIKE A JAWA MARRIOTT. Take one look at the picture and you can have no doubts: “The upside down hotel said to have inspired Star Wars faces demolition”.

Much of the shooting for the original Star Wars movies took place in Tunisia, and legend has it that one local landmark made a powerful impression on its creator, George Lucas.

The influence of Hotel du Lac in Tunis, shaped like an upside-down pyramid with serrated edges, would later be seen in the fictional Sandcrawler vehicle used by the Jawas of the Tatooine desert planet in the film.

(6) WOMEN AT THE FOREFRONT. The Bustle lists “12 Female-Driven Sci-Fi & Fantasy Novels That You Definitely Don’t Want To Miss”. One of them is —

‘The Priory of the Orange Tree’ by Samantha Shannon

A millennium ago, a powerful, evil dragon, known only as the Nameless One, was locked away in the Abyss. The people of three nations want to keep the dragon sealed away, but fear that his return is imminent. In Samantha Shannon’s sweeping new fantasy novel, three women, one from each nation, must join forces if they want to keep their world safe.

(7) ADVANCED DEGREES. As Women’s History Month winds up, Yahoo! Entertainment explores the “Six Degrees of Peggy Carter: Why the S.H.I.E.L.D. Founder Is the Lynchpin of the Entire MCU”.

While there may not be direct links from Peggy to every single Avenger, her status as a founding member of S.H.I.E.L.D. links her intrinsically to the heroic group and their efforts to save the world from evil time and time again. So here is a very unofficial, fan-centric look at the impact Peggy Carter has had on the MCU, and the ways in which she helped bring Earth’s mightiest heroes together as a team. “All we can do is our best,” after all….

2. Iron Man

A “self-made man” in the same way that Kylie Jenner is a self-made billionaire, Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) likely spent his childhood years on the receiving end of some very disapproving glances from his father’s friend and close confidante. Howard’s working relationship with Peggy — sans fondue, of course — is established in The First Avenger, but their friendship is explored even further in Agent Carter’sstellar two-season run on ABC. The pair teamed up to save the world more than a few times, forging a bond so strong, it’s impossible to believe that Peggy wasn’t a part of young Tony’s life — and that she didn’t have an impact on the hero he grew up to be.

And besides that, if Howard had died in Agent Carter’s season one finale, as he came very close to doing, Tony would have gotten scrubbed from the timeline, Marty McFly-style. Thanks, Aunt Peggy.

(8) CLASSIC TREK CONTRIBUTOR At Den of Geek, “Star Trek’s D.C. Fontana Talks the Origin of Spock’s Family”.

… For fans of Star Trek: Discovery, specifically, Fontana’s script for the animated episode “Yesteryear,” has been the visual and thematic backbone of nearly all of Discovery Vulcan-centric flashbacks in the second season, which has informed this version of Spock’s character. And, for those who love Spock parent’s— Amanda Grayson and Sarek—Fontana is the person who straight-up invented them.

…In The Original Series, Amanda and Sarek only appeared in “Journey to Babel,” written by Fontana. But, because that episode also featured a huge diplomatic summit on the Enterprise, this also means she created several of the big classic Trek aliens, too, including the Andorians and the Tellarites, who have both made huge appearances in Discovery first two seasons.

(9) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

  • Born March 30, 1904 Herbert van Thal. Editor of the Pan Book of Horror Stories series ran twenty four  volumes from 1959 to 1983. Back From the Dead: The Legacy of the Pan Book of Horror Stories is a look at the series and it contains Lest You Should Suffer Nightmares, the first biography of him written by Pan Book of Horror Stories expert Johnny Mains. (Died 1983.)
  • Born March 30, 1928 Chad Oliver. Writer of both Westerns and SF, a not uncommon occupation at that time. He considered himself an anthropological science fiction writer whose training as an academic informed his fiction, an early Le Guin if you will. Not a terribly prolific writer with just nine novels and two collections to his name over a forty year span. Mists of Dawn, his first novel, is a YA novel which I’d recommend as it reads similarly to Heinlein. (Died 1993.)
  • Born March 30, 1930 John Astin, 89. He is best known for playing as Gomez Addams in Addams Family, reprising it on the Halloween with the New Addams Family film and the Addams Family animated series. A memorable later role would be as Professor Wickwire in The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr., and I’d like single out his delightfully weird appearance on The Wild Wild West as Count Nikolai Sazanov in “The Night of the Tartar” episode. 
  • Born March 30, 1948 Jeanne Robinson. She co-wrote the Stardance Saga with her husband Spider Robinson. To my knowledge, her only other piece of writing was ‘Serendipity: Do, Some Thoughts About Collaborative Writing ‘ which was published in the MagiCon Program. (Died 2010.)
  • Born March 30, 1950 Robbie Coltrane, 69. I first saw him playing Dr. Eddie “Fitz” Fitzgerald on Cracker way back in the Ninties. Not genre, but an amazing role none-the-less. He was Valentin Dmitrovich Zhukovsky in GoldenEye and The World Is Not Enough, with a much less prominent role as a man at the airfield in Flash Gordon being his first genre role. Being Rubeus Hagrid in the Potter franchise was his longest running genre gig. He’s also voiced both Mr. Hyde in the Van Helsing film and Gregory, a mouse, in The Tale of Despereaux film.
  • Born March 30, 1958 Maurice LaMarche, 61. Voice actor primarily known for such roles as Pinky and The Brain (both of which Stross makes use of) with Pinky modelled off Orson Welles, the entire cast as near as I can tell of Futurama, the villain Sylar on Heroes, the voice of Orson Welles in Ed Wood, a less serious Pepé Le Pew in Space Jam, and, though maybe not genre, he’s voiced Kellogg’s Froot Loops spokesbird Toucan Sam and  the animated Willy Wonka character in Nestlé’s Willy Wonka Candy Company commercials. 
  • Born March 30, 1990 Cassie Scerbo, 20. She’s only here because in researching Birthdays for this date, one site listed her as being a member of the cast of Star Trek: Progeny, yet another of those video Trek fanfics. Though IMDB has a cast listed for it, that’s about all I could find on it. If I was betting a cask of Romulan ale, I’d wager this was one of the productions that Paramount got shut down three years back. 

(10) IN THE ZONE Some TV history leading up to the Jordan Peele reboot, in the New York Times: “‘The Twilight Zone’: Here’s Why We Still Care”.

Today we live in a world where the words “Twilight Zone” are used as an adjective whenever anyone wants to describe stories (or real-life events) that are fearless, insightful, ironic and just a little bit spooky. And that theme song was killer too.

(11) FLIGHTS OF FANTASY. NPR’s Etelka Lehoczky analyzes a new graphic novel: “In ‘She Could Fly,’ A Teen Wrestles With A Host Of Psychological Mysteries”.

“Would you rather be able to fly or turn invisible?” It’s the archetypal party question. It was already popular way back in 2001, when This American Life addressed it, and the years haven’t lessened its appeal. As recently as 2015, Forbes posed the question to 7,065 “business and professional leaders … across the globe” and Vulture brought it up with the stars of Ant-Man.

Fly, or turn invisible? The question’s popularity is probably due to its uncanny psychological subtext. The two powers don’t seem to conflict at first, but a closer look reveals that they represent opposing tendencies. To fly is to be triumphant, dominant, powerful. To be invisible is to recede, to hide.

Christopher Cantwell nods to this duality in She Could Fly, a graphic novel whose protagonist wishes she could fly and feels like she’s invisible…
Luna seems to be suffering from a particularly intense form of obsessive-compulsive disorder, but she hasn’t been diagnosed or received any treatment. Taking it for granted that there’s no help for her, she shuts out such well-meaning people as the aforementioned guidance counselor. Luna has only one source of hope, and it’s a doozy: A mysterious woman spotted flying, superhero-style, around the skies of Chicago.

(12) MODERN MILSF. Andrew Liptak intends this as a compliment, I wonder if Hurley takes it as one? In The Verge: “The Light Brigade is a worthy successor to Starship Troopers”.

The world Hurley presents in The Light Brigade is a feudalistic nightmare, and makes a sharp commentary on the growing influence and dangers of a world ruled by corporations. Corporations control all aspects of the lives of the citizens, from the information they have access to, to how they’re educated and where they live, their lives given up to supporting whatever unknowable corporate goals their overlords have planned. It’s a perverse twist on Heinlein’s arguments about serving to earn citizenship, which implied that one has to earn their freedom through service. In Hurley’s world, freedom is an illusion. It doesn’t matter what you do, you end up serving your host corporation.

(13) THEY’LL SCARE THE CHOCOLATE OUT OF YOU. If you thought this happened only in Monty Python, not so, says Open Culture: “Killer Rabbits in Medieval Manuscripts: Why So Many Drawings in the Margins Depict Bunnies Going Bad”.

In all the kingdom of nature, does any creature threaten us less than the gentle rabbit? Though the question may sound entirely rhetorical today, our medieval ancestors took it more seriously — especially if they could read illuminated manuscripts, and even more so if they drew in the margins of those manuscripts themselves. “Often, in medieval manuscripts’ marginalia we find odd images with all sorts of monsters, half man-beasts, monkeys, and more,” writes Sexy Codicology’s Marjolein de Vos. “Even in religious books the margins sometimes have drawings that simply are making fun of monks, nuns and bishops.” And then there are the killer bunnies.

Hunting scenes, de Vos adds, also commonly appear in medieval marginalia, and “this usually means that the bunny is the hunted; however, as we discovered, often the illuminators decided to change the roles around.”…

Numerous illustrations at the link.

(14) SURVIVAL AT STAKE. “Tasmanian devils ‘adapting to coexist with cancer'” – BBC has the story.

There’s fresh hope for the survival of endangered Tasmanian devils after large numbers were killed off by facial tumours.

The world’s largest carnivorous marsupials have been battling Devil Facial Tumour Disease (DFTD) for over 20 years.

But researchers have found the animals’ immune system to be modifying to combat the assault.

And according to an international team of scientists from Australia, UK, US and France, the future for the devils is now looking brighter.

“In the past, we were managing devil populations to avoid extinction. Now, we are progressively moving to an adaptive management strategy, enhancing those selective adaptations for the evolution of devil/DFTD coexistence,” explains Dr Rodrigo Hamede, from the University of Tasmania.

First discovered in north-eastern Tasmania in 1996, the disease has since spread across 95% of the species’ range, with local population losses of over 90%.

(15) CAMELIDS VISIT COMIC CON. Two events in the same facility find they are unexpectedly compatible.

(16) PLATE SPECIAL. AMC’s series based on the novel by Joe Hill premieres June 2. Here’s the NOS4A2 “A Fight For Their Souls” official trailer.

[Thanks to Nancy A. Collins, JJ, Mlex, Steven H Silver, Mike Kennedy, Martin Morse Wooster, Cat Eldridge, Chip Hitchcock, John King Tarpinian, Carl Slaughter, and Andrew Porter for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Soon Lee.]

Mobie Hire Fire Causes Dublin 2019 Concern

By James Bacon: Mike, Filers and Fans — the Dublin 2019 Access team are sending out an important message to anyone with access needs, specifically those requiring mobility scooter hire. 

We identified a suitable mobie hire company, who were happy to work with us, and we had sufficient mobies for Dublin 2019. Unfortunately, that provider has had a fire and lost the majority of their stock. This means there are fewer mobies available in Ireland now than we anticipated. Many hours and days have been spent investigating this and we have had support from the Irish Wheelchair Association. Yet there are still fewer mobies available than we would like.

As we continue to seek creative solutions to this problem, we are asking that anyone interested in hiring a mobie for Dublin 2019 please fill out our online form (https://dublin2019.com/forms/mobility-scooter-rentals/). That will help us know how many additional mobies we need to source.

Our access page is here:  https://dublin2019.com/about/accessibility-services/  

And the Mobility Scooter form is here https://dublin2019.com/forms/mobility-scooter-rentals/

Our teams are working and will continue to work hard to serve everyone’s needs. For more information on Access services at Dublin, please visit https://dublin2019.com/about/accessibility-services/. Our team will answer questions as best they can at [email protected]

My very best as ever.

James Bacon (Chair Dublin 2019) 

Pixel Scroll 3/29/19 This Is File 770, You Can Scroll On The File And Call The Cat A Pixel

(1) HIGH PRAISE AND SOME CASH. A student stage production of Alien has earned the highest seal of approval – and it’s more than just kind words: “Ridley Scott Praises Students for ‘Alien’ Stage Show, Offers Funds for Encore Performance”.

The North Bergen High School students who put on a stage production of Ridley Scott’s “Alien” have made a fan out of the director himself…

“My hat comes off to all of you for your creativity, imagination, and determination to produce such an ambitious show,” Scott writes in the letter. “Limitations often produce the best results because imagination and determination can surpass any shortfalls and determine the way forward – always.”

Scott continues, “Self-sufficiency is what this country was largely based upon with its immigrant population coming in to a New World and working together. This is maybe the biggest lesson for all of you, and your future plans – stay with this determination, and this spirit in everything you do, and you will succeed – let nothing put you off – or set you back.”

The letter ends with Scott encouraging the students to put on a live production of his Oscar winner “Gladiator” next year. The director is currently working on a sequel to the blockbuster. Scott said he felt “very complimented” the students decided to use “Alien” as a source of inspiration. The filmmaker ended his note with good news: “Scott Free will advance some financial help to fund an encore performance of ‘Alien.’”

(2) CHICK-A-BOOM. In science news: they have fossils from very soon after Chicxulub hit. Like within a few hours afterward. Fish, dinosaurs, trees with amber, tektites. Science Daily has the story: “66-million-year-old deathbed linked to dinosaur-killing meteor”.

Paleontologists have found a fossil site in North Dakota that contains animals and plants killed and buried within an hour of the meteor impact that killed the dinosaurs 66 million years ago. This is the richest K-T boundary site ever found, incorporating insects, fish, mammals, dinosaurs and plants living at the end of the Cretaceous, mixed with tektites and rock created and scattered by the impact. The find shows that dinosaurs survived until the impact.

(3) UP AGAINST THE WALL. In anti-science news, Lonely Planet announced that “The Flat Earth Cruise wants to sail to the edge of the world in 2020”.

Despite real, scientific evidence to the contrary, the Flat Earth Society is continuing its quest to convince the world that spherical planets are a hoax and the earth is flat. In 2020, they’ll bring their message to the seas with a special cruise they promise will be “the biggest, boldest, best adventure yet.”

It may seem somewhat dangerous to embark on a cruise on a flat surface, given the danger of potentially falling off the edge. Fear not, however, as the flat earth theory proposes that we think of as Antarctica is actually a giant ice wall which “helps protect us from whatever lies beyond.”

(4) DIRECTOR CUT. NPR’s Chris Klimek says of Dumbo: “Elephants Never Forget, But Audiences Will”.

Dumbo, the first of three live-action(ish) remakes of beloved Disney cartoons due in the next four months (Aladdin is coming in May, The Lion King in June), coulda been a contender. Its director is Tim Burton, who began his career as an animator, and who has periodically returned to that medium for heartfelt, handmade pictures like Corpse Bride and Frankenweenie. More recently, Burton is the filmmaker most directly responsible for this cartoon-reclamation trend: His 2010 re-imagining of Alice in Wonderland took in more than a billion dollars around the world. Do you know anyone of any age who likes that film? Dumbo is better, but that’s a bar any able-bodied adult elephant could clear, no unusual talents necessary.

Once the most idiosyncratic of big-studio filmmakers, Burton has long since become a company man. This efficient, indistinct Dumbo could’ve been directed by any number of Chris Columbuses or Brad Peytons or Jon Favreaus (who made 2016’s The Jungle Book and that upcoming digitized Lion King) — able project managers all, and not a one of them possessed of the fevered imagination to pull off a Beetlejuice, never mind an Ed Wood. The docile Burton we have here is the one Warner Brothers’ wished they’d had on Batman Returns a generation ago, when parents and a certain billions-and-billions-served burger chain screamed about how the blockbuster sequel turned out awfully weird and kinky and violent, for a film they’d worked so hard to sell to children.

(5) SHIRAISHI OBIT. Voice actress Fuyumi Shiraishi passed away March 28 at the age of 82 reports Anime News Network.

She is arguably best known outside Japan for voicing Mirai in the first Mobile Suit Gundam anime series.

She won a Merit Award for lifetime achievement at the 9th Annual Seiy? Awards in 2015.

(6) RIMMER OBIT. Thunderbirds voice actor Shane Rimmer had died reports The Guardian.

Actor Shane Rimmer, who voiced the character of pilot Scott Tracy in Thunderbirds, has died. The official Gerry Anderson website carried the news, saying that the death of the 89 year old had been confirmed by his widow Sheila Rimmer. Rimmer died at home in the early hours of 29 March. No cause of death has been given.

… . The actor also contributed his voice to other Gerry Anderson projects including Joe 90 and Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons, and appeared in person in the Anderson’s live action project UFO. Behind the scenes, Rimmer also wrote episodes of Captain Scarlet, Joe 90, The Secret Service and The Protectors.

As well as his work with Gerry and Sylvia Anderson he appeared in over 100 films including Dr Strangelove, Gandhi and Out of Africa. He played three different roles in three different James Bond movies, appearing in Diamonds Are Forever, You Only Live Twice, and The Spy Who Loved Me.

(7) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

  • Born March 29, 1923 Geoffrey Ashe, 96. British historian and lecturer, Arthurian expert. His first book, King Arthur’s Avalon: The Story of Glastonbury, was published sixty years ago. He wrote one novel, The Finger and the Moon, set at Allhallows, a college near Glastonbury Tor. 
  • Born March 29, 1943 Eric Idle, 76. Monty Python is genre, isn’t it? If not, I submit that The Adventures of Baron MunchausenYellowbeardMonty Python and the Holy GrailQuest for CamelotShrek the Third and Nearly Departed, an updated version of Topper, which he all hand in are.
  • Born March 29, 1947 Patricia Anthony. Flanders is one damn scary novel. A ghost story set in WW I it spooked me for nights after I read it and I don’t spook easily. Highly recommended.  James Cameron purchased  the movie rights to  her Brother Termite novel and John Sayles wrote a script, but the movie has not been produced. (Died 2013.)
  • Born March 29, 1948 Bud Cort, 71. First genre role was in  producer Roger Corman’s final film for AIP, Gas-s-s-s (also known as Gas! or It Became Necessary to Destroy the World in Order to Save It). Next was Brave New World which was followed by Invaders from Mars, a remake of the early Fifties film of that name. There was a pilot for a Bates Motel series (H’h?) but ignored the timeline from Psycho II and Psycho III. Last I’m going to note his voicing Toy Man in the Justice League and Superman animated series.
  • Born March 29, 1955 Marina Sirtis, 64. Counselor Deanna Troi in the Trekverse. I admit I never did find her role all that interesting. As for her roles outside of Trek, let’s see what we’ve got. Her first genre film appearance, The Wicked Lady, a highwayman film being noted here only for Sirtis somehow getting whipped while topless by Faye Dunaway. Waxwork II: Lost in Time as Gloria is her true genre film role followed shortly by a one-off on the The Return of Sherlock Holmes series as Lucrezia. And then there’s her mid Nineties voice acting as Demona on Gargoyles, possibly her best role to date. Skipping some one-offs on various genre series, her most recent appearance was on Titans, the DC streaming service based series, as Marie Granger in the “Hank and Dawn” episode. 
  • Born March 29, 1957 Elizabeth Hand, 62. Not even going to attempt to summarise her brilliant career. I will say that my fav works by her are Wylding HallIllyria and Mortal Love
  • Born March 29, 1968 Lucy Lawless, 51. Xena in Xena: Warrior Princess and Hercules: The Legendary Journeys, cylon model Number Three D’Anna Biers on that Battlestar Galactica series. She also played Countess Palatine Ingrid von Marburg, the last of a line of Germanic witches on the Salem series. Her most recent genre role as Ruby Knowby, one of the Dark Ones, on the Ash vs Evil Dead series. Though not genre, she was Lucretia in  Spartacus: Blood and Sand, its prequel Spartacus: Gods of the Arena and its sequel Spartacus: Vengeance

(8) COMICS SECTION.

  • Another Incidental Comic from Grant Snider:

(9) ON JEOPARDY! Andrew Porter has been patrolling the airwaves again: “Not a science fiction answer/question, but a good topic,” he says.

Answer: This 1883 classic ends with the words “A well-behaved little boy!”

All contestants got it wrong, with the questions, “Who is Little Lord Fauntleroy,” “What is The Velveteen Rabbit,” and “What is Peter Pan?”

The correct question: “Who is Pinocchio?”

(10) HELP WANTED. According to Jezebel, “Space Scientists Need Women Volunteers Who Will Stay in Bed Eating Pancakes for Two Months”.

Do you speak German and hate getting out of bed? That could be worth almost 19k to space scientists.

A study commissioned by NASA and the European Space Agency being conducted at the German Aerospace Center needs German-speaking, non-smoking women ages 22-55 to lie in bed for 60 days in order to help understand the impact of weightlessness on the body.

(11) NOT JUST CATS. It’s a veritable hitchhikers’ guide… “Dozens Of Nonnative Marine Species Have Invaded The Galapagos Islands”.

The Galapagos Islands are like a biological ark in the eastern Pacific Ocean. Giant tortoises live there, and swimming iguanas, and numerous species found nowhere else. It’s one of the world’s most protected places.

But scientists have discovered that dozens of exotic species have invaded the Galapagos — underwater.

Marine biologist James Carlton remembers when he first got to thinking that the famously wild Galapagos, a World Heritage, might not be as pristine as people thought. “On my first visit to the Galapagos,” he recalls, “I collected some samples from a boat bottom.” He found barnacles, sponges and other hitchhikers.

That was in 1987. Carlton didn’t know if the creatures he found were native or not. So about four years ago, he and a team of scientists decided to return and take a closer look.

“We didn’t know quite what to expect,” he says. They already knew there were lots of invasive species — species not native to the Galapagos — on land. But in the surrounding ocean, there were only five known species of invaders. Everything else, presumably, was native.

When Carlton’s team looked underwater, however, they found a horde of invaders. “Now we have 53, which is a rather stunning increase,” says marine biologist Gregory Ruiz, who was on the trip. “It’s about a tenfold increase.”

(12) AT LONG LAST. Try and look on the bright side —

[Thanks to P.J. Evans, JJ, rcade, Cat Eldridge, Mike Kennedy, John King Tarpinian, Martin Morse Wooster, Chip Hitchcock, Carl Slaughter, and Andrew Porter for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day BGrandrath.]

David Gemmell Awards
Are Terminated

The David Gemmell Awards for Fantasy website today announced the closing of the awards after a ten-year run:

With a lack of suitable volunteers to take on current committee roles, and insufficient manpower to deliver the wide range of tasks involved, the present team has been left with no choice but to wind up the awards.

There were three Gemmell awards, the Legend for the year’s best fantasy novel, the Morningstar for the year’s best debut in fantasy fiction, and Ravenheart for the creator of the year’s best fantasy book cover art. The winners were chosen by open public vote.

Departing Gemmell Awards Chair Stan Nicholls said: “This is a decision that has not been taken lightly, and indeed is one that myself and my committee members make with a heavy heart. It was always important to us to do things to a high standard, and in the current situation I don’t think that we could deliver something befitting the reputation the Gemmell Awards has. I hope that the awards will be remembered for the good work they have done in supporting and championing the cause of fantasy fiction over the last ten years, and that we’ve left a legacy behind that people can look at fondly in years to come.”

Another Brother for Diversity

By John Hertz: (reprinted from No Direction Home 3) André Previn (1929-2019), Knight Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (no Commonwealth citizen, he could use the initials K.B.E. but not the honorific Sir), died six weeks before his 90th birthday.  He had come to the United States (1938) from Germany via France; English was his third language, which he learned from comic books and films with a dictionary, like Nathaniel Bowditch while a boy learning Latin to read Newton’s Principia (1687) as I was taught by Carry On, Mr. Bowditch (J. Latham, 1955) in 5th Grade, except young Nat used a Bible.

By 1946 Previn was working for Metro-Goldwin-Mayer and in 1949 earned his first film credit, the music-score for The Sun Comes Up (R. Thorpe dir.; 4th film about the collie Lassie).

While serving with the Army he managed during 1951-1953 to get lessons in conducting from Pierre Monteux. He won four Academy Awards (1958-1959 [Music – Scoring of a Musical Picture, Gigi {V. Minnelli dir. 1958}, Porgy & Bess {O. Preminger dir. 1959}], 1963-1964 [Score – Adaptation or Treatment, Irma la Douce {B. Wilder dir. 1963}, My Fair Lady {G. Cukor dir. 1964}]; eleven nominations; so far the only person to receive three nominations in one year, 1961; the soundtrack albums for Gigi and Porgy & Bess won Grammys too).  Uncontent he developed a new career, or maybe two, in classical music and jazz.  His discography runs into the hundreds.

On piano, with drummer Shelly Manne and bassist Leroy Vinnegar, he recorded Modern Jazz Performances of Songs from “My Fair Lady” (1956, as by “Shelly Manne and His Friends”, Contemporary 3527), the first album consisting entirely of jazz treatments of tunes from a single Broadway musical, the first jazz album to sell a million copies; Lady had then been running on Broadway only five months.  An interview and music-making with Oscar Peterson (1925-2007) for the British Broadcasting Company’s Omnibus (1 Dec 74) was applauded as “one of the greatest hours I ever saw on television” by Marlon Brando. Previn received the Glenn Gould Prize in 2005, the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 2010 (eight other Grammys); O.P., the Gould in 1993, Lifetime Achievement in 1997.  Previn with Ella Fitzgerald in 1983 recorded Nice Work If You Can Get It (Pablo Digital D2312140; the jacket by Al Hirschfeld shows P & F and both Gershwin brothers  – for extra credit, where’s H’s Nina [his daughter’s name, which he characteristically worked in]?); five dozen jazz records through Alone (2007; EmArcy, ASIN B01G99X0DY).  Dizzy Gillespie  said, “He has the flow….  A lot of guys, they have the technique, the harmonic sense…. the perfect co-ordination….  But you need something more…. you got to have the flow.”

Previn recorded chamber music of Mozart (1756-1791), Debussy (1862-1918), Ravel (1875-1937).  He recorded Rachmaninov’s Music for Two Pianos (Suite No. 1, 1893; Suite No. 2, 1901) with Vladimir Ashkenazy (Decca 444 845-2, 1974).  He was if anything still more famous as a conductor, inter alia principal conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra 1968-1979; music director of the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra 1975-1985 (a television series Previn and the Pittsburgh ran 1977-1980; three Emmy nominations), of the Los Angeles Philharmonic 1985-1989.  Speaking of Rachmaninov, Ashkenazy and the LSO, all four piano concertos and the Rhapsody on a Theme by Paganini (1934, which some call R’s fifth piano concerto) are on a Decca 3-CD set (ASIN B000076GYF; recorded 1970-1971).  The first complete recording of Rachmaninov’s Symphony No, 2 (1907) was Previn’s in 1970 with the LSO (Warner Classics, ASIN B00000K4FI), which in 2015 Gramophone reviewing all recordings to date called “an interpretation [that] retains its legendary emotional charge” (12 Mar; also noting “Jack Brymer navigated the Adagio’s endless [clarinet] cantilena … with unparalleled subtlety”).

I’ve left a lot out.  Auditioning for George Szell, who with no piano at hand (I wish I’d invented that pun) said “Play on that tabletop”; after a while, Szell directing “Slower; faster; more tender,” Previn said “I’m sorry, Maestro, my tabletop at home has a much different action,” and Szell threw him out.  Comic appearances as “Andrew Preview” on The Morecambe and Wise Christmas Show (BBC television 1971-1972; in 2005 “Taxi drivers still call me ‘Mr. Preview’”).  Career as a composer.  Five marriages, one of which lasting seventeen years produced a Hollywood memoir No Minor Chords (1991) edited by Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis (1929-1994), the fifth though also ending in divorce producing such an ongoing collaboration that Previn joked “the divorce that didn’t work.”

I wish we had more diversity, but we have more than we used to.  Obviousness is relative, and so of course is fame.  You may never have heard of Previn, Gigi, Fitzgerald, chamber music, Gramophone.  It’s still unusual that Previn was active, and achieved, in different media, or idioms, or subcultures, for which he’s now praised – although I’m not here to say he’d have been less praiseworthy if he’d done wonders in only one – and for which he was sometimes then, and is sometimes now, thought questionable.  I try not to make unreasonable assumptions.  Let’s not, any of us.

On February 28th, the day of Previn’s death, The Guardian quoted Andrew Marriner of the LSO (Bymer’s successor as principal clarinet, son of Sir Neville Marriner), “it was the extraordinary sound [Previn] conjured from an orchestra, unmistakably his own, that dazzled….  he drew the players into a deeply moving collaboration.  His touch on the piano in Mozart piano concertos and in chamber music was divine.”  May his memory be for a blessing.

The sweet season that bud and bloom forth brings,
With green hath clad the hill and eke the vale;
The nightingale with feathers new she sings,
The turtledove to mate hath told her tale.
Summer is soon, for every spray now springs,
The hart hath hung his old head on the pale,
The buck in brake his winter coat he flings,
The fishes fleet with new repaired scale,
The adder all her slough away she slings,
The swift swallow pursueth the flies smale,
The busy bee her honey now she mings —
Winter is worn, that was the flowers’ bale:
And thus I see, among these pleasant things
Each care decays, and yet my sorrow springs.
               Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey (1517-1547)

Strange Developments in Ed Kramer Case

Can Ed Kramer’s case get any more bizarre? Yes, it can! Kramer may be the one behind bars, but now he’s also got the authorities investigating each other.

Arrested in February, Kramer appeared in court on March 26 to face charges of taking a photo of a 7-year-old boy without permission. The judge ruled there was probable cause to send his case to Superior Court, and denied bond (Atlanta’s Fox5 News, “Dragon Con co-founder to remain behind bars without bond”).  

Overshadowing that procedural news was a motion filed one day earlier by Kramer’s attorney Stephen Reba which made public for the first time that Gwinnett County Superior Court Judge Kathryn Schrader had hired private investigator T.J. Ward last February to see if someone was hacking into her computer, and Ward had used Ed Kramer as his computer forensic analyst. The motion claims they not only discovered evidence of hacking, but that his nemesis District Attorney Danny Porter was the one doing the hacking. (Gwinnet Daily Post, “GBI investigating ‘unauthorized access’ of Gwinnett computer network by convicted sex offender Ed Kramer”.)

“From February 7th to 11th, 2019, various devices obtained solely for the purposes of investigation, including a device called a Wire Shark, were attached by Frank Karic, one of Ward’s forensic specialists, to Judge Schrader’s computer into the Gwinnett County Justice and Administration Center — with the Judge’s express permission,” the filing said. “…to ensure proper analysis, Ward put his computer forensic analyst, Defendant Edward E. Kramer, in charge of monitoring and analyzing the Wire Shark’s collected data.”

DA Porter apparently first learned about this as a byproduct of Kramer’s latest arrest, at which point he asked the Georgia Bureau of Investigation to look into charges that Kramer had “unauthorized access into the Gwinnett County (computer) network.”

…Officers, along with investigators in Porter’s office, seized Kramer’s computers and cellphone to look for the alleged photos of the boy. That’s when Porter realized Kramer had access to the county computer network.

“In the course of doing a forensic analysis of all of his computers, looking for a picture of a child, we came across data that might have been related to Judge Schrader’s computer,” Porter said. “We took it one step further and looked at the text messages off (Kramer’s) phone, and it became clear that Judge Schrader had contacted Kramer…. At that point, that’s when I called in the GBI.”

Once again, Kramer’s attorney has Porter on the defensive:

Porter — who said he doesn’t know if Schrader’s computer was ever being hacked in the first place — also told the Daily Post that during the course of his investigation, prior to calling the GBI, he “learned that she had had some technical problems but that they were handled by the county and the court IT department — said he has “no idea where she got any idea that I was hacking into her computer.”

“Of course, it’s (ridiculous) to think that I would do that,” Porter said. “I have better things to do than (monitor) what Judge Schrader has on her computer.”

Porter said he is concerned about what Kramer might have done with county computer access.

“There’s no doubt that he had access; they installed a device and they captured information off the network,” Porter said. “I don’t think the county has yet assessed the damage that could have been done, or has been done. I don’t know that there has been any, but the potential for entering in and changing records in my office or changing records at the tax office — he basically was able to obtain credentials that could have logged into any desktop in the county. … I think the possible damage is almost anything you can imagine.”

Atorney Reba is demanding Porter recuse himself from any matters involving Kramer: the District Attorney “cannot possibly still prosecute Defendant in any matter and must be recused, along with said recusal being imputed to his office.”

Porter has recused himself from the ongoing GBI investigation (only) because he might be a witness (Daily Report Online, “Gwinnett DA Porter Recuses From GBI Probe Into Judge’s Computer Hack”).

As of Thursday, area reporters did not know what Superior Court judge will be assigned to Kramer’s case.

[Thanks to Nancy Collins for the story.]

Pixel Scroll 3/28/19 Old Rossum’s Book Of Pixelated SJW Credentials

(1) APOLLO REUNION. Forbes tells how the picture came to be: “Buzz Aldrin Dazzles In Photo Of Apollo Astronauts”. John A Arkansawyer, who sent the link, says, “But gosh, I love the suit Buzz Aldrin is wearing! It makes me want to go out and punch a goddam liar right in the face.”

The only man between here and the moon capable of pulling off a rocket ship patterned suit, four gold rings, American flag socks, and a double watch combo is Buzz Aldrin, 89. Aldrin was one of eight Apollo astronauts to attend the 115th Explorers Club Annual Dinner March 16. The dinner also celebrated the 50 year anniversary of the moon landing on July 20, 1969, by Aldrin and the late Neil Armstrong who died in 2012. Aldrin and his astronaut brethren were photographed in New York by Felix Kunze whose composite image rocketed to the top of Reddit Sunday evening.

(2) MY TYPE. That item in a recent Scroll about getting your cat its own keyboard? Kalimac sounds like his cat is overdue for one:

I came home from a quick visit to the library to find that a reply, fortunately unsent, had been opened to the e-mail that happened to have been sitting on my desktop at the time I left. The text read:

5v44444444444444444444444jjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkk kkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkk kkkkkkkkkkumuuuuuuu

Just so you know.

(3) FUNEREAL POSTER. SYFY Wire makes an observation as “All those dusted heroes return(?!) in latest poster for Avengers: Endgame “.

Walt Disney Studios marketing president Asad Ayaz tweeted out the new Chinese poster for Endgame, and aside from giving us some new looks at the living heroes the post-Infinty War team will have to rely on, it also features 14 of the ones who are no longer with us. As with all the rest of Endgame’s intentionally mysterious marketing teases, though, there’s a catch to the way the two groups are presented:

(4) VISA CATASTROPHE ENDS MALAYSIAN CON. Eleven cosplayers from four Asian countries plus the con organizer were taken into custody: “A Dozen Cosplayers Arrested During Immigration Raid at Cosplay Convention”.  

Twelve people without proper work visas were arrested during an immigration raid at a cosplay convention in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia on its first day over the weekend.

The event, Cosplay Festival 4, had a line-up of performances on March 23 when officers from the Immigration Department of Malaysia (Jabatan Imigresen Malaysia/JIM) stormed its venue at the Sunway Putra Hotel around 2 p.m. after receiving a tip.

(5) AMAZON DEVELOPING BUTLER BOOK FOR TV. “‘Wild Seed’: Viola Davis Developing Adaptation Of Octavia Butler Novel At Amazon, Scripted By Nnedi Okorafor And Wanuri Kahiu”: Shadow and Act has the story.

“We love Octavia Butler and her work and have for decades. But Wild Seed is our favorite. It’s expansive, disturbing, and unique. Wild Seed stays with you. It’s a love/hate story of African immortals that connects people on the African continent to the Diaspora. It merges the mystical and the scientific seamlessly. You’re going to see shape-shifting, body jumping, telepaths, people born with the ability to defy the laws of physics, all in the context of our past, present and future world,” said Kahiu and Okorafor.

(6) THE ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM. Leonard Maltin says “‘Dumbo’ Begs the Question: Why?”

Disney’s new live-action Dumbo isn’t awful….but it isn’t very good, either. Why waste so much money and talent on a film that is foredoomed to take second place to a classic? I know it’s all about making money, yet surely there are new ideas to pursue instead of constantly reproducing past successes. In this case the bar is set impossibly high. Dumbo is my favorite animated Disney feature. It’s got heart, humor, and originality. What’s more, it tells its story in just over an hour’s time. It’s a perfect movie.

Why Tim Burton would devote himself to a mediocre remake with a bloated script I can’t imagine….

(7) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

  • Born March 28, 1918 Robert J. Serling . Brother of that Serling. Author of several associational works including Something’s Alive on the Titanic. He wrote “Ghost Writer” published in Twilight Zone: 19 Original Stories on the 50th Anniversary. (Died 2010.)
  • Born March 28, 1922 A. Bertram Chandler. Did you ever hear of popcorn literature? Well the Australian tinged space opera that was the universe that of the Rim World and John Grimes was such. A very good starting place is the Baen Books omnibus To The Galactic Rim which contains three novels and seven stories. If there’s a counterpart to him, it’d be I think Dominic Flandry who appeared in Anderson’s Technic History series. Oh, and I’ve revisited both to see if the Suck Fairy had dropped by. She hadn’t.  (Died 1984.)
  • Born March 28, 1942 Mike Newell, 77. Director whose genre work Includes The AwakeningPhotographing Fairies (amazing story, stellar film), Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (popcorn film — less filling, mostly tasty), Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time and two episodes of The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles, to wit “Masks of Evil” and “The Perils of Cupid”.
  • Born March 28, 1981 Gareth David-Lloyd, 48. Best known for playing as Ianto Jones on Doctor Who and Torchwood. John Watson in (what is referred to as a steampunk version by Wiki) of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes, also known simply as Sherlock Holmes. I also see him in Dark Signal, a supernatural thriller.
  • Born March 28, 1983 Natalie Lander, 36. I adore the amount of characterization that a performer brings to an animated character in the voice work they do. So it is with her work as Stargirl in the Justice League Action series of short animated works done recently. She created a smart and stubborn character who wasn’t going to be second to anyone. 

(8) REDDIT REELING AFTER MCDONALD SMEAR. A moderator of Reddit’s r/Fantasy group was one of the individuals engaged in the character assassination of Ed McDonald. The other moderators, trying to find a way forward, have posted a timeline of what they knew when, plus an apology. Here are excerpts.

WEDNESDAY

All hell broke loose within r/Fantasy. Up became down.

The r/Fantasy mods received information from multiple sources that there appeared to be a smear campaign against Ed McDonald. Retractions were posted from those who had put things out there involving Ed.

Later on Wednesday, we received information that one of the two individuals involved was a longstanding r/Fantasy moderator. WTF.

The r/Fantasy mod team shifted communications to remove that moderator from conversations and, during that process, that mod appears to have deleted his account. No information or other from that former mod.

TODAY – THURSDAY MORNING

We took time to try and sort things out. Again – looking to people across the industry and reputable sources. At this time there are retractions related to Ed McDonald across the internet from those who posted and information building that indicates mis-information was put out there against Ed McDonald. It also appears that one of those individuals was (a former) moderator of r/Fantasy.

The remaining r/Fantasy mods are reeling a bit with this crazy information.

NEXT STEPS

We would like to issue a formal apology to Ed McDonald for what has transpired. Go buy his books and give him a virtual hug. The information out there is incomplete but, at the very least, Ed is owed an apology for the call to ban him for 2019. Of course, he has been reinstated as an active r/Fantasy member.

Ed McDonald

No ill will should be borne towards those that were brought to be a part of something unwittingly. The level and scale of deception used to influence and coerce those that were used against me was extraordinary. And when I say that, unless you have seen the evidence, what you’re imagining by ‘extraordinary’ probably does not even begin to cover it. I’m going to go on stating this because even describing it that way does not begin to explain the lengths, depths and time investment that were put into this. The people who were coerced have been abused and they are also survivors of online stalking. Some of them have posted publicly to say that the perpetrator has groomed them for an entire year.

It is not right to be angry towards those whose trust has been abused. Those that have come forward and publicly apologised must not be blamed or attacked. Not in my name. Not because of this incident.

While I was the target, and the consequences of that targeting would have been life altering and devastating for me if not for the actions of those who believed in me and brought the truth to light, I am not the only survivor of online abuse. The people now discovering that they have spent months, or years, talking to and confiding in someone they believed to be a friend, only to discover that they have been played, are survivors as well.

Secondly, this has nothing to do with gender. I was not targeted because I was male. Due to the nature of the campaign, and because I have never met or spoken to the perpetrator, I do not know whether the person responsible is male or female. Please do not make this a platform for unrelated issues. The issue is entirely one of online harassment and falsification, which could happen to anybody irrespective of who they are.

Be kind to one another. If there’s at least one lesson we can all agree on, it’s surely that.

Author Mark Lawrence, creator of the Self-Published Fantasy Blog-Off, shared his own experience with being attacked.

[–]MarkLawrenceStabby Winner, AMA Author Mark Lawrence 136 points 2 hours ago 

It’s remarkably easy to raise a reddit lynch mob.

It happened to me (on a vastly smaller scale) in one thread. Half a dozen accounts – all started that day and all sharing the same word in their title – started calling me a cancer and accusing me of unspecified crimes against new authors.

Most people looking at the thread just saw lots of names saying I was the bad guy and me not lying down and taking my lumps. The one guy with many accounts got lots of upvotes and I was down in negative double digits.

Mods removed my replies.

It was unfortunate but not malicious on anyone’s part but the instigator. Modding a group is hard and there is often a lot going on at once.

The developments of the past few days have actually helped some people discover the author’s work for the first time, while others are trying to counter the toxicity with positive attention, such as Mark Timmony’s review of McDonald’s Blackwing.

(9) SJWC CRISIS. Not all cats live up to their reputation as companions in the quest for social justice…. BBC asks: “Should cats be culled to stop extinctions?”

Scientists are calling for a widespread cull of feral cats and dogs, pigs, goats, and rats and mice to save the endangered species they prey upon.

Their eradication on more than 100 islands could save some of the rarest animals on Earth, says an international team.

Islands have seen 75% of known bird, mammal, amphibian and reptile extinctions over the past 500 years.

Many of the losses are caused by animals introduced by humans.

Not naturally present on islands, they can threaten native wildlife.

“Eradicating invasive mammals from islands is a powerful way to remove a key threat to island species and prevent extinctions and conserve biodiversity,” said Dr Nick Holmes, from the group Island Conservation.

(10) SPACESUITS AREN’T THE ONLY PROBLEM. BBC finds way too much science gear is available only in large sizes: “One small step for man, but women still have to leap”.

Nasa has cancelled plans for its first all-female spacewalk this Friday, citing a lack of available spacesuits in the right size.

There are not enough suits configured on the International Space Station for both Christina Koch and Anne McClain to go out at the same time, so male astronaut Nick Hague will replace Lt Col McClain.

Last week, Lt Col McClain went on a spacewalk with Col Hague and learned that a medium-sized spacesuit fitted her best.

However, Nasa said in a statement: “Because only one medium-size torso can be made ready by Friday 29 March, Koch will wear it.”

For many women working in science, a choice between using equipment designed for men or missing out altogether is all too familiar.

(11) BITS BECOME BITERS. Or something like that: “Britain’s ‘bullied’ chatbots fight back”.

UK chatbot companies are programming their creations to deal with messages containing swearing, rudeness and sexism, BBC News has learned.

Chatbots have received thousands of antisocial messages over the past year.

One financial chatbot has been asked out on a date nearly 2,000 times and to “send nude [picture]s” more than 1,000, according to its makers, Cleo AI.

The chatbot now responds to the request by sending an image of a circuit board.

(12) MORE INTERNET TOXICITY. Apparently it far exceeds the ratio predicted by Sturgeon’s Law: “‘The biggest, strangest problem I could find to study'”.

Businesses are under siege every second of every day, bombarded by a “grey noise” of potentially harmful web traffic seeking access to their networks. But IT staff often can’t tell the malicious traffic from the benign. Why?

If your office building were visited thousands of times a day by criminals peering through the windows seeking a way in, you’d be understandably nervous about hanging around.

Yet any organisation with an online presence gets exactly this type of unwelcome attention all the time.

Security researcher Andrew Morris calls this constant barrage “grey noise” and has started a company of the same name with a mission of logging, analysing and understanding it.

…In 2018, Mr Morris’s network was hit by up to four million attacks a day. His honey-pot computers process between 750 and 2,000 connection requests per second – the exact rate depends on how busy the bad guys are at any given moment.

His analysis shows that only a small percentage of the traffic is benign.

That fraction comes from search engines indexing websites or organisations such as the Internet Archive scraping sites. Some comes from security companies and other researchers.

The rest of the internet’s background noise – about 95% – is malicious.

(13) MAKING A SPECTRE OF HERSELF. TIME Magazine dutifully published the official disclaimer. But the truth is out there! “‘As Far As We Know All Our Stores Are Ghost-Free.’ Supermarket Responds to Frozen Aisle Haunting Post”.

The employee, Christiana Bush, who works in the store’s bakery department, posted about the ghost sighting in a local, private Facebook group. ”This is going to sound really strange….but has anyone seen a ghost in the Wilmington market basket?” she wrote according to the Boston Globe. Adding that after she saw the woman, she looked to see if anyone else was catching a glimpse of the apparition and when she looked back she was gone.

“She looked kind of like melancholy and a little angry. So it was kind of a creepy kind of sense, but it was something,” Bush said Monday, according to the local NBC affiliate. She believes the woman was a ghost and asked the Facebook group whether anyone else had a paranormal experience in her store. The modern day ghost story has since gone viral with people across the country weighing in on the likelihood of a Victorian era ghost choosing to haunt a Market Basket.

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