Review by Denise Kitashima Dutton: I’m always game for dark chocolate. Plus, I’m a sucker for hazelnuts (aka filbert, a name I absolutely love) in any form. So hello, combination of the two! Ghirardelli blends their premium chocolate with nicely minced nuts to create a bar that’s going onto my list of favorite candies.
This chocolate is chewy at room temperature. It’s a nice chewiness, without the waxy feel some lesser chocolate bars have. Substantial scattering of diced hazelnuts give each bite a bit of crunch to go along with that chew. (Note: putting the bar in the fridge gives it a snap that makes it easy to parse out equal squares, and gives the nuts extra crispness.) Ghirardelli makes no mention of the percentage of cacao in this bar, but as it’s in their “Intense Dark” line and the chocolate has a lovely deep color, I’d guess it’s over 70%. Could be wrong in that, though.
Each bar gives you eight 1×1″ squares, which makes parceling out individual nibbles very easy. Y’know, if you’re the kind that can stop at one square. The website says this bar is perfect for sharing, but screw that. It’s too yummy; before you know it, it’s gone.
Pairs well with wine, coffee, a nice oolong, or champagne. If you can stand to share, add squares of this bar to a charcuterie board. It’d make incredible s’mores, especially if you swap your graham crackers with shortbread or solid slices of angel food cake. What? With chocolate this good, you’ll want to head for the good stuff just to keep up.
Denise Kitashima Dutton has been a reviewer since 2003, and hopes to get the hang of things any moment now. She believes that bluegrass is not hell in music form, and that beer is better when it’s a nitro pour. Besides GMR, you can find her at Atomic Fan Girl, Movie-Blogger.com, or at that end seat at the bar, multi-tasking with her Kindle.
(1) ONCE ON HIS SHELVES. San Diego State University is home to the Edward Gorey Personal Library, which they acquired in 2009.
The Edward Gorey Personal Library is a special collection at San Diego State University library that comprises 26,000 books collected by Edward St. John Gorey (1924-2000). Over 9,000 catalogued volumes, or 35% of the collection are searchable. If you find a book you would like to examine from this collection, please contact Special Collections and University Archives at [email protected], or at 619-594-6791 or visit their service desk in Love Library 150. Books may only be viewed in the Special Collections area.
An American artist, Edward St. John Gorey’s publications include over one hundred books. His most well-known works include The Gashlycrumb Tinies, The Doubtful Guest and The Wuggly Ump. Many of his illustrations appear in publications like The New Yorker and The New York Times. Gorey illustrations and book designs enhance editions of works by Charles Dickens, Edward Lear, Samuel Beckett, John Updike, Virginia Woolf, H.G. Wells, Florence Heide and Peter Neumeyer.
And if you’d like to know “What Books Did Edward Gorey Collect?” then click the link. Lots of familiar names there. One jumped out at me – isn’t Franklin W. Dixon the author of the Hardy Boys series?
Police in Scotland said a reported armed man who led to a train returning to a station turned out to be a Star Wars cosplayer on his way to a comic book convention.
The man, known as the Grampian Stormtrooper on social media, was dressed in his Imperial Stormtrooper costume “with a Scottish twist” — a kilt — when he boarded a ScotRail train to Dundee at the Aberdeen train station.
The train returned to the station shortly after departing and the man was approached by a guard who escorted him to waiting police officers.
The cosplayer wrote on Facebook that he was “met by two firearms officers, three Police Scotland, two British Transport police, and had to chat to them all in an office.”
The man learned that he had been reported for carrying a “firearm” on the train, and he explained to police that his “blaster” was a plastic prop….
Shapers of Worlds Volume V will feature stories by Brad C. Anderson, Edo van Belkom, J.G. Gardner, Olesya Salnikova Gilmore, Chadwick Ginther, Evan Graham, M.C.A. Hogarth, M.J. Kuhn, L. Jagi Lamplighter, Kevin Moore, Robin Stevens Payes, James S. Peet, Omari Richards, Lawrence M. Schoen, Alex Shvartsman, Alan Smale, Richard Sparks, P.L. Stuart, Brad R. Torgersen, Hayden Trenholm, Brian Trent, Eli K.P. William, Edward Willett, and Natalie Wright.
Backers’ rewards offered by the authors include numerous e-books, signed paperback and hardcover books, Tuckerizations (a backer’s name used as a character name), artwork, one-on-one writing/publishing consultations and mentorships, audiobooks, opportunities for online chats with authors, short-story critiques, and more.
The campaign goal is $12,000 CDN. Almost all of those funds will go to pay the authors, with the rest going to reward fulfillment, primarily the editing, layout, and printing of the book, which will be published in January 2025 in both ebook and trade paperback formats
…The jury remains out on whether [director] Phillips can repeat the trick with Joker: Folie à Deux. After all, there is likely a very good reason that nobody ever made a sequel to Taxi Driver or The King of Comedy, in the format of a musical. But even if the new film fails miserably, it is likely to give us more intriguing ideas to take the comic book movie genre forward than any number of the new episodes currently being put together by new DC boss James Gunn, brilliant (in a common-or-garden superhero flick kind of way) as these may well end up being….
(5) RONDO NOMINEE FOR BEST ARTICLE OF THE YEAR. The deadline for the public to vote in the Rondo Awards is April 16 at midnight. Email votes (with your name & e-mail address) to David Colton, c/o [email protected].
(6) TURBOLIFT TO HIT BOTTOM ON LOWER DECKS. It is the end, my friend, says The Hollywood Reporter: “‘Star Trek: Lower Decks’ to End With Season 5”. (However, Strange New Worlds will get another season.)
Paramount+ has made two big decisions about its Star Trek universe.
Strange New Worlds has been renewed for a fourth season, whileLower Decks will end with its previously announced upcoming fifth season, expected to air sometime this year.
Lower Decks creator Mike McMahan and executive producer Alex Kurtzman posted a statement on the Star Trek website about the decision to conclude the animated series: “While five seasons of any series these days seems like a miracle, it’s no exaggeration to say that every second we’ve spent making this show has been a dream come true. Our incredible cast, crew and artists have given you everything they have because they love the characters they play, they love the world we’ve built, and more than anything we all love love love Star Trek. We’re excited for the world to see our hilarious fifth season which we’re working on right now, and the good news is that all previous episodes will remain on Paramount+ so there is still so much to look forward to as we celebrate the Cerritos crew with a big send-off. … We remain hopeful that even beyond season five, Mariner, Boimler, Tendi, Rutherford and the whole Cerritos crew will live on with new adventures.”
Your career has spanned so many incredible projects, even just looking at television, from Beauty and the Beast in the ’80s to Resident Alien now and Stranger Things coming up. It must feel like a radically different landscape now.
It does, and it’s been kind of a pleasure to ride that long wave. I have seen things, and certainly can remark upon the changes in all areas of film and television, but mostly TV, I think. I’m not sure the studio system really has much longer. Things are changing faster now than they ever changed in the history of Hollywood, in terms of product and streaming and just so many new jobs that are created because of what we get to shoot. People who are contact lens specialists and people who are nail specialists when you do a show like Claws, and intimacy coordinators, and the sensitivity training, the HR, and then there’s the actual filmmaking and the special effects and the Volume for all the special effects, which is now on Stranger Things. I’m like, “What the hell? Where am I?” It’s like, okay, we’ll do a scene and then [you hear], “ball and chart,” and it’s some special effects magic that they come in and do at the end of every shot. So yes, it’s changing.
(8) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.
[Written by Cat Eldridge.]
Born April 12, 1973 — J. Scott Campbell, 51. J. Scott Campbell is a comic books artist best known for his work on Wildstorm Comics. Scott actually got hired by Wildstorm by submitting a package that included a four-page WildC.A.T.S story. Before that however his first work was on Homage Studios Swimsuit Special at age twenty. It’d get a PG-13 rating today. If that.
J. Scott Campbell at the 2023 Comic-Con. Photo by Gage Skidmore.
So did you know that Marvel did a Swimsuit issue as well? It was an annual magazine-style publication from 1991 to 1995. One issue said “Take Wakanda Wild Side” on the cover. Really it did.
His subsequent work for Wildstorm included some illustrations in WildC.A.T.S Sourcebook and Stormwatch #0. I love the idea of #0 issues. Why so?
Now do you remember Gen13?He created the series along with Jim Lee and Brandon Choi as the series came out of Team 7, a series that Lee and Choi created. The series involved a group of spandexed clothed metahuman teens. I like that series but it wasn’t nearly as fun as Danger Girl, his next series.
That series followed the adventures of a group of female secret agents, made the most of Campbell’s talents which involved very well-endowed women, in the firm of three sexy female well weaponized secret agents — Abbey Chase, Sydney Savage and Sonya Savage and over the top action sequences.
Twenty years ago I read Danger Girl: The Ultimate Collection, which is a bit of an overstatement as it’s only two hundred and fifty-six pages long, but it’s still a lot of a fun. Yes, it’s still available.
Danger Girl has been continuously published since it was first came out twenty-six years ago, so there’s a lot of it now. I’ve read quite a bit of it over the years and it’s been pretty consistent in its quality. However only the first seven-issue series is illustrated by Campbell.
Campbell illustrated the covers to the Freddy vs. Jason vs. Ash six-issue limited series.
Eighteen years ago, Marvel Comics announced that he had signed an exclusive contract to work on a Spider-Man series with writer Jeph Loeb. Yes he did just covers, not interior work.
The potential use cases for smart contacts are compelling and varied. Pop a lens on your eye and monitor health metrics like glucose levels; receive targeted drug delivery for ocular diseases; experience augmented reality and read news updates with displays of information literally in your face.
But the eye is quite a challenge for electronics design: With one of the highest nerve densities of any human tissue, the cornea is 300 to 600 times as sensitive as our skin. Researchers have developed small, flexible chips, but power sources have proved more difficult, as big batteries and wires clearly won’t do here. Existing applications offer less-than-ideal solutions like overnight induction charging and other designs that rely on some type of external battery.
Now, a team from the University of Utah says they’ve developed a better solution: an all-in-one hybrid energy-generation unit specifically designed for eye-based tech.
In a paper published in the journal Small on 13 March, the researchers describe how they built the device, combining a flexible silicon solar cell with a new device that converts tears to energy. The system can reliably supply enough electricity to operate smart contacts and other ocular devices….
(11) PUT YOUR METAL TO THE BIPEDAL. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] Now, I’m not a huge sport fan but if I had to pick one then it’d be Rollerball. The original, not the new-fangled 21st century one. Great audience chant….
Generating robust motor skills in bipedal robots in the real world is challenging because of the inability of current control methods to generalize to specific tasks. Haarnoja et al. developed a deep reinforcement learning–based framework for full-body control of humanoid robots, enabling a game of one-versus-one soccer. The robots exhibited emergent behaviors in the form of dynamic motor skills such as the ability to recover from falls and tactics such as defending the ball against an opponent. The robot movements were faster when using their framework than a scripted baseline controller and may have potential for more complex multirobot interactions.
An analysis published in Nature has predicted that melting ice caps are slowing Earth’s rotation to such an extent that the next leap second — the mechanism used since 1972 to reconcile official time from atomic clocks with that based on Earth’s unstable speed of rotation — will be delayed by three years.
“Enough ice has melted to move sea level enough that we can actually see the rate of the Earth’s rotation has been affected,” says Duncan Agnew, a geophysicist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, California, and author of the study.
(13) VIDEO OF THE DAY. Zach and Kelly Weinersmith talk about — and demonstrate — why living on Mars is a bad idea. “The Mars crisis, explained by 2 experts” at Hard Reset.
[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, Chris Barkley, Cat Eldridge, Dan Franklin, Danny Sichel, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Steven French, Mike Kennedy, and Andrew Porter for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day BGrandrath.]
Members of the current Worldcon committee are only eligible for the Hugo Award if authority over it has been delegated to a subcommittee[1]. Glasgow 2024’s subcommittee members are Nicholas Whyte (2024 Hugo Administrator and WSFS Division Head), Cassidy, Kathryn Duval and Laura Martins.
Glasgow’s Hugo Awards Eligibility Research Team, composed of Claire Brialey, Arthur Liu, Mark Plummer, Regina Kanyu Wang, Alissa Wales, and Fergal Whyte, were not part of the subcommittee explained Nicholas Whyte when asked by File 770. Therefore, it is not a conflict that Arthur Liu and Regina Kanyu Wang are named as team members of Best Fanzine Hugo finalist Journey Planet.
Whyte added for full clarity, “Kat Jones was a member of the subcommittee when it was set up, and resigned from it only after nominations had already opened. We determined that she too remained ineligible. All five of us were listed on the ballot as ineligible for nomination, and I don’t think it needs to be a secret that when the votes were counted, none of us had any.”
Whyte also gave these insights into the eligibility research process:
As for the research process, the word “team” may be misleading. There was no communication between researchers (other than Claire Brialey and Mark Plummer, who worked together); they all worked independently and each reported directly to the subcommittee. Individual eligibility researchers did not research the areas in which they themselves (or their work) might receive nominations.
For your interest, the research began early, almost as soon as nominations re-opened in February. Researchers were given alphabetized lists of the top twelve nominees in each category, as voting then stood, as long as they had at least 60% of the votes held by the currently sixth-placed nominee. These lists were updated as votes came in. (Some of them changed more than others.)
Eligibility issues that were flagged by the researchers were referred to the subcommittee, and discussed and decided by the subcommittee alone. We in turn referred one eligibility issue in the Astounding Award (which is not part of the WSFS Constitution) to Dell Magazines, who duly ruled on it. In several cases, including the three cases where nominees were disqualified, we were also able to get the views of the relevant creators.
We are very grateful to the researchers for their work.
[1]Section 3.13: Exclusions. No member of the current Worldcon Committee or any publications closely connected with a member of the Committee shall be eligible for an Award. However, should the Committee delegate all authority under this Article to a Subcommittee whose decisions are irrevocable by the Worldcon Committee, then this exclusion shall apply to members of the Subcommittee only.
The Horror Writers Association (HWA) today announced the recipients of its Specialty Awards. These will be presented on June 1 during the Bram Stoker Awards® ceremony at StokerCon®2024 in San Diego, CA.
SPECIALTY PRESS AWARD
The recipient of the Specialty Press Award is Thunderstorm Books.
The HWA Specialty Press Award is presented periodically to a specialty publisher whose work has substantially contributed to the horror genre, whose publications display general excellence, and whose dealings with writers have been fair and exemplary.
The award was instituted in 1997, largely due to the efforts of long-time HWA member and specialty press aficionado Peter Crowther.
THE RICHARD LAYMON PRESIDENT’S AWARD
Brian W. Matthews
The recipient of the Richard Laymon President’s Award for Service is Brian W. Matthews.
The Richard Laymon President’s Award for Service was instituted in 2001 and is named in honor of Richard Laymon, who died in 2001 while serving as HWA’s President. As its name implies, it is given by HWA’s sitting President.
The award is presented to a volunteer who has served the HWA in an especially exemplary manner and has shown extraordinary dedication to the organization.
THE KAREN LANSDALE SILVER HAMMER AWARD
Lila Denning
The recipient of the Karen Lansdale Silver Hammer Award is Lila Denning.
In 2022, the Horror Writers Association renamed the Silver Hammer Award to the Karen Lansdale Silver Hammer Award in honor of the tremendous amount of work Karen did starting the HWA.
The HWA periodically gives the Karen Lansdale Silver Hammer Award to an HWA volunteer who has done a truly massive amount of work for the organization, often unsung and behind the scenes. It was instituted in 1996 and is decided by a vote of HWA’s Board of Trustees.
The award is so named because it represents the careful, steady, continuous work of building HWA’s “house”—the many institutional systems that keep the organization functioning on a day-to-day basis.
MENTOR OF THE YEAR AWARD
Lisa Wood
The recipient of the Mentor of the Year Award is Lisa Wood.
The HWA’s Mentor Program is available to all members of the organization. This popular program pairs newer writers with established professionals for an intensive four-month-long partnership. For new writers, the Program offers mentees a personal, one-on-one experience with a seasoned writer, tailor-made to help them grow in their writing and better market their work. For experienced writers, it is an opportunity to pay forward the assistance and encouragement other writers gave them when they were starting out. In addition, there is the added benefit of growing as a writer oneself through the act of teaching others. In short, the Program benefits all who participate, regardless of their roles.
Established in 2014, the Mentor of the Year Award recognizes one mentor in the Program who has done an outstanding job of helping new writers. The award is chosen by the current manager of the Program.
Review by Cat Eldridge: Ah, to visit John Carter and the inhabitants of Barsoom, Edger Rice Burroughs’ richly-imagined Mars. The characters in Robert Heinlein’s The Number of The Beast did so in their travels across the multiverse, and now the protaganist of Rainbow Mars does it. Well, sort of. Maybe. Possibly. Let me explain the confusion that I may have intentionally generated … Larry Niven has stated many times that he firmly believes that time travel is logically impossible — an utter and complete fantasy. So when retrieval specialist Svetz heads back from polluted future Earth in search of extinct animals, he tends to sideslip into fantastic, fictional worlds. And delightfully so in these stories.
In the short stories collected in The Flight of the Horse, he quests for a Gila monster and gets a fire-breathing dragon, seeks a wolf and retrieves an intelligent werewolf, goes after a horse and finds a unicorn with an exceedingly nasty temper, and looking for a whale finds Moby-Dick, complete with the ill-fated Captain Ahab and his harpoon sticking out of its side. It appears that either Svetz, who hates time travel, or his machine generate a reality straight out of the imagination every time he trips. Ouch. And sometimes quite literally ouch, e.g., when the unicorn tries to impale him. Or the dragon tries to deep fry him. Or the werewolf tries to eat him. Poor Svetz.
Under the command of Secretary-General Waldemar the Tenth, Svetz’s job was “simply” to travel into Earth’s past and retrieve exotic animals. (Far more exotic than he intended!) But Waldemar the Tenth is dead, and Waldemar the Eleventh has another pet project for Svetz to work on: the stars. The new Waldemar is interested in interstellar travel, but that’s pretty well beyond the means of an ecologically devastated 31st-century Earth. But Mars beckons — the intelligent Mars that they read about in the history books that remain from the 20th Century. Errr … historic records if one thinks that Edgar Rice Burroughs and Jules Verne are writers of history!
So Rainbow Mars ups the ante considerably by both space and time travel to explore Mars a.k.a. Barsoom in the deep past, before it was a dead world. As this is Barsoom itself, it’s inhabited by a menagerie of warring multi-armed sword-wielding Martians from Edgar Rice Burroughs, elements of H.G. Wells’ War of The Worlds (tentacled monsters and heat rays used as death dealing weapons), and lots of less familiar authors’ books. Svetz and his fantasy tripping companions are soon in really big trouble. Other problems that crop up include a gigantic alien tree extending into Mars’s orbit — a living version of the beanstalk elevator in Arthur C. Clarke’s The Fountains of Paradise. Unfortunately, this beanstalk breaks loose and falls to Earth!
Now I might argue that such a beanstalk on Earth seems a highly desirable situation, but there are hidden drawbacks, including the aforementioned multi-armed sword-wielding Martians and their long-running war!
The “novel” is not really a novel, as it actually consists of one novella, “Rainbow Mars,” and the short stories that were in The Flight of the Horse. But it’s delicious romp! You know that it’s going to be a great read if you keep in mind that the working title — which was better than the one used — was Svetz and the Beanstalk, and that it was originally going to be written by Larry Niven and Terry Prachett! That didn’t quite work out, but the result is still quite fine! And did I mention that Svetz discovers what the origin of the Martian canals was?
Though the book never made it to Audible or the audio streaming services, there is a delightful audiobook version. Michael Prichard is the narrator of this Books on Tape release done twenty-three years ago. Yes, it was an audiocassette tape.
I confess that someone uploaded a bootlegged version of it to the net many years ago and I listened to it off that recording. Prichard is a most excellent narrator and he brought Rainbow Mars to full life in his telling of it.
(1) IT PAYS TO BE A GENIUS OF COURSE. The Steampunk Explorer updates fans about the Girl Genius Kickstarter:
Call it mad science or just good storytelling, but Phil and Kaja Foglio are blazing through Kickstarter with their latest Girl Genius graphic novel. The campaign for An Entertainment In Londinium reached its US$50,000 funding goal within 24 hours and is now in six-figure territory. It launched on April 3.
Stretch goal rewards include the “Envelope of Madness” with bookplates, bookmarks, and other printed items. Backers will also get PDF downloads of Volumes 12 through 14. All Girl Genius titles are now available for 50 percent off from DriveThru Comics through May 5.
The campaign itself runs through May 1. See the Kickstarter page for more info.
At Eastercon we welcomed Stunt Liz, Nicholas Whyte, to the podcast for the first time, and he brought an excellent tartan rocket! We discuss Glasgow 2024’s April Fool’s Day joke, before moving onto the Hugo Award finalists, what we think of Telford, and chatting about a lot of British TV.
The trailer launch for “Joker: Folie à Deux” was no laughing matter for Warner Bros. The marketing for the studio’s upcoming DC sequel, headlined by Joaquin Phoenix and Lady Gaga, got off to a stellar start with 167 million viewers in its first 24 hours. The teaser trailer went online right after it debuted at Warner Bros.’s CinemaCon presentation in Las Vegas.
Sources tell Variety that the “Joker” sequel’s trailer numbers and social engagement surpassed that of the first “Barbie” trailer to become Warner Bros.’ biggest launch in recent years. The release was no doubt bolstered by Lady Gaga’s massive 150 million follower social media footprint. The trailer instantly became the #1 trending video on YouTube on premiere night and currently boasts 15.6 million views and counting on that platform alone, where it remains the #4 trending video nearly two days after its launch…
(4) ANOTHER DISNEY CASTING KERFUFFLE. [Item by Mike Kennedy.] OK, this has gotten out of hand. It seems like every time there’s a movie remake (especially a Disney remake) somebody has to find way to get all bent out of shape about casting. Much of the time, a racist way.
But this time they jumped the gun extra early. There’s a rumored casting of a live action remake for Disney’s Tangled. But, let’s be clear, there’s no further rumor of the remake itself, just the casting.
So now some people online are jumping all over the actress (Avantika Vandanapu) who happens to be Indian-American. Because reasons. Stupid, racist, reasons.
…Although Avantika’s rumored casting received criticism from some on social media, fans also showed support for the “Senior Year” actress.
“These comments are so awful. I’m so sorry girl you are perfect,” one Instagram user wrote, while another added, “She is my Rapunzel ❤”
“Never Have I Ever” star Maitreyi Ramakrishnan also appeared to weigh in on the online controversy, writing on X Tuesday, “And they finally woke up to realize it was all just rumors and the sources never existed. … And to the racists, y’all still need a hobby (for real)”…
(5) ELUSIVE BRADBURY COLLECTION. Episode 2 of Phil Nichols’ Bradbury 101, first aired in 2021, is devoted to a rare OP anthology.
DARK CARNIVAL is Ray Bradbury’s great “lost” book, one of his finest short story collections. But it’s out of print, and has been for decades! Find out why in this episode..
(6) TRINA ROBBINS (1938-2024). Trina Robbins, artist, writer and editor of comics, died April 10. The New York Times has a biographical tribute.
…In 1970, Ms. Robbins was one of the creators of It Ain’t Me Babe, the first comic book made exclusively by women. In 1985, she was the first woman to draw a full issue of Wonder Woman, and a full run on a Wonder Woman series, after four decades of male hegemony. And in 1994, she was a founder of Friends of Lulu, an advocacy group for female comic-book creators and readers….
…Ms. Robbins was responsible for the first publication of some notable cartoonists in The East Village Other, including Vaughn Bode and Justin Green, but she took particular pride in the women’s anthologies she edited and co-edited, and in their explicitly feminist content: It Ain’t Me Babe Comix, Wimmen’s Comix and the erotic Wet Satin.
She also designed the famously skimpy outfit for Vampirella, a female vampire who appeared in black-and-white comics beginning in 1969 — although her design was not as skimpy as the costume later became. “The costume I originally designed for Vampi was sexy, but not bordering on obscene,” Ms. Robbins told the Fanbase Press website in 2015. “I will not sign a contemporary Vampirella comic. I explain, that is not the costume I designed.”…
Prior to her career in comics, Robbins was a clothing designer and seller, and for awhile a pinup model. She was in contact with fandom in the Fifties and Sixties, and posed for the cover of an issue of Fanac, the fannish newzine, wearing a propellor beanie and with her feminine attributes strategically covered by a copy of Fancyclopedia.
Harlan Ellison and Trina Robbins at the 1955 Midwestcon.
(7) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.
[Written by Cat Eldridge.]
Born April 11, 1920 — Peter O’Donnell. (Died 2010.) London-born Peter O’Donnell was the creator of the Modesty Blaise comic stripalong with illustrator Jim Holdaway sixty-one years ago. She has no past as she doesn’t remember anything about her life before escaping from a displaced persons camp in Greece after WW II at the age of fifteen. She runs a criminal gang called The Network, and takes her last name from Merlin’s tutor. Her sidekick, of course she has one, is Willie Garvin, to give a bit of friendship in her life.
Peter O’Donnell from the rear dustjacket flap of the Archival Press edition of The Silver Mistress. Photo by Robert K. Wiener.
O’Donnell and Holdaway met when they worked together on a strip about Romeo Brown, a dashing private detective and reluctant ladies’ man, that ran in the tabloid Evening Standard for most of the Fifties. Blaise, too, would run here. It was quickly picked up globally running in the US, Australian, Indian, South African, Malaysian and other papers as she had a great appeal.
After Holdaway’s death in 1970, the art was by Spanish artist Enrique Romero. He would leave eight years later with three artists replacing him until he came back until the end of the strip with it still running in the Evening Standard thirty-eight years after it debuted.
Yes, it became a film which came just three years into the running of the strip. My did it piss O’Donnell off. Why so? Because he was hired to write the script which they then shitcanned and wrote a new one that had almost nothing to do with characters, the storyline or, well, anything else with the strip. Remember that friendship between her and Willie? Here it becomes full blown romance. And that’s just one of many, many changes.
A later film, Modesty Blaise, would be done as a pilot for a series that never happened and yet another film, My Name isModesty Blaise, would be done for yet another series that never happened. The one had O’Donnell as a consultant and he liked it.
My Name isModesty Blaise would be the only one with a British actress as the first had an Italian actress. Now Modesty wasn’t necessarily British as O’Donnell repeatedly said her nationality was deliberately not revealed.
I’ve not touched upon the plethora of books, short stories, graphic novels and original audiobooks that came of these characters in the part sixty years, and I’ll skip detailing them here.
So there you are. I did enjoy the strip when Titan, one of many who did, collected them in trade editions. I think there’s at least fifty trade paper editions available right now on Amazon.
(9) BE KIND TO YOUR WEB-FOOTED FRIENDS. This July, Marvel and Disney honor the 90th anniversary of Donald Duck and the 50th anniversary of Wolverine with an unexpected mashup adventure—Marvel & Disney: What If…? Donald Duck Became Wolverine #1.
Crafted by two acclaimed Disney comic creators, writer Luca Barbieri and artist Giada Perissinotto, MARVEL & DISNEY: WHAT IF…? DONALD BECAME WOLVERINE #1 is the latest comic book collaboration between Marvel and Disney following the What If…? Disney Variant Covers of the last few years and the highly anticipated Uncle Scrooge and the Infinity Dime #1 one-shot comic out this June. Fans can look forward to even more exciting crossovers between Marvel heroes and Disney icons throughout this year and next!
The comic will introduce Donald-Wolverine along with all sorts of reimagined Disney and Marvel mashups in a wild adventure inspired by one of Wolverine’s most memorable story arcs, Old Man Logan. In addition, the saga will revisit some of the greatest moments in Donald-Wolverine’s history including his time spent with Weapon X and the Uncanny X-Men!
Travel to the near future where chaos rules as Pete-Skull transforms Duckburg into a super-hero-less wasteland. Only Old Donald Duck can turn the tide, but he’s given up his battling days and prefers naps and his grandma’s apple pie over fighting villains. But when Mickey-Hawkeye comes knocking at the door with Goofy-Hulk at his side, Wolverine-Donald has to make a choice! Will a trip down memory lane change his mind to save the world? Or will the lure of the backyard hammock and a long nap keep him from popping his claws one last time?
In addition, Apple has struck a deal with Legendary Entertainment to develop multiple spinoff series set in the so-called Monsterverse….
…The official description for Season 1 states: “Following the thunderous battle between Godzilla and the Titans that leveled San Francisco and the shocking revelation that monsters are real, ‘Monarch: Legacy of Monsters’ tracks two siblings (Sawai, Watabe) following in their father’s footsteps to uncover their family’s connection to the secretive organization known as Monarch. Clues lead them into the world of monsters and ultimately down the rabbit hole to Army officer Lee Shaw (Kurt Russell, Wyatt Russell), taking place in the 1950s and half a century later where Monarch is threatened by what Shaw knows.”…
…An earthquake and an eclipse weren’t the only natural rarities that happened in New York City this past week. Did you hear about the sasquatch in Central Park? The makers of “Sasquatch Sunset” sure hope you did.
That’s because the sasquatch was a costume and his stroll through the park was a publicity push for the new film from the brothers David and Nathan Zellner. Opening in New York on Friday, the movie spends a year in the wild with a sasquatch pack — a male and female (Nathan Zellner and Riley Keough) and two younger sasquatches (Jesse Eisenberg and Christophe Zajac-Denek) — as they eat, have sex, fight predators and reckon with death.
Droll but big-hearted, the movie sits at the intersection of the ad campaign for Jack Link’s beef jerky, the 1987 comedy “Harry and the Hendersons” and a 1970s nature documentary, down to the hippie-vibe soundtrack.
…Is it a family-friendly movie?
KEOUGH It depends on the family. [Laughs] I think the audience is everybody. It might be scary for small children.
DAVID ZELLNER It’s rated R for nudity, which is the funniest thing.
(12) CATS AND DOGS LIVING TOGETHER. Meanwhile, Camestros Felapton has fled the country, leaving behind to distract pursuers “McEdifice in: MYCOPHAGE! Part 1”.
Cliff “Edge” McEdifice is MYCOPHAGE the intoxicating new thriller from Timothy the Talking Cat, Straw Puppy and the ghost of Michael Crichton.
It is the Year 1995 and Cliff “Edge” McEdifice (ancestor of future soldier Chiselled McEdifice) is entangled in a web of conspiracy, tendrils and webs.
Paramount Pictures officially announces the next Star Trek movie, which is scheduled to arrive in theaters in 2025. As reported in January, the next Star Trek movie isn’t the long-delayed, Chris Pine-led Star Trek 4 produced by J.J. Abrams, which remains in development at Paramount. Rather, the next Star Trek movie is an origin story directed by Toby Haynes (Star Wars: Andor) and written by Seth Grahame-Smith (Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter).
[Thanks to Andrew Porter, John King Tarpinian, Chris Barkley, Arnie Fenner, Kathy Sullivan, Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Steven French, and Mike Kennedy for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Andrew (not Werdna).]
Mokkil’s winning piece is called “No One Has To Know and Other Stories.” She is the author of the short story collection, A Happy Place and Other Stories (HarperCollins). Her new collection, Lawrence of Arabia and Other Stories, is forthcoming from Hawakal Publishers. Her work has appeared in the anthologies The Best Asian Short Stories 2018 (Kitaab, Singapore), The Punch Magazine Anthology of New Writing (Niyogi Books, New Delhi), and Things Left and Found at the Side of the Road (Ad Hoc Fiction, UK). She is currently based in New Delhi, India.
Her stories have been published in the Santa Fe Writers’ Project Journal, Quarterly Literary Review Singapore, Fictive Dream, Barren magazine, The Bombay Review, and Asian Cha, among other journals. Poems translated by her from Malayalam to English have been published in Indian Love Poems (ed. Meena Alexander, Everyman’s Library, USA). The flash fiction collection, Lightning Strikes: An Anthology of Flash Fiction by Fifty Indian Writers (Dhauli Books), edited and introduced by her, was published in 2024. Mokkil was nominated for Best Small Fictions 2019 and shortlisted for the Bath Flash Fiction Award. Her journalistic writing has appeared in The Hindu, Outlook, The Times of India, Open, and Asian Review of Books.
In 2019, the Speculative Literature Foundation and DesiLit co-sponsored the A.C. Bose Grant in memory of Ashim Chandra Bose, a lover of books—especially science fiction and fantasy. Bose’s children, Rupa Bose and Gautam Bose, founded the grant to honor the legacy of the worlds their father opened up for them. The donors hope that this grant will help develop work that will let young people imagine different worlds and possibilities. The A.C. Bose Grant annually provides $1,000 to South Asian or Desi diaspora writers developing speculative fiction. Visit speculativeliterature.org/grants for more information.
Launched in January 2004 to promote literary quality in speculative fiction, the Speculative Literature Foundation addresses historical inequities in access to literary opportunities for marginalized writers. The SLF is a 501(c)(3) non-profit, entirely supported by community donations. For more information, visit speculativeliterature.org.
The Speculative Literature Foundation is partially funded by the Oak Park Area Arts Council, Village of Oak Park, Illinois Arts Council Agency, National Endowment for the Arts and Oak Park River Forest Community Foundation.
It’s an award, says Brave New Weird anthology editor Alex Woodroe, avoiding any “Is it a breath mint? No, it’s a candy mint!” arguments. Tenebrous Press announced the winners of the second annual Brave New Weird Award on April 9, chosen from over a thousand submissions. They constitute the table of contents of Brave New Weird: The Best New Weird Horror vo. 2 which will be shipped in June.
BRAVE NEW WEIRD VOLUME TWO TABLE OF CONTENTS
Amitha Jagannath Knight – My Mother, The Exoskeleton
Anemone Moss – Everything You Dump Here Ends Up in the Ocean
Chris Kuriata – Family Not Going To Heaven
Daniel DeRock – Guest Opinion: We must take action regarding the [REDACTED] High School janitor
David Simmons – Food is Poison
Eirik Gumeny – A Balanced Breakfast
Elena Sichrovsky – Embryo
Geneve Flynn – A Box of Hair and Nail
Hussani Abdulrahim – The Library Virus
Ivan Zoric – Our Roots Will Dry Out in the End
Judith Shadford – Endless Yearning
Karlo Yeager Rodríguez – Up In the Hills, She Dreams of Her Daughter Deep In the Ground
KS Walker – River Bargain Baby
LC von Hessen – Transmasc of the Red Death
M.M. Olivas – The Prince of Oakland
Michael Bettendorf – As the Music Plays Groovy
Nelly Geraldine García-Rosas – Lullaby for the Unseen
Patrick Malka – Show Me
Perfect Kiss Strickoll – punctum (o baked alaska for you i am a former american)
Premee Mohamed – Quietus
Rachael K. Jones – The Sound of Children Screaming
Simone le Roux – The Man Outside
Thomas Ha – In That Crumbling Home
In addition to the Table of Contents, Brave New Weird has also honored a few notable individuals for their contributions to the New Weird spectrum:
And what is New Weird Horror? Tenebrous Press says:
We define New Weird Horror as a Horror subgenre focused on progress, creatively capturing themes and questions that bleed into fiction straight from the modern reader’s life and future. It acts as a challenge to break new ground in terms of form and content and to engage with the unknown. Beyond that, New Weird Horror will be defined by the winning pieces themselves.
This event will be a Town Hall with key members of the Hugo Admin and WSFS team from Glasgow 2024 who will be discussing the Glasgow 2024 awards process and timeline.
The event will be moderated taking questions in advance. If you wish to submit a question for consideration please do so below. There may not be enough time to cover all questions.
(2) IT’S OVER AT EVERMORE. [Item by Dave Doering.] KSL.com reports the final closing of our Disney-esque Evermore Park fantasy land in Utah. Sadly, Covid has claimed yet another victim. “Utah immersive fantasy park Evermore shutting down; property owner promises a ‘new attraction’”. I might hope that Brandon Sanderson would step up with another $35M campaign to create a Brand-a-land there…
Evermore Park in Pleasant Grove will not be forevermore.
Officials confirmed Tuesday the fantasy theme park is shutting down, citing challenges with its operating model and the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic as reasons for its closure.
Evermore Park was a year-round fantasy adventure experience where guests accomplished adventures or quests in a medieval and Victorian-inspired village.
Brandon Fugal, the property owner of the 12.75 acres Evermore Park is located on, said the tenants who run the “experiential-themed attraction” have closed the park’s doors permanently. Fugal owns Evermore Park Investments LLC, which owns the real estate and 27 “old-world” structures that comprise the park.
“That said, the real estate where Evermore Park was located is being repositioned to unveil a new attraction and project that is going to be announced,” Fugal said….
…”They have defaulted and have been evicted from the property,” Fugal said of the park’s operators. “In the wake of these challenges, I am confidentially working with a new enterprise that will be unveiling exciting new plans.”…
The Jon Snow spinoff of Game of Thrones is no longer in active development at HBO. Though the main series ended in 2019, the fantasy franchise is continuing with multiple prequel series based on the works of George R.R. Martin, including House of the Dragon and the upcoming A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms: The Hedge Knight. It was first reported in 2022 that a Jon Snow spinoff series, which would act as a sequel to Game of Thrones following Kit Harington’s character, was in development.
Now, during an exclusive interview with Screen Rant promoting Blood for Dust, Harington confirmed that the Jon Snow spinoff series is no longer in development. The actor says the project was previously in the developmental stage, but “currently, it’s not” and “it’s off the table” because they “couldn’t find the right story to tell.” Though it’s no longer in active development, Harington hopes they can revisit the project sometime in the future.
Gareth, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. If you could go back in time do you wish you had started your creative career sooner or later?
As far back as I can remember, I have wanted to be a storyteller. I studied creative writing at University and was fortunate to count Diana Wynne Jones and Helen Dunmore as early mentors. I always wrote, but real life and its accompanying financial pressures stopped me from pursuing writing as a career until the turn of the millennium, when I realised I was turning thirty and entering a whole new century. If I was ever going to give it a go, now was the time.
Once I’d made that decision, it took ten years until my first novel saw publication. Since then, I’ve written another eleven published novels, three short story collections, three novellas, and a non-fiction guide to life as an author.
Writing takes a lot of hard work and it helps if you’ve amassed a lot of experience that you can draw on to make your work authentic. I guess sometimes you have to put a few miles on the clock before you can write about the journey….
(5) SAMANTHA MILLS ONLINE EVENT. Space Cowboy Books will host an “Online Reading and Interview with Samantha Mills” on Tuesday, April 30 at 6:00 p.m. Pacific. Free registration at Eventbrite. Get your copy of the book here.
A loyal warrior in a crisis of faith must fight to regain her place and begin her life again while questioning the events of her past. This gripping science-fantasy novel from a Nebula and Locus Award-winning debut author is a complex, action-packed exploration of the costs of zealous faith, brutal war, and unquestioning loyalty.
Five gods lie mysteriously sleeping above the city of Radezhda. Five gods who once bestowed great technologies and wisdom, each inspiring the devotion of their own sect. When the gods turned away from humanity, their followers built towers to the heavens to find out why. But when no answer was given, the collective grief of the sects turned to desperation, and eventually to war.
Zenya was a teenager when she ran away from home to join the mechanically-modified warrior sect. She was determined to earn mechanized wings and protect the people and city she loved. Under the strict tutelage of a mercurial, charismatic leader, Zenya became Winged Zemolai.
But after twenty-six years of service, Zemolai is disillusioned with her role as an enforcer in an increasingly fascist state. After one tragic act of mercy, she is cast out, and loses everything she worked for. As Zemolai fights for her life, she begins to understand the true nature of her sect, her leader, and the gods themselves.
(6) PETER HIGGS (1929-2024). Theoretical physicist Peter Higgs, who won a Nobel Prize for his work on the mass of subatomic particles, died April 8 at the age of 94. The Wikipedia explains the background of his prediction of the existence of a new particle which came to be called the Higgs boson, It was finally detected in 2012 at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider. The discovery of the Higgs boson prompted Stephen Hawking to note that he thought that Higgs should receive the Nobel Prize in Physics which he did, shared with François Englert in 2013.
And that’s the background to this gag, which Higgs played along with:
A little nod to Peter Higgs, to mark his passing. I interviewed him at Cheltenham Science Festival a few years ago, and asked him to sign this silly note, which he was delighted to do! There are only two of these in existence (a certain other Irish comic has the other). RIP. pic.twitter.com/vgI6yx50FN
Born April 10, 1957 — John M Ford. (Died 2006.) Paul Weimer wrote our Birthday this time. (Cat Eldridge says, “I bribed him with chocolate.”)
John M Ford has, sadly after his passing, become one of my heart writers. Years ago I came across one of my favorite novels, period, The Dragon Waiting. Possibly one of the best alternate history novels ever written, and simultaneously introduced me to a new point of view on Richard III.
It was not until I started going to 4th Street Fantasy con, of which he is practically a patron saint, that I really have grasped just how wide and broad his work really is. Space Opera? Early Cyberpunk? Urban Fantasy? The writer who Ford reminds me of, today, is Walter Jon Williams: a ferocious and restless talent. Ford’s last and incomplete novel, Aspects, a steampunk-esque fantasy novel, only cements that sentiment.
Ford’s work is not for everyone. It is work that not only rewards close attention, it demands it in order to enjoy it. In that way think if we wanted to reconstruct Ford, in addition to Walter Jon Williams, we’d add a lot of Gene Wolfe as well.
Finally, Ford’s writing and style has more than a touch of the mythic and definitely the poetic. There is joy in reading his work line by line, be its setting or sharp dialogue. So to complete this reconstructIon, add a helping of Roger Zelazny as well.
Given my love of these three, now you see why Ford is one of my favorites. And taken from us all too soon.
John M. Ford portrait, January 2000. By David Dyer-Bennet. CC BY-SA 2.5
(8) COMICS SECTION.
Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal has a Berlitzkrieg – a bilingual pun. You’ll all get it – and you won’t be allowed to give it back!
(9) NEW BRUST. [Item by Daniel Dern.] Lyorn — Steven Brust’s 17th Vlad Taltos novel — is out! (I’ve just placed a library reserve) Published by Macmillan.
As I recall, Brust’s series can be read in any order, the most common choices between chron-published, or book-chron. So if you haven’t yet had the pleasure of reading any or all of the prior 16, you can start here and then backfill based on availability. Or alphabetical order, or by word count, up to you.
The Chinese company NetEase said on Wednesday that it had struck a deal to distribute titles from Microsoft’s Blizzard Entertainment, restoring access to popular video games like World of Warcraft for Chinese gamers.
More than a year ago, NetEase and Blizzard called an end to their long-running partnership when renewal talks turned testy, with both sides accusing each other of bad-faith negotiations. An uproar ensued among Chinese gamers, upset about losing access to a slew of popular titles from Blizzard’s parent company, the U.S. game developer Activision Blizzard.
NetEase said on Wednesday that it had reached the new deal with Microsoft, which acquired Activision Blizzard in a $69 billion deal in October. The two companies said they had also agreed to distribute NetEase titles on Microsoft’s Xbox game device….
Even Eli Roth can’t believe that two-time Oscar winner Cate Blanchett was willing to learn to twirl guns and shoot baddies in “Borderlands,” the director’s gonzo adaptation of the popular video game.
Roth noted that since people loved seeing Blanchett wield a baton in “Tár,” where she portrayed a fictional world-famous conductor embroiled in controversy, the filmmaker said he might as well “put a flamethrower in her hand.”
In “Borderlands,” Blanchett sports a fiery red bob and is surrounded by the starry ensemble of Kevin Hart, Jamie Lee Curtis, Jack Black and “Barbie” breakout Ariana Greenblatt. The story follows Blanchett as Lilith, an infamous outlaw with a mysterious past. She reluctantly returns to her home planet of Pandora and forms an unexpected alliance to find the missing daughter of Atlas….
This trailer is from a month ago – quite entertaining all the same.
The first trailer for Joker: Folie à Deux, the musical sequel to Joker starring Oscar winners Joaquin Phoenix and Lady Gaga, has been revealed.
The sequel sees Phoenix return as Arthur Fleck, the titular aspiring standup comedian turned villain, and Lady Gaga as Dr Harleen Quinzel, a psychiatrist assigned to treat Fleck at Arkham Asylum, who falls in love with him and becomes his accomplice Harley Quinn.
The title is a reference to a psychiatric syndrome in which a delusional state is shared by two people.
Unlike Joker, Joker: Folie à Deux will be a musical and is expected to include 15 numbers, Variety reported, with most of them being covers of pre-existing songs, including That’s Entertainment from the 1953 musical The Band Wagon, which was also famously sung by Judy Garland. The trailer features the 1965 song What the World Needs Now Is Love….
(13) SNL DOES SFF. From last weekend’s Saturday Night Live with guest host Kirsetn Wiig. One skit is fantasy – isn’t it? The other is definitely horror!
Meanwhile PBS Space-Time has looked at how eclipses helped the ancients work out the basic astronomy of the Solar System. They knew, from the mid-day shadow of an upright pole of known length measured at both ends of a north-south line many miles long, the curvature of the Earth, hence its size. They could then see from the Earth eclipsing the Moon the Earth’s shadow on the Moon and so work out the comparative size of the Earth to the Moon. Knowing the Earth’s size it was then possible to calculate the Moon’s size. Knowing the Moon’s size, and the size it appears to us, enabled them to work out the distance between the Earth and the Moon. Then using Venus eclipsing, or rather transecting, the Sun from different places on the Earth, they could then work out the distance to Venus….
(Meanwhile, those who have attended my bio-astronomy talks over the years will recall that some corals not only have daily growth rings (due to daily temperature changes) but also monthly bunches of rings due to the reproductive cycle triggered by tides which are caused by the Moon, as well as yearly super bunches outside of the tropics due to cooler winters. By looking at fossil corals tens of millions of years ago it is possible to work out how many, months and days there were in the year back then. And so it is possible to see that the Moon was closer to the Earth and orbited faster back then. Plugging in the distance between the Earth and the Moon it is possible to see how fast the Moon is retreating from the Earth and also how the Earth’s day has been getting longer… But I digress (if you want to know more you’ll have to ask me to give the talk at your con). Back at the plot you can see the 16-minute PBS Space-Time video here…
(15) THE STARSHIP TROOPERS VOTING CONTROVESY SOLVED??? [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.]Grammaticus Books takes a bit of a dive into Heinlein’s Starship Troopers to see how much of a right-wing military state it was.
A detailed look at all of the evidence and passages contained within Robert A. Heinlein’s seminal military-science-fiction novel, Starship Troopers, to determine once and for all who could vote in his Terran Federation. And who could not vote. Resolving the broad and widespread false beliefs so prevalent among the fandom and across the internet.
[Thanks to Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, John King Tarpinian, Daniel Dern, Dave Doering, Chris Barkley, Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, and Steven French for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Daniel Dern.]
The announcement took place April 10 at the International Book Fair in Québec after a meeting between the three finalist authors and high school students who have read the nominated works during the past academic year.
The other finalists were Le monde paranormal d’Odile by Ariane Charlan, and Équinoxe d’automne (La sorcière d’hiver, #1) by Gabrielle Dubé
A $2,000 scholarship is awarded to the winner – this is the second time Laurent has won.
The prize was created to raise a taste for reading among lower secondary school students and to introduce them, through a school activity, to the literature of science fiction and fantasy.
