Pixel Scroll 8/31/19 A Scroll Title Named Desire

(1) TIPTREE AWARD CONTROVERSY. While I can’t say I located the ultimate roots of the discussion, I found Carrie Cuinn’s thread, which starts here.

There are more comments in Natalie Luhrs’ thread, starting here.

Today Sweden’s John-Henri Holmberg countered challenges raised about continuing the James Tiptree Award under its existing name in his review of the history of the award and its namesake on Facebook. He asks in conclusion:

…What has changed in the last few months? As far as I know, nothing. The award given not even in her own name, but in the name of her pseudonym, celebrates work of imaginative fiction exploring the territory she made her own over her twenty-years long writing career. She explored it more deeply, searchingly, critically and imaginatively than anyone before her had ever come close to doing, and her work remains startlingly fresh, moving, and thoughtful. We owe it to her to celebrate her heritage, not to obliterate it. Her death, as that of her husband, was a tragedy, but not by any reasonable standard an erasure of her life or her literary heritage.

(2) CARRYING THE BANNER. Travis Corcoran’s Prometheus Award acceptance speech has been posted on the Libertarian Futurist Society blog:

Here is the acceptance speech by Travis Corcoran for 2019 Prometheus Award for Best Novel for Causes of Separation.  (Corcoran could not attend the Dublin Worldcon but wrote this acceptance speech to be read there at the ceremony.)

…Chapman’s essay and Pournelle’s and Conquest’s laws are three observations of a single underlying phenomena: the collectivists always worm their way in and take over. We know THAT this happens, but WHY does it happen? How can we model it and understand it?

(3) WHAT, IT’S NOT CHEESE? Space.com reports “China’s Lunar Rover Has Found Something Weird on the Far Side of the Moon”.  

China’s Chang’e-4 lunar rover has discovered an unusually colored, ‘gel-like’ substance during its exploration activities on the far side of the moon.

The mission’s rover, Yutu-2, stumbled on that surprise during lunar day 8. The discovery prompted scientists on the mission to postpone other driving plans for the rover, and instead focus its instruments on trying to figure out what the strange material is.

…So far, mission scientists haven’t offered any indication as to the nature of the colored substance and have said only that it is “gel-like” and has an “unusual color.” One possible explanation, outside researchers suggested, is that the substance is melt glass created from meteorites striking the surface of the moon. 

(4) EL-MOHTAR REVIEW. NPR’s Amal El-Mohtar says “‘Palestine + 100’ Explores Contested Territory, Past And Future”

A few years ago I reviewed Iraq + 100, a project which invited its contributors to write stories set 100 years in Iraq’s future. It was conceived as an imaginative springboard for Iraqi writers to potentially launch themselves beyond the enduring trauma of waves of invasion and devastation — but because science fiction stories set in the future are always in some way about our present, the collection became a multi-voiced testament to the fact that you can’t project a future without first reckoning with the past.

Comma Press has followed that collection up with Palestine + 100, an anthology edited by Basma Ghalayini in which twelve Palestinian authors write stories set 100 years after the Nakba — Arabic for “catastrophe” — during which, as Ghalayini writes in her moving, thoughtful introduction, “Israel declared itself a new-born state on the rubble of Palestinian lives.” Thus where Iraq + 100 looked towards the year 2103, the stories in Palestine + 100 look towards 2048, and the bulk of the work isn’t about extrapolating a future so much as recognizing, fighting, and establishing narratives about the past. The choice of subtitle — “stories from a century after the Nakba” — exemplifies this, drawing attention to the fact that for Palestinians (and many Israelis), May 15, 1948 is not a date to celebrate, but to grieve.

In Palestine + 100, memory and imagination are contested territories. Samir El-Youssef’s “The Association,” translated by Raph Cormack, kicks off with the murder of a historian; the narrator observes that “Since the 2028 Agreement, the people of the country — all the different sects and religions, Muslim, Christian and Jewish — had decided that forgetting was the best way to live in peace.” In Saleem Haddad’s “Song of the Birds,” a young girl lives in a beautiful simulation haunted by the vicious, broken reality it obscures. In Ahmed Masoud’s “Application 39,” two young men imagine a Palestinian bid for the Olympics as a joke — and find themselves in the tormented midst of trying to make that a reality, with all the consequences it entails. In Tasnim Abutabikh’s “Vengeance” the plot is evenly divided between one man’s elaborate pursuit of revenge against a neighbor he thinks has wronged him — and that neighbor’s heartbroken revelation that the man had the past all wrong. In almost all these stories there is a doubled, troubled vision, that never resolves so much as it fractures further.

(5) MICHAELS OBIT. Melisa Michaels (1946-2019) died August 30 of complications amid efforts to treat her lung cancer. (Condolences to filer Xtifr, her nephew.)

Michaels was known for her series about Skyrider, a woman space combat pilot. She also wrote urban fantasies including “Sister to the Rain” and “Cold Iron.” Her novel Skirmish was nominated for a Locus Award for Best First Novel in 1986. SFWA presented her with a Service Award in 2008.

(6) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

  • Born August 31, 1914 Richard Basehart. He’s best remembered as Admiral Harriman Nelson in  Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea. He also portrayed Wilton Knight in the later Knight Rider series. And he appeared in “Probe 7, Over and Out”, an episode of The Twilight Zone. (Died 1984)
  • Born August 31, 1933 Robert Adams. He’s best remembered for the Horseclans series which became his overall best-known works though he wrote other works.  While he never completed the series, he wrote 18 novels in the Horseclans series before his death. (Died 1990.)
  • Born August 31, 1949 Richard Gere, 70. Lancelot in First Knight starring Sean Connery as King Arthur. And was Joe Klein in The Mothman Prophecies. That’s it. First Knight for me is more than enough to get Birthday Honours!  
  • Born August 31, 1958 Julie Brown, 61. Starred with Geena Davis in the cult SF comedy, Earth Girls Are Easy. She’s actually been in genre films such as The Incredible Shrinking Woman, Bloody Birthday (a slasher film), Timebomb and Wakko’s Wish. She’s had one-offs in TV’s Quantum Leap and The Addams Family. She’s voiced a lot of animated characters included a memorable run doing the ever so sexy Minerva Mink on The Animaniacs. She reprised that role on Pinky and The Brain under the odd character name of Danette Spoonabello Minerva Mink. 
  • Born August 31, 1969 Jonathan LaPaglia, 50. The lead in Seven Days which I’ve noted before is one of my favourite SF series. Other than playing Prince Seth of Delphi in a really bad film called Gryphon which aired on the Sci-fi channel, that’s his entire genre history.
  • Born August 31, 1971 Chris Tucker, 48. The way over the top Ruby Rhod in Luc Besson’s The Fifth Element, a film I really, really like. His only other genre credit is as a MC in the Hall in The Meteor Man.
  • Born August 31, 1982 G. Willow Wilson, 37. A true genius. There’s her amazing work on the Hugo Award winning Ms. Marvel series starring Kamala Khan which I recommend strongly, and that’s not to say that her superb Air series shouldn’t be on your reading list. Oh, and the Cairo graphic novel with its duplicitous djinn is quite the read. The only thing I’ve by her that I’ve not quite liked is her World Fantasy Award winning Alif the Unseen novel.  I’ve not yet read her Wonder Women story but will soon.
  • Born August 31, 1992 Holly Earl, 27. She’s been in a number of British genre shows such as playing Kela in Beowulf: Return to the Shieldlands, Agnes in Humans, and yes, Doctor Who in the “The Doctor, the Widow and the Wardrobe”, an Eleventh Doctor story in she was Lily Arwell.

(7) COMICS SECTION.

  • Bizarro lives up to its name with this idea about collaborative effort.

(8) ONE TO BEAM UP. Camestros Felapton’s incredible “tweetfilk” of Star Trek and Bowie, featuring science officer Ziggy!! Thread starts here.

(9) PLEASE DON’T JOKE ABOUT THIS. Variety: “‘Joker’ Reviews: What the Critics Are Saying”.

Critics are raving for Warner Bros. latest comic book installment.

Todd Phillip’s “Joker” opened Saturday at the Venice Film Festival to effervescent reviews, with many critics highlighting an Oscar-worthy appearance from star Joaquin PhoenixVariety‘s own Owen Gleiberman praised Phoenix’s performance, emphasizing his physical acting and emotional control:

“He appears to have lost weight for the role, so that his ribs and shoulder blades protrude, and the leanness burns his face down to its expressive essence: black eyebrows, sallow cheeks sunk in gloom, a mouth so rubbery it seems to be snarking at the very notion of expression, all set off by a greasy mop of hair,” he wrote. “Phoenix is playing a geek with an unhinged mind, yet he’s so controlled that he’s mesmerizing. He stays true to the desperate logic of Arthur’s unhappiness.”

(10) VERY LEAKY ESTABLISHMENT. NPR asks “Have You Seen Any Nazi Uranium? These Researchers Want To Know”. (The photo makes it look like a Borg spaceship.)

Timothy Koeth’s office is crammed with radioactive relics – old watches with glowing radium dials, pieces of melted glass from beneath the test of the world’s first nuclear weapon.

But there is one artifact that stands apart from the rest: a dense, charcoal-black cube, two-inches on a side. The cube is made of pure uranium metal. It was forged more than 70 years ago by the Nazis, and it tells the little-known story of Germany’s nuclear efforts during World War II.

“From a historical perspective this cube weighs a lot more than five pounds,” Koeth, a physicist at the University of Maryland, says as he holds it in his hand.

…At the time of Hitler’s rise, Germany was actually at the cutting edge of nuclear technology. “Nuclear fission was discovered in Berlin in late 1938,” says Alex Wellerstein is a historian of science at the Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, New Jersey. “They were the first team of people who figured out how to split the atom, and figured out that when you split the atom, a lot of energy was going to be released.”

That basic idea of splitting atoms to release energy is what’s at the heart of all of today’s nuclear power plants and all the world’s nuclear weapons.

But back during World War II, it was all theoretical. To find out how it could work, the Germans devised strange looking experiment. Scientists strung together 664 cubes of uranium with aircraft cables and suspended them. The result looked “kind of like a very strange modernist chandelier of cubes,” Wellerstein says.

The chandelier was dipped into a cylindrical tank of heavy water, which contains special isotopes of hydrogen that make it more conducive to nuclear reactions.

The setup was known as the B-VIII reactor. The Germans were experimenting with it inside a cave in the southern town of Haigerloch. They were still trying to get it to work when the allied invasion began. As Allied forces approached, the German scientists disassembled the reactor and buried the cubes in a field.

The first wave of Allied troops to arrive included a task force known as Alsos, which was seeking to seize as much of the Nazi program as they could.

The Nazi scientists quickly disclosed the location of the buried cubes to the Allies, Wellerstein says. The Alsos team boxed up the cubes, to send them back to America, but what happened after that is not entirely clear.

(12) UK BIOBANK. “Geneticists To Cooperate, Not Compete”NPR has the story.

There’s an astonishing outpouring of new information linking genes and health, thanks to the efforts of humble Englishmen and women such as Chritopeher Fletcher. The 70-year-old man recently drove 90 miles from his home in Nottingham to a radiology clinic outside the city of Manchester.

He is one of half a million Brits who have donated time, blood and access to their medical records to a remarkable resource called UK Biobank. The biobank, in turn, has become a resource for more than a thousand scientists around the world who are interested in delving into the link between genes, behaviors and health.

Popularity of the resource is snowballing. Just this week, a major study using the data explored the genetics of same-sex sexual behavior. And as researchers discover the biobank’s value, there’s a strong incentive to add to the database to make it even richer.

…What makes UK Biobank valuable is not only the half-million volunteers, whose health will be followed for decades, but also its community-spirited scientific strategy. Chief scientist Dr. Cathie Sudlow says the organizers, in a break from their usual ways, aren’t out to answer their own scientific questions, but to serve their colleagues.

“I’ll freely admit that when I first started out in the biobank I couldn’t really believe that we were all going to work really hard to make data available for other people,” she says. “And that is because I came from this traditional, kind of slightly paranoid, somewhat territorial, academic background.”

The scramble for research funds creates competitive incentives in much of academic science today. This biobank is different.

(13) JUST A FEW MORE HOURS. Readers of Camestros’ Felapton’s blog have entertained each other today with some last-minute speculation about the winners: “Just for fun, some Dragon Award predictions”.

Best Science Fiction Novel: A Star-Wheeled Sky by Brad Torgersen is a plausible winner. If it does then we can assume other works in the Brad Puppies list got lots of votes. I think Tiamat’s Wrath is a likely winner given the popularity of The Expanse TV series and the Dragon Con audience. However, Becky Chambers has a wide and devoted set of fans and I wouldn’t be astonished if Record of a Spaceborn Few won. If any of the others won, that would be interesting but I don’t know what it would mean.

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

GRRM on the Hugo Losers Party

By George R.R. Martin: We ran into some problems this year at the Hugo Losers Party in Dublin, and it seems there’s been a good deal of online commentary about what happened and why, much of it from people who were not there and don’t know any of the facts, but are outraged and eager to chime in all the same.   There’s been way too much misinformation going around, and a lot more heat than light. 

I do not know that anything I can say will appease those who did not get into the party… but I can at least explain what happened, and why.

Facts first.  At the Hugo Losers Party on Sunday night at the Dublin 2019 Worldcon, for a certain period of time, the venue where we were hosting the party reached its maximum legal capacity, and a number of invited guests arrived at the door and were denied entrance.   Included among them were some nominees from the awards ceremony that had been held earlier that evening (losers largely, I gather, though there may have been a winner or two as well), together with their plus ones.   A few of those who did not get into the party became very irate and took their grievance on line, even as the party was going on.  Others, not present, became irate on their behalf.    And matters have mushroomed from there.   There have been a lot of angry words spoken, and a demand to know who is to blame. 

There were four separate groups involved in this year’s Hugo Losers Party, in major or minor ways: the 2019 Worldcon (Dublin), next year’s Worldcon (New Zealand), the venue (the Guinness Storehouse), and me m’self and I, with my staff.   Everybody played some part in what befell us, but for some that part was very, very small.   I have seen posts blistering both Dublin and New Zealand.  Neither one deserves the criticism they are getting.   If someone must be castigated here, fine, blame me.   It was my party.   Other people were involved, and there were definitely some failures of communication, but the ultimate responsibility was mine.   And while a number of mistakes were made along the way, the biggest was the one I made at the very beginning, months ago, when I chose the venue.  

Since reviving (or reclaiming, if you prefer) the Hugo Losers Party in 2015, I have searched for unique, interesting, off-site venues to hold the festivities.  The party had long since outgrown the hotel suites where it began in the 70s and 80s, and a sterile convention center function room is no place to have a party, in my opinion.   The Guinness Storehouse seemed perfect.   Historic, colorful, interesting, quintessentially Dublin… and they say Guinness is best when drunk at the source.   Many of my guests agreed, and told me during the party how much they loved the venue.  

The problem was, it turned out not to be big enough for everyone that wanted to attend.

That requires a bit more explanation, however.   The Storehouse is a massive old multi-story building.   From the outside, it looks as if it could contain ten parties the size of ours.  And it could have, if we had the whole building.    We didn’t.  We rented the Arrol Suite and adjoining mezzanines on the second floor.  With the set-up we selected (a stage, some comfortable seating, a dance floor, the bar, food stations, tables, and more seating out on the mezzanine, etc), its maximum capacity was 450 people.  

My mistake was thinking that would be enough.

Dublin was the fifth Hugo Losers I have run since reclaiming the party.   In terms of venue size, the Storehouse falls right in the middle.   It was smaller than the Glasshouse in San Jose and the cavernous Midland Theatre we used for the Kansas City party, but larger than Glover mansion in Spokane and way larger than the steampunk bar we used in Helsinki, the smallest of our party sites.   We knew the capacity of the floor we were renting well in advance, and worried whether the 450 limit would be a problem for us.   The possibility was there, we all saw that.    But there was no easy answer, so in the end we decided to go ahead as planned in the hopes that things would work out.   The final decision was mine.   It was the wrong decision.

I will not deny that my team and I had concerns.   This came into sharp focus when James Bacon requested 140 invitations from us, for inclusion in the registration packets.   He wrote, “The figure of 140 invitations, (280 people), includes. Hugo Finalists. Guests of Honour. Featured artists, Special Guests (astronauts)  FF Delegates, the Master of Ceremonies.”  This was a much larger figure than we’d been expecting, though perhaps it should not have been.   The number of Hugo finalists has been growing steadily in recent years.  We now have six finalists in each category where once we had five, and Worldcon keeps adding more and more new categories (this year, the Lodestar) without ever dropping any.  Also, whereas in the past categories like fanzine and semiprozines only had one editor, and therefore one nominee (Andy Porter for ALGOL, DIck Geis for ALIEN CRITIC, Charlie Brown for LOCUS, Mike Glyer for FILE 770, etc.), now most of them seem to be edited by four, five, or seven people, all of whom expect rockets and nominee invitations.  It adds up.    Since each invitation is a plus one, Dublin’s request meant that 280 spots of out 450 were already gone, before I had even invited a single guest of my own.   That made me and my team gulp a bit.   Nonetheless, we complied.  (Later, James requested additional invitations for his own concom and “other worthy people.”  We provided those as well).

Despite our trepidations, I still believed that 450 would be enough.  I had several reasons for that.   A month before the con, I exchanged emails with James Bacon,  asking him for his best estimate of attendance.   Since Dublin had shut off registration, it seemed likely that his estimate would be accurate.   James told me he expected about 5500 people, which turned out to be quite close.   That was smaller than last year’s San Jose Worldcon, and quite a bit smaller than the Helsinki Worldcon, which drew 7900.   A smaller con meant a smaller party, I reasoned; fewer past Hugo losers, writers, editors, and other people normally invited would be in attendance.  (I was wrong).   

I was also misled by our experience at Helsinki (2017).   The steampunk bar that year was easily the smallest of the five venues I’ve used since 2015.   The Hugo Losers absolutely packed the place, to the extent that the by the time I arrived, I could not get into my own party.  Every seat was taken, every booth full, people were lined up three-deep at the bar, the dance floor was packed.  Fortunately, there was an outside seating area with tables and chairs, and lots of sidewalk, so the Helsinki party simply spilled outdoors.   The bar did not seem to mind.   The more people poured in, the more drinks they served, so they were happy.  Ecstatic, even.  They thanked us afterwards.   All that was in the back of my mind when I considered the Guinness Storehouse.   We would have a LOT more room than we had in Helsinki… and I suppose I figured that if we exceeded the 450 limit, we would simply pack in tighter, or spill over to other areas of the building.   The Storehouse had plenty of space.    Foolishly, I assumed the Guinness people would think the same way they had in Helsinki: the more people we had, the more drinks they could move.   (I was wrong about this as well).

A number of the louder Twitterers have stated SOMETIMES IN SCREAMING CAPS that it is simplicity itself to calculate the number of attendees at a party.   That makes me suspect that none of them have ever organized one, at least not one as big as the Hugo Losers Party.   We are not talking about a sit-down dinner with a set number of guests, nor an awards ceremony with fixed opening and closing times.   And while there is certainly a relationship between the number of invitations handed out and the number of guests, it is not one-to-one, as you might think.   Not everyone who receives an invitation actually comes.   On the other hand, every year we have invited guests who turn up with their plus one… and a plus two, a plus three, a plus four, etc.   “They’re with me,” they announce, and some get very indignant if told their extras will not be admitted.  We also get people arriving at the door without an invitation in hand, having forgotten to bring it when they donned their party finery.   Other people may not have received an invite this year, but have attended past parties.    Some never got invited simply because we never encountered them at the con;  if we had known they were there, we certainly would have invited them.  Bottom line, there’s a certain amount of guesstimation going on every year when we try to figure how many guests we’ll have.

Also, parties ebb and flow.   People come, people go.   Some come early and leave early.   Some arrive late and depart at closing.  A few are there when you open the doors and still there when you turn out the lights.   We’d had four years of experience with these affairs, so I had a good idea of the patterns.   A few early birds show up even while the awards are still going on.   After the Hugos, there is a big rush.   Two rushes, actually; one made up of losers and spectators, who leave right after the last rocket is handed out, and a second made up of winners and friends, who tend to linger around the con accepting congratulations and posing for photos.   After that people continue to trickle in, in smaller groups.   Food is served, the band plays, the party gets  larger… until about midnight, which traditionally (if something that started in 2015 can be considered a tradition) is when I present the Alfie Awards.   After the Alfies, dessert is served.   In past years, we’ve had a large cake fashioned in the shape of a rocket ship crashed into a pile of books.   This year, our friends from CoNZealand offered to take care of dessert, so we had small individual cakes of a sort popular in New Zealand (and, because of a lapse in communications, we also had a second sort of small individual cakes arranged by my staff).   After dessert, guests start to depart.   Not all at once by any means — the party usually runs for several more hours —  but midnight is definitely the high point.

Our past experience with party ebb and flow was another reason why I figured a maximum capacity of 450 would be sufficient.   The Guinness Storehouse was a good ways away from the convention center.   Too far to walk; we figured most guests would take taxis.   Knowing that some con-goers would be on tight budgets, however, we also provided free transport; a minibus with twenty seats that would shuttle back and forth between the convention center and the Spencer and the Guinness Storehouse.   It would take some time to make the trip,  so the guests would be arriving in small groups throughout the evening.   Three or four trips into the night, past experience told us that some people would be leaving even as others were arriving.  

In any case, this was how it was supposed to go.   But you know what they say about the best laid plans…

We got the first bad news when we arrived in Dublin and some of my staff went down to the Guinness Storehouse to go over all the arrangements.   It was there that the Guinness people made it very clear to us that the 450 maximum capacity was an absolute hard limit.   There would be no packing more people in, as at Helsinki.  If we went over 450, the party would be shut down immediately.   Also, though there was nobody else in the building that night, we would not be permitted to spill out onto unused floors.   Our guests would be restricted to the Arrol Suite and adjacent mezzanine rooms, the areas we had booked, and there would be security on hand to make certain no one went wandering.   That was… well… firm, but hardly something we could quibble over.   We got what I paid for.    And the Guinness people were extremely accommodating in many other ways, so by no means do I want to blame them for our problem.    They were perfectly correct.

(There will be some, undoubtedly, who are now saying, “well, why didn’t you rent more space.”   Yes, so simple.   But renting more floors would have cost more money.   A LOT more money.  Also, more space meant more guests, which meant a larger bar bill to be paid.   Plus food.   We had an open bar.   The Guinness people also informed us that when you have an open bar, Irish law requires that you provide food for however many guests you are anticipating, as a measure against drunkenness.  Not bowls of pretzels or finger food either, but meals.  And we did just that, with several food stations throughout the party serving sausages and Irish stew and other substantial eats, and waiters circulating with smoked salmon, pigs in blankets, etc.   A larger space would have meant ordering sufficient additional food to feed the new maximum capacity, at substantial additional cost.   And Dublin, we had learned, is an expensive city.   The Guinness Storehouse was not the largest venue we had ever used, but it was definitely the most expensive.   This year’s party cost almost twice as much as last year’s bash in San Jose).

Which brings me, finally, to The Night, and how things went wrong.

The party was on the second floor of the Storehouse.   Just inside the entrance, on the ground floor, was an escalator to the party floor, and an elevator for those unable to use an escalator.   For the past three years, the following year’s Worldcon has assisted me with the Hugo Losers Party.  This year it was our friends from New Zealand.   In addition to a cash contribution to help defray the expenses of the party, CoNZealand provided the desserts (as previously mentioned), and people to man the door.  Guinness had its own people on the door, of course, but as in past years, I also wanted fans there, someone who might recognize a Hugo loser or BNF or editor if they showed up without an invite.   The Kiwis also had gifts for all the Hugo nominees, winners and losers both, a tradition that sprung up some time during the long years when I wasn’t doing the party.   To reach the escalator/ elevator and the party floor, arriving guests had to pass the door just off the parking area, where the Kiwis were checking invitations and Guinness had stationed a man with a counter who was clicking every guest as they entered to keep an exact count.   The Kiwis also set up at the top of the escalator, where they were giving the nominees their gifts as they went by, and putting funny hats on the winners.   (We do allow winners to attend the Hugo Losers Party, but only if they don a conehead or chicken hat so they can be suitably mocked by the losers).   James Bacon and other members of the Dublin concom did attend the party, but had no role there save as guests, and should not be blamed for anything that happened thereafter.   I had four staff members with me at Worldcon… my minions, as I call them.  One minion was solely devoted to assisting my wife Parris, who was recovering from recent surgery and walking with a pair of canes.   The other three were assisting me with various aspects of the party; food, drink, photography, awards, what have you.  

The party was scheduled to open at 10:30 and run until 2:00, but the early birds started to arrive well before we opened the doors.   A few even got there before my staff.   They were turning up earlier than usual because they could not get into the awards ceremony.   (I do find it curious that, with all this Twitter talk about people being “turned away” from the Hugo Losers Party, no one is mentioning the far larger number of people turned away from the Hugos themselves.   I’ve been attending Worldcons since 1971, and in all those years all you ever needed to get into the Hugos was a con badge…  but this year, that was not enough.  You also needed to queue up and get a wristband.   As it happens, some people did not get that message, and others were unable or unwilling to queue).   Turned away from the Hugos, many of these people opted to grab taxis and hop over to Guinness instead.   Their numbers included editors, publishers, writers, long-time fans, past Hugo losers, past Worldcon GOHs, even a Grandmaster.   Some of the angry Twitterers seem to be suggesting that these early birds were cheating somehow or doing something underhanded, that they should not have been allowed at the party, etc.   Nonsense.  Yes, some turned up sooner than expected, but the vast majority of them had invitations, and all of them were welcome.

The awards themselves ran long.   I was the designated acceptor for two nominees who could not attend, but both of them lost, so there was no need for me to linger once the last Hugo had been presented.   I departed immediately, and grabbed a ride over to the Guinness, travelling with John Picacio and several of his ladies from the Mexicanx Initiative.  It was a little before 11:00 when we arrived, by which time the party was already hopping… though by no means overcrowded.   A lot of other guests were turning up as well, most coming straight from the conference center by cab.   The minibus we had chartered made its first delivery around the same time, then turned around and headed back to collect more.   Once on the scene, I went up to the second floor and stayed there for the rest of the night.   I was the host here, people wanted to see me and talk with me, there were a hundred party details to see to… my minions and I were kept very busy over that next hour.   All the while, more and more guests kept arriving, and the security guard down on the door kept clicking and clicking his counter.

Up on the second floor, I had no notion of what was happening down on the door, and even now I am not sure of the timing, but as best as I can determine sometime between 11:30 and 12:00, that counter hit 450, and the venue, as per their previously stated policy, informed us that no one else could be allowed in until some of those presently there left.   I was first informed of this just as I was about to take the stage to present the Alfies.   But even then I had no inkling of the magnitude of the problem.  I imagined a handful of latecomers waiting at the door.  Maybe our minibus had turned up with twenty new guests.  But I knew from past years that once I announced the Alfies, people would start to leave, so I figured the new arrivals would get in soon enough.

But there was something I didn’t know, something I did not find out until twenty/thirty minutes later.   It seems that there was some sort of major sporting event in Dublin that evening (forgive me, I am spotty on the details).   When our friends from New Zealand heard of this, they were concerned that taxicabs might be scarce on the ground, making it difficult for people to reach the Storehouse… so, with the very best of intent, and entirely at their own expense, they chartered two buses to carry guests from the conference center to the Storehouse.   These were not minibuses, like the one I had shuttling back and forth, but full size buses, each capable of carrying 80 people.  My own staff knew nothing of CoNZealand’s generous gesture until far too late… but the upshot was, just as the venue was reaching its maximum capacity, two big buses came lumbering into the parking area and disgorged something like 150 people in rapid succession. 

I was up in the middle of the party during this, so I cannot speak with any certainty as to precisely what happened next.  From what I have been able to gather, a few people from the first bus were admitted before the counter hit 450.  The rest were stopped and told the venue had reached capacity.   Who was on the door at that point?  I don’t have names.  What precisely did they say?  I don’t know that either.   How many people in the crowd at the door did they speak to?  Did someone stand on a chair and make an announcement to the crowd, was it handled more individually?   I don’t know.    I don’t doubt that the people on the door said, “You can’t go in” or some variant thereof.  That was, in fact, the case.  I doubt very much that this was all they said, however.   I would hope that they also added the word “now” and explained the reasons.   “You can’t go in now, we are at capacity, but as soon as some people leave, you will be welcome to enter.”   That’s what should have been said.   With such a large number of people descending on them all at once demanding entrance, however, it is possible that the fans on the door felt overwhelmed and defensive.   If any of them were rude or dismissive, that should not have happened, and I am deeply sorry for it.   By the same token, however, I would hope that the new arrivals were patient and understanding, once the situation had been explained to them, and that they treated the folks on the door with courtesy.   None of this was the fault of the fans who had agreed to man the door.   They were doing what they had to, to prevent the party from being shut down.   They were obeying what we were told was the law.

What happened outside after that gets a bit murky.   Some guests hailed a cab and went back to their hotels, or to a bar, or to another party.   Others waited patiently for admission.   At least one person decided the world needed to hear of this outrage and began to tweet furiously from the parking lot.   Meanwhile, inside the party, I climbed on stage and asked for quiet.  I had the Alfies to present, but before that I made a couple of announcements.   One of the guests had her service animal with her and requested that I ask the partiers not to pet, feed, or step on her dog.   I was glad to do so.  I also reported that we had some people outside who could not get in because we had reached capacity, who would be admitted when space permitted… but I didn’t want anyone thinking I was kicking them out, so I also said that no one had to leave unless they wanted to.   Then I presented well-deserved awards to two giants of British publishing, Jane Johnson and Malcolm Edwards.   Each of them said a few words, then the band began playing again, the party resumed, and the servers started serving cakes.  

And people began to leave.   Just as I had anticipated.   Just as they had in previous years.   Some guests always leave after the cake.  

As they left, the people outside began to be admitted.

Not all at once, no.   There were a lot of people outside.   No one ever gave me a number, but the Guinness guard with the counter was keeping track as guests came and went.   For every person who left, a person was admitted.   If ten people left, ten were let in.   All the time keeping the count at 450.   This was exactly what should have happened, given these circumstances, and most of those waiting for admission were happy enough once the line started moving again… but not everyone.   The finalist who had first started blasting us on Twitter, angry that he was denied entrance, seemed to become even angrier when the door admitted thirty people… on the grounds that more than thirty were waiting, and somehow this was ‘playing Hunger Games.’   Well, no.   I have heard no reports of death matches in the parking lot.   Thirty people had departed, so thirty were admitted.  The rest would also be admitted when more guests took their leave.

And here’s the important thing, the crucial fact that none of the Twitter reports seem to mention: eventually everyone who waited got in.  They had to wait, yes, and I am sorry for that, and it should not have happened, and a number of mistakes were made, most by me.   But my minions and the Kiwis, and even the Guinness folk, did everything they possibly could under the circumstances, and sometime between 12:30 and 12:45, they cleared that parking area.   Yes, a certain percentage of those denied entry had left, some departing with a shrug and others with a snarl, but those who simply waited were all admitted eventually and were able to enjoy the last hour and a quarter of the party.   There was still food, there was still cake, the band was still playing, people were dancing, talking, and mocking the winners in their funny hats.    New guests were still arriving even then by taxi and minibus.   Anyone who arrived after 1:00 am walked right in.    And by the way, some of the people who had to wait were among my oldest and dearest friends.   I’ve known Joe and Gay Haldeman since my first con in 1971.  They arrived, could not get in, and chose to head back to their hotel.   The next day they joked with me about it; no anger, no recriminations, they had seen overcrowded parties before.   Ellen Datlow edited some of my most famous stories during her years at OMNI.   She was stopped at the door, but she waited, and was finally admitted, and I ran into her inside the party around 1:00 am.   She seemed to be enjoying herself.     The same was true of Pat Cadigan, another old friend.   Pat had a cane, and when the folks on the door saw that, she was offered a chair while she waited.    Mary Robinette Kowal did not have to wait.   She arrived late enough that she could just walk right in, once she’d donned her stupid hat.  That was true for everyone who arrived after 12:45 (except for the part about the funny hat).  The circumstances were trying for everyone, but my minions and the Kiwis did their best to make things right.   They do not deserve to be vilified.   A mistake was made, that was all.   There was never any intention to slight or mistreat anyone. 

That’s the story.  Guests who came early walked right in.   Guests who came late walked right in.   Some guests who arrived at the party’s peak, where the crush was at its thickest, had to wait outside for a period of time.  Not fun, I know.   I hate waiting myself.   But the same thing happens every weekend at nightclubs all across the country.  It’s not anything anyone wanted to happen… but it is not the same as saying “droves of nominees were turned away,” as some people are saying on Twitter.  (Mostly people who were not there, repeating third hand tales).   That’s just wrong.   For all its problems, for all the mistakes and miscommunications, the 2019 Hugo Losers Party was overall a great success.   A lot more went right than went wrong.   When all the coming and going is taken into account, we welcomed more than 600 guests, we fed them and plied them with Guinness Stout and other adult beverages (and soft drinks as well). We had Irish dancers, a band, two professional photographers taking pictures, a caricature artist, little cakes, and an Alfie presentation.   We provided free transportation… and CoNZealand provided a lot more of same.    My minions worked for months planning the event, and even harder on the night.   So did the Kiwis.    To see them being pilloried on Twitter just confirms the sad fact that no good deed goes unpunished.   They deserve some thanks instead.  

That being said… I need to clear up some misconceptions.

Some of those in the parking area who were not allowed to enter were finalists who had lost Hugo awards that night.    That made them Hugo losers, certainly.   And as nominees, all of them had party invitations, supplied to them in their registration materials by Dublin 2019.   But much of the outrage about what happened seems to have its root in a mistaken belief that this was their party,  intended to “honor” or “celebrate” them, that it was being staged “for” them, that they should have been given preference over everyone else, an assertion that just reeks of entitlement.  Some Twitterers have even gone so far to suggest which other guests should have been thrown out to make room for them.   Eva Whitley Chalker, for instance, suggests we should have tossed out “Tor’s staff & the herd from Locus.”   No.  Just no.  LOCUS has been part of the Hugo Losers Party since the beginning; Charlie Brown was at the first one in 1976 and wrote after that it was the best party at the con, and I gave LOCUS a well-deserved Alfie in 2016.  I am not tossing out Tor either… nor Orion, nor Voyager, nor Random House, nor any other editor or publisher.   Nor any of my other invited guests.  (And yes, I dared to invite some GAME OF THRONES cast members, an Irish filmmaker and actress, a Broadway producer, and other friends of mine own, some not even members of the con, to the party I organized and paid for.  Shocking, I know.  How dare I).   All of them had just as much right to attend as any of the people on the bus.   They got there earlier, so they got in.   If they had arrived later, they would have been the ones who had to wait outside.  You cannot get more fair than that.

The Hugo Losers Party is not intended to honor or celebrate the current year’s cop of Hugo finalists or exalt them above all others.  

Never has been, never will be, not so long as I am throwing the party.    LOSERS WELCOME.  WINNERS WILL BE MOCKED.   NO ASSHOLES.   That’s how our invitations have read since 2015.   There is not a word about the current year’s nominees or finalists.

Gardner Dozois and I threw the first party at my room at MidAmericon in 1976, with stale pretzels and leftover booze scrounged from other parties, but we’d been Hugo Losers long before that.   The first time I lost, in 1974, Gardner inducted me into the “Hugo Losers Club” by chanting “one of us, one of us” from Todd Browning’s FREAKS.   The next year, when I won, he threw me out (of our fictive ‘club,’ there was no party).    But he let me back in again.   “Once a Hugo Loser, always a Hugo Loser,” he said.  

The party is not just for the 2019 Hugo losers… it’s for the people who lost last year and the year before, or ten years ago, it’s for the guy who was nominated in 1963 and never again.   And it’s for winners too, at least those with a sense of humor (see Alfie Bester, for whom my award is named).  And for editors, and publishers, and the smofs and conrunners who work so hard putting on these cons.   The new losers, the guys and gals who lost for the first time this year, are certainly welcome… but they are joining a community, a battered brotherhood of defeat.  Every year at the party I have a handful of HUGO LOSER ribbons, and I am always delighted to give one to someone who has just lost for the first time.   Most of these virgins (with a couple of exceptions) are delighted to receive it.   There’s a sense, as Gargy put it so long ago, that they are now “one of us, one of us,” welcome at our party.   That does not mean it is now their party, and that everyone else should get the hell out.

For what it’s worth, there IS a party that honors the current year’s nominees, and them alone.   That’s the reception that is held before the Hugos.   Only nominees, presenters, and acceptors are allowed into that party.   I’ve seen multiple Hugo winners, past Worldcon GOHs, even SFWA Grandmasters turned away from these receptions if they were not on the list.   The Dublin reception was very nice.   Lots of drink, some tasty hors d’oevres, nominees were lauded and had their pictures taken and were escorted out to reserved seats in the auditorium.   That was the party for the 2019 finalists.   My party is for them and a lot of other losers, who have just as much a right to be there as they do.   And it is my party.   Gardner and I started it in 1976 and I ran it (in borrowed hotel suites for the most part, since a single hotel room no longer sufficed) for the better part of a decade.   Since Parris and I revived the party in 2015, well… Random House covered the bar one year.   This year, Harper Collins Voyager chipped in some pounds for that, and CoNZealand provided our door staff, the cakes, and some money as well.   The San Jose Worldcon helped in Helsinki, and the Dublin Worldcon helped in San Jose, but mostly it is me and my wife and our minions doing this. 

Parties were once the heart and soul of Worldcon, but more and more they are becoming an endangered species.   Con hotels shut down room parties at the least excuse, or don’t allow them in the first place, or restrict them to a single floor.   Hall parties have become extinct, and publisher parties, what few still exist, are hot, noisy, and even more overcrowded than that Losers Party at Helsinki.   But this field has been very good to me, and I am a firm believer in the idea of giving something back to the community I’ve been a part of for all of my adult life.    That’s something I would like to continue to do, but this year’s experience has made it plain that any future parties face real challenges.   No one wants this to happen again.   But how to prevent it?  

There are two easy, glib answers to that: hire larger venues, or invite fewer people.   But there are problems with both those solutions.   The number of Hugo Losers keeps growing.   Even if we stop adding new categories, this year’s losers will still be around next year… and a whole bunch of new virgins will be joining them.   I cannot just keep booking larger and larger venues, and providing ever increasing amounts of food and drink.   That road ends with me booking the Superdome for some future New Orleans Worldcon.   But inviting fewer people is not so simple either.   Who gets cut?  Yes, we can be harder at the door with the guests who turn up with a plus four instead of a plus one, but that alone won’t make much impact.   Do I drop the two “not a Hugo” categories?   Ban the winners instead of just putting them in funny hats?   Stop inviting my own friends and fans and colleagues?   I don’t think so.

When I revived the Hugo Losers Party in 2015, for some years there had been a “Post Hugo Nominees Reception” run by the following year’s Worldcon.   At LonCon, the party thrown by the Spokane people was so pathetic that I decided to get back in the game.   At Spokane, however, Kansas City still had their party, and at Kansas City, Helsinki threw one.   Those two parties ran concurrently with my own, though mine tended to keep going after the other had shut down.  For Helsinki, however, the San Jose people reached out and suggested we merge parties, and I agreed.  So San Jose helped with our Helsinki party, and Dublin joined me for San Jose, and CoNZealand this year.   But maybe the merger was a mistake.   Maybe, going forward, we should embrace the “two party solution.”   Two parties running concurrently would divide the crowd and make overcrowding much less likely.   It might even spur future Worldcons to put a little more time, effort, and money into the “official” party, so dismal affairs like the LonCon party would not reoccur.   Is that the answer?  I guess I need to talk to Washington, see how they feel.

 One thing you can bet on.   I am not going to rent the bloody Superdome.

Pixel Scroll 8/30/19 The Past Is Long And Full Of Writers

(1) BACK IN THE SHED. The tower for Artemis is being hauled under cover: “Kennedy Space Center bracing for Hurricane Dorian”.

NASA civil servants and contractors at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida are bracing for high winds and rain from Hurricane Dorian. Ahead of the storm, they are securing rocket stages, spacecraft assembly areas and even hauling a 6.7-million-pound mobile launch tower, designed for the huge rocket being built for the Artemis moon program, back to the cavernous Vehicle Assembly Building for safekeeping.

The 355-foot-tall gantry structure, carried atop a squat Apollo-era crawler-transporter, is scheduled to begin the 4.2-mile trip from launch complex 39B back to the protection of the VAB at dawn Friday — a journey that’s expected to take more than eight hours to complete.

(2) DUBLIN UP. Two more Worldcon write-ups.

Noelle Ameijenda, in “The Fantastic comes Home”, tells how she juggled attending and working the con:

Thursday (15th August) was the first full day – I spent a while in the morning doing some running for the Chair’s office  – up and down the elevator with bits and pieces – highly important bits and pieces, of course! Then I got to attend two brilliant panels –  ‘Invasions and the Irish Imagination’ and ‘When scientists write science fiction’ – before a quick bite for lunch with my friend Karina, and then a 3-hour Writers’ Workshop with the amazing Diane Duane. What was great about this workshop was the amazing DD, and the other fantastic participants – I made 2 lovely new friends  – Eliana all the way from Paraguay, and Caoilfhionn from Kilkenny – we hung out at the bar lots together. There was an ‘interesting’ bit in the middle of the workshop when I was terribly rude and had to answer a phone call from my Featured Artist, Jim, who was having technical difficulties at his presentation – SO SO sorry to interrupt the flow of the workshop, but we got it sorted.  The opening ceremony then was great, including the Retro Hugos. And seeing 3 members of my (real-life, work) company onstage with the rousing choir at the close : ‘where the strawberry fields…’.

Sara at Not Another Book Blogger penned one of the sweetest conreports I ever saw: “Dublin 2019 My First WorldCon”. Lots of photos of her and her kids.

GRRM The Irish Connection with Colm Lundberg (Moderator) William Simpson, Peadar O’Guilin and Parris McBride Martin. It was a really enjoyable panel on their Irish Connections and great to have it confirmed that Westeros is indeed a map of Ireland upside down!

Afterwards he walked right by me and I said hello which is probably the closest I’ll ever get to him! We got chatting with William Simpson who is absolutely lovely, very passionate about climate change as is Abigail. William drew all of the storyboards for Game of Thrones and while we were chatting he drew a dragon for Abigail in her notebook! So very cool.

(3) NEXT YEAR’S WORLDCON. CoNZealand invites everyone to view their promotional video from the Dublin 2019 closing ceremony, featuring their Author Guests of Honour, Mercedes Lackey and Larry Dixon, NZ Artist Guest of Honour, Greg Broadmore, and special guests, Tania Taylor, Sir Richard Taylor, and the Prime Minister of New Zealand, the Right Honourable Jacinda Ardern.

(4) KEEP COOL WITH THE CREW. Don’t we all need one of these for Christmas? — “Star Stre V Auto Sun Shades”.

(5) THANK YOU. Mike Resnick posted another update to his GoFundMe “Help Mike Resnick pay off a near-death experience”.

“I just want to thank all the people who have contributed to my GoFundMe appeal. I’m still weak, but I can walk about 50 feet without a cane or a walker. Carol and I have been overwhelmed by your numbers, and by the absolute love we read in your messages. I’m back to work — not as fast as I’d wish — but I did sell 3 short stories in the last two weeks, so at least you know your good wishes and outporing of affection aren’t going into a black hole. I have been moved beyond belief.”

The donations passed $19,000 today.

(6) ROBOTS AND KNIGHTS. Jewish in Seattle recently published two items of interest to Filers. The first is a short story entitled “Next Year In” by Merridawn Duckler. It won the magazine’s short story competition.

…The day of Team meeting for the spring robot fashion launch, it was raining hard. Other protectorates have man-made precipitation but here in New Cascadia we still have the real thing, from little eyelash dusters, to the full, sideways sliding downpour. I like real rain. I’ve experienced the human-made stuff and it’s just not the same; too uniform, each drop perfect, dries too fast. Plus, it stops. Still, I complain about the rain like everyone else. The last thing we need is for more people to emigrate here…. 

The second is “How Yiddish Writers Influenced Arthurian Legend” by Emily Boynton, a non-fiction article.

…And Yiddish? One Arthurian figure, Wigalois, has piqued the interest of Annegret Oehme, a University of Washington assistant professor of Germanics who specializes in pre-modern literatures and languages. She argues that the story of Wigalois (pronounced vee-gah-loy) is an intercultural production between medieval German and Jewish societies. Not only does Wigalois appear in Yiddish, but Oehme argues that it interacted with and influenced Germanic versions of the story.

“It’s really important to see that the Jewish community was familiar with courtly literature, they participated with transmission, and didn’t just read and produce religious texts,” Oehme says.

The son of prominent Arthurian knight Gawain, Wigalois grows up in a fairylike land with his mother before setting off to find his father in Camelot. While at court, he accepts the quest of a maiden seeking aid for her kingdom, which is under siege. Battling dragons and giants along the way, Wigalois successfully defeats the usurper and frees the kingdom, becomes a knight, and marries a princess.

The tale packs enough action for an HBO series, yet Oehme argues the real stakes of the story lie in what it tells us about early modern Yiddish culture….

(7) HINES’ SAD ANNOUNCEMENT. Jim C. Hines told Facebook readers that his wife, Amy, died yesterday after a nine-month fight with cancer. Read more on Facebook.

(8) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

  • Born August 30, 1797 Mary Shelley. Author of the Gothic novel Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus which I’ll admit that I’ve not read. Who here has read it? It certainly has spawned a multiverse of novels and films since it came, some quite good, some quite bad. (Died 1851.)
  • Born August 30, 1896 Raymond Massey. In 1936, he starred in Things to Come, a film adaptation by H.G. Wells of his own novel The Shape of Things to Come. Other than several appearances on Night Gallery forty years later, that’s it for genre appearances. (Died 1983.)
  • Born August 30, 1942 Judith Moffett, 77. She won the first Theodore Sturgeon Award  with her story “Surviving” and the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer at the Nolacon II for her Pennterra novel. Asimov wrote an introduction for the book and published it under his Isaac Asimov Presents series. 
  • Born August 30, 1943 Robert Crumb, 76. He’s here because ISFDB lists him as the illustrator of The Religious Experience of Philip K. Dick which is likely they say an interview that Dick did with Gregg Rickman and published in Rickman’s The Last Testament. They’re also listing the cover art for Edward Abby’s The Monkey Wrench Gang as genre but that’s a very generous definition of genre.
  • Born August 30, 1955 Jeannette Holloman. She was one of the founding members of the Greater Columbia Costumers Guild and she was a participant at masquerades at Worldcon, CostumeCon, and other conventions. Her costumes were featured in The Costume Makers Art and Thread magazine. (Died 2019.)
  • Born August 30, 1963 Michael Chiklis, 56. He was The Thing in two first Fantastic Four films, and Jim Powell on the the No Ordinary Family series which I’ve never heard of.  He was on American Horror Story for its fourth season, American Horror Story: Freak Show as Dell Toledo. The following year he was cast as Nathaniel Barnes, in the second season of Gotham, in a recurring role. And he voiced Lt. Jan Agusta in Heavy Gear: The Animated Series
  • Born August 30, 1965 Laeta Kalogridis, 54. She was an executive producer of the short-lived excellent Birds of Prey series and she co-wrote the screenplays for Terminator Genisys and Alita: Battle Angel. She recently was the creator and executive producer of Altered Carbon. She also has a screenwriting credit for Lara Croft: Tomb Raider, a film the fanboys hate but which I really like.
  • Born August 30, 1967 Frederique van der Wal, 52. She appeared in exactly one genre film — Wild Wild West as Amazonia. Oh well. 
  • Born August 30, 1972 Cameron Diaz, 47. She first shows as Tina Carlyle in The Mask, an amazing film. She voices Princess Fiona in the Shrek franchise. While dating Tom Cruise, she’s an uncredited Bus passengers in Minority Report. Oh and she’s Lenore Case in the cringingly awful Green Hornet.
  • Born August 30, 1980 Angel Coulby, 39. She is best known as Gwen (Guinevere) in the BBC’s Merlin. She also shows up in Doctor Who as Katherine in the “The Girl in the Fireplace”, a Tenth Doctor story. She also voices Tanusha ‘Kayo’ Kyrano in the revived Thunderbirds Are Go.

(9) COMICS SECTION.

  • Incidental Comics by Grant Snider – “Reader’s Block”

(10) TIPTREE AWARD NAME CHALLENGED. According to the award’s Motherboard, they’ve taken under advisement a request to drop the name because in her last acts the author shot her invalid husband before killing herself.

(11) SUPERREALISM. In “Review: The Boys (Amazon)”, Camestros Felapton indicates the show suffers from certain inconsistencies in storytelling.

…Hughie Campbell (Jack Quaid) is a young man whose girlfriend is brutally killed accidentally by the superhero A-Train — a Flash like superhero whose superspeed essentially explodes Campbell’s girlfriend in front of him. This early scene sets the confused tone of the series: gory, comical and shocking, with events often set up like jokes but then played out for emotional impact.

A distraught Hughie is recruited by Billy Butcher — Karl Urban sporting the accent he used as Skurge in Thor: Ragnarok. Butcher is a foul-mouthed cockney rogue CIA agent on his own personal mission of revenge against the seven….

(12) WAVING HELLO. NPR reports “After Months In A Dish, Lab-Grown Minibrains Start Making ‘Brain Waves'”

By the time a fetus is 6 months old, it is producing electrical signals recognizable as brain waves.

And clusters of lab-grown human brain cells known as organoids seem to follow a similar schedule, researchers reported Thursday in the journal Cell Stem Cell.

“After these organoids are in that six-to-nine-months range, that’s when [the electrical patterns] start to look a lot like what you’d see with a preterm infant,” says Alysson Muotri, director of the stem cell program at the University of California, San Diego.

The finding suggests that organoids can help scientists study the earliest phase of human brain development and perhaps reveal the earliest biological beginnings of conditions such as schizophrenia and autism.

But the presence of humanlike brain waves in a dish is also likely to focus attention on the ethical questions surrounding this sort of research.

(13) SAUCE FOR THE GANDER. “Twitter CEO and co-founder Jack Dorsey has account hacked” – BBC has the story.

The co-founder and chief executive of Twitter had his own account on the service briefly taken over by hackers.

A group referring to itself as the Chuckling Squad said it was behind the breach of Jack Dorsey’s account.

The profile, which has more than four million followers, tweeted out a flurry of highly offensive and racist remarks for about 15 minutes.

Twitter said its own systems were not compromised, instead blaming an unnamed mobile operator.

(14) SHERLOCKIAN FALLACY. BBC details “The two illusions that tricked Arthur Conan Doyle”.

Two real-life hoaxes managed to fool the creator of Sherlock Holmes – and they help to reveal our own ‘metacognitive illusions’ that influence our memory and perception.

On 21 March 1919, a committee including a paranormal investigator, a viscountess, a mind reader, a Scotland Yard detective, and a coroner were all assembled in a small flat in Bloomsbury, London. “I have spent years performing with fake mediums all over the world in order to disprove spiritualism,” declared their host. “Now at last, I have come across a genuine medium.”

The woman who entered the room was wearing a veil that concealed the lower half of her face. She began with a séance which involved a demonstration of “clairvoyance”. Each member of the committee had been instructed to bring with them a small personal item or written letter. Before the medium arrived all the objects were placed into a bag, which was then locked inside a box.

The medium held the locked box in her lap, and while the committee watched carefully, she proceeded to not only name the objects within, but to describe them in vivid detail. She divined that one of the objects was a ring belonging to the deceased son of the paranormal investigator, and even read the faded inscription.

…The creator of Sherlock Holmes declared that he was highly impressed with the clairvoyant demonstration, although he said he would need to see the ghost again before he would attest to its paranormality.

Today, Conan Doyle is best known for his detective stories, but the good doctor was also an illustrious paranormal investigator who often failed to see the frauds in front of his eyes. He famously fell for the photographs of the Cottingley Fairies, for instance, faked by two children – Frances Griffiths and Elsie Wright. He attended séances, too. As a spiritualist, Conan Doyle also asserted that he witnessed mediums make direct contact with the spirits of the dead.

…Conan Doyle’s reactions to these hoaxes are clearly problematic, but they are also an illustration of psychological phenomena known as “metacognitive illusions”.

“Metacognition” is the idea of thinking about thinking. By extension, metacognitive illusions occur when people hold mistaken beliefs about their own cognitive systems. We all tend to feel like we are experts about the nature of our own perceptions and memories. After all, we generally perceive things and remember things successfully throughout most of our day-to-day lives. However, in many cases our intuitions about our own cognitive systems can be surprisingly unreliable – we are not always nearly as observant as we think we are and our memories can be surprisingly malleable.

(15) TERMINATOR, BUT NEVER THE END. Yahoo! Entertainment: “Linda Hamilton delivers a classic ‘Terminator’ line in new ‘Dark Fate’ trailer”.

In case there were any lingering doubts, Sarah Connor is most definitely back. Reprising her signature role for the first time in nearly 30 years, Linda Hamilton asserts her authority in the latest trailer for Terminator: Dark Fate by delivering the franchise’s most famous line … you know the one. (Watch the trailer.)

[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, Cat Eldridge, JJ, Danny Sichel, Andrew Porter, Martin Morse Wooster, Mike Kennedy, Michael Tolan, Jerry Kaufman, and Chip Hitchcock, for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Nigel.]

Brad Linaweaver (1952-2019)

Brad Linaweaver in 1989 holding his Prometheus Award. Photo by and (c) Andrew Porter.

Prometheus Award-winning author Brad Linaweaver died August 29 after a long battle with cancer. He would have been 67 on Sunday.

I met Brad long ago through other Libertarian fans and knew about his good sense of humor – he attended the satirical Hogu Ranquets organized at Worldcons by Elst Weinstein and John Novak. His goal was a pro writing career and he made his mark with some noteworthy sff.

The novella version of his novel Moon of Ice was a Nebula Award finalist (1983) and the novel length version won a Prometheus Award (1989). Linaweaver shared a second Prometheus Award (1998) with Ed Kramer for co-editing Free Space, a libertarian science fiction anthology from TOR books. His novels Anarquia with J. Kent Hastings, and Sliders (based on the television series) were also Prometheus nominees.

Linaweaver’s other novels include The Land Beyond Summer, four Doom novels with Dafydd ab Hugh, and three Battlestar Galactica novels with actor Richard Hatch.

He had original story credits on a number of films, including The Brain Leeches and Jack-O for Fred Olen Ray.

He was proud to add, in the bio he sent me when I ran program at the 2000 Loscon, “Besides playing a werewolf in the upcoming Vampire Hunters Club, his media credits include story adaptations for radio, and cameo appearances in almost a dozen feature films, including Attack of the Sixty Foot Centerfold. Brad even did a scene with Kato Kaelin before he because America’s most famous houseguest (Kato, not Brad).” Kaelin was a witness in the OJ Simpson trial (1995).

His nonfiction appeared in National Review, Chronicles, Reason, The Agorist Quarterly,and Famous Monsters of Filmland.

In 2004, he co-authored Worlds of Tomorrow with Forrest J Ackerman, a hardcover coffee table book that spotlights science fiction cover art from the Golden Age.

He was the publisher of Mondo Cult Magazine and its associated website, edited by Jessie Lilley Campbell.

One of Linaweaver’s proudest possessions was a small brass cannon once owned by Robert and Virginia Heinlein. For nearly 30 years they fired it every July 4 at the Heinlein residence. Virginia bequeathed to Linaweaver when she died in 2003. He restored it and in 2007 made a video of it being fired several times (with very small charges). (Cannon discharges begin around 6:41.)

2019 James White Award Shortlist

The 2019 James White Award shortlist is out, six stories chosen from 355 submissions, 22 of which made the longlist:

  • Better Lost Than Loved – Bryn Fazakerley
  • Bug on Bug – Mica Scotti Kole
  • Digital Nomad – Koji A Dae
  • Limitations – David Maskill
  • The Last Words of Harry Niffen – Stephen Cashmore
  • Property Crime – Michael Donoghue

The competition is open to original, unpublished short stories of not more than 6,000 words by non-professional writers. The award, established in 2000, offers non-professional writers the opportunity to have their work published in Interzone, the UK’s leading sf magazine. In addition, this year’s prize is £200.

The winner, selected by judges Justina Robson, Chris Beckett and Donna Scott, will be announced on Thursday, September 5.

 [Thanks to Mark Hepworth for the story.]

Begin Your Rediscovery

Galactic Journey, the site that tracks sff and the space age day-by-day 55 years in the past, is always doing incredibly creative things (they host an online radio station playing period tunes!) Founder Gideon Marcus has just released another labor of love – Rediscovery, an anthology of fourteen woman-penned science fiction stories from the 1958-63 period. 

The Silver Age of Science Fiction saw a wealth of compelling speculative tales — and women authors wrote some of the best of the best.  Yet the stories of this era, especially those by women, have been largely unreprinted, unrepresented, and unremembered.

Until Now.

Rediscovery features fourteen selections of the best science fiction of the Silver Age by the unsung women authors of yesteryear, introduced by today’s rising stars:

  • Unhuman Sacrifice (1958) by Katherine MacLean, introduced by Natalie Devitt
  • Wish Upon a Star (1958) by Judith Merril, introduced by Erica Frank
  • A Matter of Proportion (1959) by Anne Walker, introduced by Erica Friedman
  • The White Pony (1960) by Jane Rice, introduced by T.D. Cloud
  • Step IV (1960) by Rosel George Brown, introduced by Andi Dukleth
  • Of All Possible Worlds (1961) by Rosel George Brown, introduced by Cora Buhlert
  • Satisfaction Guaranteed (1961) by Joy Leache, introduced by A.J. Howells
  • The Deer Park (1962) by Maria Russell, introduced by Claire Weaver
  • To Lift a Ship (1962) by Kit Reed, introduced by Gideon Marcus
  • The Putnam Tradition (1963) by Sonya Hess Dorman, introduced by Lorelei Marcus
  • The Pleiades (1963) by Otis Kidwell Burger, introduced by Gwyn Conaway
  • No Trading Voyage (1963) by Doris Pitkin Buck, introduced by Marie Vibbert
  • Cornie on the Walls (1963) by Sydney van Scyoc, introduced by Rosemary Benton
  • Unwillingly to School (1958) by Pauline Ashwell, introduced by Janice Marcus

From the foreword by Dr. Laura Brodian Freas Beraha:

Female authors wrote stories about coming of age…cautionary tales…stories set beyond our universe…You’ll find these themes and more in this anthology. I hope that as you read their stories you don’t try to find ‘feminine’ versus ‘masculine’ elements. What you are about to read is really good science fiction, plain and simple.

It’s available as an ebook or in paper (through Amazon) at Journey Press.

Pixel Scroll 8/29/19 Come A Little Bit Closer, You’re My Kind of Pixel And The Scroll Title Is So Long

(1) FAREWELL. Martin Hoare’s funeral was held today. Pete Young shared a photo of the casket (posted here with permission.)

Yes, it was used for Martin. He was inside, then Martin + Tardis were cremated. I could not get any closer but I believe the Tardis was painted on it; I think it was Hazel Langford who told me it was Martin’s girlfriend’s idea. Needless to say the coffin was bigger on the inside…

(2) SURVIVABILITY OF SHORT SFF. Neil Clarke speaks again about the problems with the current economic model of short fiction in the sff field. Thread starts here.

(3) STRETCHING…THE IMAGINATION. The Irish Times’ Karlin Lillington kicks off a multi-installment report about Dublin 2019 in “Net Results: Sci-fi, spandex and the wonders of WorldCon”. Yes, there is a paragraph about Spandex, but there is much more…

…I hadn’t realised how apparently old-school I was until I discovered that one panel at WorldCon was entitled Continuing Relevance of older SF, which questioned whether 20th-century writing was still relevant in the 21st (answer: yes). Among the writers it listed as older and of a past era were Isaac Asimov, Octavia Butler and Margaret Atwood – yikes, really?

 The discussion was lively and intense and intelligent – and this was the real joy, for me, of this entire colossal event, alongside the surprising (and vast) range of the hundreds upon hundreds of sessions over five days.

My assumptions were immediately and happily demolished. I’d looked forward to learning about some new writers and had thought there might also be some intriguing overlap with technology. But the science element was just as high-profile as the fiction….

(4) LOTS MORE WORLDCON REPORTS.

(5) RESNICK. The GoFundMe to “Help Mike Resnick pay off a near-death experience” surpassed its $15,000 goal overnight — and a new goal of $30,000 has been set. Contribute at the link.

Mike and Carol Rensick are at a loss for words about how successful this GoFundMe campaign has become. (Which says a lot, since as a storyteller Mike is well known for his words.) They cannot thank everyone enough–there are not the words to say how much all of you have changed a very bad year for the better.

Many people have asked them why, with so many weeks in ICU and bills much surpassing any modest number, we had only set the fundraiser goal to $15;000. But in Mike’s mind, $100 is a lot to ask for, let alone $15,000. He had not realised how beloved in the field he is, and how much we all love the opportunity to “pay it back” for all he has given to the science fiction and fantasy community.

Mike is composing and thank you message as we speak–once he can pick up his jaw up from the ground and find the words–but in the meantime we have been encouraged to increase the GoFundMe goal, and so we have! We have doubled the number to $30,000.

(6) LIBRARIES AND DIGITAL BOOKS. Tom Mercer, Senior Vice President of cloudLibrary, has written an email about the many changes impacting libraries and their ability to offer high-quality digital lending services to library users. He discusses why these shifts are happening, how libraries can respond, and what bibliotheca is doing to support libraries — “bibliotheca leadership responds to publisher model changes”.

…Now, fast-forward to the digital library lending market today, where we’re seeing a shift from several of the major publishing companies. Blackstone Audio is embargoing audiobook titles for 90 days, Hachette has changed from perpetual access to two-year expirations (also implemented by Penguin Random House last October), and Macmillan will limit the quantity of frontlist titles effective November 1. It’s unlikely that all of these publishers would be changing their terms without external pressures. So, where is the pressure coming from? ?There is evidence to suggest that in recent years, authors and agents have come to feel that the library market is eroding their revenue. I think it’s telling that Macmillan CEO John Sargent addressed his letter about the library model change to “Macmillan Authors, Macmillan Illustrators and Agents.” 

This begs the next question: if authors and agents are voicing concerns about library lending, where are they getting their data from? I doubt it’s publishers, since a report on library lending is not part of an author’s royalty statement. There is only one company that has access to readers’ digital retail purchases as well as users’ digital library borrowing habits, and that is Amazon.

In 2009, Amazon created a publishing division, Amazon Publishing, which doesn’t sell any of its eBooks or audiobooks to libraries. They have teams of people talking with authors and agents trying to secure rights and make them as exclusive as possible to the Amazon ecosystem. It’s highly probable that they use the data provided by library users to argue that library lending is undercutting retail sales. This is a major concern that we need to understand and to face together as an industry.

(7) MARVEL 1000 ISSUE HAS AN ISSUE. “Marvel Revises Comic in Which Captain America Called U.S. ‘Deeply Flawed’” – the New York Times has the story.

…Captain America reflects on the symbolism of his costume in a newly published essay by Mark Waid, which was changed from an earlier version in which he called his country “deeply flawed.”Marvel Entertainment

Marvel Comics No. 1000, a special issue in honor of 80 years of storytelling, was supposed to be a cause for celebration. But revisions to one page of the comic, which came out Wednesday, are casting a pall over the festivities.

The page, written by Mark Waid and drawn by John Cassady, is narrated by Captain America. In earlier versions of the page that comic-book retailers received in July, the star-spangled hero opened with: “I’m asked how it is possible to love a country that’s deeply flawed. It’s hard sometimes. The system isn’t just. We’ve treated some of our own abominably.”

He went on to say that fixing America’s system is “hard and bloody work” but that it could be done when enough people take to the streets, call for revolution and say, “Injustice will not stand.”

Captain America concludes: “That’s what you can love about America.”

The version that arrived in stores and online, however, has new text, also written by Waid, in which Captain America ruminates on his own image, not the United States: “Captain America isn’t a man. It’s an idea. It’s a commitment to fight every day for justice, for acceptance and equality, for the rights of everyone in this nation.” The hero says that those qualities — “not hatred, not bigotry, not exclusion” — are the values of true patriotism.

Marvel and Waid declined to say why the page was changed. But in an email message, Waid expressed frustration at how his original text was being presented. “I’m disappointed that the cherry-picked quotes circulated by the media severely mischaracterize what was actually written,” he wrote. While the essay was critical, he added, “As written, Cap is supportive of America as a whole.”

(8) A WORD FROM OUR WILDLIFE. The Red Panda Fraction asks that I remind everyone there is only a little more than 24 hours remaining to vote in the Dragon Awards. Request a ballot at the link.

(9) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

  • Born August 29, 1854 Joseph Jacobs. Australian folklorist, translator, literary critic and historian who became a notable collector and publisher of English folklore. Many of our genre writers have use of his material. “Jack the Giant Killer” becomes Charles de Lint’s Jack Of Kinrowan series!  Jack the Giant Killer and Drink Down the Moon to give an example. (Lecture mode off.) Excellent books by the way. (Died 1916.)
  • Born August 29, 1904 Leslyn M. Heinlein. She was born Leslyn MacDonald. She was married to Robert A. Heinlein between 1932 and 1947. Her only genre writing on ISFDB is “Rocket’s Red Glare“ which was published in The Nonfiction of Robert Heinlein: Volume I.  There’s an interesting article on her and Heinlein here. (Died 1981.)
  • Born August 29, 1939 Joel Schumacher, 80. Director of The Lost Boys and Flatliners, not mention Batman Forever and Batman and Robin. Ok, so those might not be the highlights of his career… However his Blood Creek vampirefilm starring Michael Fassbender is said to be very good. Oh, and his The Incredible Shrinking Woman is a very funny riff the original The Incredible Shrinking Man
  • Born August 29, 1942 Dian Crayne. A member of LASFS, when she and Bruce Pelz divorced the party they threw inspired Larry Niven’s “What Can You Say about Chocolate-Covered Manhole Covers?” She published mystery novels under the name J.D. Crayne. A full rememberence post is here. (Died 2017.)
  • Born August 29, 1942 Gottfried John. He’s likely best known as General Arkady Orumov on GoldenEye but I actually best remember him as Colonel Erich Weiss on the short-lived Space Rangers. He was Josef Heim in the “The Hand of Saint Sebastian” episode of the Millennium series, and played König Gustav in the German version of Rumpelstilzchen as written as collected by the Brothers Grimm. (Died 2014.)
  • Born August 29, 1945 Robert Weinberg. Author, editor, publisher, and collector of science fiction. At Chicon 7, he received a Special Committee Award for his service to science fiction, fantasy, and horror. During the Seventies, he was the genius behind Pulp which featured interviews with pulp writers such as Walter B. Gibson and Frederick C. Davis. (Died 2016.)
  • Born August 29, 1951 Janeen Webb, 68. Dreaming Down-Under which she co-edited with Jack Dann is an amazing anthology of Australian genre fiction, winner of a World Fantasy Award. If you’ve not read it, go do so. The Silken Road to Samarkand by her isa wonderful novel that I do also wholeheartedly recommend. Death at the Blue Elephant, the first collection of her short stories, is available at iBooks and Kindle. 
  • Born August 29, 1953 Nancy Holder,  66. She’s an impressive four-time winner of the Bram Stoker Award. I’m not a horror fan so I can’t judge her horror novels for you, but I’ve read a number of her Buffyverse novels and I must say that she’s captured the feel of the series quite well. If you are to read but one, make it Halloween Rain

(10) COMICS SECTION.

  • Today’s pop culture figure, tomorrow’s museum exhibit — Bizarro.
  • Grimmy makes a monstrous theological pun.

(11) NG IN NYT. The New York Times found the name change newsworthy: “John W. Campbell Award Is Renamed After Winner Criticizes Him”.

…[Jeannette] Ng, who wrote the fantasy novel “Under the Pendulum Sun,” said in an interview on Wednesday that she was delighted by the decision. “It’s a good move away from honoring a completely obnoxious man who kept a lot of people out of the genre, who kept a lot of people from writing, who shaped the genre to his own image.” Thanks to the change, she added, “we’re now celebrating a little more neutrally a piece of history that’s not attached to his name.”

(12) ABOUT THOSE EDITORIALS. A tweet highlights one problematic view – the Wikipedia article covers this one and many more.

(13) FRESHER TOMATOES. Or is that a contradiction? “Rotten Tomatoes Adds 600 Critics After Initiative to Increase Inclusion”: Variety has the story.

A year after Rotten Tomatoes announced plans to boost diversity among its approved critics, the review aggregation site revealed it has added 600 new film commentators.

In an effort to increase representation and inclusion across the industry, the company also renewed $100,000 in grants for 2020 to assist critics from underrepresented groups to attend film festivals and industry events. In 2018 and 2019, Rotten Tomatoes has helped over 160 journalists attend film festivals by donating grant money to festivals like Toronto, Sundance and SXSW.

Last August, Rotten Tomatoes refurbished its criteria to look at an individual’s qualifications, rather than just their employer when it comes to verifying critics. The initiative also expanded its pool to newer media platforms like digital videos or podcasts. Of the new critics added this year, 55% are women, 60% are freelancers and 10% publish reviews on more modern platforms like YouTube.

(14) JEDI DRINK TRICK. TSA will treat this as a “no fly” souvenir: “Disney Coke Bottles From Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge Banned by TSA”.

The containers look too much like hand grenades, it seems.

Visitors to Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge at Disneyland and Walt Disney World Resort will not be able to take one unique item sold in the land on an airplane.

It was recently discovered that the TSA told one fan that the “thermal detonator” Coke and Sprite bottles would not be allowed in any luggage.

(15) OH NOES! A File 770 field reporter has discovered White Pumpkin M&Ms are back!

(16) RIGHT TO ASSEMBLE. BBC is there when the “James Webb Space Telescope comes together”

The successor to the Hubble observatory has reached a key milestone in its construction.

All the elements that make up the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) have been brought together for the first time.

It sets the stage for some critical tests that will hopefully lead to a launch to orbit sometime in 2021.

JWST will use a colossal mirror and state-of-the-art instruments to try to see the glow from the very first stars to shine in the Universe.

It will also have the power to resolve the atmospheres of many of the new planets now being discovered beyond our Solar System, and to analyse their atmospheres for the potential for life.

(17) AIRBORNE ON MARS. CNN reports “NASA is sending a helicopter to Mars. It’ll be the first aircraft to fly on another planet”.

Before humans make it to Mars, NASA will send a helicopter to scope out the terrain.

Engineers attached a helicopter to the Mars 2020 rover ahead of its launch next summer. And if it flies successfully, it’ll be the first aircraft to fly on another planet, NASA said.

The solar-powered Mars Helicopter will be safely stowed underneath the rover until it lands at the Jezero Crater, where scientists believe water once flowed. The craft will detach from the rover and explore Mars from the air while the rover collects samples on the ground, NASA said.

If the helicopter flies, it can provide a unique vantage point for scientists to observe Mars.

If all goes well, the autonomous aircraft will snapshot aerial views of Martian cliffs, caves and craters that the land-bound rover can’t explore. And even if it doesn’t take flight, the rover can still gather important data from the surface.

(18) TECH SOLUTION. Viable strategy? BBC tells how it works: “Anti-groping stamp lets victims mark assailants”.

An anti-groping device aimed at tackling sexual harassment on public transport has been launched in Japan.

It allows victims to mark their assailants with an invisible ink stamp in the shape of a hand.

People can then use the device’s black light to identify those who have been marked.

The firm involved says it wants to help tackle the crime. But one sex abuse charity is concerned that the tech could place an added burden on victims.

Japanese firm Shachihata says it developed the stamp to help deter groping on trains in the country.

The company first announced it was developing the stamp in May after a video showing a pair of Japanese schoolgirls chasing down a suspected groper on a station platform went viral.

(19) A VISIT TO HMS TERROR. A short video on BBC about the ill-fated Franklin expedition (1845) to chart the NW Passage.  The ship, HMS Terror was found in Terror Bay, near King William Island. Video: “Franklin Expedition: New footage of wreck of HMS Terror”. (Wikipedia entry: HMS Terror (1813).)

(20) VIDEO OF THE DAY. In “I Wrote A Song Using Only Hate Comments” on YouTube, Madilyn Bailey provides a song where all the lyrics come from comments made by trolls.

[Thanks to Standback, John King Tarpinain, JJ, Lis Carey, James Bacon, mlex, Mike Kennedy, Martin Morse Wooster, Chip Hitchcock, Cat Eldridge, StephenfromOttawa, Hampus Eckerman, and Andrew Porter for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Trey.]

Freedom, Freedom

By John Hertz: (reprinted from No Direction Home 26)  We could take 2018 or 2019 as the 70th birth-anniversary year of Walt Kelly’s Pogo.  It began as a newspaper comic strip in 1948.  It was adopted for syndicated national distribution in 1949.  It ran through 1975.  Judith Merril put a Pogo sequence in her 6th annual Year’s Best S-F (1961).

I’ve recommended America’s Great Comic-Strip Artists, subtitled  from “The Yellow Kid” to “Peanuts” (R. Marschall, rev. 1997).  Kelly is penultimate (p. 255):

Fantasy was the specialty of Winsor McCay [1867-1934, Little Nemo in Slumberland 1905-1926 his magnum opus]; George Herrimann [1880-1944, Krazy Kat1913-1944] made it his bailiwick too, while staking ground in the realm of literary and intellectual expression.  Cliff Sterrett [1883-1964, Polly and Her Pals1912-1958] also appealed to intellectuals, as Charles Schulz [1922-2000] would later do in Peanuts [1950-2000].  Farce and parody were the domains of E.C. Segar [1894-1938, Popeye from 1929 (in Thimble Theatre; after 1938 continued by others, Hy Eisman since 1994)], and the graphic sense he lacked was displayed with seeming instinctiveness by Frederick Opper [1857-1937, Happy Hooligan 1900-1932].  Dialogue – incisive, distinctive – that revealed not only the personalities of the characters but also the world view of the cartoonist was the special gift of Al Capp [1909-1980, Li’l Abner 1934-1977].

In the company of great cartoonists such as these, one stands out as a monumental talent…. Walt Kelly [1913-1973] was master of all that could be surveyed, the many tools and techniques available to comic-strip artists.  Pogo… generously included elements of fantasy, literary and intellectual touches, farce and parody, graphic brilliance … wonderful dialogue … also … philosophy, politics, whimsy, poetry, metaphysics, social commentary, and good old-fashioned slapstick.

– o O o –

St. Nectarios Greek Orthodox Church, 20340 E. Covina Bl., Covina, CA 91724, held its annual festival 23-25 Aug.  On Saturday evening I went for a few hours.  I’ve told of another one.

Lots of different folks go to these Greek church festivals.  Vendors stock accordingly.  I saw displayed a pair of T-shirts, An Armenian Man Is Never Wrong and An Armenian Woman Is Always Right.  Alas, I did not see them on any husband & wife with the husband wearing Armenian Woman and the wife wearing Armenian Man.

– o O o –

At Hampton, Virginia, it was African Landing Weekend.  The 24th was African Landing Day.  In August 1619 “20 and odd” Africans from what is now the Republic of Angola arrived on the White Lion at Old Point Comfort, now Fort Monroe National Monument, Hampton, the first black slaves to land in English North America.

On Saturday, Governor Ralph Northam, Doug Wilder the first elected black Governor (66th Governor of Virginia 1990-1994, now 88 years old), Hampton Mayor Donnie Tuck, United States Representative Karen Bass (Democrat – California) chair of the Congressional Black Caucus, and 11-year-old Brycen Didly a pupil at Larkspur Middle School in Virginia Beach, were among those who spoke.  Two thousand people came.  The Norcom High School Choir from Portsmouth ended the program with “Lift Every Voice and Sing” (poem by James W. Johnson 1900, music by his brother John R. Johnson 1905; called the Negro national hymn by the Nat’l Ass’n for the Advancement of Colored People, 1916).

Governor Northam announced a new State Commission on African American History Education.  Didly, who got a standing ovation, said “There is another way that we can give back to our community.  We can start with how we treat one another.  Are you kind to others daily?”

– o O o –

August 20th would have been the 100th birthday of Rodrick W. Edmonds (1919-1985), who during World War II was a Master Sergeant in the 106th Infantry Division.

On 1 Nov 44 the 106th was assigned to VIII Corps, 1st United States Army, 12th Army Group; on 6 Dec moved to France, joining the Rhineland Campaign; 10 Dec crossed into Belgium; 16 Dec assigned to the Ardennes-Alsace Campaign.  On 19 Dec the 422nd Infantry Regiment, including Edmonds, was overrun by Germans in the Battle of the Bulge, and forced to surrender.  In fact the men of the 422nd were still green, with 19 days overseas training in England during November.

Edmonds was taken to Stalag IX near Ziegenhain (in the Rhineland-Palatinate).  Stalag was short for Stammlager, itself short for Kriegsgefangenen-Mannschafts Stammlager; Stamm is a stem, or a tribe, and like that; Lager is a camp; Krieg is war; gefangen is capturedMannschaft is a crew: a Stalag was a prisoner-of-war base camp – but not for officers, who were held separately.

Edmonds was the highest ranking NCO (noncommissioned officer, i.e. up through sergeant) of 1,275 U.S. soldiers held in Stalag IX on 27 Jan 45.  They had just arrived.  It was bitter cold.  A German officer, Major Siegmann, told Edmonds to identify the Jews by the next morning.

The next morning Edmonds ordered all the U.S. soldiers to assemble outside the barracks.  They did.  Major Siegmann was infuriated.  He walked up to MSG Edmonds snarling, in English, “I ordered the Jews to be separated, to be identified.”  Siegmann drew his Luger pistol and put it to Edmonds’ head.  “You are to identify the Jews, immediately.”

Edmonds did not flinch.  “We are all Jews here,” he said.  He told Siegmann that to shoot the Jews the Nazis would have to shoot everyone.  The Geneva Convention required prisoners only to give their name, rank, and serial number, not their religion. Edmonds said that if any of the prisoners were harmed, Siegmann would be hunted, tried for war crime, and convicted.  Siegmann holstered his Luger and left.  Three months later Allied forces freed these U.S. soldiers.

Edmonds had saved 200 Jews.  He never told the story.  After he died it was pieced together by his son Chris Edmonds, Pastor of the Piney Grove Baptist Church in Marysville, Tennessee.  On 2 Dec 15 Yad VaShem (Hebrew, “a place of memorial”; yad is a hand, shem is a name; Isaiah 56:4-5) the World Holocaust Remembrance Center recognized Edmonds as Righteous Among the Nations.  On 27 Jan 16 in a ceremony at the Israeli Embassy, with President Obama and Ambassador Dermer attending, Rabbi Israel Lau the Chair of the Yad VaShem Council (himself a Holocaust survivor: Buchenwald) presented Pastor Edmonds with Roddie Edmonds’ medal and certificate, the fifth American so honored.

Noir at the Bar

By Martin Morse Wooster: On August 25 I went to a Noir at the Bar, a short story reading for mystery writers held at a Busboys and Poets in Shirlington in Washington’s Virginia suburbs. The event drew about 60 people.  It was sponsored by Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, which donated 50 copies of their September/October 2019 issue and a year’s subscription to a lucky raffle winner (not me).

The event had a strong Ellery Queen presence among the eight readers of short stories.  The organizer was Josh Pachter, who has been selling short stories to Ellery Queen and other mystery magazines for over 50 years; his first sale to Ellery Queen in 1968 made him, at 17, the magazine’s second-youngest contributor in the magazine’s 78-year history.  In addition, Pachter has published 20 translations in mystery magazines of stories by Dutch, Flemish, and Spanish authors.

Every year Ellery Queen holds a “Reader’s Award,” which is their version of the Analytical Laboratory.  All three winners of the 2018 Reader’s Award—Pachter, David Dean, and Stacy Woodson—read at the event.  Woodson was the first-place winner, and the first person to win the Reader’s Award with her first story.  Also present from Ellery Queen was Kristopher Zgorski, who writes a column about blogs mystery readers would find interesting.

Of the eight writers who read, clearly the best was Shawn A. Cosby, an African-American author whose day job is working in his family’s funeral home, where he deals with a great many clients who were prisoners.  Cosby’s sharply etched story dealt with the problems felons face when they are released from prison.  I’d like to hear more from him.  I’ll give second and third prizes to Pachter and David Dean, a former police chief who read his story about a deal gone sour in a passable Irish accent.  I thought the other stories were OK, although I could have done without the one about a two-year-old who flunks toilet training in a spectacularly disgusting manner.

E.A. Aymar had the most imaginative story, which was a Choose Your Own Adventure style of fiction.  A criminal gets stewed in a bar.  Do we want him to a) get even more wasted or b) do something pointlessly stupid and violent?  Well, guess what the audience wanted!  

Busboys and Poets promises to let Noir at the Bar meet quarterly if the customers bought enough meals.   Based on the crowd, I’m pretty sure the event will be held again.

(Hat tip:  Todd Mason)

Baen Books & RBmedia Announce Audiobook Publishing Partnership

Baen Books, one of the top independent publishers of science fiction and fantasy, and RBmedia, a global leader in spoken audio content, have announced an agreement to publish more than 170 audiobooks over the next three years. The partnership brings together Baen’s bestselling, award-winning content and RBmedia’s market-leading position as a publisher of sci-fi and fantasy audiobooks.

This agreement means publication of both frontlist titles–with a primary focus on alternate history and science fiction–as well as many titles from Baen’s extensive backlist, including classics from Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA) Grand Masters and long-time fan favorites that have not previously been released in audio format. RBmedia will publish Baen Books titles across its family of imprints, including Recorded Books and Tantor.

Notable recent and upcoming RBmedia exclusive audiobook productions include:

  • In Fury Born by David Weber
  • The Council Wars series by John Ringo
  • The Belisarius series by David Drake & Eric Flint
  • The General series by David Drake, Eric Flint, S.M. Stirling, & Tony Daniel
  • The Domination (Draka) series by S.M. Stirling
  • SERRAted Edge: The Doubled Edge series by Mercedes Lackey & Roberta Gellis
  • The Witchy War trilogy by D.J. Butler
  • The Chronicles of Kencyrath by P.C. Hodgell The entire Technic History series

“Given the soaring demand for audiobooks, especially in the realms of science fiction and fantasy, Baen is thrilled to be entering into this partnership with RBmedia to make sure our rousing tales of adventure are available in all formats,” said James Minz, Director of Subsidiary Rights for Baen Books. “With this deal, Baen Books will have licensed as an audiobook virtually every available title on our extensive list.”

The first titles published under the agreement will be available starting this monthon Audible, iTunes, Google Play, Audiobooks.com, public libraries via RBdigital, and many other sites that provide digital audio. The remainder will be released over the next three years.