Pixel Scroll 5/31/20 All I Want Is A Scroll Somewhere, Filed Away From The Covid Air

(1) THE TOP OF THE WORLD. Rachel S. Cordasco is dedicating June to “Nordic SF in Translation” on her SF in Translation site and on FB and Twitter: “SFT From The Nordic Countries” . She’s looking for on-topic contributions, too.

Speculative fiction in English translation from the Nordic countries has been available as far back as the turn of the twentieth century. Since the beginning of the twenty-first, though, we’ve gotten a lot more, especially horror from Sweden and fantasy from Finland.

During the month of June, I’ll be spotlighting this little-known (in the Anglosphere) but important and often brilliant speculative fiction. Several stories listed here are available for free online.

(2) HONOURS. SFFANZ gets a head start on a royal story: “Elizabeth Knox & Taika Waititi – Queen’s Birthday honours”

Elizabeth Knox has been named a Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit for services to literature in the Queen’s Birthday honours list announced today. We note that she describes her books as “literary non-realism”, but if you read them you will recognise science fiction and fantasy when you see it.

Taika Waititi picked up an ONZM in the same awards for services to film. He has been involved in many projects which fit in our genre description, although we note that the Stuff article about the awards fails to mention his role in the creation of what we here at SFFANZ news think is the best of them – Wellington Paranormal.

Stuff fills in Knox’s bibliography:

…The first book in the series, Dreamhunter, won the 2006 Esther Glen Award and the 2007 ALA Best Books for Young Adults award, was shortlisted for the 2006 Montana New Zealand Book Awards, and awarded a ‘White Raven’ by the International Youth Library in 2006.

Her most recent book, published in 2019, The Absolute Book, won the Prime Minister’s Award for Literary Achievement.

(3) FELLOWSHIP REUNITED. Josh Gad has posted “One Zoom to Rule Them All | Reunited Apart LORD OF THE RINGS Edition.”

It’s the Return of the KINGS – Josh gathers the Fellowship and then some, to go on a very important mission…. quest…. thing.

FEATURING: Sean Astin, Elijah Wood, Dominic Monaghan, Billy Boyd, Orlando Bloom, Ian McKellan, and many more!

(4) CHECKING IN. CoNZealand Fan Guest of Honour Rose Mitchell stays in touch —

(5) SOUTH GATE IN ’58. Fanac.org is adding folders of photos scanned from the collection of Elinor Busby, including today’s packet from the 1958 Worldcon. (Which, incidentally, was held at the Hotel Alexandria, whose marquee was in a helicopter view I saw of Friday night’s protests in downtown LA.)

Thanks to the scanning of Linda Deneroff, we’re putting up photos from Elinor Busby’s collection. Today, we’ve added the first 16 and these are from the 1958 Solacon, and parties thereafter. Find them at http://fanac.org/Fan_Photo_Album/b03-p00.html . There are more to come. Thanks to Linda for scanning and to Elinor for providing the photos. It’s a real treat to see these.

(6) BEST TRANSLATED BOOK. FYI, Dasa Drndic’s non-genre book EEG is the 2020 Best Translated Book Award Winner. There’s a review in The Guardian.

… The text includes long lists of suicidal chess players, war criminals and notable Latvian celebrities, from Mikhail Baryshnikov to Mark Rothko. There are also accounts of victims of the Nazis, from Ban’s uncle’s young love, a violinist, to Joseph Roth’s mentally ill wife, fatally institutionalised in the euthanasia clinic Schloss Hartheim, “the only killing centre in the second world war from which not a single person emerged alive”.

(7) CONTRACTUAL LANDMINES, At the Writer Beware blog, Victoria Strauss gives tips about “Evaluating Publishing Contracts: Six Ways You May Be Sabotaging Yourself”. Here’s an excerpt.

…These issues are as relevant now as they were years ago, if not more so (see, for instance, the ChiZine scandal, where authors accepted all kinds of abuse, including questionable contract language, because of the publisher’s then-stellar reputation). I hear all the time from writers who’ve been offered seriously problematic contracts and are using various rationalizations to convince themselves (sometimes at the publisher’s urging) that bad language or bad terms are not actually so bad, or are unlikely ever to apply.

Here are my suggestions for changing these damaging ways of thinking.

Don’t assume that every single word of your contract won’t apply to you at some point. You may think “Oh, that will never happen” (for instance, the publisher’s right to refuse to publish your manuscript if it thinks that changes in the market may reduce your sales, or its right to terminate the contract if it believes you’ve violated a non-disparagement clause). Or the publisher may tell you “We never actually do that” (for instance, edit at will without consulting you, or impose a termination fee). But if your contract says it can happen, it may well happen…and if it does happen, can you live with it? That’s the question you need to ask yourself when evaluating a contract….  

(8) CONTINUING A MOVEMENT. Ethan Alter, in the Yahoo! Entertainment story “‘The Empire Strikes Back’ at 40: What the ‘Star Wars’ sequel’s iconic special effects owe to Ray Harryhausen”, interviews Dennis Muren, who handled many of the film’s special effects and discusses how Harryhausen’s stop-motion techniques made Empire stronger.

…Muren’s role also expanded with Empire, as he took point on directing the fleet of miniatures that play a major part of the film’s iconic opening set-piece on the ice planet, Hoth. With the advent of digital technology still many years away, Muren and his team brought the Rebel’s herd of tauntauns and the Empire’s squad of AT-AT walkers to life by hand. And through it all, he followed the example established by Harryhausen.

(9) BOOKSELLER OBIT. The New York Times’ series of tributes to people who died of coronavirus includes: “Steve Hann, Sidewalk Bookseller With a Brainy Following, Dies at 67”.

Even as scores of bookstores came and (mostly) went along the West Side of Manhattan in recent decades, Steve Hann endured.

He could be found through the dead of winter and the muggy heat of summer selling secondhand books on a sidewalk near Columbia University.

He drew a following from Columbia and NASA’s nearby Goddard Institute for Space Studies, with his fold-up tables proffering a well-curated array of mysteries, classics, art books and — his specialty — science fiction.

Mr. Hann began selling books and CDs in stores in the Morningside Heights section of Manhattan starting at least in the early 1980s, before settling into his longtime spot on Broadway between 112th and 113th Streets.

To generations of Columbia students, he was part of the streetscape, as much a sidewalk fixture as the parking meter he leaned upon while almost invariably immersed in a sci-fi paperback.

But even when his head was in a galaxy far away, his tennis shoes were planted on New York streets, where life, he would remark, could often be stranger than anything dreamed up by Ray Bradbury or Isaac Asimov….

(10) TRIVIAL TRIVIA.

The name of the soft serve ice cream cart on the space force military base is named Meal Armstrong 

(11) TODAY IN HISTORY.

  • May 31, 1990 — Paul Verhoeven’s Total Recall premiered. It starred Arnold Schwarzenegger, Rachel Ticotin, Sharon Stone, Ronny Cox, and Michael Ironside. It’s rather loosely based on  Philip K. Dick‘s “We Can Remember It for You Wholesale” story. Ronald Shusett, Dan O’Bannon and Gary Goldman Wrote the screenplay. It finished second at Chicon V for Best Dramatic Presentation to Edward Scissorhands.  Most critics liked it well-enough though a number of feminist critics thought it excessively violent towards women. It currently holds a 78% rating among audience reviewers at Rotten Tomatoes. 

(12) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge and John Hertz.]

  • Born May 31, 1893 – Elizabeth Coatsworth.  Newbery Medal for The Cat Who Went to Heaven (1930).  Four “incredible tales” for adults; four books of poetry; ninety in all; memoir Personal Geography.  (Died 1986) [JH]
  • Born May 31, 1895 George R. Stewart. His 1949 novel Earth Abides won the first International Fantasy Award in 1951. That was a British award and the first one was given at Festivention. Other genre works would include Man, An Autobiography and Storm which is at least genre adjacent. (Died 1980.) (CE)
  • Born May 31, 1910 – Aubrey MacDermott.  Possibly the first fan.  He always said he was.  Unfortunately, the supporting evidence is thin.  He may well have founded the Eastbay Club in the San Francisco Bay area around 1928.  Anyway, he was Fan Guest of Honor at Westercon XXXX (Oakland, 1987).  Here is his Origin Story as of 1990.  (Died 1996) [JH]
  • Born May 31, 1921 – Arthur Sellings.  Six novels, fifty shorter stories, in FantasticGalaxyImaginationThe Magazine of Fantasy & Science FictionNebulaNew WorldsNew WritingWorlds of Tomorrow; translated into Dutch, French, German, Italian, Russian.  Born in Kent, died in Sussex.  Antiquarian, book & art dealer.  (Died 1968) [JH]
  • Born May 31, 1930 Gary Brandner. Best remembered for his werewolf trilogy, The Howling of which the first was very loosely made into a film. He wrote the script for Howling II: Your Sister Is a Werewolf.  The fourth film of the Howling series, Howling IV: The Original Nightmare, is actually almost an accurate adaptation of the first novel. He wrote a lot of other horror and penned the novelisation of Cat People. (Died 2013.) (CE)
  • Born May 31, 1942 – Brian Burley.  Active fan in Ohio and New York.  In 1966, co-founder of Marcon.  In 1979 he was in FISTFA (Fannish Insurgent Scientifictional Ass’n); here he is (with S.H. Craig and Pat O’Neill) on “Fandom in New York” for the Lunacon XXII Program Book.  Co-founded (with John Boardman and Fred Lerner) the Beaker People Libation Front, which Fancyclopedia III mildly calls “not entirely serious”; see here.  (Died 2006) [JH]
  • Born May 31, 1950 Gregory Harrison,70. I’m always surprised to discover a series didn’t last as long as I thought It had. He was Logan 5 in Logan’s Run which only lasted fourteen episodes. He was also in Dark Skies, twenty episodes before cancellation, as the voice of Old John Loengard, and had one-offs in Dead Man’s Gun (cursed object), Touched by an AngelOuter Limits and Miracles. (CE)
  • Born May 31, 1961 Lea Thompson, 59. She’s obviously best-known for her role as Lorraine Baines in the Back to the Future trilogy though I remember her first as Beverly Switzler in Howard the Duck as I saw Back to the Future after I saw Howard the Duck. Not sure why that was. Her first genre role was actually as Kelly Ann Bukowski in Jaws 3-D, a film I most decidedly did not see. If you accept the Scorpion series as genre, she’s got a recurring role as Veronica Dineen on it. (CE)
  • Born May 31, 1968 John Connolly, 52. An Irish writer who is best known for his series of novels starring private detective Charlie Parker. According to ISFDB, these novels are well within the genre as some of the assigned tags are “zombies”, “alien invasion”, “supernatural thriller” and “dark fantasy”. So who has read these? (CE)
  • Born May 31, 1977 – Cat Hellisen.  Fantasy for adults and children; free-lance editing; also archery, aikidô, figure skating.  Here is a digital-art sketch of a chaffinch; here in ink are some vines and chrysalides.  First novel, When the Sea is Rising Red; four more; a dozen and a half shorter stories. “The Worme Bridge” won the Short Story Day Africa award.  More recently in Fife she likes the forests and the fields and the Forth.  [JH]
  • Born May 31, 1979Sophia McDougall, 41. She has a very well-crafted alternative history series, the Romanitas series, in which Rome didn’t fall and rules the world today. She has two SF novel — Mars Evacuees is sort of YA alien invasion novel; Space Hostages reminds of a Heinlein YA novel. (CE)
  • Born May 31, 1995 – Jeremy Szal.  Two dozen short stories electronically and on paper, e.g. at Tor.comand in Nature.  Fiction editor at StarShipSofa 2014-2020 (Episodes 360-600).  First novel Stormblood scheduled for release in early June.  See his review of Predestination at Strange Horizons here.  [JH]

(13) COMICS SECTION.

(14) GUESS WHO? Scott Edelman invites Filers who haven’t already seen this in his Twitter and Facebook feeds to identify the swordsman:

(15) TAKE A RIDE ON THE READING. Amal El-Mohtar’s “Otherworldly” column in the New York Times advises: “Visit These Science-Fiction Worlds to Make Sense of Our Own”.

…I experienced Tochi Onyebuchi’s RIOT BABY (Tor.com, 176 pp., $19.99) as one tightly held breath. Moving from South Central Los Angeles to Harlem to Rikers Island to a speculative near-future in short bursts of fierce feeling, “Riot Baby,” Onyebuchi’s first novel for adults, is as much the story of Ella and her brother, Kevin, as it is the story of black pain in America, of the extent and lineage of police brutality, racism and injustice in this country, written in prose as searing and precise as hot diamonds.

Ella has a “Thing,” a power that manifests variably as telepathy, precognition, telekinesis, but isn’t ever described in those terms; she experiences it as overwhelming grief and anger, as explosion and aftermath, and struggles with controlling and deploying it over the course of the book. Kevin, born in 1992 during the Los Angeles riots, grows up in Harlem in the shadow of Ella’s furious, repressed power — but when Ella vanishes after watching reports of the murder of Sean Bell on television, she takes her limited protection of him with her. Kevin’s adolescence consists of being harassed by the police and consistently steered away from education and prospects, before getting arrested on an attempted armed robbery charge and imprisoned on Rikers….

(16) ABOUT LOVE. Brain Picking’s Maria Popova discusses Edward Gorey’s illustrated 1969 poem about the secret of true love: “The Osbick Bird: Edward Gorey’s Tender and Surprising Vintage Illustrated Allegory About the Meaning of True Love”

…. For great love, as the Nobel-winning Polish poet Wis?awa Szymborska observed in her splendid meditation on its mystery, is “never justified” but is rather “like the little tree that springs up in some inexplicable fashion on the side of a cliff: where are its roots, what does it feed on, what miracle produces those green leaves?”

That improbable and inexplicable miracle is what Edward Gorey (February 22, 1925–April 15, 2000) celebrates with his signature faux-terse tenderness and soulful oddness in the vintage gem The Osbick Bird (public library).

(17) THE FULL LID. Aldasair Stuart tells what to expect in the new issue: “The Full Lid 29th May 2020”

This week in The Full Lid, Streets of Rage 4 teaches me how to crystallize my love for a good action scene. Louie Stowell’s wonderful The Dragon in the Library is a big-hearted and witty MG fantasy that has a lot for parents too while Doctor Who audio specialists Big Finish head into new SFnal territory with The Human Frontier. We’ve also got a look at some of the best indie tabletop RPGs on the market and a massive Signal Boost section, including several Hugo finalists and their voter packet material. If you’re a finalist and you have your material hosted online already, please get in touch and I’d be happy to link to that too.

The Full Lid is published every Friday at 5pm BST. You can sign up, and find an archive of the last six months of issues, here.

(18) HELLO, MR. CHIPS. It might not be the cuisine I expect to read about at Food and Wine, but news is where you find it — “Necco Wafers Are Officially Back”.

…Back in 2018, Necco—one of America’s oldest candy companies—went out of business, leaving a number of well-known but polarizing products in limbo, including Sweethearts Conversation Hearts, Clark Bars, Mary Janes, and the eponymous Necco Wafers. Nearly all of these brands have been snapped up by someone. For instance, Sweethearts are a Valentine’s Day classic, so Ohio’s Spangler Candy Company has been pushing to get them back into production. The Clark Bar has its roots in Pittsburgh, so Pennsylvania’s Boyer Candy Company decided to bring the bar home. Heck, even Mary Jane—those peanut butter chews that made it easy to decide which houses to T.P. on Halloween—found a new producer, according to CandyIndustry.com.

But what about Necco Wafers? The flavored discs are historically significant, first produced over 150 years ago in 1847, but they are also often unfavorably compared to chalk. Plus, with Necco unable to keep the lights on, was the writing on the wall for the company’s signature wafers?

(19) EXPANDING HORIZONS. NPR’S Samantha Balaban says “This Bedtime Book Helps Kids Find Their Place In The ‘Universe'”.

Imagining your place in the universe can make you feel pretty small and insignificant, and in the midst of a global pandemic? Well, even more so.

“I think this moment that we are living through reminds us how fragile our species is, living on this small rock in the vastness of the cosmos,” says astrophysicist Ray Jayawardhana. But he doesn’t think that the universe should necessarily make you feel alone. It’s inspiring, he says, to remember the “intimate and enduring connections that we have with the rest of the cosmos.”

Jayawardhana, a professor at Cornell University, has written a bedtime story called Child of the Universe which helps parents talk with their children about some of those connections.

“The universe conspired to make you …” a dad tells his daughter as they look up at a full moon. “The iron in your blood, the calcium in your bones, are made up of stars that lived long ago.”

Jayawardhana drew from memories of looking up at the night sky with his father, when he was a child growing up in Sri Lanka. “I remember being awed by constellations of twinkling stars and bright planets like Venus and Jupiter in particular” Jayawardhana says. “One night, my father told me that people had been to the moon. I was just amazed. Suddenly, that bright light up above became a place that one could visit. At that moment, my sense of what’s possible expanded dramatically.”

(20) VIDEO OF THE DAY. Memories from the National Book Festival Blog: “Best of the National Book Festival: John Scalzi, 2019”.

Enormously successful science fiction writer John Scalzi of the Old Man’s War series came to the Genre Fiction stage of the 2019 Library of Congress National Book Festival to discuss “The Consuming Fire,” book 2 of the Interdependency series. Phoebe Connelly, deputy director of video at The Washington Post, introduces Scalzi, who begins at 1:15 by telling the audience that his friend Joe is in the audience. “I actually killed him not once but twice in my books.” Q&A begins at 26:45.

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

2020 Manly Wade Wellman
Award Longlist

The 2020 Manly Wade Wellman Award for North Carolina Science Fiction and Fantasy longlist was revealed during ConCarolinas’ closing ceremonies today.

Last year’s winner, Christopher Ruocchio, announced the 18 titles on behalf of the North Carolina Speculative Fiction Foundation.

  • Masks & Malevolence / Time & Temper by Natania Barron (Falstaff Books)
  • The Hive by Orson Scott Card [and Aaron Johnston] (Tor Books)
  • The Storm by David Drake (Baen Books)
  • The Hanged Man by K. D. Edwards (Pyr)
  • 48 Hours by William R. Forstchen (Forge Books)
  • Where Oblivion Lives by T. Frohock (Harper Voyager)
  • The Women’s War by Jenna Glass (Del Rey)
  • Carl Perkins’ Cadillac by John G. Hartness (Falstaff Books)
  • Southern Fury / Southern Souls by Stuart Jaffe
  • The Twisted Ones by T. Kingfisher (Saga Press)
  • Inheritance by Gail Z. Martin (SOL Publishing)
  • Breaking Gods by D. J. Molles
  • To the Bones by Valerie Nieman (West Virginia University Press)
  • Winter World by A. G. Riddle (Legion Books)
  • Howling Dark by Christopher Ruocchio (DAW)
  • As the Crow Flies by Rysa Walker and Caleb Amsel (Starry Night)
  • A Fall in Autumn by Michael G. Williams (Falstaff Books)
  • A Midnight Dreary by David Niall Wilson (Crossroad Press)

A shortlist of finalists will be announced on Wednesday, July 1. Ordinarily, the winner(s) would be announced at ConGregate on July 17, however, plans have not been finalized because the con is not being held in person this year.

The Manly Wade Wellman Award was founded in 2013 to recognize outstanding achievement in science fiction and fantasy novels written by North Carolina authors. The 2020 award covers novels published in 2019.

The award is named for long-time North Carolina author Manly Wade Wellman with the permission of his estate.

2020 Grand Prix de l’Imaginaire Winners

The 2020 Grand Prix de l’Imaginaire winners were announced May 30.

Congratulations to the authors whose works in French translations won awards, Ada Palmer, Tade Thompson, Marina and Sergueï Diatchenko, and Neal Shusterman.

The jurors for the award were Joëlle Wintrebert (president), Jean-Luc Rivera (vice-president), Bruno Para (assistant secretary), Jean-Claude Dunyach (treasurer), Sylvie Allouche, François Angelier, Audrey Burki, Olivier Legendre, Sylvie Le Jemtel, Jean-Claude Vantroyen. The Secretary (not a member of the jury) is Pascal Patoz.

Roman francophone / Novel in French

  • Les Furtifs by Alain Damasio (La Volte)

Roman étranger / Foreign Novel

  • Vita Nostra by Marina & Sergueï Diatchenko (L’Atalante) (same English title)

Nouvelle francophone / Short Fiction in French

  • Helstrid by Christian Léourier (Le Bélial’)

Nouvelle étrangère / Foreign Short Fiction

  • Les Meurtres de Molly Southbourne (The Murders of Molly Southbourne) by Tade Thompson (Le Bélial’)

Roman jeunesse francophone / Novels for youth in French

  • L’Arrache-mots by Judith Bouilloc (Hachette jeunesse)

Roman jeunesse étranger / Foreign novels for youth

  • La Faucheuse tomes 1 à 3 (Arc of a Scythe volumes 1-3), by Neal Shusterman (Robert Laffont)

Prix Jacques Chambon de la traduction / Jacques Chambon Translation Prize

  • Michelle Charrier for Trop semblable à l’éclair (Too Like the Lightning) by Ada Palmer (Le Bélial’)

Prix Wojtek Siudmak du graphisme / Wojtek Siudmak Graphic Design prize

  • Philippe Aureille pour Les Îles noires by Sylvie Lainé (Organic)

Essai / Essay

  • Lovecraft : Je suis Providence by S.T. Joshi (ActuSF)

Prix special

  • La BnF pour l’exposition Tolkien, Voyage en Terre du Milieu

2020 Colorado Book Awards

The winners of the 2020 Colorado Book Awards were announced May 30 in Denver. Awards are presented in 16 categories by Colorado Humanities to celebrate the accomplishments of Colorado’s outstanding authors, editors, illustrators, and photographers.

The winner in this category of genre interest was —

Science Fiction/Fantasy

  • An Illusion of Thieves by Cate Glass (Tor Books)

Pixel Scroll 5/30/20 The Galileo Sevateem

(1) ASTRONAUTS SUCCESSFULLY LAUNCHED. The LA Times has details: “New era of spaceflight dawns as SpaceX sends NASA astronauts into orbit”.

For the first time in nine years, NASA astronauts launched to orbit from U.S. soil. And for the first time ever, their ride to space was a craft designed and owned by a private company.

Astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley rocketed to space Saturday afternoon aboard a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule, en route to the International Space Station. Despite some initial weather concerns, SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket lifted off from Kennedy Space Center in Florida at 3:22 p.m. EDT. The capsule is set to dock at the station early Sunday morning at 10:29 a.m. EDT.

Saturday’s launch was the start of a test flight evaluating Crew Dragon’s systems and capabilities. As the first crew ever to ride in the capsule, Behnken and Hurley will ensure everything works as expected before NASA certifies the spacecraft to regularly transport its astronauts to the space station.

Here is video tweeted by SpaceX:

(2) MY DAUGHTER RIDES ALONG. Virtually. I found out today that Class of 2020 graduates were invited to submit their photos to be part of a mosaic that is accompanying the astronauts to the ISS. My daughter Sierra is part of the picture – see her photo here.

The below mosaic will be flown to the International Space Station with NASA astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley on Crew Dragon spacecraft for the Crew Demo-2 mission. To learn more about this historic mission, please visit spacex.com/launches

(3) MINNEAPOLIS BOOKSTORE UPDATE. We posted earlier today that Minneapolis sff landmarks Uncle Hugo’s had been burned and DreamHaven vandalized.

This is a photo of the remains of Uncle Hugo’s —

Someone immediately started a GoFundMe appeal in the name of Uncle Hugo’s, which got a lot of traction in social media, however it is not authorized. Owner Don Blyly will organize his own.

There was also an update from DreamHaven:

Thank you everyone who came by to help and wish us well. It was a mess, with most of the glass cabinets at least partially broken. There were a few merchandise casualties and they took/destroyed the electronics they found, but mostly they ignored the books. All except the one they tried to burn, which they left to smolder and which put itself out.

Teams of folks came by during the day (they appeared out of nowhere! It was *brilliant*!) and boarded up the store and painted “With great power comes great responsibility” on the boards. Also brilliant.

(4) LABOR OF LÁADAN LOVE. “A Third Dictionary & Grammar of Láadan” by Suzette Haden Elgin, Edited by: Jeanne Gomoll, Diane Martin, and with an  Introduction by Rebecca E. Haden, is now available. The 342-page trade paperback contains Láadan-English and English-Láadan dictionaries, grammar, lessons, essays by Suzette Haden Elgin, and an introduction by her daughter, Rebecca Haden. Go to Lulu.com, a print-on-demand company to order your copy: https://tinyurl.com/SHEdictionary

This book includes material from 1st Dictionary and Grammar (1988) and merges it with new vocabulary created for the Láadan website. Elgin died in 2015, but interest persists in the language she created in 1982, embodied in her SF “Native Tongue” series. Láadan is a feminist constructed language created by Elgin to test the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis that the language one speaks influences the way one thinks, i.e., can a language expressing the views of women shape a culture? Láadan includes morphemes that require speakers to own their own perceptions—words that indicate, for instance, whether a statement comes from personal observation, a trusted source, or an unreliable third party. Nowadays Elgin might argue that accusations of “fake news” would be impossible in Láadan. This language also encodes speakers’ intentions into their sentences, eliminating another form of micro-aggression, the rude comment that is passed off as “just a joke.”

All proceeds will go to the Science Fiction Poetry Association, which Elgin founded in 1978.

(5) STARSHIP TEST FAILS. Not everything has been running smoothly at SpaceX, unfortunately. The Verge reports: “SpaceX loses another Starship prototype in massive explosion”.

A fourth prototype of SpaceX’s next generation Starship rocket exploded right after a test at the company’s south Texas test site on Friday. Shortly after SpaceX ignited the engine on the test rocket, a massive fireball engulfed the vehicle in flames, leaving very little hardware still standing and apparently causing damage to the test site.

The failed test comes just a day before SpaceX is set to perform an unrelated launch for NASA that will send two astronauts to the International Space Station. That historic mission will take place out of Cape Canaveral, Florida, on SpaceX’s workhorse Falcon 9 rocket, which has flown more than 100 times before.

While the failure of the Starship prototype is not linked to the upcoming NASA mission, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk did tell Aviation Week that SpaceX planned to put a pause on Starship development while the company focused on its first crewed flight. “I have redirected SpaceX’s priorities to be very focused on the crew launch,” Musk told Aviation Week during a podcast interview published on May 26th. “So that’s going to slow things down on the Starship front.”

The failed test comes just a day before SpaceX is set to perform a critical launch for NASA

The prototype that just exploded is meant to test out the design for SpaceX’s future Starship, a giant rocket the company wants to create to send people to deep space destinations like the Moon and Mars. SpaceX has been building various test versions of the Starship down at the company’s work site in Boca Chica, Texas. Today, the company ignited the main Raptor engine on the latest Starship prototype while holding the vehicle down, a type of test known as a static fire. It was the fifth static fire test SpaceX had conducted over the last couple of weeks.

(6) TYMN OBIT. Marshall B. Tymn (1937-2020), who did much to advance the study of sf in academia, died May 24. He won a Pilgrim Award for lifetime contributions from the Science Fiction Research Association in 1990 Locus Online covers his career here.

(7) TODAY IN HISTORY.

  • May 30, 1952 Tales of Tomorrow’s “The Little Black Bag” first aired. An unsuccessful doctor finds some very interesting instruments in a black bag which he has bought from a pawnshop. He and his wife differ over the ethics of using them. The script was written by Mann Rubin from story by Cyril Kornbluth as first published in Astounding Science Fiction, July 1950. (It would win a Retro Hugo for Best Novelette at Millennium Philcon.) It starred Joseph Anthony, Vicki Cummings, Florence Anglin and John Shellie. You can watch it here.

(8) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge and John Hertz.]

  • Born May 30, 1914 Bruce Elliott. His fifteen stories in The Shadow magazine in the late Forties are generally held in low esteem by Shadow fans because of his handling of the character, best noted by the three stories in which the Shadow does not appear at all in his costumed identity. Oh the horror! He also wrote three genre novels — The Planet of ShameAsylum Earth  and, errr, The Rivet in Grandfather’s Neck. And he had stories in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction including “Wolves Don’t Cry”:and “The Last Magician”. (Died 1973.) (CE) 
  • Born May 30, 1920 Franklin J. Schaffner. In genre circles, he’s best remembered for as the director of two films, Planets of The Apes and Boys from Brazil. On the television side, he directed Alice in Wonderland and Treasure Island adaptations as five episodes of the Tales of Tomorrow series. (Died 1989.) (CE)
  • Born May 30, 1922 – Harry Stubbs.  Active Boston fan.  Began pro writing as Hal Clement in 1942, so I guess that’s Clement’s birth year; “Uncommon Sense” (1945) won a Retro-Hugo; HC maybe best known for Mission of Gravity.  Also living in the same body was the graphic artist George Richard.  See the NESFA Press collection The Essential Hal Clement.  (Died 2003) [JH]
  • Born May 30, 1927 – Bob Peak.  Illustrator for film, TimeTV GuideSports Illustrated, postage stamps.  NY Artists Guild Artist of the Year, 1961.  Society of Illustrators Hall of Fame, 8 Awards of Excellence, 4 gold medals.    Posters for West Side StoryMy Fair LadyCamelot; in our field, RollerballSupermanStar Trek.  See a Camelot-themed cover for The Once and Future King here.See a Camelot-themed cover for The Once and Future King here.   (Died 1992) [JH]
  • Born May 30, 1934 – Pete Turner.  Renowned photographer; examples here.  See a cover for Omni magazine here; a book cover for Exile here.  (Died 2017) [JH]
  • Born May 30, 1936 Keir Dullea, 84. David Bowman in 2001: A Space Odyssey and its sequel, 2010: The Year We Make Contact. He’s done a number of other genre films, Brave New WorldSpace Station 76, Valley of the Gods and Fahrenheit 451. And less we forget he was Devon in Starlost. (CE)
  • Born May 30, 1937 – Ross Chamberlain.  One of our finest fan artists.  Guest of Honor at Westercon LV.  Rotsler Award.  Here’s his Website.  [JH]
  • Born May 30, 1952 Andy Sawyer, 68. Member of fandom who managed the Science Fiction Foundation library in Liverpool for 25 years up to last year. For his work and commitment to the SF community, the Science Fiction Research Association awarded him their Thomas D. Clareson Award for Distinguished Service. And the  paper he wrote that I want to get and read is “The Shadows out of Time: H. P. Lovecraftian Echoes in Babylon 5” as I’ve always thought The Shadows were Lovecraftian!  And his APA list is impressive: &Another Earth Matrix,  Paperback Inferno and  Acnestis. (CE)
  • Born May 30, 1952 Mike W. Barr, 68. Writer of comics and sf novels. Created along with Jim Aparo the character Looker (Emily “Lia” Briggs), a hero in the DC  Universe. She first appeared first appeared in Batman & the Outsiders #25. He worked for both major houses though I’d say most of his work was at DC. He wrote the “Paging the Crime Doctor” episode of Batman: The Animated Series. (CE)
  • Born May 30, 1953 – Nancy Lebovitz.  Fan, conversationalist (is that redundant?), particularly known for calligraphy and thus slogan-buttons.  She says things like “I re-read sometimes because I’m enough of a different person that I notice different things in books than I used to.”  Here she is on a panel at Laffcon IV (R.A. Lafferty convention) last year; L to R, Samuel Tomaino, Darrell Schweitzer, Robert Bee, NL. [JH]
  • Born May 30, 1963 – Helen Sharman, Ph.D.  Chemist.  First British cosmonaut.  Ten honorary doctorates.  Okay, it’s not SF.  She was called the Girl from Mars (she was 24) but it was for research at Mars Confectionery.  Memoir, Seize the Moment – with Christopher Priest, is that better?  [JH]
  • Born May 30, 1964 Mark Sheppard, 56. He’s the son of actor W. Morgan Sheppard. A number of genre roles including lawyer Romo Lampkin on the Battlestar Galactica reboot, truly sleazy crime lord Badger on Firefly,  Tanaka on Dollhouse, Regent Benedict Valda on Warehouse 13, Canton Everett Delaware III on Doctor Who and Willoughby Kipling, member of the Knights Templar, on Doom Patrol. (CE)

(9) RUNNING HOT. This is not a National Enquirer headline: “‘Scorching-hot hacked computer burned my hand'”.

Bullets rained down from all angles but Abdelrhman Badr kept calm.

Suddenly an enemy burst through a window. Abdelrhman swung round to face the soldier and save his team. He lined up his sights for a fatal shot and squeezed the trigger but… his screen went black.

His computer had silently and suddenly shut itself down without warning.

Abdelrhman was confused. The game he was playing had never caused problems before.

He reached down and looked inside his computer, which he liked to leave open and on display in his bedroom.

Instinctively he touched one of the components, swore and pulled his hand back. The graphics card was so hot it had burned his fingers.

The 18-year-old from Sheffield hadn’t realised it yet, but this minor injury was caused by crypto-jacking.

(10) MUNDANE MEETS GENRE. “The Machine Stops: Will Gompertz reviews EM Forster’s work”.

My wife was listening to a radio programme the other day and heard a man talking about artificial intelligence. He mentioned a science fiction novella by EM Forster called The Machine Stops, published in 1909. He said it was remarkably prescient. The missus hadn’t heard of it, and nor had I. Frankly, we didn’t have Forster down as a sci-fi guy, more Merchant Ivory films starring Helena Bonham Carter and elegant Edwardian dresses.

We ordered a copy (you can read it for free online).

OMG! as Forster would not have said.

The Machine Stops is not simply prescient; it is a jaw-droppingly, gob-smackingly, breath-takingly accurate literary description of lockdown life in 2020.

If it had been written today it would be excellent, that it was written over a century ago is astonishing.

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

2019 Nebula Awards

The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA, Inc.) announced the winners of the 55th Annual Nebula Awards in a livestreamed ceremony on May 30.

The Nebula Awards, given annually, recognize the best works of science fiction and fantasy published in the previous year. They are selected by members of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America. The first Nebula Awards were presented in 1966.

Novel

  • A Song for a New Day, Sarah Pinsker (Berkley)

Novella

  • This Is How You Lose the Time War, Amal El-Mohtar & Max Gladstone (Saga)

Novelette

  • Carpe Glitter, Cat Rambo (Meerkat)

Short Story

  • “Give the Family My Love”, A.T. Greenblatt (Clarkesworld 2/19)

The Andre Norton Award for Outstanding Young Adult Science Fiction or Fantasy Book

  • Riverland, Fran Wilde (Amulet)

Game Writing

  • The Outer Worlds, Leonard Boyarsky, Megan Starks, Kate Dollarhyde, Chris L’Etoile (Obsidian Entertainment)

The Ray Bradbury Award for Outstanding Dramatic Presentation

  • Good Omens: “Hard Times”, Neil Gaiman (Amazon Studios/BBC Studios)

Other awards presented:

Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master Award

  • Lois McMaster Bujold

Kevin O’Donnell, Jr. Service Award

  • Julia Rios

Kate Wilhelm Solstice Award

  • John Picacio
  • David Gaughran

Presenters joined virtually from around the country, including Sam Weller, Sarah Pinsker, Rebecca Roanhorse, Lillian Stewart Carl, Greg Bear, George R.R. Martin, Jeffe Kennedy, LeVar Burton, Sarah Gailey, Whitney “Strix” Beltrán, and Charlie Jane Anders. Additionally, Ambassador Carol Moseley Braun addressed the festivities with a message for the Nebula audience.

Minneapolis SF Bookstore Burned, Another Vandalized

Two Minneapolis science fiction landmarks were caught up in the wave of vandalism that struck the city amid protests against the death of George Floyd. Don Blyly’s Uncle Hugo’s bookstore has been burned, and Greg Ketter’s DreamHaven was broken into and damaged.

Uncle Hugo’s and Uncle Edgar’s in 2010.

Uncle Hugo’s, in business since 1974, and neighboring mystery bookstore Uncle Edgar’s since 1980 (also burned), are located near the corner of Lake and Chicago, Uncle Hugo’s is the nation’s oldest surviving sf bookstore.  

Owner Don Blyly told Facebook followers:

Friends: I’ve gone past heartsick into angry. This is from Don this morning: Hi Folks,
There was a call from the security company around 3:30 this morning that the motion detector was showing somebody in the building. I threw on clothes and headed over there. When I was 2 blocks away I received a call that the smoke detectors were showing smoke in the store. Every single building on both sides of Chicago was blazing and dozens of people dancing around. As I pulled into the dentist’s lot I could see that flames were leaping out the front windows of the Uncles. It looked to me like they had broken every window on the front of the Uncles and then squirted accelerant through each broken window. It looked hopeless to me, but I went around to the back door to see if I could get to a fire extinguisher. As soon as I opened the back door a wave of very thick black smoke poured out, so I quickly closed the door again… Since Chicago Ave. was full of dancing rioters, broken glass, and flaming debris, I went down the alley and took Lake St. home. There were blocks of Lake St. where every building was blazing. No sign of any cops, national guard troops, or any help.

I’m pretty sure the insurance policy excludes damage from a civil insurrection, so I suspect I won’t get a cent for either the building or the contents.

I am starting to investigate the best crowdsourcing to rebuild. Any donations – well – I’ll need to find where to send them

Located about two miles away, Greg Ketter’s Dreamhaven Books, Comics and Art was vandalized but not destroyed. Glass was broken and bookcases turned over. 

DreamHaven last night.

DreamHaven’s Wendy Comeau said on Facebook:

We have a crew at DreamHaven. They smashed the front door, came in and smashed a lot of other glass, tried to bash their way into an empty cash box, and tried to set the store on fire. They took a few things, but so much was tossed around that it will be a while before we can figure it out.

Lots of cleaning is happening, glass slivers are everywhere. If anybody nearby has an industrial vacuum cleaner, that might be good for glass slivers.

Right now, we’re trying to get some cleaning done and not answering the phone, but feel free to swing by and chip in. Many thanks to everybody who already have.

DreamHaven boarded up. Photo by Oliver Grudem.

[Thanks to Joyce Scrivner and Joe Sherry for the story.]

2020 Nebula Awards Livestream

The 2020 Nebula Awards ceremony will be streamed live to conference attendees and the public alike at 8 p.m. Eastern/ 5 p.m. Pacific on May 30.

“The Nebula Awards Ceremony will be seen live online by people around the globe,” said Mary Robinette Kowal, SFWA President. “While the circumstances are difficult, we’re excited that the conference is more accessible than when in a physical location.”

When: May 30th, 2020
Time: 8:00 PM EDT / 5:00 PM PDT
Where: Links Below

These links will go live approximately at ceremony time.

Please visit the SFWA Events page for the latest schedule and event details.

UPDATE: Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America’s (SFWA) 2020 Nebula Awards Ceremony also will be available in Virtual Reality (VR) for the first time.

“We are excited about exploring VR Events with Oculus and look forward to what the future holds,” said Mary Robinette Kowal, SFWA President.

Please visit https://www.oculus.com/experiences/event/628499264406152/ for details about viewing the ceremony in VR.

NEBULA ANTHOLOGY AUDIOBOOK PLANNED. As part of the celebration of the Nebula Award winners, SFWA has partnered with audio-first entertainment studio Podium Audio to adapt, produce and distribute its 55th Nebula Awards Showcase Anthology, edited by Cat Valente, in audio format. A top publisher of science-fiction and fantasy audiobooks, Podium Audio is on the forefront of discovering new authors and voice artists from the U.S. and around the world.

“Since the first publication of the Nebula Anthology in 1966, the yearly collection has only been available in print. Expanding into the world of audiobooks offers new opportunities for expression and outreach,” says Kowal. “We’re delighted to partner with the innovative and experienced team at Podium Audio.”

The Nebula Awards® are voted on, and presented by, full members of Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, Inc. Founded as the Science Fiction Writers of America in 1965 by Damon Knight, the organization began with a charter membership of 78 writers; it now has more than 2000 members, among them many of the leading writers of science fiction and fantasy.

[Based on a press release.]

Update 05/30/20: Added VR link from new press release.

Pixel Scroll 5/29/20 And One Wormhole Going Nowhere Just For Show

(1) DYNAMIC DINOS. Camestros Felapton continues celebrating his fifth blogoversary with the release of a post collection — “Book Launch: The Hugosauriad”. And the price is right: “As always the cost is FREE and half price for dinosaurs.”

Two hundred and fifty two million years in the making, a book that spans geological eras, astronomical bodies colliding, and people getting upset at award ceremonies. Space! Big game hunters! A surprising number of priests! Atheist therapods! This is a book that has everything but a simple premise!

…Picking a single theme opened up a way into the huge scope of the Hugo Awards. Instead of just winners, I could look at notable finalists as well but more than that, I could look at stories that weren’t even nominated (in some cases because they preceded the Hugo Awards) but which were influential. It also meant that I could trace how one theme had changed and shifted in the genre over decades but also how features of the Hugos (such as the infamous No Award) had played out in multiple eras.

To my delight and surprise other themes volunteered themselves as if eager to jump on the bandwagon: the boundary between science fiction and literary fiction, the influence of changing scientific ideas on science fiction, the role of humour in science fiction, the representation of women as both authors and characters in the awards.

(2) KGB. Fantastic Fiction at KGB reading series hosts Ellen Datlow and Matthew Kressel present N.K. Jemisin and Kenneth Schneyer online Wednesday, June 17th, 2020, at 7 p.m. (The in-person event is cancelled.) The YouTube link for the livestream is forthcoming.

N.K. Jemisin

N.K. Jemisin is a New York Times-bestselling author of speculative fiction short stories and novels. In 2018, she became the first author to win three Best Novel Hugos in a row for her Broken Earth trilogy. She has also won a Nebula Award, two Locus Awards, and a number of other honors. Her latest novel, The City We Became, is out now from Orbit Books. She lives and writes in Brooklyn.

Kenneth Schneyer

Kenneth Schneyer has been nominated for the Nebula and Sturgeon awards. His fiction has appeared in Lightspeed Magazine, Uncanny Magazine, Strange Horizons, Analog, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, and Clockwork Phoenix. Fairwood Press will release his second collection, Anthems Outside Time and Other Strange Voices in July. He teaches Shakespeare, constitutional law, sf, criminal procedure, and introductory logic to college students in Rhode Island.

(3) LEGENDS OF TOMORROW RECAP. [Item by Martin Morse Wooster.] Tuesday night’s episode of DC’S Legends of Tomorrow was the episode where they parodied Star Trek.  The premise this season is that the three Greek Fates are in the Legends of Tomorrow universe and have three rings, and these rings are plot coupons that you can turn in for the prize, which I think is absolute power or something.  Two of the Fates are evil and one, Clotho, is a good character who helps the Legends.  In Tuesday’s episode, Clotho places the Legends in a universe where they are on TV all the time, in shows that are analogues of Friends, Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood, Downton Abbey, and Star Trek.

The Trek parody was called “Star Trip,” a spaceship whose continuing mission was to find strange new worlds and then blow them up.  They faced characters called “Gromulans” who looked vaguely like Klingons.  There was also a character who looked like Khan and was called Don, and the joke here is that Don had long flowing white hair while Dominic Purcell, who played Don, is a bald character in the Legends universe.  Caity Lotz did her Shatner impression and was funny, but I thought the best character in the show was Matt Ryan, who played the head butler in the Downton Abbey analogue but on the show plays dissolute demon hunter John Constantine.

My problem with the Arrowverse shows is that their writers discovered parallel worlds, making the show’s story arcs ridiculously complicated.  I think Tom Cavanaugh on The Flash has played four variants of his character from four parallel worlds.  But Legends of Tomorrow has a less complex backstory and is entertaining.  I also think Stargirl is promising, at least for the first two episodes.

(4) LET’S KEEP LOOKING. Robert Zubrin, in “Searching for Life in the Outer Solar System” at National Review Online, has a positive review of JPL scientist Kevin Peter Hand’s Alien Oceans, which discusses the need for continuing deep-space exploration.

You Earthlings are all alike. Whether humans, turtles, wasps, trees, mushrooms, tardigrades, or bacteria, you all use the same DNA, RNA, ATP biochemical operating system. You offer some interesting diversity, that is true. But are you all there is to life?

Kevin Peter Hand, a scientist with the Jet Propulsion Lab, really wants to get the answer. In his engaging new book, Alien Oceans: The Search for Life in the Depths of Space, he lays out why, where, and how we can do so.

English, French, Spanish, German, and Polish all use the same system for encoding information: the Latin alphabet. Greek and Russian employ alphabets that differ significantly but still work according to the same basic principles. That is because all these scripts have a common origin. If all you knew were European languages, you might think that variation on such writing systems exhausted the possibilities. Chinese, though, on the other hand, utilizes an information technology with no resemblance to any Western phonetic alphabet. It accomplishes the same function but does so in a fundamentally different way.

There are, as Hand explains, fundamental reasons why we might expect that life everywhere uses the same carbon- and water-based chemistry we see here. But Earth life is far more restricted in its format than such considerations alone require. Specifically, it all uses the same DNA-RNA alphabet for encoding genetic information from one generation to the next — the Latin alphabet, if you will. That works well enough, but could life elsewhere be using Chinese? And what could that mean if it does? …

(5) BE AWARE. Angela Yuriko Smith advises readers of the Horror Writers Association newsletter about the need to do “Marketing Without Marketing”.

…For many of us (including my own family) expendable income has been reduced or dried up completely. Even those of us who were flush before the pandemic are feeling the pinch now. Many of us are looking at all the avenues of income we have access to. And suddenly, I’ve noticed, everyone has something to sell.

Here’s the problem: when people don’t have extra money, how do blatant advertisements make them feel? For me, I get annoyed. I’m already upset that my extra money is gone and I’m having to cut back on luxury items. Some people can’t even cover bare necessities right now. When we’re broke and you get hit with a blunt “buy this” notice, we typically have a negative response.

If I can no longer purchase the things I do regularly, a “buy this” marketing approach only serves as a reminder of the bitter truth. As artists, we never want anyone to feel a negative response to us or our work. That feeling of dislike can last long after the current pandemic becomes history.

(6) CALLED OFF. A piece in the Washington Post with the theme “summer is not cancelled” that names a lot of activities still happening or going online, also lists local cancellations – including two large Washington media conventions:  Blerdcon, the “black nerd” convention, and Otakon, a giant 30,000 person anime convention that was in Baltimore and moved to Washington a few years ago.

Blerdcon and Otakon: It’s a tough year for those who love dressing up as their favorite pop-culture icons. Both Otakon, the mega-convention which drew almost 30,000 attendees to a celebration of anime, manga and Asian art at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center in 2019, and Blerdcon, a diverse gathering for thousands of gamers, cosplayers and fans of nerd culture at the Hyatt Regency Crystal City, are off.

(7) CREATING TO SCALE. Tor.com’s Alan Brown might talk you into making a model yourself: “Bringing Stories to Life: The World of Science Fiction and Fantasy Model Building”.

Science fiction and fantasy fans love to dream about things that never existed. And some of them enjoy bringing objects and ideas from their imagination to life. Whether working from kits or making something from scratch, there is a great deal of enjoyment to be gained from model building, and satisfaction in seeing a finished project. This is a great time for those who enjoy the hobby: the internet has provided ways to share information with other modelers and to shop for kits and products from around the world, and the new technology of 3D printing has opened up even more ways to bring imaginary things to life. So if, like a lot of people these days, you have some extra time on your hands, you might want to look into model building

We live in a time where social distancing has become imperative. Folks are being warned to minimize contact with other people, keep a safe distance and remain in their homes as much as possible. This has become a source of good-natured humor in the model-building community, whose members spend a lot of time at benches tucked away in a basement or corner of their house. “We’ve been training for this our whole lives,” they joke. But this also raises a good point: Modeling is a perfect hobby for these times…. 

(8) AT SEVENTEEN. PureWow’s Sarah Stiefvater did it: “Every Single ‘Harry Potter’ Movie Explained Using Only a Haiku”.

2. ‘HARRY POTTER AND THE CHAMBER OF SECRETS’

Dobby tries to help

Gang gets whomped by a willow

Tom Riddle—uh oh!

(9) JAMES OBIT. Actor Anthony James, famed for playing creeps and villains in major films like The Heat of the Night and The Unforgiven, died of cancer May 26. His extensive resume included appearances in TV’s Beauty and the Beast (1989), and Star Trek: The Next Generation (“The Neutral Zone” as Romulan Sub-Cmdr. Thei, 1988). (His career included getting killed by Clint Eastwood’s character in two different movies.)

James had made a single brief appearance on a TV series before Norman Jewison cast him as the killer Ralph in 1967’s In the Heat of the Night, starring Sidney Poitier and Rod Steiger. The film went on to win five Oscars, including Best Picture.

His memoir, Acting My Face — a title borrowed from an oft-told story about his acting idol Marlon Brando — was published in 2014.

Anthony James on the right as Sub-Cmdr. Thei.

(10) HERD OBIT. Actor Richard Herd, best-known for his work on Seinfeld, died May 27. The New York Times paid tribute:

Richard Herd, who played lawmen, tough guys, a general, an alien commander and a Watergate burglar, but was best known as Mr. Wilhelm, George Costanza’s supervisor, on “Seinfeld,” died on Tuesday at his home in Los Angeles. He was 87.

Mr. Herd was also known for roles on several science-fiction series, among them Supreme Commander John on the mini-series “V” in 1983 and its sequel the next year; L’Kor, a Klingon, on “Star Trek: The Next Generation”; and Admiral William Noyce on “Seaquest 2032.”

Richard Thomas Herd was born on Sept. 26, 1932, in Boston. In 1970 he was cast in his first film, “Hercules in New York,” whose star, Arnold Schwarzenegger, was also making his movie debut.

He stayed busy for nearly 50 years. He had roles in the mini-series “Ike: The War Years” (1979), “The China Syndrome” (1979), “All the President’s Men” (1976), and the TV series “T.J. Hooker,” “Quantum Leap” and “Desperate Housewives.”

In 2017, Mr. Herd played the founder of a cult in one scene in Jordan Peele’s acclaimed horror film “Get Out.”

(11) TRIVIAL TRIVIA.

Edgar Allan Poe’s poem “The Raven” was inspired by a real bird, specifically Charles Dickens’ pet  Grip, who also makes an appearance in his owner’s story “Barnaby Rudge.” Grip died in 1841 but was preserved in arsenic and taxidermied. He can be seen in the Rare Books department of the Philadelphia Free Library.

Source: Atlas Obscura

(12) TODAY IN HISTORY.

  • May 29, 1956 X Minus One aired Gordon R. Dickson’s “Lulungameena.” It first appeared in the Looking Forward anthology in November 1953 (edited by Milton Lesser), and is the first story where his Dorsai mercenaries are mentioned (though it was not considered a Dorsai story by him). Four years after this aired, Dorsai! would finish second to Starship Troopers for Best Novel Hugo at Pittcon. The script was by George Lefferts who did most of the scripts here. The cast was Ralph Camargo, Ned Weaver, Jack Grimes, Bob Hastings and Kermit Murdock. You can hear the show here.

(13) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge and John Hertz.]

  • Born May 29, 1874 – G.K. Chesterton.  Wrote essays, fiction, poems (is poetry fiction?), plays, biography, criticism.  Illustrator; journalist; radio broadcaster.  Half a dozen of his eighty books are ours, famously The Napoleon of Notting Hill and The Man Who Was Thursday; eighty of his two hundred shorter stories.  Events in his Father Brown stories turn out not to be fantasy.  But GKC was the prince of paradox.  Translated into Dutch, Finnish, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Romanian, Spanish.  (Died 1936) [JH]
  • Born May 29, 1901 – Ken Fagg.  A dozen covers for If and a few others; co-creator of world’s largest geophysical relief globe; illustrator for LifeHolidaySaturday Evening Post; art director for 20th Century Fox.  See three of his If wrap-arounds hereherehere.  Here is A Volcanic Eruption on Titan, Sixth Moon of Saturn.  (Died 1980) [JH]
  • Born May 29, 1906 – T.H. White.  We can claim six of his novels (counting The Once and Future King as one – although its publication history made its first part “The Sword in the Stone” eligible for a Retro-Hugo, which we gave it), twenty shorter stories.  He lived to see Once & Future made into the Lerner & Loewe musical Camelot, which L&L told each other was impossible, and they were right, but luckily that didn’t matter.  He translated a Bestiary, called non-fiction, which is like calling Once & Future a children’s story.  (Died 1964) [JH]
  • Born May 29, 1909 Neil R. Jones. It is thought that “The Death’s Head Meteor,” his first story, which was published in Air Wonder Stories in 1930, could be the first use of “astronaut” in fiction. He also created the use of a future history before either Robert A. Heinlein or Cordwainer Smith were to do so. They’re collected in The Planet of the Double SunThe Sunless World and a number of another overlapping collections.  He’s a member of the First Fandom Hall of Fame. (Died 1988.) (CE)
  • Born May 29, 1923 Genevieve Linebarger. Widow of Cordwainer Smith. She had a hand in The Instrumentality of Mankind series, co-authoring “The Lady Who Sailed the Soul” (1960), and “Golden the Ship Was — Oh! Oh! Oh!” (1959) and, after her husband’s death, was the sole author of “Down to a Sunless Sea” (1975) published under his name, and completed “Himself in Anachron“ (published 1993). (Credits per NESFA Press’ Rediscovery of Man collection.) (Died 1981.) (CE)
  • Born May 29, 1930 – Richard Clifton-Dey.  Five dozen covers in our field; a hundred total, Westerns, war books, advertising, romance; a few interiors; much unsigned, identified by his widow.  See here (Fritz Leiber), here (Tim Powers), here (H.G. Wells).  (Died 1997) [JH]
  • Born May 29, 1939 Alice K. Turner. Playboy fiction editor from 1980 to 2000. Silverberg praised her highly and she did much to make sure SF had an important place in the fiction offered up there. The Playboy Book of Science Fiction collects a good tasting of the SF published during her tenure. (Died 2015.) (CE)
  • Born May 29, 1948 – Larry Kresek.  Thirty covers in our field.  First chair of illustration dep’t, Ringling School of Art & Design; movie posters, record albums, national ads, pharmaceutical illustrations; adviser to education committee, N.Y. Society of Illustrators; professor, Rocky Mountain College of Art & Design; various projects with wife Joan Kresek.  See here (Spider & Jeanne Robinson), here (Theodore Sturgeon), here.  [JH]
  • Born May 29, 1952 – Louise Cooper.  Eighty novels in our field: a dozen Time Master novels; also CreaturesDark EnchantmentIndigoMermaid CurseMirror, MirrorSea Horses; a dozen stand-alone novels, another dozen shorter stories. Translated into French, German, Spanish.  She and husband Cas Shandall sang with the shanty group Falmouth Shout.  (Died 2009) [JH]
  • Born May 29, 1959 Adrian Paul, 61. Duncan MacLeod on Highlander. And yes, I watched the whole bloody series. His first appearance in genre circles was as Dmitri Benko in the “Ashes, Ashes” episode of the Beauty and the Beast series. He shows up next as Prospero in Masque of the Red Death. He’s got several series before HighlanderWar of the Worlds (not bad at all) where he was John Kincaid, a short-lived role as Jeremiah Collins on Dark Shadows and an even shorter-lived rolled on Tarzán as Jack Traverse. His first post- Highlander Sf series is Tracker where her he players alien shapeshifter Cole / Daggon.  A decade ago, he returned to a familiar role in Highlander: The Source. His last series role was playing Dante on Arrow.  Note: this is not a complete list. (CE)
  • Born May 29, 1987 Pearl Mackie, 33. Companion to Twelfth Doctor, the actress was the first openly LGBTQ performer and companion cast in a regular role in Doctor Who. Mackie, says Moffatt, was so chosen as being non-white was not enough. Her other notable genre role was playing Mika Chantry in the audiowork of The Conception of Terror: Tales Inspired by M. R. James. (CE)
  • Born May 29, 1996 R. F. Kuang, 24. She’s an award-winning Chinese-American fantasy writer. The Poppy War series, so-called grimdark fantasy, consists of The Poppy War which won the Compton Crook Award for Best First Novel, The Dragon Republic and The Burning God (forthcoming). She’s a nominee this year for the Astounding Award for Best New Writer. (CE)

(14) COMICS SECTION.

Q: Why is the suspense killing him?

A: Someone has to do it.

Wondermark on time traveling assassins.

(15) BLEEDING OUT. Sarah McNally asks in a New York Times opinion piece, “What Could Kill My New York Bookstores?” There’s no doubt about it. Tagline: “It won’t be Amazon or the coronavirus. It will be artificially high rents.”

Every weekday I drive to my four bookstores, pick up our customers’ orders, wedge them into the back of my car and take them to the Cooper Station post office. My route takes me to Williamsburg to Downtown Brooklyn to the South Street Seaport, and ends at my original store in NoLIta.

I sweep the deserted sidewalks — if you own a shop, you’re responsible for the sidewalk — and I wonder how many of the stores and restaurants around mine will be able to reopen and pay the debts they accrued during the lockdown.

So many closed long before the pandemic. I miss my old neighbors in NoLIta, the restaurants and their chefs, the bodega that magically had everything I needed, like Mary Poppins’s carpetbag, the Buddhist monk from the Tibetan store who gave me cardamom for tea, the bar where I had the most beautiful date of my life.

How many more distinctive stores and restaurants can our city lose before we find that we are no longer New York, but a dead-faced simulacrum?

Years before Covid, many city blocks had been reduced to a few overlit national chains — Dunkin’ Donuts, Metro by T-Mobile, Subway, Starbucks — and a whole lot of dark, depressing vacancies. Almost every business owner I spoke to or read about seemed to give the same reason: soaring rents. In some neighborhoods, even as vacancies are increasing, rent keeps rising….

(16) DEEP EIGHT. “World’s deepest octopus captured on camera”.

The deepest ever sighting of an octopus has been made by cameras on the Indian Ocean floor.

The animal was spotted 7,000m down in the Java Trench – almost 2km deeper than the previous reliable recording.

Researchers, who report the discovery in the journal Marine Biology, say it’s a species of “Dumbo” octopus.

The name is a nod to the prominent ear-like fins just above these animals’ eyes that make them look like the 1940s Disney cartoon character.

(17) ONE TO MEME UP. William Shatner tweeted a photo of him inside one of the new SpaceX spacesuits and said he’s available if NASA wants him.

(18) WAVE OFFERING. “‘Cannabis burned during worship’ by ancient Israelites”

Ancient Israelites burned cannabis as part of their religious rituals, an archaeological study has found.

A well-preserved substance found in a 2,700-year-old temple in Tel Arad has been identified as cannabis, including its psychoactive compound THC.

Researchers concluded that cannabis may have been burned in order to induce a high among worshippers.

This is the first evidence of psychotropic drugs being used in early Jewish worship, Israeli media report.

The temple was first discovered in the Negev desert, about 95km (59 miles) south of Tel Aviv, in the 1960s.

In the latest study, published in Tel Aviv University’s archaeological journal, archaeologists say two limestone altars had been buried within the shrine.

Thanks in part to the dry climate, and to the burial, the remains of burnt offerings were preserved on top of these altars.

(19) ASSUMING THIS IS YOUR IDEA OF COOL. “When Covid-19 hit, zookeeper Caitlin Henderson ended up in lockdown with 70 spiders” — video with lots of cool closeups.

Caitlin Henderson was working for a spider exhibition when the coronavirus pandemic hit. The venue closed, and suddenly she was living in lockdown with 70 spiders in her bedroom.

(20) BACK IN THE DAY. Superman serial star Kirk Alyn plays baseball with other movie celebrities of 1950, including Hopalong Cassidy, in this Paramount News feature.

[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, John Hertz, JJ, Chip Hitchcock, Michael Toman, Mike Kennedy, Martin Morse Wooster, Nina Shepardson, John A Arkansawyer, Cat Eldridge, and Andrew Porter. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Daniel Dern.]