DisCon III announced today that online voting for the 2021 Hugo Awards has opened. Members of the 2021 Worldcon are eligible to choose the winners of the Hugo Awards, the Astounding Award for Best New Writer, and the Lodestar Award for Best Young Adult Book.
Members are receiving an email explaining how to vote online. Members also have the option of using a paper ballot.
The deadline for voting is November 19, 2021, 23:59 Pacific (which is November 20th at 02:59 Eastern, 07:59 Greenwich Mean Time, and 20:59 New Zealand Daylight Time).
Voters can make additions or changes to their online ballots as often as they like until the deadline. A copy of their current ballot will be emailed to them thirty minutes after they finish modifying it.
TRACK RECORD. Forty-four days lapsed between DisCon III’s Hugo finalist announcement and the opening of online voting. That’s faster than last year’s Worldcon managed to do it, but less quickly than the 2015-2019 Worldcons (see JJ’s chart Waiting For Online Hugo Voting And The 2021 Voter Packet.)
(1) BLACK PANTHER. Today marks the end of an era for one of Marvel’s most acclaimed series: Ta-Nehisi Coates’ Black Panther. View never-before-seen artwork from Coates’ final issue and revisit some of the best moments of this iconic run in the all-new Black Panther #25 trailer.
Alongside artists Daniel Acuña and Brian Stelfreeze, the National Book Award winner and New York Times Best-selling author closes out his game-changing run with a special giant-sized finale issue. Since taking over the title in 2016, Coates has transformed the Black Panther mythos. Now five years later, he departs, leaving the world of Wakanda and the Marvel Universe as a whole forever changed and laying the groundwork for the next bold era of one of Marvel’s most celebrated heroes.
Howard University is renaming its College of Fine Arts after one of its most acclaimed alums: actor Chadwick Boseman.
On Wednesday, Howard renamed its performing and visual arts school after the “Black Panther” star, who earned an Academy Award nomination for his role in last year’s “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom.” Boseman, who graduated from Howard in 2000 with a bachelor of arts degree in directing, died in August at the age of 43 from colon cancer.The renaming unites Howard and Walt Disney Co.’s executive chairman, Bob Iger, who will spearhead fundraising for an endowment named after Boseman, as well as help raise money for the construction of a state-of-the-art building on the campus. The new building will house the Chadwick A. Boseman College of Fine Arts, the Cathy Hughes School of Communications, its TV station, WHUT, and its radio station, WHUR 96.3 FM.
(3) SFF FROM AFRICAN WRITERS. Omenana Issue 17 is out, the latest issue of a tri-monthly magazine that publishes speculative fiction by writers from across Africa and the African Diaspora. The magazine is credted by Mazi Nwonwu, Co-founder/Managing Editor; Chinelo Onwualu, Co-founder; Iquo DianaAbasi, Contributing Editor; and Godson ChukwuEmeka Okeiyi, Graphic Designer.
Omenana is the Igbo word for divinity – it also loosely translates as “culture” – and embodies our attempt to recover our wildest stories. We are looking for well-written speculative fiction that bridges the gap between past, present and future through imagination and shakes us out of the corner we have pushed ourselves into.
We’re thrilled to share that TorCon is back! Taking place from June 10 through June 13, 2021, TorCon is a virtual convention that was launched in 2020 with a simple goal: to bring the entertainment and excitement of live book conventions into the virtual space. From Thursday, June 10 through Sunday, June 13, Tor Books, Forge Books, Tordotcom Publishing, Tor Teen, and Nightfire are presenting ten panels featuring more than 30 of your favorite authors, in conversation with each other—and with you!
Join authors, including James Rollins, Charlie Jane Anders, Joe Pera, Catriona Ward, Gillian Flynn, TJ Klune, Alix E. Harrow, Seanan McGuire, Nghi Vo, and many others for four days of pure geekery, exclusive reveals, content drops, giveaways, and more…all from the comfort of your own home!
I got involved with tie-in writing when, as the then-scripter of the Dick Tracy comic strip, I was enlisted to write the novel of the Warren Beatty film. That was, happily, a successful book that led to my writing novels for In the Line of Fire, Air Force One, Saving Private Ryan, and many others, including Maverick, that favorite of my childhood. Eventually I wrote TV tie-ins as well, in particular CSI and its spin-offs. Finally I got the opportunity to work with the Mickey Spillane estate to write Mike Hammer novels – a dream job, since Spillane had been my favorite writer growing up and Hammer my favorite character.
The founding of the IAMTW came out of a series of panels about tie-ins at San Diego Comic Con. Lee Goldberg, a rare example of a TV writer/producer who also wrote tie-in novels, was an especially knowledgeable and entertaining participant on those panels. He and I shared a frustration that the best work in the tie-in field was ignored by the various writing organizations that gave awards in assorted genres, including mystery, horror, and science-fiction.
Individually, we began poking around, talking to our peers, wondering if maybe an organization for media tie-in writers wouldn’t be a way to give annual awards and to grow this disparate group of creative folk into a community. I don’t remember whether Lee called me or I called Lee, but we decided to combine our efforts. What came out of that was the International Association of Media and Tie-in Writers and our annual Scribe Awards, as well as the Faust, our Life Achievement Award.
(6) SUPPORT YOUR LOCAL OUTLAW.
I am an unlicensed writer and YOU'LL NEVER CATCH ME, COPPERS, he yelled, driving away down the wrong side of the English language, gerunds screaming as they ran for cover pic.twitter.com/lk7TacLKob
(7) HOW MANY HAVE YOU READ? AbeBooks has come up with their own list of “100 (Fiction) Books to Read in a Lifetime”, and some genre books are on it. I’ve read 29. (My midlife decision to read Moby Dick is constantly rewarded by raising my score on these things.)
We’ve seen these lists before – from Amazon to the Telegraph to Time Magazine and beyond. Plenty of folks have lists of the 100 best books of all time, the 100 books you should read, and on. And beautifully, despite overlap, they are all different. The glorious subjectivity of art means that no two of these lists should ever be exactly alike. So this is ours, our special snowflake of a list, born out of our passion for books. We kept it to fiction this time. Some of the expected classics are there, alongside some more contemporary fare. There is some science fiction, some YA, and above all else, some unforgettable stories.
Do any of the included titles shock you? Are you outraged by any omissions? Let us know what makes the cut for your top 100 novels.
(8) JMS’ B5 EPISODE COMMENTARY NOW ON YOUTUBE. For nearly a year J. Michael Straczynski has been providing his Patreon supporters full-length on-camera Babylon 5 commentaries. He’s now going to make some of them available to the public. Up first: “The Parliament of Dreams.” For this to work, you need to get access to a recording of the episode. Like JMS says —
For those who would like to sync up with the commentary on this video (since full-length TV episodes are not allowed here), fire up the episode and be ready to hit Play at the appropriate (or inappropriate) moment.
…Carle headed straight back to the U.S. after graduating from art school at age 23 and was immediately hired by The New York Times. He fell in love with the impressionists (“color, color, color!”), served in the U.S. military during the Korean War, and, upon his return, moved into advertising.
Perhaps that career helped him prepare for using the simple, resonant language of The Very Hungry Caterpillar. For the book’s 50th anniversary in 2019, professor Michelle H. Martin told NPR that The Very Hungry Caterpillar‘s writing helps little kids grasp concepts such as numbers and the days of the week. (“On Monday he ate through one apple. But he was still hungry. On Tuesday he ate through two pears, but he was still hungry.”)
Martin, the Beverly Cleary Endowed Professor for Children and Youth Services at the University of Washington, told NPR the book builds literacy by gently guiding toddlers toward unfamiliar words. For example, when Saturday comes around and the hungry caterpillar binges on “one piece of chocolate cake, one ice-cream cone, one pickle, one slice of Swiss cheese, one slice of salami, one lollipop, one piece of cherry pie, one sausage, one cupcake, and one slice of watermelon,” words such as salami and Swiss cheese might be new to 3-year-olds already familiar with ice cream and lollipops….
…I am devastated. One of my oldest friends in the business. Our whole family loved him. HE and Bobbie lived for years about twenty five minutes from our house, and then in Northampton for some time before moving down South.
He was funny, dear, a favorite “uncle” to my kids.And his museum is twenty minutes from my house. I have been sobbing since I heard about two hours ago from a notice sent out by the family….
(10) MEDIA ANNIVERSARY.
May 26, 1995 — On this day in 1995, Johnny Mnemonic premiered. Based on the William Gibson short story of the same name, it was directed by Robert Longo in his directorial debut. It starred Keanu Reeves, Takeshi Kitan, Henry Rollins, Ice-T, Dina Meyer and Dolph Lundgren. Despite the story itself being well received and even being nominated for a Nebula Award, the response among critics to the film was overwhelmingly negative. It currently holds a 31% rating on Rotten Tomatoes among audience reviewers. It is available to watch here.
(11) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.
[Compiled by Cat Eldridge and John Hertz.]
Born May 26, 1865 — Robert Chambers. His most remembered work was The King in Yellow short stories. Though he would turn away from these supernatural tellings, Lovecraft’s included some of them in his Supernatural Horror in Literature critical study. Critics thought his work wasn’t as great as could have been. That said, Stross, Wagner, Carter and even Blish are said to have been influenced by him. (Died 1933.) (CE)
Born May 26, 1903 — Harry Steeger. He co-founded Popular Publications in 1930, one of the major publishers of pulp magazines, with former classmate Harold S. Goldsmith. They published The Spider which he created, and with Horror Stories and Terror Tales, he started the “Shudder Pulp” genre. So lacking in taste were these pulps that even a jaded public eventually rejected them. (Died 1990.) (CE)
Born May 26, 1913 — Peter Cushing. Best known for his roles in the Hammer Productions horror films of the Fifties to the Seventies, as well as his performance as Grand Moff Tarkin in Star Wars. He also played Holmes many times, and though not considered canon, he was the Doctor in Daleks’ Invasion Earth 2150 A.D. and Dr. Who and the Daleks. He even made appearances in both The Avengers and The New Avengers as well as Space: 1999. A CGI recreation of Grand Moff Tarkin was used for his likeness in Rogue One. (Died 1994.) (CE)
Born May 26, 1913 – Joan Jefferson Farjeon. Scenic designer, illustrated published versions of plays she’d done, also fairy tales. See here (a frog footman), here (a tiger lily), here. From a 1951 stage production, here is a moment in Beauty and the Beast. (Died 2006) [JH]
Born May 26, 1923 — James Arness. He appeared in three Fifties SF films, Two Lost Worlds, Them! and The Thing from Another World. The latter is based on the 1938 novella Who Goes There? by John W. Campbell (writing under the pseudonym of Don A. Stuart). The novella would be the basis of John Carpenter’s The Thing thirty years later. (Died 2011.) (CE)
Born May 26, 1923 — Roy Dotrice. I’ll always think of him first and foremost as Jacob “Father” Wells on Beauty and the Beast. He was Commissioner Simmonds in two episodes of Space: 1999. He also appeared in a recurring role on Hercules: The Legendary Journeys as Zeus. He’s on A Game of Thrones in the second season playing “Wisdom Hallyne the Pyromancer” in “The Ghost of Harrenhal” and “Blackwater” episodes. He narrates at least some of the GoT audiobooks. (Died 2017.) (CE)
Born May 26, 1925 – Howard DeVore. Began collecting, 1936. Michigan Science Fantasy Society, 1948 (Hal Shapiro said it was the Michigan Instigators of Science Fantasy for Intellectual Thinkers Society, i.e. MISFITS). Leading dealer in SF books, paraphernalia; known as Big-Hearted Howard, a compliment-complaint-compliment; called himself “a huckster, 1st class”. Active in N3F (Nat’l Fantasy Fan Fed’n); Neffy Award. Also FAPA (Fantasy Amateur Press Ass’n), SAPS (Spectator Am. Pr. Society). Said a Worldcon would be in Detroit over his dead body; was dragged across the stage; became Publicity head for Detention the 17th Worldcon. With Donald Franson The Hugo, Nebula, and World Fantasy Awards (through 3rd ed’n 1998). Named Fan Guest of Honor for 64th Worldcon, but died before the con. His beanie had a full-size airplane propeller. (Died 2005) [JH]
Born May 26, 1933 – Yôji Kondô, Ph.D. Black belt in Aikido (7th degree) and judo (6th degree). Senior positions at NASA, Medal for Exceptional Scientific Achievement; two hundred scientific papers, see here. SF as Eric Kotani; six novels, most with J.M. Roberts; two shorter stories; edited Requiem tribute to Heinlein; non-fiction Interstellar Travel & Multi-Generation Space Ships with F. Bruhweiler, J. Moore, C. Sheffield; essays, mostly co-authored, in SF Age and Analog. Heinlein Award. Writers of the Future judge. Our Gracious Host’s appreciation here. (Died 2017) [JH]
Born May 26, 1938 – Lyudmila Petrushevskaya, age 83. Author (including plays and screenwriting), singer, painter, animator. Russian Booker Prize, Pushkin Prize, World Fantasy Award. Twenty short stories for us. See here. [JH]
Born May 26, 1954 – Lisbeth Zwerger, age 67. Children’s-book illustrator. Hans Christian Andersen and Silver Brush awards; Grand Prize from German Academy for Children’s & Youth Literature. Thirty books, most of them fantasy; see here (Swan Lake), here (the Mad Tea Party), here. [JH]
Born May 26, 1964 — Caitlín R. Kiernan, 57. She’s an impressive two-time recipient of both the World Fantasy and Bram Stoker awards. As for novels, I’d single out Low Red Moon, Blood Oranges (writing as Kathleen Tierney) and The Drowning Girl: A Memoir as being particularly worth reading. She also fronted a band, Death’s Little Sister, named for Neil Gaiman’s character, Delirium. (CE)
Non Sequiturshows astronauts making a cosmic discovery.
(13) ZOOMING WITH THE TRIMBLES. Fanac.org has posted a videos of “Bjo and John Trimble – A Fan History Zoom Session with Joe Siclari (Parts 1 and 2)”.
Bjo and John Trimble sit with Joe Siclari (May 2021) to tell us about their fannish histories. In part 1 of this interview, they talk about how they each found fandom, their ultimate meet-cute under Forry Ackerman’s grand piano, Burbee’s “Golden Treachery” and more serious topics. The Trimbles changed their part of fandom. Bjo talks about how she revitalized LASFS in the 1950s, and about the beginnings of the convention art show as we know it today (and Seth Johnson’s surprising part in that). Fandom is not without its controversies, and the Trimbles also speak about the Breendoggle and Coventry. Part 1 finishes up with anecdotes about Tony Boucher’s poker games. In Part 2, the interview will continue with the Trimbles’ roles in the Save Star Trek campaign. For more fan history, go to <FANAC.org> and <Fancyclopedia.org>. If you enjoyed this video, please subscribe to our channel.
In part 2 of Bjo and John Trimble’s interview with Joe Siclari (May 2021), they tell the remarkable story of how they met Gene Roddenberry and became involved in Star Trek. Learn the story of how they started, orchestrated and managed the “Save Star Trek” campaign which resulted in the third year of Star Trek, the original series. Hint: it all started in Clelveland. There’s much more in this interview. There are stories of the early days of the SCA, including how it got the name “Society for Creative Anachronism”, the day that a Knight of St. Fantony appeared at an SCA event, and the unlikely story of the first coronation of an SCA king. Additionally, you’ll hear about costuming, Takumi Shibano and how Gene Roddenberry helped get him to Worldcon (and how Bjo helped Shibano-san learn that his wife spoke English), and Q&A from the attendees.
In the ultimate symbol of one Hollywood era ending and another beginning, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, home to James Bond and Rocky, finally found a buyer willing to pay retail: Amazon.
The e-commerce giant said on Wednesday that it would acquire the 97-year-old film and television studio for $8.45 billion — or about 40 percent more than other prospective buyers, including Apple and Comcast, thought MGM was worth….
So why did Amazon pay such a startling premium?
For starters, it can. The company has $71 billion in cash and a market capitalization of $1.64 trillion….
Amazon most likely paid more than others thought MGM was worth because of its all-important Prime membership program.
In addition to paying Amazon $119 a year or $13 a month for free shipping and other perks — notably access to the Prime Video streaming service — households with Prime memberships typically spend $3,000 a year on Amazon. That is more than twice what households without the membership spend, according to Morgan Stanley. About 200 million people pay for Prime memberships.
“More and more Prime members are using video more often, spending more hours on there, so I think this is a way to add more content and more talent around movies,” said Brian Yarbrough, a senior analyst at Edward Jones.
“This isn’t one studio buying another,” he added. “If you’re Amazon, the perspective is what’s the potential for Prime membership, what is the potential for advertising.”…
(15) SAME BAT-TIME, SAME BAT-CHANNEL. Galactic Journey’s Erica Frank is tuning in to 1966 where Adam West’s Batman on the air:“[May 26, 1966] Batman: So Bad It’s Good?”.
I have been greatly enjoying the new Batman tv series. Campy costumes, over-the-top acting, wacky super-science gizmos, silly plots, the chance to see several of my favorite comic book characters on a screen; it’s all good fun….
The Batman Drinking Game
The best way to watch this show: Before it starts, get yourself a beer, glass of wine, or couple of shots of something harder. Every time you see a gizmo that can’t actually work as shown, take a sip. Every time Robin says, “Holy [something]!,” take a sip. When either of the Dynamic Duo is trapped, take a sip; if they’re both trapped, take two. Every time a supposedly valuable item, like a museum statue, is destroyed during the obligatory heroes-vs-thugs slugfest, take another sip. By the time the show is over, you’ll be pleasantly relaxed—unless you actually know much about science and technology, in which case, you’ll have left “relaxed” in the dust and be on your way to “blitzed.”…
[May 26, 1966] Batmania has struck the nation — and Journeyer Erica Frank has figured out the secret to enjoying this wacky, weird new show.
…I thoroughly enjoyed this and despite the scale of the world-building, I found myself immersed into the setting very quickly. It is a book with a sense of bigness to it with quite different magical elements to it distinct to the individual characters. The growing tension as chapter by chapter we get closer to what will clearly be a very bad day for all concerned, is well executed and if I hadn’t been using the audiobook version I would probably have rushed through the final chapters.
I’ve enjoyed other works by Roanhorse but this is definitely a more skilful and mature work from a writer who started with a lot of promise. It sits in that sweet spot of delivering the vibe of the big magical saga but with enough innovation in setting and magic to feel fresh and original….
The circus, with its built-in otherworldliness, is an ideal setting for fantasy, horror and science-fiction novels. Authors have been capitalizing on it for years. Stephen King terrified a whole generation with Pennywise the clown in 1986’s “It,” then tackled a carnival setting 27 years later in “Joyland.” In 2011, Erin Morgenstern charmed readers and scored a big hit with “The Night Circus.” So what other great fiction hides under the big top?…
…By now, I was starting to see that the shaded letters would be forming some sort of figure, a pooka indeed and it seemed to be symmetrical. Also, I had enough of the early across answers to start to see the quotation forming. With “Years ago my mother say this world”. An internet search revealed, “Years ago my mother [used to say to me,] she’d say, [“In this world, Elwood, you must be” – she always called me Elwood] – “In this world, Elwood, you must be [oh so] smart or [oh so] pleasant.” Well, for years I was smart. I recommend pleasant. You may quote me. ”…
(19) VIDEO OF THE DAY. In “Honest Trailers: The DCEU (400th episode), the Screen Junkies, for their 400th episode, portray the entire DC Extended Universe, a world where “Superman doesn’t want to save people, Batman’s a murderer, Wonder Woman’s an incel, and Harley Quinn takes three movies to break up with Joker, who looks like my coke dealer.” And given a choice between all the quips in Marvel movies, and DC films where “everyone talks like a 14-year-old boy trying to sound badass while they’re reading a Wiki page,” wouldn’t you rather see an Air Bud movie?”
[Thanks to Andrew Porter, Martin Morse Wooster, JJ, StephenfromOttawa, David Langford, Daniel Dern, Michael Toman, John King Tarpinian, Cat Eldridge, John Hertz, and Mike Kennedy for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to contributing editor of the day Jack Lint.]
CAEZIK Notables, an imprint of Arc Manor Books, is putting out a series of speculative fiction books marking important milestones in science fiction or fantasy. Each book in the series is given a new introduction highlighting the book’s significance within the genre. Two of those books were released this month, and two more are coming in June and July.
Friday by Robert A. Heinlein
Release Date: May 5
The comeback novel for Heinlein after he recovered from his reversible neurologic dysfunction which had impacted his writing. First published in 1982.
New introduction by Richard Chwedyk, ascience fiction writer and teacher. He won a Nebula Award in 2002 and has been nominated for the Hugo Award, the Rhysling Award, and shortlisted for the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award. He has been teaching creative writing and literature, and science fiction writing, at Columbia College Chicago since 2009. He currently writes the book review column for Galaxy’s Edge magazine
Midnight At The Well Of Souls byJack L. Chalker
Release Date: May 11
One of the original gender and species transformation novels. First published in 1977.
New introduction by David Boop, an author, screenwriter and award-winning essayist. His debut novel, the sci-fi/noir She Murdered Me with Science was published in 2017. His follow-up, The Soul Changers, is a Victorian Horror based on Rippers is due out in 2021. As editor, David edited the bestselling weird western anthology series for Baen beginning with Straight Outta Tombstone.
The Long Tomorrow by Leigh Brackett
Release Date: June 15
One of the original novels of post-nuclear holocaust America, The Long Tomorrow is considered by many to be one of the finest science fiction novels ever written on the subject. First published in 1955.
New introduction by Howard Andrew Jones, author of the historical fantasy novels, The Desert of Souls, and its sequel, The Bones of the Old Ones. He has also written a Pathfinder Tales novel, Plague of Shadows.
Simulacron-3 by Daniel F. Galouye
Release Date: July 13, 2021
The original “Cyberpunk” novel. A story about virtual reality written before anyone knew about the concept. It has been converted into various media productions. First published 1964.
New introduction by Richard Chwedyk.
COMING ATTRACTIONS. Three more books scheduled for release as Caezik Notables in the coming months are:
Double Star by Robert A. Heinlein (intro not yet decided, 9/7/21)
Bolo: Annals of the Dinochrome Brigade by Keith Laumer (intro by Jack Campbell, 9/7/21)
The Warlock in Spite of Himself by Christopher Stasheff (intro not yet decided, 2/8/22)
By John Hertz: Long-time fan Marty Helgesen, active in fanzines and thus known across the country, sometimes seen at SF cons, quick-witted and comical, thoughtful, cheerfully Catholic, left our Earth for a better life, as his co-religionists trust, on Sunday, May 23rd. He was 82.
He was a wise guy in the highest sense, like – though the comparison would have embarrassed him – Ronald Knox, a Catholic priest who made a new translation of the Bible and wrote detective stories. Marty’s fanwriting included – as I noted here – things like “All syllogisms have three parts. Therefore, this is not a syllogism.”
His own fanzine Radio Free Thulcandra in the mid-1980s through mid-1990s ran three dozen issues of five or six dozen pages, its title alluding to Radio Free Europe broadcasts and a name for Earth in three books by C.S. Lewis, Out of the Silent Planet, Perelandra, That Hideous Strength. Marty was, besides, in three apas that I know of, Minneapa, APA-L, and FLAP. Minneapa, mighty in its day, came to an end; APA-L and FLAP continue.
He knew and quoted Msgr. Knox’ writing; also the writing of another who had the gift of speaking clearly on topics difficult to manage, Frank Sheed. This was welcome. Marty resisted anti-Christian or anti-Catholic prejudice – as I’ve sometimes put it, too often we fans aren’t really tolerant, we just march behind a banner that says “Tolerance” – but, although Christians may proselytize, he did not misappropriate fannish moments to urge his faith. He was a counter-example to the Spanish proverb Every man pushes his own sardine a little closer to the fire.
He earned his living as a librarian. He lived in Malverne, New York.
I cherish the memory of running across him one day at a convention, dressed in his usual white short-sleeved shirt with four pockets, black trousers, drawing a little red wagon carrying a children’s T-shirt, the T-shirt filled out somehow as if worn on a human or humanoid body and reading “My parents went to Middle-Earth and all I got was this stupid ring.”
A friend of his posted a notice here about Marty’s funeral Mass and burial, to be held on Friday, May 28th. If you can go, do. If you can remember him in prayers, do that. He and I had substantial differences, but we were too occupied with what we had in common to dwell on them. I’m not sure fandom is a way of life, but if it is, that’s in it.
(1) STAR WARS AT 44. On the “realio trulio” Star Wars Day, Craig Miller posted two excerpts from his book, Star Wars Memories, on Facebook. Here’s a quote from the first part:
SAYING YES TO “STAR WARS” (FOX’S MARKET RESEARCH)
It wasn’t an easy sell to get a studio to okay production on “Star Wars”. George Lucas had made the extremely successful “American Graffiti” for Universal Studios. He had a three-picture deal with them. “American Graffiti” was the first. They wanted him to make more films for their studio. The whole purpose of a multi-picture deal, of providing on-going office space and services, is because the studio is betting that the films you make will be profitable and they want you to make those movies for them.
They turned “Star Wars” down.
The Readers Report, while generally favorable, included the phrase “Do we have faith that Mr. Lucas can pull this off?”. Obviously, Universal didn’t….
(2) TUCKERIZED TITANS. A new Teen Titans Go! episode titled ”Marv Wolfman and George Perez” will air this Saturday at 9 a.m. Pacific, featuring animated versions of their namesakes voiced by themselves. Marv and George were the co-creators of Raven, Starfire, and Cyborg, who were added to Robin and the other Titans.
Here’s a link to a scan of the print edition, where you can actually read the whole thing, though it’s still in German: “Neue Aussichten Auf die Rakete” (“New prospects for the rocket”).
In this episode of ‘Notes On A Scene,’ Director Zack Snyder breaks down a zombie heist scene from ‘Army of the Dead.’ Zack guides us through the nuances and challenges of working with CGI zombies, and explains how he was able to edit Tig Notaro into his ‘Army of the Dead’ universe.
Many months ago I found myself on r/fanfiction explaining the history of the AO3 tag “Serious Human Male/Handsome Gay Living Archive”, and made a mental note that it would make a good HobbyDrama post if I wrote it up more comprehensively….
— and ends a mere 2700 words later with a link to the Tingle-esque work involved.
(6) REAR GUARD ACTION. [Item by Martin Morse Wooster.] Isaac Asimov, in his autobiography In Joy Still Felt, discusses a Star Trek convention he went to in New York City in 1975.
The climax of the convention came on Sunday the twelfth (January 12, 1975), when William Shatner (Captain Kirk) spoke before a superenthusiastic audience of more than four thousand, who filled the seats and aisles to capacity. Shatner answered all questions with good humor and unpretentiousness and had everyone enthralled. When it was time to leave, he explained to everyone there was no way he could sign autographs for such huge a crowd and made ready to get off the stage.
At this point, the young man who organized the convention whispered in my ear, ‘Quick! Get on the stage and hold the audience so that Shatner can get away.’
I said, ‘They’ll tear me limb from limb.’
But he was physically pushing me onto the stage while one of his henchmen was busily announcing me.
I started talking–babbling, rather.I waited for a mad, furious rush on the part of disappointed ‘Star Trek’ fanatics, but it didn’t come. They seemed to be enjoying me, actually, and I was just beginning to relax and settle down when the organizer approached and said, ‘Shatner’s safely away. Get off, so we can get on with the program.’ So I got off.
All You Need Is Kill by Hiroshi Sakurazaka (Trans. Alexander O. Smith) (2004)
The aliens who dispatched the engineered lifeforms humans call Mimics did stop to consider the morality of xenoforming a world that might well be inhabited. But they concluded that xenoforming would be as ethically neutral as killing insects to make way for housing construction. No need to examine Earth before reshaping it.
Keiji Kiriya, human, thinks human needs are more important than alien schemes. Thus, his brief, glorious career in Earth’s defence forces. Thus his inevitable death the first time he encounters Mimics. His resurrection in the past—on the morning before the first battle—comes as an unexpected surprise. Alas, the results of the rerun battle are little better than the first. The same is true of the second. And the third…but by death 157, Keiji is getting the hang of the time loop in which he is trapped and well on his way to figuring out how he might save the Earth for humans.
In March, literary heavyweights Kazuo Ishiguro and Neil Gaiman — a Nobel laureate, and the beloved author of “American Gods,” “Sandman,” and “Good Omens,” respectively — convened at an independent bookstore event to discuss genre and science fiction.
They arrived at twin conclusions: one, that rigid genre distinctions between literary works promote an unproductive and false hierarchy of worth, and two, that the 21st century is a very tricky time to attempt to define “science fiction” at all. Gaiman said that he increasingly feels genre “slippage where science fiction is concerned” because, he says, “the world has become science fiction.” The hacking exploits in William Gibson’s novel “Neuromancer” or the sequencing of an entire genome overnight no longer belong to the realm of fantasy.
For MIT students, the permeable relationship between reality and science fiction is often familiar territory. In their labs and research projects, students and faculty experience personally the process by which imaginative ideas turn into new techniques, possibilities, medicines, tools, and technologies. (And they learn that many such new realities actually have had their origins in speculative literature.)
Students in the MIT Literature course 21L.434 (21st Century Science Fiction), taught by Assistant Professor Laura Finch, also discover that science fiction is a powerful, useful way to think about and understand the world we currently inhabit….
It felt good to love again, in that big empty house. Virginia Kellner got the cat last November, around her ninety-second birthday, and now it’s always nearby. It keeps her company as she moves, bent over her walker, from the couch to the bathroom and back again. The walker has a pair of orange scissors hanging from the handlebar, for opening mail. Virginia likes the pet’s green eyes. She likes that it’s there in the morning, when she wakes up. Sometimes, on days when she feels sad, she sits in her soft armchair and rests the cat on her soft stomach and just lets it do its thing. Nuzzle. Stretch. Vibrate. Virginia knows that the cat is programmed to move this way; there is a motor somewhere, controlling things. Still, she can almost forget. “It makes you feel like it’s real,” Virginia told me, the first time we spoke. “I mean, mentally, I know it’s not. But—oh, it meowed again!”
She named the cat Jennie, for one of the nice ladies who work at the local Department of the Aging in Cattaraugus County, a rural area in upstate New York, bordering Pennsylvania. It was Jennie (the person) who told her that the county was giving robot pets to old people like her. Did she want one? She could have a dog or a cat. A Meals on Wheels driver brought Virginia the pet, along with her daily lunch delivery. He was so eager to show it to her that he opened the box himself, instead of letting Virginia do it. The Joy for All Companion pet was orange with a white chest and tapered whiskers. Nobody mentioned that it was part of a statewide loneliness intervention….
(10) MEDIA ANNIVERSARY.
May 25, 1977 — On this day in 1977, Star Wars premiered. Later retitled as Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope, it was written and directed by George Lucas. You know who the cast is so we’ll not list all of them here. Lucas envisioned the film as being in the tradition of Buck Rogers which he originally intended to remake but couldn’t get the rights to. Reception by critics and fans alike alike was fantastic with IguanaCon II voting it the Best Dramatic Presentation Hugo over Close Encounters of the Third Kind. It holds a stellar ninety-six percent rating among audience reviewers at Rotten Tomatoes.
(11) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.
[Compiled by Cat Eldridge and John Hertz.]
Born May 25, 1915 – DeeDee Lavender. Four decades an active fan with husband Roy Lavender. Together served a term as Secretary-Treasurer of the N3F (Nat’l Fantasy Fan Fed’n). They’re in Harlan Ellison’s forewords to his collections I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream and Angry Candy; they knew Leigh Brackett & Edmond Hamilton, and were guests at the B&H homes in Ohio and California. They were part of a Southern California fannish social group called the Petards, named by one of Rick Sneary’s famous misspellings, hoist for host. Here she is with Roy at a Petards meeting in 1983, and thirty years earlier in New York (L to R, Bea Mahaffey, Hannes Bok, DeeDee, Roy, Stan Skirvin). (Died 1986) [JH]
Born May 25, 1916 – Charles Hornig. Published his fanzine The Fantasy Fan in 1933, thus First Fandom (i.e. active by at least the first Worldcon, 1939), and hired, age 17, by Hugo Gernsback to edit Wonder Stories. Founded the SF League with HG; later edited Fantasy; also Future and Science Fiction (they eventually combined); SF Quarterly. See his notes on Nycon I, the first Worldcon, here. (Died 1999) [JH]
Born May 25, 1926 – Phyllis Gotlieb. Prix Aurora for A Judgement of Dragons (note spelling; she was Canadian). The Sunburst Award is named for her first novel. A dozen SF novels, a score of shorter stories, eight poetry collections – the first being Who Knows One? Among her husband’s Physics students was Cory Doctorow’s father. (Died 2009) [JH]
Born May 25, 1935 — W. P. Kinsella. Best I’d say known for his novel Shoeless Joe which was adapted into the movie Field of Dreams, one of the few films that Kevin Costner is a decent actor in, ironic as the other is Bull Durham. Kinsella’s other genre novel is The Iowa Baseball Confederacy and it’s rather less well known than Shoeless Joe is but it’s excellent as well. He also edited Baseball Fantastic, an anthology of just what the title says they are. Given that he’s got eighteen collections of short stories listed on his wiki page, I’m reasonably sure his ISFDB page doesn’t come close to listing all his short stories. (Died 2016.) (CE)
Born May 25, 1939 — Ian McKellen, 82. Best known for being Magneto in the X-Men films, and Gandalf in The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit trilogies. I’m fairly sure his first genre role was as Dr. Faustus in an Edinburgh production of that play in the early Seventies. He also played Macbeth at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre during that period. He’d played Captain Hook in Peter Pan at The Royal National Theatre, and was the voice of the Demon in The Exorcist in the UK tour of that production. Of course he was Dr. Reinhardt Lane in The Shadow, The Narrator in Stardust, Sherlock Holmes in Mr. Holmes, Cogsworth in Beauty and the Beast and finally he’s the Gus the Theatre Cat in the best forgotten Cats. (CE)
Born May 25, 1946 — Frank Oz, 75. Actor, director including The Dark Crystal, Little Shop of Horrors and the second version of The Stepford Wives, producer and puppeteer. His career began as a puppeteer, where he performed the Muppet characters of Animal, Fozzie Bear, Miss Piggy, and oh-so-patriotic Sam Eagle in The Muppet Show, and Cookie Monster, Bert, and Grover in Sesame Street. Genre wise, he’s also known for the role of Yoda in the Star Wars franchise. An interesting Trivia note: he’s in the Blues Brothers as a Corrections Officer, and is the Warden in Blues Brothers 2000. (CE)
Born May 25, 1949 — Barry Windsor-Smith, 72. Illustrator and painter, mostly for Marvel Comics. Oh, his work on Conan the Barbarian in the early Seventies was amazing, truly amazing! And then there was the original Weapon X story arc involving Wolverine which still ranks among the best stories told largely because of his artwork. And let’s not forget that he and writer Roy Thomas created Red Sonja as partially based on Howard’s characters Red Sonya of Rogatino and Dark Agnes de Chastillon. (CE)
Born May 25, 1950 – Kathryn Daugherty. Engineer. Married four decades to James Stanley Daugherty. At Bucconeer the 56th Worldcon, headed Contents of Tables; a typo made it “Contests of Tables”: in each newsletter I announced “Today’s winner is the Picnic”, “Today’s winner is the Periodic”. Chaired Westercon LIII, a hard one: it was at Honolulu, see my report here [PDF; p. 11]. Luckily not exhausted; she and JSD were Fan Guests of Honor at Baycon 2001, Loscon 36. OGH’s appreciation here. (Died 2012) [JH]
Born May 25, 1953 – Stan Sakai, age 68. Lettered Groo the Wanderer comics; since 1984, author of Usagi Yôjinbô comics about samurai rabbit Miyamoto Usagi, who has (wouldn’t you know it) crossed paths with the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. The rônin life is hard. During the most recent Year of the Rabbit (2011), the Japanese-American Nat’l Museum in Los Angeles had an Usagi Yôjinbô exhibit. Parents’ Choice award, an Inkpot, six Eisners, an Inkwell, two Harveys, two Haxturs (Spain), a Plumilla de Plata (Mexico), a Cultural Ambassador award, and a Nat’l Cartoonists Society award. [JH]
Born May 25, 1966 — Vera Nazarian, 55. To date, she has written ten novels including Dreams of the Compass Rose, what I’d called a mosaic novel structured as a series of interlinked stories similar in tone to The One Thousand and One Nights that reminds me more than a bit of Valente’s The Orphans Tales. She’s the publisherof Norilana Books which publishes such works as Catherynne M. Valente’s Guide to Folktales in Fragile Dialects, Marion Zimmer Bradley’s Sword and Sorceress anthologies,and Tabitha Lee’s Lee’s Sounds and Furies. (CE)
Born May 25, 1982 – Bertrand Bonnet, age 39. Six dozen reviews in Bifrost (French-language prozine; European SF Society award for Best Magazine, 2016), of Blish, Herbert, Le Guin, Pohl (with and without Kornbluth), Resnick, Strugatsky, Tolkien (including the Letters, yay). [JH]
What is it like being a Marvel Comics artist? For Malaysian artist Alan Quah, it is nothing short of having a wish granted.
“It is a dream come true, because I collected Marvel Comics when I was really really young. When I became a teenager I drew comics for a living, then I left the [comics] industry for 15 years to venture into advertising. Then I came back and tried my luck drawing comics for the American market again,” said Alan Quah, who became a cover artist for Marvel Comics in late January this year.
The Petaling Jaya-based artist mainly does comic book covers for Marvel Comics in a work-for-hire agreement. In the United States, comics retailers may sometimes commission a cover for an issue of a comic. These covers are known as retailer exclusive variant covers. Comics retailers will liaise with Marvel Comics to determine the requirements and specifications of the cover art. Marvel Comics will then get in touch with Quah to create the artwork, along with all the relevant stakeholders.
Since joining Marvel Comics, he has worked on covers for the following titles: Alien, The Spider’s Shadow, Venom, and The Marvels (not related to the 1994 series Marvels, which was told from the perspective of man-on-the-street Phil Sheldon)….
(13) I KNOW — YOU’RE FROM THE SIXTIES! A teaser trailer forLast Night in Soho has dropped. Opens in theaters this October.
Edgar Wright’s psychological thriller about a young girl, passionate in fashion design, who is mysteriously able to enter the 1960s where she encounters her idol, a dazzling wannabe singer. But 1960s London is not what it appears, and time seems to fall apart with shady consequences…
(14) FASHION SHOW. Someone on eBay is selling thisUFO-themed “Space Shopping” Hermes scarf. They want $629 – but you can pay on monthly installments! This is not something to blow your nose on.
Spanish police are investigating the death of a 39-year-old man whose body was found inside a dinosaur statue.
Authorities were alerted on Saturday after a father and his son noticed a smell emanating from the papier-mâché figure in Santa Coloma de Gramenet, a suburb of Barcelona.
The father then saw the corpse through a crack in the Stegosaurus’ hollow leg.
Police said the man had been reported missing by his family, and no foul play is suspected.
Three fire brigade teams were called to scene after the body was discovered, and firefighters cut open the dinosaur leg to retrieve it.
Local media report the man – who has not been named – was trying to retrieve a mobile phone he dropped inside the statue. He then fell inside the decorative figure and was left trapped upside down, unable to call for help.
Rachel Bloom’s performance at Renovation, the 69th World Science Fiction Convention. She was at the convention because her song “Fuck Me Ray Bradbury” was nominated for a Hugo award. Sorry about the poor lighting. The room was set up for a disco, and Rachel gave a short performance.
(17) VIDEO OF THE DAY. In “Honest Game Trailers: Pokémon Snap”, Fandom Games says that this Pokémon movie where you take photos instead of shooting people, is the gaming equivalent of “a little amusement park ride and some photos at the end.”
[Thanks to David K.M. Klaus, N., Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, Martin Morse Wooster, JJ, Michael Toman, John King Tarpinian, Cat Eldridge, Tom Galloway, Cora Buhlert, and John Hertz for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to contributing editor of the day Cat Rambo.]
(1) BOOM! STUDIOS BEGINS WORK WITH #DISNEYMUSTPAY TASK FORCE. SFWA has another update:
The #DisneyMustPay Joint Task Force is pleased to announce that BOOM! Studios have begun to work with them to achieve the Task Force’s goals to ensure that all writers who are owed royalties and/or statements for their media-tie in work are identified and that Disney and other companies honor their contractual obligations to those writers after acquiring the companies that originally hired the writers.
“BOOM! Studios strongly support all creators receiving any reporting and royalty payments they are contractually owed. When we have obligations, we honor them,” said Filip Sablik, President, Publishing & Marketing BOOM! Studios. “We are happy to work with both the Disney Task Force and our licensor Disney to resolve the situation to everyone’s satisfaction.”
Through their research, the Task Force believes that BOOM! Studios were not told about the writers who were due royalties when Disney transferred media rights to them. Though Disney is a partial owner of the studios, it is not engaged in the day-to-day operations. “BOOM! Studios are not at fault here, and the #DisneyMustPay Joint Task Force is grateful that they have taken the lead with their cooperation,” said Mary Robinette Kowal, President, Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA). “With their help, we’re able to speed up the process of locating writers who might have been affected by the rights transfer by Disney. I wish Disney itself was also willing to work with us.”
Fans, fellow writers, and the creative community need to continue to post on social media showing their support so the #DisneyMustPay Joint Task Force can help writers. Thanks to their support, the message is reaching Disney and related organizations, such as BOOM! Studios, to alert them to the work they need to do to honor their contractual obligations.
(2) KRANER Q&A. Download the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction’s interview with Author Stephanie Kraner.
(3) FREE VIRTUAL BALTICON. Balticon, Maryland’s oldest science fiction convention, is holding its second virtual convention on Memorial Day Weekend (May 28-31, 2021). Balticon is being offered without charge at balticon.org.
“Last year we set a high standard that other science fiction conventions have used as their model,” said ConChair, Yakira Heistand. “Balticon 55 will be even better because we learned a lot and had an entire year to plan for this format, instead of just two months.”
Hugo-winning author Seanan McGuire, headlines the event as the Guest of Honor. Celebrated author, C.J Cherryh will accept the Robert A. Heinlein Award. Micaiah Johnson will receive the 2021 Compton Crook Award, given for the best first science fiction novel and named to honor the memory of long time Towson University professor Compton Crook. Maryland high school winners of this year’s Jack Chalker Young Writers’ Award will read from their works.
Almost 300 panels, concerts, discussions, and readings are planned during the 36-hour convention, along with open role playing and board gaming sessions Traditional Balticon events including the art show, headed by Artist Guest of Honor Alyssa Winans, and the four-hour short film festival Sunday evening are on the schedule. The very popular science program offers multiple presentations on medical advancements, space exploration, and other technological developments.
For the first time, Balticon is supported in part by the Maryland State Arts Council (msac.org) through an emergency grant. “We are happy to have this help because hosting an online convention requires many additional resources,” said Steven Joel Zeve, the Balticon Treasurer. A GoFundMe fundraiser is being held to help make up for the revenue lost by holding a free convention.
Balticon is a presentation of the Baltimore Science Fiction Society, Inc. The BSFS building, in east Baltimore, houses a 12,000+ item library of speculative fiction books, magazines, and videos. Information on regular BSFS events can be found at bsfs.org.
(4) FAN IMPROVEMENTS. In the May 19 Financial Times, Tom Faber discusses game “modders.” He explains that a “mod is a fan-made alteration that can range from small graphical tweaks to huge overhauls in gameplay.”
The most frightening thing in Capcom’s new horror game Resident Evil Village is not the mutilated hand of protagonist Ethan Winters, nor the 9-foot tall Lady Dmitriescu with her razor-sharp fingers: it is Thomas The Tank Engine. Days after the game’s official release, members of the online modder community, who hack games to alter graphics and gameplay, have already offered a raft of ludicrous additions. including swapping every monster in the game with Barney the Dinosaur.
Thomas is special for gamers, though. Since a modder first swapped the dragons of SKYRIM for the cheery blue locomotive in 2013 (prompting legal threats from IP holder Mattel), he has been incongruously shoehorned into all manner of games. Most memorable was the mod that replaced Mr X, the mutant villain of Resident Evil 2, with a huge Thomas who stalks you with dead eyes, his theme tune jangling eerily.
…I believe that the books and stories we fall in love with make us who we are, or, not to claim too much, the beloved tale becomes a part of the way in which we understand things and make judgments and choices in our daily lives. A book may cease to speak to us as we grow older, and our feeling for it will fade. Or we may suddenly, as our lives shape and hopefully increase our understanding, be able to appreciate a book we dismissed earlier; we may suddenly be able to hear its music, to be enraptured by its song.
When, as a college student, I first read Günter Grass’s great novel “The Tin Drum,” I was unable to finish it. It languished on a shelf for fully 10 years before I gave it a second chance, whereupon it became one of my favorite novels of all time: one of the books I would say that I love. It is an interesting question to ask oneself: Which are the books that you truly love? Try it. The answer will tell you a lot about who you presently are….
… I want to return, however, to that childhood self, enchanted by tales whose express and sole purpose was enchantment. I want to move away from the grand religious epics to the great hoard of scurrilous, conniving, mysterious, exciting, comic, bizarre, surreal and very often extremely sexy narratives contained in the rest of the Eastern storehouse, because — not only because, but, yes, because — they show how much pleasure is to be gained from literature once God is removed from the picture.
One of the most remarkable characteristics of the stories now gathered in the pages of “The Thousand Nights and One Night,” to take just one example, is the almost complete absence of religion. Lots of sex, much mischief, a great deal of deviousness; monsters, jinnis, giant Rocs; at times, enormous quantities of blood and gore; but no God. This is why censorious Islamists dislike it so much.
In Egypt, in May 2010, just seven months before the revolt against President Hosni Mubarak, a group of Islamist lawyers got wind of a new edition of “Alf Laylah wa Laylah”(the book’s original Arabic title) and brought an action demanding that the edition be withdrawn and the book banned because it was “a call to vice and sin” that contained several references to sex. Fortunately, they did not succeed, and then larger matters began to preoccupy Egyptian minds. But the fact is, they had a point.
(6) ETERNALS TEASER. Marvel dropped a trailer for Eternals.
“Throughout the years we have never interfered, until now.” Watch the brand new teaser trailer for Marvel Studios’ “Eternals” and experience it in theaters this November.
… Also present, near the village of Brocton is an accurate 40-meter by 40-meter model of the area involved in the Battle of Messines Ridge in Belgium. It was complete with accurate contours, trenches, roads, railways, and an accurate model of the village of Messines. This model was re-excavated by archaeologists in 2013 and after laser scanning was covered with a protective membrane then re-buried because it was too fragile to be left exposed. The model was constructed by German prisoners held in a nearby POW camp and was used for training purposes. An information board now marks the spot….
One of the best known WWI occupants of the Cannock Chase complex was J.R.R. Tolkien, who both trained and lived locally while recovering from injuries sustained in France. Many people believe that several parts of the chase inspired scenes in the author’s Lord of the Rings trilogy….
…In 1943, Shaver wrote to Amazing Stories to tell the editor Ray Palmer that he had discovered an ancient unknown language called Mantong, the source for all human languages. Palmer, always on the lookout for ways to shill his magazine, got in touch with Shaver. Shaver submitted a manuscript to Palmer which Palmer rewrote and published the novella, titled “I Remember Lumaria,” in the March 1945 issue. The story introduced the evil “deros” to the science fiction reading public….
…Unlike most sci-fi anthology shows — like Twilight Zone or Outer Limits —The Ray Bradbury Theater has the most in common with Black Mirror for one simple reason: the vast majority of the episodes are written by the same person.
The Ray Bradbury Theater is literally what it sounds like: Ray Bradbury presenting TV versions of a bunch of his short stories. It’s the kind of stunt that seems almost impossible to imagine now, with the closest analog perhaps being Castle Rock insofar as Stephen King is probably the closest living version of Bradbury. It’s hard to find a short story writer more prolific and consistently good as Bradbury, especially when you go digging around in the sandbox of older science fiction. Bradbury’s stories don’t always make sense, but they’ve always got style and attitude.
(10) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.
[Compiled by Cat Eldridge and John Hertz.]
Born 24 May 1794 – Rev. Dr. William Whewell. (Pronounced “hew-ell”.) Master of Trinity College, Cambridge. Crater on the Moon named after him. Mathematician, Anglican priest, historian of science. Coined the words scientist, physicist, linguistics, osmosis, ion, astigmatism. Royal Medal for organizing thousands of volunteers internationally to study ocean tides. Clifton Fadiman in Fantasia Mathematica anthologized this poem. (Died 1866) [JH]
Born May 24, 1917 – Irving Cox. Five dozen stories in Amazing, Astounding, Cosmos, Fantastic, Future, If, Imagination, Orbit, Rocket Stories, Saturn, SF Adventures, SF Quarterly, SF Stories, Universe – to name just some of the prozines we’ve had. You can read ten of his stories from 1953-1960 here. (Died 2001) [JH]
Born May 24, 1925 — Carmine Infantino. Comics artist and editor, mostly for DC Comics, during the late 1950s know as the Silver Age of Comics. He created the Silver Age version of the Flash (with writer Robert Kanigher), Deadman with writer Arnold Drake and the Elongated Man (with John Broome). He also introduced Barbara Gordon as a new version of Batgirl. Infantino wrote or contributed to two books about his life and career: The Amazing World of Carmine Infantino (Vanguard Productions and Carmine Infantino: Penciler, Publisher, Provocateur. (Died 2013.) (CE)
Born May 24, 1928 – William Trevor. Whitbread Prize for The Children of Dynmouth, reviewed by Elaine Cochrane in SF Commentary 60/61, p. 26 [PDF]; two more Whitbreads; Hawthornden Prize; Saoi; four O. Henry Awards (not limited to U.S. authors since 2002). (Died 2016) [JH]
Born 24 May 1930 – Terri Pinckard. Stories in Fantasy Book, Vertex; wrote the Introduction to Womanthology (F. Ackerman & P. Keesey eds. 2003). Told the L.A. Times (3 Jun 99) that when we landed on the Moon “I cried. Science fiction writers were the ones who dreamed it.” With husband Tom Pinckard hosted the Pinckard Salon, which drew Ackerman, Bloch, Bradbury, Daugherty, George Clayton Johnson, C.L. Moore, Niven, Pournelle, Roddenberry, Spinrad. Dian Girard dedicated Tetragravitron (as by J.D. Crayne) to “Members of the Pinckard Salon”. Big Heart (our highest service award) to Terri & Tom jointly. (Died 2005) [JH]
Born May 24, 1947 — James Cosmo, 74. Genre work is fairly deep including appearances in films including Highlander, The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, The Seeker: The Dark Is Rising and Wonder Woman, as well as television series such as SS-GB, Terry Pratchett’s The Colour of Magic and the Game of Thrones. (CE)
Born May 24, 1952 — Sybil Danning, 69. Her rise to fame began with her role in Roger Corman’s space opera cult classic, Battle Beyond the Stars which he billed as his Star Wars. (No kidding.) She went on to star in Hercules, Howling II: Your Sister Is a Werewolf, a faux trailer directed by Rob Zombie titled Werewolf Women of the SS for Quentin Tarantino’s Grindhouse (I couldn’t make this stuff up!), the Halloween remake and finally she as in a horror film called Virus X. Series, She appeared in recurring roles of the The Lair as a vampire out for revenge. (CE)
Born May 24, 1953 — Alfred Molina, 68. His film debut was on Raiders of The Lost Ark as Satipo. He was an amazing Doctor Octopus on Spider-Man 2, and he also provided the voice of the villain Ares on the outstanding 2009 animated Wonder Woman. Oh, and he was a most excellent Hercule Poirot on Murder on the Orient Express. I know, not genre, but one of my favorite films no matter who’s playing the character. (CE)
Born May 24, 1960 — Doug Jones, 61. I first saw him as Abe Sapien on Hellboy, an amazing role indeed. To pick a few of my favorite roles by him, he’s in Pan’s Labyrinth as The Faun and The Pale Man (creepy film), a clown in Batman Returns, the Lead Gentleman in the “Hush” episode of Buffy and currently Commander Saru on Discovery. (CE)
Born May 24, 1960 — Michael Chabon, 61. Author of the single best fantasy novel about baseball, Summerland which won a Mythopoeic Fantasy Award for Children’s Literature. His other two genre novels, Gentlemen of the Road and The Yiddish Policemen’s Union, winner of Best Novel at Denvention 3, are stellar works in themselves. He was Showrunner for the first season of Picard but will be Executive Producer for the upcoming season. (CE)
Born May 24, 1965 – Watanabe Shin’ichirô, age 56. (Personal name last, Japanese style; apostrophe to indicate syllables “shin-ichi-rô”; circumflex to indicate o is a long vowel, also written oh or ou or oo – or with a macron, which this software won’t allow.) Co-directed Macross Plus; directed Cowboy Bebop, alternative-history Samurai Chanpurû, Space Dandy, Carole & Tuesday. Blade Runner – Black Lotusis expected in 2021. At the Yokohama (65th) Worldcon my host’s daughter was rehearsing The Magic Flute but none of my fellow gaijin are rehearsing Yoshitsune and the Thousand Cherry Trees. [JH]
Born May 24, 1985 – Isabelle Melançon, age 36. Drawings in Oziana and The Baum Bugle. Oz found its way into the Webcomic that Isa co-authors, Namesake – or vice versa. Here’s a sketch for Quibbling and even one for Hamilton. [JH]
Join us for a raucous evening of fun and merriment to celebrate a day of towel-carrying and all things, ‘The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy’.
We’ve teamed up with Stand up for Towel Day to bring you the very best sketches and segments from real events between 2017 and 2020. It will feature the very best sketches and segments from Stand Up for Towel Day’s short but rich history.
Limited edition Towel Day merchandise will be available during the event. Including a towel!
…Since 2017 Stand Up for Towel Day has provided a place to gather after a day of celebratory towel carrying for stand-up comedy, slam poetry, sketches, improv and more in homage to Douglas and his work.
For the second year in a row, we’ve teamed up with Stand up for Towel Day’s curator, Rachel Wheeley, and producer, Nell Thomas, to bring you the 2021 edition of the event.
This year’s programme, a pre-recorded event, will feature live footage recorded at real events from 2017 to 2020. It will feature the very best sketches and segments from Stand Up for Towel Day’s short but rich history. Thanks to Kevin Jon Davies, Douglas Adams documentarian and author ‘42 The Probable Ideas of Douglas Adams’ for making the footage available.
(13) HOLLYWOOD SINCE COVID. Guillermo del Toro’s next movie, scheduled for a December 3 release, interrupted production because of the pandemic.“Nightmare Alley: Release Date, Cast, Details” at IndieWire. The title caught my eye, because the book it’s based on was written by Joy Davidman’s first husband.
…The movie wrapped in December of 2020, and now, a year later, it’s headed for release on December 3 from Searchlight Pictures. Del Toro spoke about the film’s production during an IndieWire Live conversation over the summer. “We stopped the shoot a week before [the industry shut down]. We reacted super fast, we proposed the studio to stop as opposed to being asked to stop,” del Toro said. “That saved us. Nobody to my knowledge in the cast or the crew got coronavirus. We were roughly 45 percent in. We were literally in the middle of a great scene. We went to lunch and talked to the studio and when we came back we said, ‘Everybody leave your tools and leave now.’”
Here are nine things to know about del Toro’s latest thriller before it opens later this year.
A Noir-Tinged Storyline
Based on the novel by William Lindsay Gresham, the film centers on an ambitious young carny (Cooper) with a talent for manipulating people with a few well-chosen words. He hooks up with a female psychiatrist (Blanchett) who, it turns out, is even more dangerous than he is. The seedy story drops us into the demimonde of 1940s American show business, and introduces us to the sleazy denizens of a carnival filled with grifters, charlatans, and noir-like femme fatales.
(14) UNDER PRESSURE. John Scalzi wonders if we expect too much:
"Super Flower Blood Moon" is a lot to put on a single moon, I'm just saying, not every moon has to be an overachieverhttps://t.co/B8MtvR4NWI
…The 1996 “Space Jam” website is important in the way antique maps are important — not because they are necessarily useful tools for present-day navigation, but because they reveal the boundaries around which people’s lives were once oriented, and invite us to remember, or imagine, a world differently arranged.
Many years past its original relevance (of which there was never terribly much, this being the official website of the 1996 live-action/animated sports comedy “Space Jam”), the “Space Jam” website now serves as a virtual portal to the 1990s. The home page — a low resolution star-speckled black galaxy whose flat cartoon planets are slapped, like stickers, around the “Space Jam” logo — is not a nostalgic recreation. It is the real thing, beautifully preserved in the resin of digital time — a visual artifact from a less connected World Wide Web.
Today the internet is dominated by overlapping social platforms. But the “Space Jam” website, which existed before Google, harkens to an era when the web felt more like an infinite archipelago of islands to which one might surf in pursuit of one’s passions — or by accident….
Cora is indentured in the service of Hue, the creator and owner of time-exchanging technology. She is alive thanks to Hue’s monthly “payments”: on her own, she’d have only a few weeks left. She works as his bodyguard and assistant, extracting or injecting time from his clients. She is horrified by Hue’s predatory deals, but complaining means breaching her contract. However, when a single mother of two falls victim to his extortion, Cora’s leash finally snaps. She now has to choose between her future or the life of a stranger.
(17) VIDEO OF THE DAY. In the SPOILER-FILLED “Army of The Dead Pitch Meeting” on Screen Rant, Ryan George explains that the movie asks “What if zombies did everything?” and has “strong zombies, fat zombies, dumb zombies, and robot zombies.” Also, we learn that a group of mercenaries can carry hundreds of millions in $100 bills out of Vegas because they have backpacks!
[Thanks to John Hertz, Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, Martin Morse Wooster, JJ, Michael Toman, John King Tarpinian, and Cat Eldridge for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to contributing editor of the day Brown Robin.]
The finalists for the Premio Ignotus 2021 (2021 Ignotus Awards) have been announced by Spain’s Asociación Española de Fantasía, Ciencia Ficción y Terror.
They include works in Spanish translation by Ken Greenhall, Gwendoylyn Kiste, Brian Evenson, Joe Abercrombie, Becky Chambers, Ted Chiang, Stephen King, and Brooke Bolander.
Novela / Best Novel
Agujeros de sol, by Nieves Mories (Dilatando mentes)
Hambrientos y cobardes, by Ángel Vallecillo (Pez de Plata)
Inmóviles: Noche, by Juan José Díaz Téllez (self-published)
Se vende alma (por no poder atender), by Sergio S. Morán (self-published)
Tras esa montaña está la orilla, by Eva Cid (Amor de Madre)
Novela Corta / Best Novella
Astrales, by Eleazar Herrera (Cerbero)
El bosque de los cristales rotos, by Rain Cross (Suseya)
La última luz de Tralia, by Isa J. González (Crononauta)
Ojalá tú nunca, by Javier Miró (Insólita)
R?ha|Alma, by Caryanna Reuven (Cerbero)
Un mundo para el olvido, by Dioni Arroyo Merino (Nowevolution)
Cover of Igualtat de ritus, de Marina Vidal (Mai Més)
Cover of La única criatura enorme e inofensiva, by Sara H. Randt (Crononauta)
Cover of No matarás, by Héctor Rodríguez Asperilla (Titanium)
Cover of Renacer, by Laura María Rodríguez Sanz (self-published)
Cover of Vomitando mariposas muertas, by Samuel Pérez Arquellada (Matraca)
Producción audiovisual / Audiovisual production
Café librería, pódcast by VVAA
La cuarentena, programa de la editorial Cerbero
La TerMa, semblanza de una época, documental by Sergio Mullor
Las escritoras de Urras, pódcast by Maielis González y Sofía Barker
Lumak, pódcast by Ander Mombiela y Eleazar Herrera
Tebeo / Comics
Descanso Corto, by Laurielle (self-published)
La cólera, by Javier Olivares y Santiago García (Astiberri)
Matadero Cinco, by Albert Monteys y Ryan North (Astiberri)
No te serviré, by Irra (Spaceman Project)
Orlando y el juego, by Luis Durán (Diábolo)
Revista / Magazine
Círculo de Lovecraft, by Amparo Montejano y José R. Montejano
Historias Pulp, by María Larralde
La cabina de Nemo, by Pako Mulero Arenillas
Tentacle Pulp, by Francisco Javier Giménez Carrero
Windumanoth, by Álex Sebastián, David Tourón y Víctor Blanco
Novela extranjera / Foreign Novel
Baxter, by Ken GreenHall [Baxter] (translated into Spanish by Blanca Rodríguez, La biblioteca de Carfax)
Las doncellas de óxido [The Rust Maidens], by Gwendolyn Kiste (translated into Spanish by José Ángel de Dios, Dilatando mentes)
Los últimos días [Last Days], by Brian Evenson (translated into Spanish by José Ángel de Dios, Dilatando mentes)
Un poco de odio [A Little Hatred], by Joe Abercrombie (translated into Spanish by Manu Viciano, Alianza)
Una órbita cerrada y compartida [A Closed and Common Orbit], by Becky Chambers (translated into Spanish by Alexander Páex y Antonio Rivas, Insólita)
Cuento extranjera / Foreign story
“Exhalación” / “Exhalació” [“Exhalation”], by Ted Chiang (translated into Spanish by Rubén Martín Giráldez and by Ferran Ràfols Gesa, respectively. (Sexto Piso / Mai Més)
“El teléfono del señor Harrigan” [“Mr. Harrigan’s Phone”], by Stephen King (translated into Spanish by Carlos Milla Soler, en La sangre manda [If It Bleeds], Plaza & Janés)
“La rata” [“Rat”], by Stephen King (translated into Spanish by Carlos Milla Soler, en La sangre manda [If It Bleeds], Plaza & Janés)
La única criatura enorme e inofensiva [The Only Harmless Great Thing], by Brooke Bolander (translated into Spanish by Carla Bataller Estruch, Crononauta)
“Las ocho personas que me asesinaron” [“The Eight People Who Murdered Me (Excerpt from Lucy Westenra’s Diary”)], by Gwendolyn Kiste (translated into Spanish by Carla Bataller Estruch, Crononauta)
The Doctor Who: Alternating Current Blog Tour makes its final stop today at File 770! We feature Cat Eldridge’s review of the comic, and a gallery of interior pages.
Review By Cat Eldridge: First, you need to know that Doctor Who: Alternating Current is a sequel to Titan Comics graphic novel of the Tenth and Thirteenth Doctors battling the Weeping Angels and the Autons in London, A Tale of Two Time Lords: A Little Help from My Friends. After that first adventure together, the paradox of their meeting has caused history to go awry resulting in the Sea Devils having taken over the Earth. They first appeared in Doctor Who in the 1970 Doctor Who and the Silurians serial.
Now a Rose Tyler leads the human resistance, but as always there is more going on than is apparent. Can the two Doctors work together and bring reality back to normal? This is a Tyler centered story so we get a lot of detailed on Rose and Jackie, her mother. Alternative timelines are a bitch it seems. (Hence my use of a Rose Tyler) As always I’m not detailing the story as that’d spoil your pleasure on reading it. It’s a truly great Who story.
Jody Houser has given us a story of pasts that apparently never happened, and the futures that might never happen because of what is going on now, and she does ever so well. Her script does a spot-on job of making the dialogue sound like the characters di on the series.
I’m quite fond of the story here and Roberta Ingranata’s artwork complements it very nicely. I admit that I’d like to have seen some of the panels opened up a bit as some of layout seemed a bit cramped. Just my preference.
London Comic Mart, May 23, 2021 Royal National Hotel Russell Sq., London
By James Bacon: The London Comic Mart has a long history, in various guises, can be traced back to the Seventies, and it continued today. The lockdown beginning to ease has recently allowed venues to open up and welcome fans. It’s been 435 days since I walked into a scout hall in Pollokshields, Glasgow for the Commando Swap Meet, and the lack of interaction and engagement, and just comics, is telling.
I headed into London early. Once into the city, the streets were deserted, surely quiet on a Sunday morning, but as I watched a cyclist pedal down the wrong side of what is normally a brisk road, it is obvious that normality is slow to return here. But a small group of comic book fans had also made the trek in. Changes have occurred, the space normally for tour busses and vans maneuvering is now a courtyard with matted green fake grass, and plastic benches, so seating was socially distanced amongst the couple dozen people who were patiently waiting.
The queue formed, there were no cosplayers, no people running around offering hugs, no cheer when the door opened, these are collectors, of all ages, quietly on the mission, looking for comics, or cards or pops, and hoodies adorned with Venom, Cap Shields, Hunger Games and Star Wars were de rigueur, amongst some slick looking styles, and relaxed casuals. The wide diversity of London gets good representation at this event, while it’s also a destination for hard core European collectors, literally jetting in for the day. Or used to be.
There was a limit on how many people were allowed in, which was never met. One had to fill in a tracing form, masks were mandatory for those who can wear them, and hand san was in abundance. The tables themselves were much more spaced, an extra room had been utilised, and a number of tables were not where they once were, a whole island block no longer in existence, and more spacing. Many of the regulars were here, and there were dealers who were there who I had not seen before, but there were also one of two regulars missing, making me wonder and hope that they were OK.
If you felt there was someone too close, there was ample move away space.
Comics were of course in abundance, eight boxes at 20p next to some silver age, about 50 boxes at a £1 next to an incredible wall for of key titles, 40p, 50p, £850… all prices were catered for here, and I was astonished to see one dealer offering Fantastic Four 1, graded at 1.5 for £10,000. The first appearance of Catwoman, you can have that for four figures, while Star Wars comics from 2015, a pound, including number 1.
Usually it is a swarming chaotic mess of humanity, a little jostling, pushing and squeezing to get into the comics, but today, well today it is different. A new politeness had descended upon everything, people were patient, stepping away or back, giving space, checking in, and generally the extra space helped.
Dave Finn from Incognito Comics reported a brisk and positive trade, and he reckoned that business was similar to pre-Covid, but it was clear that people went in earlier, and with more focus, to get going. His wall, all colourful and full of the nice things had many gaps as the short day wore on.
It was amazing to watch, as a few comics would cost hundreds, and then moments later, a stack cost so little. There was some serious spending happening and many of the dealers had interesting comics on their walls.
Some of the dealers who specialise in recent comics sold cheaply (from the last six to eighteen months) were either not there, or those that were did not have as much as I expect. It was interesting, there was no sign of Far Sector, and no DIE, Invisible Kingdom, Monstress and only a couple of very recent Ghost Spiders. There was a Far Sector 1 on wall, at a fascinating price, but the Hugo constituency have chosen comics which have sold through, which are popular, and obviously in demand, as well as recognising the brilliance.
Variety in pricing was obvious, with so many thousands of comics at a £1 or less, it was easy to find one person selling at a few or fiver, and the same to hand, being moved on. Stock in shops or stock rooms, is not what is wanted, here, there was a keenness to move stock on. It was great to hear sharp London voices getting good deals, everyone, sellers and buyers happy, with the transaction, and to see knowledge and at times watch on, and see incredible bargains.
My purchase of the day was a Silver Age Captain America for a £1.
Everyone was just so nice, so grateful to be back, elbow knocks were to greet people, not to sharply squeeze in and look at comics, everyone thankful for being there, well, and of course enjoying the browse, the hunt, the chase, ticking off the wants, and taking in the comics. The outdoor bar filled up after lunch, and many like myself, moved on, headed off when it was time to do so, not hanging around unnecessarily.
The next Comic Mart is scheduled for 22nd of August, but the same team, Showmasters, will be bringing London Film and Comic Con to the Olympia in July, and with Christopher Eccelston and Fiona Shaw leading the dozens of TV and film guests, that is expected to be the next major event, in London. The full Showmasters team were here, welcoming and observing, taking it in, and It was nice to hear about future plans and the National Film and Sci-Fi Museum, which will open this summer.
