(1) PROBABLY SOMETHING. I would use Patrick Morris Miller’s entire verse as the title if it wouldn’t break Jetpack. Here are the lyrics he posted in comments.
Something quite fannish, Something quite slannish, Something for everyone, A pixel scroll tonight!
from A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Consuite
(2) TAFF NEWS. Taffluorescence 4, downloadable from the link, has the latest on the Trans-Atlantic Fan Fund: (1) a two-vote correction to the TAFF results reported a couple weeks ago, (2) winner Sarah Gulde’s basic itinterary, and (3) financial information.
The two stories were selected for the competition’s top honors by Quantum Shorts judges Chad Orzel, George Musser, Ingrid Jendrzejewski, José Ignacio Latorre, Ken Liu, Leonardo Benini and Tania De Rozario from a shortlist of ten quantum-inspired stories. The winner receives $1500, and the runner-up gets $1000.
The People’s Choice Prize was chosen by a public poll on the shortlist, and includes $500.
In addition to the shortlist award, certificate and digital subscription to Scientific American that is awarded to all the finalists, the three winners will receive cash awards and an engraved trophy.
…The Universe of Xuya by Aliette de Bodard is one of the Best Series finalists for the 2024 Hugo Awards. As this point, there are two novels and 33 pieces of short fiction (4 novellas, 13 novelettes, and 16 short stories). Since the main connection between them is the setting, they can pretty much be read independently and in any order. Take a look at the author’s webpage about the series for suggestions on where to start and background information….
(5) WRITER BEWARE. Jeanne Veillette Bowerman explains “How a Book Really Becomes a Movie” in a guest post at Writer Beware. Here the introduction.
… The filmmaking industry baffles many—even those working in it. The reality is, there is no single way to get a film made. There are quite literally as many ways to break in as there are writers who’ve successfully done so, making scams harder to identify.
Sadly, when someone proactively reaches out to you, you have to assume it’s fake until you can prove otherwise. With scams abounding, the burden of proof has shifted. Due diligence has never been more important.
You do NOT need a screenplay to sell your book-to-film rights.
You do NOT need a sizzle reel or “cinematic trailer”.
You do NOT need storyboards.
You do NOT need mood boards.
You should NOT have to pay any upfront fees.
You should NOT be required to buy anything.
Let’s go through the traditional paths first, then I’ll share an unusual story to demonstrate how varied this process can be….
Corvus has snapped up Rose McGee’s “delightful” STEM rom-com, Talk Data to Me…
“Physicists Dr Erin Monaghan and Dr Ethan Meyer are bitter rivals,” the synopsis says. “They are each at the forefront of their opposing fields and competing for everything: grant money, lab time, government backing. But fate has lined up a meet-cute on the pages of sci-fi magazine Galactica. Erin’s short story and Ethan’s illustrations are paired for publication, and when they meet online as their alter egos ‘Aaron Forster’ and ‘Bannister’, sparks fly.”
A Doctor Who fan feature film described as a ‘passionate tribute to the classic ’70s and ’80s series’ is being filmed in Cardiff using local amateur actors and crew.
The movie titled ‘Dr Who meets The Scorpion’ is to be released as a non-profit film on YouTube purely for the pleasure of the fans to watch.
As of last month – 45 minutes of the 70 minute feature film is already in the can.
Now the makers of the movie have launched a crowdfunding campaign to raise the funds needed to complete filming…. [Dr Who meets the Scorpion at Greenlit]
…Are there any copyright implications in making something like this and how would you circumnavigate them?
There are literally hundreds of Dr Who fan films out there on Youtube. As well as Star Trek, Star Wars, James Bonds fan films. As long as you don’t try to make money out of something like Doctor Who that belongs to the BBC there has never been a problem. If you put it out on Youtube for free purely for the enjoyment of the fans then I don’t think the BBC is concerned. I’m not trying to compete with the BBC series and wouldn’t want to. How could we on our tiny budget? We’re trying to give a flavour of the 70s/80s series with a bit of the Peter Cushing Dalek movies thrown in as well. It’s my homage to the days of the classic series where the ingenuity of the designers faced with a tight budget produced some iconic sets and monsters out of nothing. Just like I’m having to do! That’s always been the charm of the classic series for me.
What is the plotline of Dr Who meets The Scorpion without giving away spoilers obviously?
The Doctor bumps into Jennie in a deserted warehouse at night, both there to find out more about the mysterious Scorpion company. They start to unravel a fiendish plot by the arch villain Scorpion and his right hand man Taylor which takes them from Earth to a planet far, far away! Thrills, spills, monsters, peril and adventure await them…and we couldn’t resist including the iconic Daleks as well!…
(8) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.
[Written by Cat Eldridge.]
Born April 14, 1925 — Rod Steiger. (Died 2002.) Let’s start with Rod Steiger’s best-known genre role as Carl in The Illustrated Man. The film is based off of three short stories from Bradbury’s The Illustrated Man released first seventy-three years ago, “The Veldt”, “The Long Rain” and “The Last Night of the World” with all three having been published elsewhere previously.
Need I say that I madly, deeply love this collection? I have it as an audiobook from Audible with the narrator being Scott Brick who does the Philip Marlowe series.
Rod Steiger being illustrated.
Steiger gives his usual commanding performance though I do think he was a bit much at times. Hostile and violent, it’s hard to feel any sympathy for him. That of course is the role. And setting aside the role, there’s that illustrated body. I wasn’t sure if it was his body that got illustrated or not until I actually found the image below which indicates that indeed he got inked before every filming session. Cool.
Let’s not forget the other two principal actors, Claire Bloom and Robert Drives, who put on magnificent performances as well. It was nominated for a Hugo at Heicon ’70.
He had several genre roles after that, all interesting.
A decade after this film, he’s in The Amityville Horror as Father Francis ‘Frank’ Delaney, a rather great role.
He’s Dr. Phillip Lloyd in The Kindred. Hey, it has a tentacled baby in it. Need I say more?
In Tim Burton’s Mars Attacks! he is a United States Army General who did not trust the Martians, and advised nuclear warfare against them, an action which that is not allowed by President Dale.
He sank his teeth, no I couldn’t resist into his next role as Dr. Van Helsing, leader of Van Helsing’s Institute of Vienna in Modern Vampires (also known as Revenant).
Finally he’s in an Arnold Schwarzenegger film, End of Days, a horror film about a young woman who is chosen to bear the Antichrist. He’s Father Kovac here.
(10) ALSO KNOWN AS. Rich Horton has put together a “Pseudonyms Quiz” for readers of Strange at Ecbatan.
…Most of these questions are about writers, but there are some from the film world, one singer, and one more politically-oriented individual. I’ll have answers in a couple of days. If you wish, leave your guess in the comments….
I got 11 out of 16, greatly aided by the hints that Horton sprinkled along the way. Not bad, but I expect to hear from Filers who have run the table.
…While the folks behind the Dune: Part Two bucket (probably) didn’t intend for people to view it in a lewd way, Marvel Studios has decided to take the idea and run with it for Deadpool & Wolverine. Kevin Feige took the stage at CinemaCon today during Disney’s presentation and revealed the movie will have an intentionally risqué popcorn bucket.
“Deadpool & Wolverine is getting a popcorn bucket which will be intentionally crude and lewd. #CinemaCon,” ComicBook.com‘s Brandon Davis shared on Twitter while attending the presentation…
(12) GRADE INFLATION. [Item by Mike Kennedy.] This Variety article about movies presented at industry-insider CinemaCon is packed with information on upcoming releases. But it’s hard to take their overall conclusions too seriously since none of the companies’ slates received a grade below a B-. “CinemaCon Winners and Losers: ‘Gladiator 2,’ ‘Wicked,’ ‘Deadpool 3’”.
Hollywood decamped for Las Vegas this week for CinemaCon, looking to reassure movie theater owners and executives that they had what it takes to keep audiences flocking to cinemas through 2024 and beyond. And despite odes to the magic of the big screen experience, there was a whiff of desperation in the artificially-oxygenated, cigarette-perfumed air of Caesars Palace, where the annual exhibition trade show takes place.
That’s because the box office hasn’t recaptured its pre-pandemic stride — studios estimate that roughly 15% to 20% of frequent moviegoers have yet to resume their old entertainment habits now that COVID has dissipated. Plus, the labor strikes that consumed the media industry for much of the previous year as actors and writers hit the picket lines resulted in production delays that left theaters with fewer movies to hawk on their marquees….
….After four days filled with hours-long pitches to tease blockbuster hopefuls and big gambles, Variety has assessed the studio presentations that may have missed the mark or could just salvage the struggling box office….
(13) STIFFED AGAIN. In Morecambe & Wise’s 1980 Christmas Special, Peter Cushing makes another attempt to get the money he’s owed for appearing in the M&W show in the early 70’s
What happened to the Night Gallery paintings? Night Gallery co-author Jim Benson reveals the strange and sometimes sad fate of these classic, and valuable, TV artifacts. The fate of the Night Gallery paintings has always been shrouded in mystery–until now!
[Thanks to Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Steven French, Ersatz Culture, Kathy Sullivan, Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, John King Tarpinian, and Chris Barkley for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Patrick Morris Miller.]
The finalists for the 2024 Colorado Book Awards have been announced. Awards are presented in 16 categories by Colorado Humanities to celebrate the accomplishments of Colorado’s outstanding authors, editors, illustrators, and photographers.
The winners will be announced on June 21, 2024.
Works of genre interest include —
SCIENCE FICTION/FANTASY
Silenced by Ann Claycomb
Not Quite Dead Geniuses at Large on an Angry Planet by R. Gary Raham
Dark Moon Shallow Sea by David R Slayton
SHORT STORY
“Uranians” by Theodore McCombs
ANTHOLOGY
Stories of the Reconvergence by Angie Hodapp and Josh Viola
(1) MURDERBOT THEMES. Martha Wells has posted the text of the “Jack Williamson Lecture 2024” she delivered on April 12 in Portales, NM. Here are the opening paragraphs:
I’ve always been drawn to non-human characters, both as a reader and a writer. I’ve been writing them for most of my career. From Kade Carrion, the daughter of the Queen of Air and Darkness, in my first novel The Element of Fire, through the post-human Krismen in City of Bones, to my ant-lion-lizard-dragon-bee people in the Books of the Raksura series. But Murderbot was my first machine intelligence.
There are a lot of people who viewed All Systems Red as a cute robot story. Which was very weird to me, since I thought I was writing a story about slavery and personhood and bodily autonomy. But humans have always been really good at ignoring things we don’t want to pay attention to. Which is also a theme in the Murderbot series.
(Here’s an aside. (I do asides a lot, because Murderbot’s way of thinking was based on my own brain, except my attention span is a lot more limited.) One of the major publication reviews for Artificial Condition wondered why Murderbot was so wary of humans considering they were all so nice to it. That was also the novella where one of the characters was a ComfortUnit, which Murderbot called a sexbot, but I don’t know, maybe that was too subtle. So I’m not exaggerating about the way some readers ignore the fact that it was a story about enslaved people.)…
Varada Sethu will join Doctor Who as one of the Doctor’s two companions for Ncuti Gatwa’s second series in the role, it has been confirmed.
She will appear onscreen in 2025, alongside the former Coronation Street actor Millie Gibson after speculation over her character Ruby Sunday’s future on the sci-fi show.
Sethu, who recently appeared in the Disney+ Star Wars series Andor, said it was an honour to be part of the long-running BBC series.
She said: “I feel like the luckiest person in the world. It is such an honour to be a part of the Whoniverse, and I’m so grateful to the whole Doctor Who family – because that is what they are – for welcoming me with open arms and making me feel so at home.
…Fanboys will have to wait until San Diego Comic Con to see footage from Marvel Studios‘ 2025 release Captain America: Brave New World, but exhibitors do not. On Thursday during Disney‘s closing CinemaCon session, the studio showed off the new Anthony Mackie movie that picks up after the events of the 2021 Disney+ series The Falcon and the Winter Soldier. In that series, Sam Wilson takes over the shield left behind by the late Steve Rogers (Chris Evans)….
… In the clip, Harrison Ford’s POTUS wants Sam Wilson to rebuild the Avengers. He’s impressed what the hero did down in Mexico. However, Wilson wonders what happens if they disagree on how to manage the new team. Next scene: Ford is making a presentation to a room full of authorities. However, a couple of people in the crowd become possessed — Carl Lumbly’s Isaiah Bradley and a general — and turn on the crowd, in particular Ford’s character. A la Air Force One, he’s a tough POTUS and punches the military guy in the face….
(4) SUNDAY MORNING TRANSPORT. “I Am Not the One Who Gets Left Behind” by Eric Smith is a free read at Sunday Morning Transport to inspire new subscriptions.
When I can smell my wife’s apple cinnamon French toast, I know the monsters are outside.
I peer out of our third-floor window to the darkened street below, and for a second, just a second, I can almost taste it again, but I know it’s all a lie. A trick. I lost my sense of smell after hitting my head in a car accident years ago. I’ve made it too long, and they’re not gonna get me….
…It’s taken a quarter of a century for Farscape to achieve the respect and appreciation that it boasts today. At launch, Sci Fi the channel was still growing so if you didn’t have basic cable TV that carried the network, there was no other way to access the series. But for those who had access and loved unique sci-fi storytelling, Farscape was like discovering a tingly aura morph.
Brian Henson told SYFY WIRE that it’s been such a singular experience to watch the series go from niche audience, to convention darling and now well-respected series by both critics and audiences.
“It’s so interesting because we live in an industry where I’ve heard year after year after year, that you know you have a hit after the opening night. In my company, that has been 100% not true,” Henson laughed. “Well, I guess the first Muppet Movie was a hit on the first night. But other than that, everything grew on people because what we do is always very original. And that means nobody knows what to expect which always takes longer to find a fan base. And the fan base of Farscape just gets bigger and bigger.”…
The magical world of Oz arrives to the streets of your city in the form of an outdoor escape room-style experience.
You will use your phone to follow hidden clues, solve witty puzzles and complete fun challenges as you walk around the city.
Follow the story of the iconic team of misfits trying to escape from Oz before the witch has her way! The event is entirely based on the original The Wonderful Wizard of Oz novel by L. Frank Baum.
You can play at your own pace or against the clock to compete with friends or hundreds of other teams parading their fantastic costumes (wearing costumes is optional at the event).
(7) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.
[Written by Cat Eldridge.]
Born April 13, 1950 — Ron Perlman, 74. Hellboy of course as we all well know. I was surprised that the Hellboy movie wasn’t nominated for a Hugo but Hellboy II: The Golden Army was at Anticipation. Both are excellent in different ways.
Ron Perlman was in my opinion the perfect performer to be Hellboy. Not only did he have the physicality to pull off the role but he had the presence to pull off that role even though he was under Harbour’s makeup prosthetics to the point that he had to express himself by overcoming the limitations that those prosthetics placed upon his natural facial expressions. And he did that magnificently.
Of course his voice was a major aspect of it. That deep, resonating voice. Perfect for a demon that liked a lot of cats. He used that voice later when there were two Hellboy animated films and a short, all quite well done.
Everything about him worked here. The outfit, the gun, the cigar, his backstory. Yes, I know it all came from Mike Mignola but getting it to the screen that way was amazing, it really was. And I have read all of the all Hellboy stories up to the last decade when it stopped really being interesting though I did keep reading the Hellboy and the B.P.R.D. series as I think that really fantastic.
The movie was likewise fantastic as I thought it was just perfect with everything being stellar. Well almost. I wasn’t thrilled by the Tom Manning character but I’m fairly sure that I wasn’t supposed to be. So I can’t count how many times I’ve seen it, at least a half dozen now.
Hellboy II: The Golden Army was excellent though a quieter film if that’s the right word for it. The absolute highlight here is the spectacular Goblin Market. I’ve not looked to see but is this based off a particular Mignola graphic novel?
So now for other genre work. I’m only including that where he’s in makeup as I’ll be including images of him in each of those makeups.
He was in The Island of Doctor Moreau film of the same name as the story by H. G. Wells. His character was a juicy role indeed, the Sayer of the Law, a blind sheep/goat/human hybrid who is the priest figure among the hybrids.
He’s Deiter Rheinhart, a pureblood vampire and a member of the Bloodpack, a group of vampires specially trained by the House of Damaskinos to hunt Blade in Blade II. Need I say he comes to a bad end?
He’s the Reman Viceroy in Star Trek: Nemesis. Reman Viceroy was the title of Romulan Praetor Shinzon’s Reman adviser, Vkruk.
And of course, there’s the beloved by many Vincent in the Beauty and the Beast series. Loved the series, wasn’t at all fond of the way that they wrapped it up.
… Creature Comforts is a wonderfully inventive adult stop-motion comedy mockumentary franchise created by Nick Park and Aardman Animations. It originated with Park and Aardman’s hilarious, Oscar-winning 1989 animated short film of the same name, which matched animated zoo animals with voices of people talking about their homes, making it appear as if the animals were being interviewed about their living conditions. The film later became the basis of a series of television advertisements for electricity boards in the United Kingdom, and in 2003, a television series in the same style was released.
“Things We Love is similar in that there was no script, so you don’t know exactly where you’re going with the short until you start to interview people,” shares Webber. “We got some lovely warmth, comedy, and natural conversation. We started with only a few questions and then let the conversation go where it wanted to go, keeping an ear out for possible animated scenarios or animals that would be a good fit for conveying what’s being said and who’s saying it.”
Aardman has created six short films in total for the BBC’s Things We Love campaign, transforming the interviewees into Claymation animals, from pigeons to hamsters. …The sixth and final short – which centers on an older and younger brother as mice – [was released] Saturday, April 6.
[Thanks to Chris Barkley, Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Robin Anne Reid, Lise Andreasen, Kathy Sullivan, Steven French, Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, and John King Tarpinian for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day OGH.]
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.
