Pixel Scroll 3/5/24 But The Pixels We Climbed Were Just Shoggoths Out Of Time

(1) COMING IN FOR A LANDING. Los Angeles Magazine tells why “George Lucas’ Billion Dollar Museum Is About Way More Than ‘Star Wars’”. A year ago this design looked unique. But today? I bet you can guess what building it reminds me of now.

We’re still maybe a year out from the grand opening of the new museum created by film director George Lucas and his wife, executive Melody Hobson. But anyone visiting the Coliseum, Natural History Museum, USC, or riding the Expo Line has seen the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art rising above Exposition Park. The absolutely massive structure by Beijing-based architect Ma Yansong encloses some 300,000 square feet over a building ranging from three and five floors set atop an underground parking garage (with 600 more spaces than the surface lot the building replaced) all nestled in a green garden….

Artist’s rendering of Lucas Museum of Narrative Art

(2) A SHORE THING. A trailer has dropped for The Wild Robot. Arrives in theaters on September 20.

The epic adventure follows the journey of a robot—ROZZUM unit 7134, “Roz” for short — that is shipwrecked on an uninhabited island and must learn to adapt to the harsh surroundings, gradually building relationships with the animals on the island and becoming the adoptive parent of an orphaned gosling.

(3) LEARNEDLEAGUE SFF QUESTION. [Item by David Goldfarb.] It’s the hundredth season of LearnedLeague. The first question of match day 15 asked us:

“What name is the last word uttered in the final installment of the Star Wars sequel trilogy from 2019, as well as the last word of the film’s title?”

Way to nerf the question with that last clause, eh? Although even with that, the question had a 67% get rate, with 12% giving the most common wrong answer of “Jedi”. (Presumably thinking of the second movie in the trilogy.)

My opponent quite rightly assigned me 0 points for this one, as did I for him.

(4) HANDS (OR LEGS) UP FOR “YES”? NO? [Item by Mike Kennedy.] Is the giant spider in Netflix’s Spaceman real or just a figment of the title character’s imagination? The main creatives each have an answer but it may not be your answer. Beware — spoilers ahead.

There’s an obvious question at the heart of Spaceman, Netflix’s science fiction movie where Adam Sandler’s forlorn astronaut character spends half the story talking to a tennis ball communing with a giant alien spider that he names Hanuš. But even without watching the movie, viewers may wonder: Is Hanuš actually real?

Normally, when a movie revolves around this kind of question, the director and stars hedge when asked for their opinions. For instance, No One Will Save You writer-director Brian Duffield has been clear that he wants viewers to interpret that film’s startling ending in whatever way they think fits best, without his input. Andrew Haigh has been careful about weighing in on the controversial ending of All of Us Strangers. And that’s entirely reasonable — often filmmakers want to keep viewers guessing, thinking, debating, and interpreting.

But not always. Polygon couldn’t resist asking Spaceman director Johan Renck and stars Adam Sandler and Paul Dano what they think about the movie’s central debate point — and we were surprised at how definitive their answers were. We’ll get into the details after a spoiler break….

(5) MPSE GOLDEN REEL AWARDS. The Motion Picture Sound Editors presented their Golden Reel Awards on March 3. Here are the winners of genre interest:

EFFECTS & FOLEY

  • Oppenheimer

DIALOGUE & ADR

  • Oppenheimer

ANIMATION

  • Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse

(6) IN THE YEAR 2024. “Plane commutes, world peace and 100-year-old predictions about 2024” at USA Today.

Well, we’re finally here. Is this the future that you envisioned?

Nearly 100 years ago, a group of visionaries dared to imagine what life would be like in 2024. Some of their prophecies fell woefully short while others proved to be strangely accurate. 

Join us now as we gaze into that crystal ball from 1924….

A growing problem

Arthur Dean, whose parental advice column appeared in newspapers across the country, expressed concerns about American dietary habits.

“I sometimes wonder what our stomachs will look like and be like 100 years from now,” he wrote. “Will we have any teeth at all? Will there be any color on our face except paint? Will the men have any height to speak of or will they be all girth? Will people have mostly an east and west appearance – all latitude and lassitude and no longitude?”

(7) SFWA ESTATES LEGACY PROGRAM. The Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers Association has informed members that Mishell Baker is stepping down from her lead position on the Estates Project but will remain available for consultation. Going forward, the remaining Estates Project volunteers will cover her duties as needed.

Mishell is a winner of the Kevin J. O’Donnell Service to SFWA Award, and she served as the primary contact for SFWA’s Estate Project since 2016. She liaised with publishers interested in reprinting works by science fiction and fantasy authors who are no longer with us and acted as an intermediary for individual heirs who wished to keep their contact information confidential. Mishell gained a well-deserved reputation for handling these communications with consistency and sensitivity, providing help in sometimes difficult and confusing situations.  

The Estates-Legacy Project wishes to thank Mishell for her many years of exceptional service on behalf of writers, their heirs, and the readers now enjoying the work of past masters as a result of her efforts.

(8) RICHARD BOWES (1944-2023). In “Richard Bowes—A Remembrance” at Uncanny Magazine, Lynne M. Thomas and Michael Damian Thomas, Christopher Barzak, Matthew Cheney, Sam J. Miller, and Matthew Kressel share their memories and feelings about Bowes, who died December 24. Here is an excerpt fro Kressel’s segment:

I’m fairly certain I met Rick Bowes at a Fantastic Fiction at KGB reading on November 15, 2006. That night, Lucius Shepard and Catherynne Valente were reading. This may seem awfully specific, but I have proof. Ellen Datlow captured this moment in a photo that resides on her Flickr stream. For a Halloween party I’d bleached my hair and dressed up as Roy Batty from Blade Runner. In the photo, Rick leans in, hands pressed like a sage, telling me something with authority, while I, with my Billy-Idol-blonde hair, listen rapt. (In the background, Rajan Khanna, whom in this moment I have yet to befriend, stares at the camera.) And this is how I will remember Rick. Telling stories. His depth of knowledge always astounded me. Right away, I knew I was in the presence of a sharp mind….

(9) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

Born March 5, 1951 Margaret Astrid Lindholm Ogden, 73. Let’s talk about Margaret Astrid Lindholm Ogden who writes under the pen names of Megan Lindholm and Robin Hobb. Thirty-six years ago at the age of thirty, as Megan Lindholm, her second novel, a fantasy set in Seattle was published. That was the extraordinarily excellent Wizard of the Pigeons, a novel that bring a smile to the face of even the Suck Fairy. 

In a sense, it is a direct evolution from her fiction as children’s writer which published in magazines as Jack and JillHighlights for Children and Humpty Dumpty as she notes. Her Robin Hobb persona, she claims is a little more gentle than her Meghan Lindholm persona which, as she told a Bookseller interviewer, is “a little more snarky, a little more sarcastic, a little less optimistic, less emotional”.

So let’s stay with her writing under the Lindholm name. Her first writing as that persona was short fiction was in 1979, “Bones for Dulath”, followed in 1980 by “The Small One” and in 1981 by “Faunsdown Cottage”. She’s written (and coauthored) twenty-six stories exclusively as Lindholm. That includes five works in Emma Bull and Will Shetterly’s Laivek franchise, some co-written with Stephen Brust or Gregory Frost. 

Lindholm’s first novel, Harpy’s Flight, was published forty-one years as ago, and was the first in her Windsingers series about the characters Ki and Vandien, and, yes, I like these novels a lot. 

Now remember these Birthdays are, if I choose, are what I’ve read by a given writer and this is what I’m doing here as I’ve read enough her to be reasonably knowledgeable about her.

The final novel by her that I’ve read is the one she did with Stephen Brust, The Gypsy. It’s based on Romany folklore, and it’s more or less a mystery. It got its own soundtrack courtesy of Boiled in Lead, vocals by Adam Stemple, son of Jane Yolen. Superbly crafted work. 

So now her other persona, Robin Hobb, and may I now say that I like both of the creators that she choose to be? Really I do.

Her first work as Hobb was the Farseer trilogy, narrated in first person, my favorite way to experience this sort of fiction, involves  FitzChivalry Farseer, illegitimate son of a prince. Great character, ever better series.  The first volume of the trilogy, Assassin’s Apprentice, sets up them well.

Ok, I’ll admit I’ve read much of the Realm of the Elderlings franchise, though by no means all, that talking about it coherently isn’t possible. What I will say is nothing by her is anything by really, really good.  I will say, despite Margaret Astrid Lindholm Ogden saying Hobb is the gentler of the two, that trigger warnings for brutality and even rape are necessary here. Really they are.

Both personas in the end aren’t, despite her claims, really that different. The only novel that is decidedly different I can say as a reader is The Gypsy but that was co-written with Brust as were the four Laivek works. Co-written works are such that one never knows how much that the one has influenced it and how much the other has.

(10) A NEW MEANING FOR WC. “What Is WcDonald’s, McDonald’s Anime Counterpart?” at Food Network. One of these comics was on my bag today!

… This month, McDonald’s is embracing what has become a common … homage, shall we say, to its golden arches in anime films and series: WcDonald’s.Swapping in a “W” — or, rather, an upside-down “M” — has become a cheeky way for animators and illustrators to let their characters dine at or otherwise interact with what the audience can immediately identify as a McDonald’s without licensing the actual name of (or getting sued by) McDonald’s itself. Starting next week, however, McDonald’s is embracing its cartoon counterpart at its real-life restaurants in the U.S. and beyond…. A New McNugget Sauce: To pair with “WcNuggets,” a new, limited-edition Savory Chili WcDonald’s Sauce is coming to the menu, described as a “unique combination of ginger, garlic and soy with a slight heat from chili flakes.” Manga-Inspired Packaging: Japanese illustrator Acky Bright designed original artwork of WcDonald’s crew members for the McDonald’s/WcDonald’s items. Packaging will also feature a QR code with access to digital WcDonald’s manga content weekly featuring Bright’s cast of WcDonald’s characters (yes, one is a mecha).

The promotional website WcDonald’s has a lot of content. Here are some of the newest characters.

(11) LAST DARKNESS FALL — PERMANENTLY. “Solar eclipse glasses: Why you need them, and why you should buy them right now” – advice from Slate. “The eclipse is happening on April 8—and last time, the glasses sold out many places.”

Few natural phenomena bring sci-fi-esque buzz like a solar eclipse. Some people talk about this astronomical event as if it comes straight out of a Ray Bradbury story. And those people are right! Solar eclipses are, without hyperbole, awesome. And just in case you haven’t heard, there’s one happening on April 8.

Of course, a cardinal rule of day-to-day life still applies to eclipses: You must absolutely not look at the sun directly—even if it’s partially obscured by the moon. It can cause permanent retinal damage.

Photoreceptors in the eyes register and convert light to electrical signals detected in your brain. The powerfully incandescent sun overwhelms those photoreceptors, bombarding them with far more light than they can convert. Any light your photoreceptors don’t absorb filters through to the back of your eye, producing heat. Although the moon partially blots out the sun, that doesn’t make the rays that are visible any less potent. Look at a partial eclipse long enough and you can burn the sun into your retinas, which can result in a permanent hole in your vision called a scotoma. Since your retinas lack pain receptors, you won’t know that the damage has been done until it’s too late. Looking through conventional binoculars or telescopes doesn’t mitigate this risk….

(12) ROLL THE CREDITS. “Superman movie to film in Ohio, hire more than 3,000 locals” at NBC4i. The state will reward this decision with a big tax credit.

It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s Superman! A new movie on the comic book hero is filming in Ohio this year and has been awarded about $11 million in tax credits, with plans to hire more than 3,000 locals.

The DC Studios movie titled simply “Superman” is filming in Cincinnati and Cleveland this spring and summer and will receive $11,091,686 in tax credits, according to an Ohio Motion Picture Tax Credit application filed under the project’s code name, “Genesis.” The film is expected to hire 3,254 Ohio residents to take part in the production.

DC’s Ohio-related expenses are projected to exceed $36 million, which makes up about 10% of the movie’s total budget of more than $363 million….

(13) TECH BROS. “’Musk needs to be adored … Zuckerberg is out of his depth’: Kara Swisher on the toxic giants of Big Tech” in the Guardian.

…In the book, Swisher says Zuckerberg is “the most damaging man in tech”. Elon Musk, by contrast, is maligned as the “most disappointing”, which reflects Swisher’s long period of thinking of the founder of Tesla and SpaceX as one of the tech industry’s most promising sons. In 2016, she contacted him ahead of the big meeting with Trump, warning that the president-elect would “screw” him; two years later, Musk told her she had been right. All told, she seemed to believe that he operated on a higher level than most of his peers.

“Here’s someone who actually was doing serious things,” she says. “There’s a lot of people in Silicon Valley who are always doing a dry cleaning app. He was thinking of everything from cars to space to solar. Even the silly stuff like [his imagined high-speed transport system] Hyperloop: what a great idea. What an interesting idea.” She also mentions Neuralink, the venture working on computer interfaces that can be implanted in people’s brains. “How could we upgrade our intelligence? That’s a big, fascinating problem.”…

(14) SFWA INSTAGRAM PROGRAM. The SFWA Instagram Program gives users a peek at members’ daily creative lives, pets, and works. In the past year and a half, SFWA has processed nearly 200 requests and created over 600 graphics that have been shared through its Instagram account. Here’s an example:

(15) A FINE IDEA. This month (only) “A Massachusetts Library System Will Let You Pay Fines With Cat Pictures” according to Mental Floss.

It’s not often that cat photos are accepted as currency. But for the month of March, public libraries in Worcester, Massachusetts, will wipe certain fines from your account if you submit any picture of a cat.

Branches in the Worcester Public Library (WPL) system don’t charge fees for overdue books, but they do charge for lost or damaged ones. The call for cat pictures is a way to keep those bills from preventing patrons from using the library. “We at the Worcester Public Library are always looking for ways to reduce barriers,” Worcester Public Library executive library director Jason Homer told WBUR. “We know that a lot of people, unfortunately, through being displaced in housing, or life getting in the way in the global pandemic, lost a lot of materials.” 

“Felines for Fee Forgiveness” is part of March Meowness, a month of cat-centric programming that includes a screening of the 2019 movie Cats, a cat-eye makeup tutorial, a “de-stressing” hour of playing with shelter cats, DIY crafts, and more events.

Before you show up to a WPL branch with a cat image at the ready, there are a few rules to know. For one, a book needs to have been lost for at least two months in order for its fee to be waived…. 

(16) PROTOPLANETARY SYSTEM. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] Last week’s issue of Science looks at the formation of other planetary systems.

This JWST infrared image shows the Orion Bar, which separates parts of the Orion Nebula containing cool molecular gas (lower left) from those containing hot plasma (upper right). The latter are ionized by ultraviolet radiation from massive stars (located beyond the image). The strong ultraviolet radiation field heats protoplanetary disks around young stars in this region, dispersing the gas needed for planet formation<

Primary research paper’s abstract here.

(17) VIDEO OF THE DAY. GamesRadar+ reports “Star Wars fans rocked by resurfaced beer adverts stitched directly into the original trilogy – including a bizarre replacement for Luke Skywalker’s lightsaber”. One video is embedded below, there are more at the link.

We all remember that iconic Star Wars moment where Obi-Wan Kenobi goes to give Luke Skywalker his father’s old, ice cold beer, right? 

Well, if you watched a specific version of the movie shown in Chile, you might remember things that way. The old ads are going viral once again thanks to the fact that the beer marketing is spliced directly into some of the original trilogy’s most famous moments – unintentionally creating the most hilarious advertising campaign ever. While these videos might seem like fakes, they are very much real: according to The Guardian, the campaign even won an award for its ingenuity…. 

[Thanks to Steven French, Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, N., Jeffrey Smith, JJ, David Goldfarb, John King Tarpinian, Chris Barkley, Cat Eldridge, and SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Jeff Jones.]

Pixel Scroll 1/18/24 Mission Of Impossible Gravity

(1) LETTERS FROM THE EDITOR. C. E. Murphy shares her views about what kind of revision request letters work best: “Process Post: on edit letters” at The Essential Kit.

There was a discussion going on over on Bluesky about dealing with edit letters, and this truth came up: “Editors aren’t always right about the solutions, but they’re nearly always right about the problems.”

That thread went on to discuss how the person quoting it, who happens to be KJ Charles whose books I read all of last year and who is also an editor, approaches edit letters; her approach involves suggesting ideas to fix the problems, because it opens the writer’s mind to the possiblity that the book could have something different happen in that moment, and also it gives them something to reject/bounce off/spitefully correct. Which, like: that seems very valid.

That said, I have recently watched friends get SUPER LONG, to my mind, edit letters, 70%+ of which are ideas & suggestions as how to tackle problems, and I honestly think my brain would explode. My editors have VERY MUCH been of the “this is a problem, pls fix” approach, rather than the “let us brainstorm!” approach, and I think that works for me….

(2) NONSENSE OF TASTE. Camestros Felapton shared a couple of riotous sci-fi themed brew labels in “Thursday’s Sunday Beer”. I won’t steal his thunder – click the link to discover his selections — only thank him for introducing us to New Zealand’s Behemoth Brewing Company where literally dozens more comical labels can be viewed, including tap badges like these:

(3) SEATTLE 2025 STATEMENT ABOUT REGISTRATION. Seattle 2025 Worldcon chair Kathy Bond today made the following statement about their registration software, and a delay in the ability to upgrade to attending membership for Seattle Worldcon bid supporters and site selection voters:

Due to a last-minute change in our registration software, our ability to process registrations and upgrades to attending memberships for site selection voters and bid supporters has been delayed past our originally projected date. We apologize for the delay. Please be assured we will honor our initial registration rates for at least two weeks after we are able to make our registration system go live. 

Thank you for your patience as we iron out the bugs.

(4) BRITISH LIBRARY CONVENES ONLINE PANEL ABOUT LE GUIN. On January 23, join Theo Downes Le Guin, Ursula’s son and literary executor; Julie Phillips, her biographer, and writer Nicola Griffiths (shortlisted for the 2023 Ursula K. Le Guin Prize for Fiction) for an evening of appreciation and exploration: The British Library Cultural Events – “The Realms of Ursula K. Le Guin Tickets”.

  • Event: 7:00 pm UK/11:00 am Pacific
  • Tickets are £6.50, or £3.25 for Library members

This is an online event streamed on the British Library platform. Bookers will be sent a viewing link shortly before the event and will be able to watch at any time for 48 hours after the start time.

(5) THESE REBOOTS ARE MADE FOR WALKING. [Item by Cat Eldridge.] This could be good, it could be decidedly not. “’The Avengers’ Reboot Coming; ‘Industry’ Writers Pen StudioCanal Pilot” at Deadline.

There were rumors that the project was in with HBO, but this was denied last year. It is not clear where The Avengers reboot will land. StudioCanal declined to comment as talks continue….

Macnee starred as Steed, who fought off diabolical plots against the state with his trademark bowler hat and umbrella. He had a succession of high-fashion assistants played by the likes of Diana Rigg and Honor Blackman. They broke ground for being Steed’s equal, holding their own in brawls and delivering playful quips….

Steed’s first partner wasn’t a woman at all but medical doctor David H Keel as the series  spun out of Police Surgeon where Keel played the same character who asked Steed to help on a case. It would feel like a uniquely different series than the later series as the tone, Steed’s personality and stories are markedly more grounded. 

Nightclub singer Venus Smith played by Julie Stevens was next, just six episodes in duration. Now we have Cathy Gale played by Honor Blackman, an anthropologist. Of course we finally got the extraordinary Emma Peel as played by Diana Rigg, described as a “talented amateur agent”.  

Linda Thorson ended the series as Tara King. An actual spy, enlisted at an early age in the Intelligence Service as a trainee, under the number 69. Would I kid about that? No, I would not. 

So how do you reboot a beloved classic of British television? Personally I don’t think you can. 

So before you ask, I prefer not to mention that film.

(6) CLIMATE ACTION ALMANAC. The Center for Science and the Imagination at Arizona State University has launched The Climate Action Almanac, a free collection of fiction, nonfiction, and art exploring positive climate futures, grounded in real science and in the complexities of diverse human and physical geographies. The book is presented in partnership with the MIT Press and supported by the ClimateWorks Foundation.

The Almanac features 8 individual works of science fiction, with four authors contributing two stories apiece: Vandana Singh, Gu Shi, Hannah Onoguwe, and Libia Brenda. Overall, the collection features contributions from more than 25 writers representing 17 different countries around the globe, from Argentina, Norway, and China to Nigeria, Germany, Malaysia, Sri Lanka, and more. On the science fiction front, there is also a dialogue between Kim Stanley Robinson and Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein, the former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights.

(7) NOT OK IN OK. [Item by Mike Kennedy.] A certain Oklahoma state legislator might want to take advantage of any mental health benefits available in his medical plan. Representative Justin Humphrey apparently has a possibly-unhealthy obsession with Furries. Or, perhaps specifically, with the urban myth that Furries are being provided litter boxes by school systems. According to HuffPost, “An Oklahoma Republican Wants Animal Services To Remove Furries From Schools”.

A Republican legislator in Oklahoma who once said that transgender people have “a mental illness” introduced a bill this week that would allow animal services to remove students who identify as furries from school.

The bill, which was pre-filed ahead of Oklahoma’s legislative session, would bar students who “purport to be an imaginary animal or animal species, or who engage in anthropomorphic behavior commonly referred to as furries,” from school activities.

The legislation, sponsored by Republican state Rep. Justin Humphrey, may seem farcical. But the idea that schools accommodate students who identify as animals has its roots in a long-standing — and repeatedly debunked — conservative myth.

Republican legislators and candidates have for years claimed that schools are putting litter boxes in classrooms for students who identify as cats or furries. At least 20 GOP politicians peddled these claims in 2022, and used them as a way to sound the alarm over protections and accommodations for LGBTQ+ students, NBC News reported.

“What’s most provocative about this hoax is how it turns to two key wedge issues for conservatives: educational accommodations and gender nonconformity,” Joan Donovan, a researcher on media and politics at Harvard University, told the outlet at the time…

(8) GONE BUT NOT FORGOTTEN. Rich Horton sadly reports that “Bad Things Come in Threes: Terry Bisson (February 12, 1942 – January 10, 2024), Howard Waldrop (September 15, 1946 – January 14, 2024), Tom Purdom (April 19, 1936 – January 14, 2024): A Tripartite Obituary” in an obituary notice for Black Gate.

On the heels of Terry Bisson’s death I heard news that Howard Waldrop had died. And this morning I woke up to learn that Tom Purdom had also died. A profound 1-2 punch to the SF community, followed by a knockout. Bisson and Waldrop were two of the most original, indeed weirdest, SF writers; and if Purdom wasn’t as downright weird as those two he was as intriguing in his slightly more traditional fashion. All three writers wrote novels, but it’s fair to say they are all best known for their short fiction….

(9) PURDOM TRIBUTE. Michael Swanwick also salutes the late author in “Tom Purdom, Heart of Philadelphia” at Flogging Babel.

This is very hard for me to write. So please excuse its infelicities. I knew this man for a full fifty years.

Tom Purdom is dead. Not enough people will know what a loss this is. While he was as vivid and eccentric an individual as any of the rest of us, he absolutely refused to promote himself. I think he believed it was ungentlemanly. But those who knew him, cherished him.

Tom was the very heart of Philadelphia science fiction long before I came to town in 1974. He and his socially elegant wife Sara Purdom had monthly open houses where all the SF community was welcome–even rowdies like Gardner Dozois and myself. They two served as role models for Marianne and me. 

His gatherings were as glittery events as our crew ever saw. I recall Milton Rothman discussing the physics of nuclear-powered aircraft, and I most vividly remember Jack McKnight (who machined the first Hugo trophies in  his garage) pretending to steal our then-infant son Sean at one of these soirees….

(10) PETER SCHICKELE (1935-2024). The composer also known as “P.D.Q. Bach”, Peter Schickele, died January 16 at the age of 88.

Schickele won the Grammy Award for Best Comedy Album four years in a row from 1990-1994. He also won in 2000 for Best Classical Crossover album. Once, he included in a concert program book an airsickness bag, labeled “For Use In Case of Cultural Discomfort.”

His catalogue of more than 100 works includes the score for Silent Running (1972).

He hosted the radio show “Schickele Mix” for Public Radio International. In 168 episodes, produced between 1992 and 1999, he explored the elements, concepts and techniques that make music work, illustrated with classical, jazz and rock recordings, proclaiming in his introductions that “all musics are created equal.”

(11) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

Born January 18, 1953 Pamela Dean, 71. So we come this Scroll to Pamela Dean, one of the writers I consider without equivocation to be one of the best fantasy writers ever. 

She’s a member of two writing groups, of which the first was the Scribblies, with Nate Bucklin, Steven Brust, Emma Bull, Kara Dalkey,Will Shetterly and Patricia Wrede.

Then there was Pre-Joycean Fellowship. Love that name!  It was a shared belief that was more or lesser seriously adopted by several writers to indicate that they value 19th-century values of storytelling. Steven Brust wrote that “it is in large part a joke, and in another large part a way to start literary arguments.” 

Pamela Dean

Writers who are members include Steven Brust, Emma Bull, Kara Dalkey, Pamela Dean, Neil Gaiman, Will Shetterly, Adam Stemple and Jane Yolen. No idea when the Pre-Joycean Fellowship meet up for tea and biscuits, but they must, right? 

Warning: this is my list of favorites, not a comprehensive overview though it comes close. 

Tam Lin, based of course on that Child ballad, and set in the early Seventies at the fictional Blackstock College in Minnesota is just brilliant. It was nominated for a Mythopoeic Fantasy Award for Adult Literature. It’s certainly my favorite book by her. 

Another Child Ballad, “Riddles Wisely Expounded”, is the root text of her novel, Juniper, Gentian, and Rosemary. I relish a story with a house that shouldn’t exist and a character who speaks in riddles. Quite delicious indeed.

And for my reading pleasure, the final set of works by her is The Secret Country trilogy consisting of The Secret CountryThe Hidden Land and The Whim of the Dragon. A Royal family in considerable turmoil, witches, unicorns — what’s not to like? Really it’s superb storytelling at its best. 

She’s written but thirteen short stories and a poem, six of which and the poem were published in the Laivek tales that were edited by Emma Bull and Will Shetterley who created that franchise. Yes, I’ve read the Laivek tales and they are really great fantasy. Hers are among the best here. (The one here was co-written with Patricia C. Wrede.)

All of the novels I like are now available from the usual suspects. Oh and what I thought but now know having just checked the usual sources was a single Laivek story with Wrede is actually multiple stories as it’s available here as Points of Departure: Liavek Stories, all three hundred sixty-four pages of it! 

I’m very glad to see these nine Laivek stories getting published like this, and I’m hoping more Laivek writers do the same. 

(12) COMICS SECTION.

(13) WATCH ON THE RHINE. The Governator ran afoul of German customs inspectors says the Guardian: “Arnold Schwarzenegger held at Munich airport over luxury watch”.

Arnold Schwarzenegger was briefly held by customs officers at Munich airport on Wednesday after allegedly failing to declare a €26,000 (£22,000) Audemars Piguet watch the Terminator star was planning to sell at an auction in aid of his climate crisis charity.

The Austrian-born actor and former governor of California, 76, was stopped at the airport for about three hours upon arrival from Los Angeles, according to the German tabloid Bild, which quoted customs officials.

Schwarzenegger was taken aside by officers who searched his luggage and found the watch, which the actor had allegedly not declared on his arrivals customs form….

A spokesperson for the main customs office in Munich said: “We have initiated criminal tax proceedings. The watch should have been registered because it is an import.”

(14) OCTOTHORPE. In episode 101 of the Octothorpe podcast “John Has Developed Precognitive Abilities”.

Alison Scott, John Coxon and Liz Batty get the year started off correctly. We give listeners a round-up of forthcoming conventions (mostly in the UK), give Keanu Reeves a frank talking-to, and discuss some hot new SF.

(15) UP AGAINST THE PRIZE WALL. This project is not being marketed as horror for some inexplicable reason: “Chuck E. Cheese Television Series Based on Restaurant Chain Now in Development” at Yahoo!

Chuck E. Cheese reality television series is now in development.

Per The Hollywood Reporter, Magical Elves, a production company that’s worked on shows such as Top Chef and Project Runway, is now developing a reality television series based on the Chuck E. Cheese restaurant chain.

The description of the series reads, “The format will feature stand-alone comedic physical challenges where duos of ‘big kids’ (a.k.a. adults) will compete over supersized arcade games — including pinball, air hockey, alley roller, and the human claw.  The top ticket-earning duo will get the chance to exchange their tickets for prizes off the massive version of the iconic Chuck E. Cheese prize wall.”…

(16) IT’S A GAS! Futurism reports “Astronomers Puzzled by Galaxy With No Stars”.

Astronomers have accidentally found an entire galaxy that appears to have plenty of gas — but no visible stars to speak of.

Their findings, which were presented this week at the annual meeting of the American Astronomy Society, may seem paradoxical on their face, but the discovery could provide a rare, possibly never-before-seen insight that challenges our understanding of how stars and galaxies are formed….

… The eerily empty object, called J0613+52, is located 270 million light years away, according to a Big Think writeup on the discovery, and at the very least appears to be a low-surface brightness galaxy (LSB).

As the name suggests, an LSB is significantly less bright than other glimmering objects that populate the night sky because the gasses it contains are so spread out that few stars are formed.

Still, this classification holds that such a galaxy would at least have some stars, and J0613+52, with seemingly none at all, could be something even more rare and elusive: a dark, primordial galaxy.

“This could be our first discovery of a nearby galaxy made up of primordial gas,” Karen O’Neil, a senior scientist of the Green Bank Observatory, said in a statement about the research….

(17) BARBIE’S DREAM HOUSE. Neil DeGrasse Tyson geo-locates Barbieland using visual details in the movie in this clip from The Late Show with Stephen Colbert as adapted by @EnigmaWorldOfficial.

(18) YOU’RE LOCKED INSIDE WITH ME. Isn’t that what Rorschach said was the inmates’ problem? There’s good reason to call this “The Creeptastic ‘Abigail’ Trailer”. The film arrives in theaters on April 19.

Children can be such monsters!. You just can’t ‘dance’ around the subject. If you need convincing, check out Radio Silence’s first trailer for the horror film ‘Abigail,’ featuring a very, very creepy kid. After a group of would-be criminals kidnap the 12-year-old ballerina daughter of a powerful underworld figure, all they have to do to collect a $50 million ransom is watch the girl overnight. In an isolated mansion, the captors start to dwindle, one by one, as they discover that they’re locked inside with no normal little girl.

[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, Chris Barkley, Kathy Sullivan, Daniel Dern, Joey Eschrich, Cat Eldridge, 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 Daniel Dern.]

Pixel Scroll 4/10/23 A Pixel Sliding Into Third Just Under The Tag Of A Scroll As A Filer Calls “Safe!”

(1) FRENCH SFF SCHOLAR COMING TO KANSAS. The Gunn Center for the Study of SF is welcoming 2023 Hall Center International Scholar, Simon Bréan. Professor Simon Bréan (U. of Paris-Sorbonne), a world-renowned a scholar and specialist in science fiction, will visit the University of Kansas in April 2023 as the Hall Center for the Humanities 2023 International Scholar and a guest of the Department of French, Francophone & Italian Studies, Center of Excellence, KU Libraries, and the Gunn Center for the Study of SF. Professor Bréan will be visiting from Wednesday April 26 to Thursday, April 27, 2023.

(2) ENJOY IT WHILE YOU CAN. “Harlan Coben’s Top Tip for Book Touring: Appreciate Crowds” in the New York Times.

On July 11, 2001, Harlan Coben was at home in Ridgewood, N.J., when his publisher called to share the happy news that his 10th novel, “Tell No One,” was a best seller. “That’s the first time I hit the New York Times list,” he said in a phone interview. “It was also the day my fourth and youngest child was born. Things changed a lot after that.”

Not only was the author swarmed by small people — the oldest Coben kid was 7 — he suddenly attracted crowds to bookstores. Gone was the awkwardness he immortalized in a 2014 Op-Ed about a slow afternoon at Waldenbooks: “During the first hour of my signing, a grand total of four people approached me. Two asked me where the bathroom was. The third explained his conspiracy theory linking the J.F.K. assassination with the decision by General Mills to add Crunch Berries to Cap’n Crunch breakfast cereal. The fourth asked me if we had a copy of the new Stephen King.”

Maybe this memory explains why Coben declined to issue a single substantive complaint about the toll of recent professional obligations.

(3) NERO FIDDLES, VULCAN BURNS. [Item by Mike Kennedy.] We may be living in some offshoot of the Star Trek alternate timeline where Nero destroys Vulcan.

Back in 2018 it was announced an exoplanet (“super-Earth” sized) had been discovered at 40 Eridani which was, of course, popularly referred to as Vulcan after Mr. Spock‘s home planet orbiting there in the Star Trek universe.

Well, reanalysis of the data has lead to the conclusion that, sadly, that announcement was in error. Though, the door isn’t completely closed as current data isn’t sensitive enough to rule out other, smaller, planets in the system. 

So, fingers crossed — for Nero to be thwarted and Vulcan to be rediscovered in its rightful place. Or perhaps a different arrangement of one’s fingers is called for. “Sorry Trekkies: Bad news about the ‘real-life Planet Vulcan'” at Mashable.

… The trouble is, after a reanalysis, the new team found the discovery was likely a mistake. That’s right: They couldn’t just let Spock live long and prosper in a real world. They had to go and wipe out his home planet from existence.

“We apologize for that,” Burt told Mashable. “We’ll find other cool planets.”…

… Despite their findings, the search for Spock’s home can continue, Laliotis said. Though they may not have a starship Enterprise to seek it out, more sensitive instruments and detection methods in the near future may make it possible to find another smaller exoplanet in that star system — perhaps one that is more Earth-like — to rename Vulcan.

After all, if 40 Eri b’s detection were correct, it would be much too hot for life as we know it.

“There is still hope that there might be a Vulcan there,” she said. “This actually is maybe promising that there might be a better Vulcan there.”

(4) BE ON THE LOOKOUT. [Item by Mike Kennedy.] A fan costumed as Boba Fett had the transit police called on them during Anime Boston because onlookers thought he was carrying a real rifle. Fortunately, nothing severe came of it. “Police were called about a person with a rifle. It turned out to be a man in a Boba Fett costume” at CNN.

… Boston police had an intergalactic encounter after a report about a person carrying a long rifle led them to someone dressed up in a Boba Fett costume.

Transit police with the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority received a call about a person armed with a long rifle at the Back Bay train station on Friday around 6 pm ET, according to a tweet from the agency’s official account.

But the rifle in question wasn’t real at all, said police…

(5) AL JAFFEE (1921-2023). Mad Magazine cartoonist Al Jaffee died April 10 at the age of 102 reports SFGate.com.

Al Jaffee, Mad magazine’s award-winning cartoonist and ageless wise guy who delighted millions of kids with the sneaky fun of the Fold-In and the snark of “Snappy Answers to Stupid Questions,” has died. He was 102.

Jaffee died Monday in Manhattan from multiple organ failure, according to his granddaughter, Fani Thomson. He had retired at the age of 99.

…The [initial fold-in] idea was so popular that Mad editor Al Feldstein wanted a follow-up. Jaffee devised a picture of 1964 GOP presidential contenders Nelson Rockefeller and Barry Goldwater that, when collapsed, became an image of Richard Nixon.

“That one really set the tone for what the cleverness of the Fold-Ins has to be,” Jaffee told the Boston Phoenix in 2010. “It couldn’t just be bringing someone from the left to kiss someone on the right.”

…Jaffee received numerous awards, and in 2013 was inducted into the Will Eisner Hall of Fame, the ceremony taking place at San Diego Comic-Con International. In 2010, he contributed illustrations to Mary-Lou Weisman’s “Al Jaffee’s Mad Life: A Biography.” The following year, Chronicle Books published “The MAD Fold-In Collection: 1964-2010.”

The Hollywood Reporter notes that Jaffee began his comics career after graduating high school in 1940, and at age 20 he made his first sale to Will Eisner, who bought his parody of Superman called Inferior Man. He went on to work for soon-to-be Marvel legend Stan Lee at Timely Comics, a forerunner of Marvel Comics.  He did his first work for Mad Magazine in 1955.

(6) NORMAN REYNOLDS (1934-2023). Production designer and art director Norman Reynolds died April 6, and Lucasfilm has a lengthy tribute.

Reynolds shared the 1978 Academy Award for Best Production Design with three colleagues for their work on the first Star Wars movie.

…Reynolds was an art director on Star Wars: A New Hope (1977). He worked closely with John Barry, the film’s overall production designer, to help establish the core design philosophy behind Star Wars architecture and construction. They joined art director Leslie Dilley and set decorator Roger Christian as winners of the Academy Award for Art Direction in 1978. For Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back (1980), Reynolds was elevated into the production designer role as Barry pursued directing (sadly, he would pass away while working as a consultant on Empire)…. 

He won another Academy Award for Art Direction 1982, shared with two colleagues, for their work on Raiders of the Lost Ark.

…When Steven Spielberg partnered with Lucasfilm to make Raiders of the Lost Ark, Reynolds became production designer, helping establish the Indiana Jones style from the ground-up. This even included sculpting the iconic golden idol that Indy attempts to procure during the film’s memorable opening. Reynolds used an Incan fertility sculpture that he’d collected during his travels overseas….

Of course, Raiders wouldn’t be complete without Indy’s close call with a giant boulder as it rolls down a temple passage. “I didn’t know it was gonna look as good as it did until the day Norman Reynolds showed me that he had actually made a boulder that was something like 22 feet in circumference,” Steven Spielberg would explain. As Reynolds explained, it was Spielberg himself who kept asking for it to be bigger! Raiders would earn Reynolds his second Academy Award for Art Direction in 1982 alongside art director Leslie Dilley and set decorator Michael Ford….

(7) MICHAEL LERNER (1941-2023). Actor Michael Lerner has died at the age of 81. The Yahoo! profile mentions many genre roles.

…With an Academy Award nod under his belt [for Barton Fink], Lerner became a familiar face for moviegoers through the ’90s, with notable credits including “Newsies,” “Blank Check,” “No Escape” and “Celebrity.” In Roland Emmerich’s 1998 “Godzilla,” he played the overwhelmed, pompous New York leader deemed Mayor Ebert, a flagrant lampoon of premier film critic Roger Ebert. Lerner was styled to resemble the “At the Movies” co-host in the disaster blockbuster. (Ebert ended up panning the film with a 1.5 star review, though he praised Lerner for a “gamely played” performance.)

Lerner continued regular work after the turn of the century. He played the severe boss to James Caan’s grumpy publishing company exec in the 2003 holiday comedy “Elf,” as well as a mutant-weary U.S. Senator in the 2014 blockbuster “X-Men: Days of Future Past.”

(8) MEMORY LANE.

1888[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

Our Beginning is both that of Arthur Conan Doyle’s A Study in Scarlet and of the best known consulting detective to ever grace the pages of fiction, Sherlock Holmes. 

The November 1887 issue of Beeton’s Christmas Annual published Arthur Conan Doyle’s A Study in Scarlet which showed us for the first time Sherlock Holmes and his friend Watson. Only eleven known copies of this issue are known to exist. 

It would be published in book form in 1888 by Ward, Lock & Co. 

It’s hard to believe there’s a single soul here who doesn’t know the story of these characters but I’m playing by our established rules, so no spoilers. So let’s go to our Beginning.

MR. SHERLOCK HOLMES

IN the year 1878 I took my degree of Doctor of Medicine of the University of London, and proceeded to Netley to go through the course prescribed for surgeons in the army. Having completed my studies there, I was duly attached to the 5th Northumberland Fusilier as assistant surgeon. The regiment was stationed in India at the time, and before I could join it the second Afghan f war had broken out. On landing at Bombay, I learned that my corps had advanced through the passes and was already deep in the enemy’s country. I followed, however, with many other officers who were in the same situation as myself, and succeeded in reaching Candahar in safety, where I found my regiment and at once entered upon my new duties.

The campaign brought honors and promotion to many, but for me it had nothing but misfortune and disaster. I was removed from my brigade and attached to the Berkshires, with whom I served at the fatal battle of Maiwand. There I was struck on the shoulder by a Jezail bullet, which shattered the bone and grazed the subclavian artery. I should have fallen into the hands of the murderous Ghazis had it not been for the devotion and courage shown by Murray, my orderly, who threw me across a pack-horse and succeeded in bringing me safely to the British lines.

Worn with pain, and weak from the prolonged hardships which I had undergone, I was removed, with a great train of wounded sufferers, to the base hospital at Peshawur. Here I rallied, and had already improved so far as to be able to walk about the wards, and even to bask a little upon the veranda, when I was struck down by enteric fever, that curse of our Indian possessions. For months my life was despaired of, and when at last I came to myself and became convalescent, I was so weak and emaciated that a medical board determined that not a day should be lost in sending me back to England. I was despatched, accordingly, in the troopship Orontes, and landed a month later on Portsmouth jetty with my health irretrievably ruined, but with permission from a paternal government to spend the next nine months in attempting to improve it.

I had neither kith nor kin in England, and was therefore as free as air—or as free as an income of eleven shillings and sixpence a day will permit a man to be. Under such circumstances, I naturally gravitated to London, that great cesspool into which all the loungers and idlers of the empire are irresistibly drained. There I stayed for some time at a private hotel in the Strand, leading a comfortless, meaningless existence, and spending such money as I had considerably more freely than I ought. So alarming did the state of my finances become, that I soon realized that I must either leave the metropolis and rusticate somewhere in the country, or that I must make a complete alteration in my style of living. Choosing the latter alternative, I began by making up my mind to leave the hotel and to take up my quarters in some less pretentious and less expensive domicile.

On the very day that I had come to this conclusion, I was standing at the Criterion bar, when some one tapped me on the shoulder, and turning round I recognized young Stamford, who had been a dresser under me at Bart’s. The sight of a friendly face in the great wilderness of London is a pleasant thing indeed to a lonely man. In old days Stamford had never been a particular crony of mine, but now I hailed him with enthusiasm, and he, in his turn, appeared to be delighted to see me. In the exuberance of my joy I asked him to lunch with me at the Holborn, and we started off together in a hansom.

“Whatever have you been doing with yourself, Watson?” he asked, in undisguised wonder, as we rattled through the crowded London streets.

“You are as thin as a lath and as brown as a nut.”

I gave him a short sketch of my adventures, and had hardly concluded it by the time that we reached our destination.

“Poor devil!” he said, commiseratingly, after he had listened to my misfortunes. “What are you up to now?”

“Looking for lodgings,” I answered. “Trying to solve the problem as to whether it is possible to get comfortable rooms at a reasonable price.”

“That’s a strange thing,” remarked my companion; “you are the second man to-day that has used that expression to me.

“And who was the first?” I asked.

“A fellow who is working at the chemical laboratory up at the hospital. 

He was bemoaning himself this morning because he could not get some one to go halves with him in some nice rooms which he had found, and which were too much for his purse.”

“By Jove!” I cried; “if he really wants some one to share the rooms and the expense, I am the very man for him. I should prefer having a partner to being alone.”

Young Stamford looked rather strangely at me over his wineglass.

“You don’t know Sherlock Holmes yet,” he said; “perhaps you would not care for him as a constant companion.”

“Why, what is there against him?”

“Oh, I didn’t say there was anything against him. He is a little queer in his ideas—an enthusiast in some branches of science. As far as I know, he is a decent fellow enough.”

(9) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

  • Born April 10, 1897 Eric Knight. Decidedly better known for his 1940 Lassie Come-Home novel which introduced Lassie who I cannot stretch to be even genre adjacent for the soul of me, but he had one genre undertaking according to ISFDB, the Sam Small series. I’ve never heard of them, nor are they available in digital form though Lassie Come-Home of course is. Anyone read them? (Died 1943.)
  • Born April 10, 1921 Chuck Connors. His first genre role was as Senator Robert Fraser in Captain Nemo and the Underwater City followed by being Tab Fielding in Soylent Green. He’s Captain McCloud in Virus, a Japanese horror film, and he had one-offs in The Adventures of SupermanThe Six Million Dollar ManFantasy Island and a recurring role as Captain Janos Skorzenyn in Werewolf. (Died 1992.)
  • Born April 10, 1929 Max von Sydow. He played Ernst Stavro Blofeld in the Never Say Never Again and Ming the Merciless in Flash Gordon. He shows up in the Exorcist II: The Heretic as Father Lankester Merrin while being King Osric in Conan the Barbarian. Dreamscape sees him being Doctor Paul Novotny while he’s Liet-Kynes the Imperial Planetologist in Dune. He was Judge Fargo in Judge Dredd (and yes I still like it), in Minority Report as Director Lamar Burgess, Sir Walter Loxley in Ridley Scott’s Robin Hood and finally in Star Wars: The Force Awakens as Lor San Tekka. (Died 2020.)
  • Born April 10, 1953 David Langford, 70. And how long have you been reading Ansible? If he’s not noted for that singular enterprise, he should be noted for assisting in producing the second edition of the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, not to mention hundreds of thousands of words as a principal editor of the third (online) edition of the publication, and some eighty thousand words of articles to the most excellent Encyclopedia of Fantasy as well. And let’s not forget his genre writing as well that earned him a Best Short Story Hugo at the Millennium Philcon for “Different Kinds of Darkness”.  And he has won 28 other Hugos for his fan writing, for Ansible, and his work on the third edition of EoSF
  • Born April 10, 1955 Pat Murphy, 68. I think that her most brilliant work is The City, Not Long After which I’ve read myriad times. If you’ve not read this novel, do so now. The Max Merriwell series is excellent and Murphy’s ‘explanation’ of the authorial attributions is fascinating. And The Falling Woman by her is an amazing read as well. She’s reasonably well stocked at the usual suspects.
  • Born April 10, 1957 John M. Ford, 1957 –  2006 Damn, he died far too young! Popular at At Minicon and other cons where he would be Dr. Mike and give silly answers to questions posed to him while wearing a lab coat before a whiteboard. His most interesting novel I think is The Last Hot Time, an urban fantasy set in Chicago that might have been part of Terri Windling’s Bordertown series but wasn’t. Possibly. (And no, the Suck Fairy hasn’t gotten near when I last read it.) The Dragon Waiting is also excellent and his Trek novels are among the best in that area of writing.  He’s finally back into print after a very long time. (Died 2006.)
  • Born April 10, 1962 — James H. Burns. Every search I did in putting together this late Filer’s Birthday ended back here. That he was beloved here, I have no doubt. In OGH’s obituary for Burns in 2016 he said Burns’ pride was this trio of posts that paid tribute to the influence of his father — My Father, And The BrontosaurusSons of a Mesozoic Age, and World War II, and a Lexicon in Time. Burns also wrote for File 770 about memories of “growing up fannish,” such as the very popular Once, When We Were All Scientists, and CLANKY!. And his good friend Steve Vertlieb also has reminisced about Burns here. (Died 2016.)
  • Born April 10, 1992 Daisy Ridley, 31. Obviously she played the role of Rey in The Force AwakensThe Last Jedi and The Rise of Skywalker. She will reprise her role as Rey in an yet untitled Star Wars film set that is after The Rise of Skywalker. She was also in Scrawl, a horror film as well as voicing Cotton Rabbit in Peter Rabbit. Though stretching to even call it genre adjacent even, she was Mary Debenham in Murder on The Orient Express.

(10) COMICS SECTION.

  • Heart of the City shows us an episode of what Filers might call SJW Credential Court TV. (Hint: this is cat humor.)

(11) STRONG SALES PITCH. Charlie Jane Anders makes some pretty wild promises in the “Here’s What I’ll Do If You Buy My New Book!” section of her latest Happy Dancing newsletter. Here’s just the first of many:

…But regardless of where and how you purchase Promises Stronger Than Darkness, here are all the things I will do for you, because I love you and appreciate your support.

I will ship you, by zeroeth class mail, a portable ambient sexifier, which for 24 hours after activation, will render every inanimate object in your vicinity thirty-nine percent sexier. Your drapes will billow sexily. The cracks in the sidewalk will wink salaciously. Newspaper articles about the impending mulchification of civilization will appear diaphanous. The uneaten crusts of your morning toast will salute you….

(12) JUST ADD CUSTOMERS. “German monks create world’s first powdered beer”New Atlas has details.

A monastic brewery in East Germany says it’s created the first powdered beer. Just add water, and it’ll froth up, complete with a foamy head and full flavor. The result promises massive savings on transport, because it can be shipped at 10% of the weight.

Klosterbrauerei Neuzelle worked together with “technology partners” and used funding from BMWi to create its first powdered product, a dextrin-rich zero-alcohol beer which has been brewed using conventional methods, then “processed and prepared into a water-soluble beer powder/granulate.”…

(13) YOU NEVER KNOW. According to AP News, “’The Super Mario Bros. Movie’ is a box office smash”.

Audiences said let’s go to the movie theater for “ The Super Mario Bros. Movie ” this weekend. The animated offering from Universal and Illumination powered up with $204.6 million in its first five days in 4,343 North American theaters, including $146.4 million over the weekend, according to studio estimates on Sunday.

With an estimated $173 million in international earnings and a global total of $377 million, “Mario” broke records for video game adaptations (passing “Warcraft’s” $210 million) and animated films (“Frozen 2’s” $358 million).

Its global total makes it the biggest opening of 2023 and the second biggest three-day domestic animated opening (behind “Finding Dory”). It’s also a record for Illumination, the animation shop behind successful franchises like “Minions,” which has made over $5 billion from its 13 films….

(14) VIDEO OF THE DAY. [Item by N.] Animated fantasy series The Owl House received a final season that was truncated to only three hour-long episodes, despite the outcry of both the creator and its fanbase. In the face of that challenge the show has given viewers arguably its best episodes. The final episode has been uploaded to YouTube in full for free (as the previous two were), bringing The Owl House to a close after three years. “The Owl House Season 3 Final Episode”.

[Thanks to Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, John King Tarpinian, Gary Farber, P. J. Evans, Daniel Dern, N., Chris Barkley, Michael Toman, and Cat Eldridge for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Cat Eldridge.]

Pixel Scroll 9/15/21 You Load Fifteen Pixels, What Do You Get?

(1) NEW FIRST DOCTOR ANIMATION PLANNED. The next classic Doctor Who adventure to be animated using archival fragments is the opening story of the third season, “Galaxy Four”, reports the BBC.

Galaxy 4 (alternatively spelled Galaxy Four) is the mostly-missing first serial of the third season of Doctor Who, which originally aired in four weekly episodes from 11th September to 2nd October 1965.

Audio-only recordings of all four episodes have survived from this classic story, and have been used to create a brand new, fully animated story, filling the gaps alongside the original surviving Episode 3 and over five minutes of original footage from the otherwise lost Episode 4.

The Doctor and his travel companions, Vicki and Steven land the TARDIS on a planet which is on the verge of total annihilation, as it drifts too close to the three suns it orbits. Trapped on the planet with them are the Drahvins, a race of warrior women, and the Reptillian Rills.

The Drahvins want to steal the Rills spacehip to escape the planet’s death throes, and enlist the Doctor’s help, which he is forced to give when Maaga, the cunning Drahvin leader, keeps Vicki and Steven as hostage. Even though the Doctor is determined to broker a peace deal between the two sides, Maaga doesn’t trust him, or the Rills…

This two disc release gives fans the opportunity to enjoy the four new animated episodes of Galaxy Four in either colour or black and white.

(2) FIYAHCON PUBLISHES CONTENT RELEASE FORM. On the eve of FIYAHCON 2021, which begins tomorrow, the convention leadership has addressed a Twitter kerfuffle.

Kim Yoon Mi evidently was dissatisfied with some terms of the release that FIYAHCON is asking panelists to sign and aired some criticisms on Twitter. Initially, the release’s language was not being quoted, but L. D. Lewis subsequently made it available for public review. (See below.)

Here are screencaps of several of Kim Yoon Mi’s points.

Here are excerpts from L.D. Lewis’ replies on Twitter.

This preface precedes the copy of the consent form:

This is the agreement copy for the Consent Release Form sent to all panelists so they may optionally have their programming item included in FIYAHCON’s Archives. As of this writing, it has been signed without complaint by 302 panelists across both of FIYAHCON’s events, and all caveats have been respected. The document was crafted with the assistance of Marguerite Kenner, a legal expert and active participant in the SFF Community. Questions, concerns, and requests for clarity are welcome and encouraged at [email protected].

(3) 2001 MINUS 71. Fanac.org’s latest additions include a scan of Futurian v3n1 (1940) which contains Arthur C. Clarke’s article, “How To Build A Spaceship.” Clarke thought his rocket would only cost £250,000 to build – a rather surprising bargain when compared with the cost to construct the first Queen Mary passenger ship, £3.5 million in 1934 (says the Wikipedia).

As far as I can remember, no Science Fiction author has ever had the nerve to describe a rocket propelled spaceship as it really must be. Writers such as Manning (“The Wreck of the Asteroid”) and the painstaking German authors have spoken glibly of step rockets, but they have all fallen short of reality. This article will therefore consist largely of a systematic debunking of rocketships. The amount of energy needed for any interplanetary voyage can be accurately calculated, so we know what a spaceship has to be capable of if it is to do its job. We also know the energy content of our best fuels and a simple calculation gives us the quantity of, say, hydrogen and oxygen we need for any particular journey. The result is depressing: so depressing” in fact that Science Fiction has ignored it with the same verve that enabled E.T. Snooks, D.T.G. to repeal the equally inviolable law of inverse squares. To take one ton of matter to the Moon and back requires several hundred tons of the best fuels we possess. Faced with this situation we can do one of two things. We can sit twiddling our thumbs until a better fuel comes along, or we can try and do the job with the materials we have. Course one is not likely to get us very far…

(4) NATIONAL BOOK AWARDS LONGLISTS. The National Book Awards Young People’s Literature longlist includes these titles of genre interest.

  • Home Is Not a Country, Safia Elhillo (Make Me A World)
  • A Snake Falls to Earth, Darcie Little Badger (Levine Querido)
  • Too Bright to See, Kyle Lukoff (Dial)
  • The Mirror Season, Anna-Marie McLemore (Feiwel and Friends)

The judges are Pablo Cartaya (presenter), Traci Chee, Leslie Connor, Cathryn Mercier (chair), and Ibi Aanu Zoboi.

The National Book Awards 2021 Longlist for Translated Literature includes one book of genre interest:

  • On the Origin of Species and Other Stories by Bo-Young Kim. Translated by Joungmin Lee Comfort and Sora Kim-Russell

The complete longlists are at the link. Five finalists in each category will be announced October 5. The winners will be revealed on November 17. Finalists receive a $1,000 prize, a medal, and a judge’s citation. The winners will receive $10,000 and a bronze sculpture.

(5) YA RATINGS SITE DOA. The YAbookratings.com site has been taken down since Foz Meadows unloaded on it the other day. Meadows’ thread, which includes some screencaps of what she reacted to, starts here.

(6) WORRIED ABOUT LIFE ON EARTH. The New York Times profiles the Tennessee author whose novel is on the Booker Prize shortlist: “Richard Powers Speaks For the Trees”. (No relation to the sff artist of the same name.)

…He was hiking in the woods nearby one day when he had the idea for his new novel, “Bewilderment,” which W.W. Norton will release on Sept. 21. Set in the near future, “Bewilderment” is narrated by Theo Byrne, an astrobiologist whose search for life on other planets feels increasingly futile in the face of the coming collapse of life on Earth. As he struggles with the disasters unfolding around him, Theo fears for his 9-year-old son, Robin, who is consumed by grief over the death of his mother and the fate of the planet.

The novel is shaping up to be a literary prize contender and was named to the Booker Prize shortlist on Tuesday. “Bewilderment” marks Powers’s latest and perhaps furthest foray into science fiction, but it has ominous echoes of contemporary America — catastrophic weather, political unrest, a Trump-like president who tweets erratically and spouts conspiracy theories about election fraud, a deadly virus that jumps from cows to humans and spreads rapidly before it gets detected….

(7) ELLISON’S ICONIC HOME. Tim Kirk posted photos of Harlan Ellison and a visitor admiring the “Aztec Martian” facade of Harlan’s home which was designed and sculpted by Tim’s brother Steve Kirk. Also at the link, a shot of Steve and Tim inside Harlan’s study; Steve sculpted the “Robot Deco” totems visible in the foreground.

(8) MEMORY LANE.

1965 – On this evening fifty six years ago on CBS, Lost in Space first aired. It was created and produced by Irwin Allen whose previous SF show was Voyage to the Bottom of The Sea. Its main cast was Guy Williams, June Lockhart, Mark Goddard, Marta Kristen, Bill Mumy, Angela Cartwright and  Jonathan Harris. Oh, and The Robot was played by Bob May and voiced by Dick Tufeld. It was designed by Robert Kinoshita who did the Robot for Forbidden Planet. It would last three seasons of eighty three episodes. A Lost in Space film with a new cast would later happen, as well as a rebooted series. 

(9) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

  • Born September 15, 1890 — Agatha Christie, or to give her full name of Dame Agatha Mary Clarissa Christie, Lady Mallowan, DBE (née Miller). ISDB lists her Harley Quin tales as being genre as they think the lead character is supernatural though no reviewers I can find think that he is. Anyone here who has read them? They also list one Hercule Poirot story, “The Big Four”, as genre as it involved apparently the use of atomic explosives in a 1927 story.  I’ll admit that I love her Murder on the Orient Express in all its film incarnations no matter who plays the lead role. (Died 1976.)
  • Born September 15, 1940 — Norman Spinrad, 81. The only novel I’ve read by him is Bug Jack Barron. My bad. And I was fascinated to learn he wrote the script for Trek’s “The Doomsday Machine” episode which is an amazing story. It was nominated for a Hugo at Baycon. So how is that he’s never won a Hugo? He did get nominated for quite a few Hugos, the “Riding the Torch” novella at Aussiecon One, Staying Alive: A Writer’s Guide  at L.A. Con II, Journals of the Plague Years at Noreascon 3 and  Science Fiction in the Real World at Chicon V. 
  • Born September 15, 1942 — Chelsea Quinn Yarbro, 79. Best known for her series of historical horror novels about the vampire Count Saint-Germain. She has been honored with the World Fantasy Award for Life Achievement, a Living Legend Award from the International Horror Guild Award and a Bram Stoker Award for Life Time Achievement. Very impressive indeed.
  • Born September 15, 1946 — Oliver Stone, 75. Jeopardy! answer: Oliver Stone. Jeopardy question: Who was the scriptwriter for the Conan the Barbarian? Yeah, isn’t that a kick? He has several genre credits one being the executive producers of the Wild Palms series, and the same for The Hand, a horror film about a comic book artist gone horribly wrong.
  • Born September 15, 1946 — Howard Waldrop, 75. I think that The Texas-Israeli War: 1999 which he wrote with Jake Saunders is my favorite work by him, but I’ve not read Them Bones. His short fiction such as “The Ugly Chickens” which won the World Fantasy and Nebula Awards is most excellent. He just won a World Fantasy Award for Lifetime Achievement. A generous selection of his work is available at the usual digital suspects. 
  • Born September 15, 1952 — Loren D. Estleman, 69. You’ll have noticed that I’ve an expansive definition of genre and so I’m including a trilogy of  novels by this writer who’s better known for his mainstream mysteries featuring Amos Walker which are set in the  Sherlock Holmes Metaverse, Sherlock Holmes vs. Dracula, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Holmes and The Devil and Sherlock Holmes. I think it was Titan Book that maybe a decade ago republished a lot of these Holmesian pastiches of which there are more than I want to think about. ISFDB lists two other novels by him as genre, Journey of the Dead and The Eagle and the Viper.
  • Born September 15, 1946 — Tommy Lee Jones, 75. Best known as Agent K in the Men in Black franchise, he’s has done other genre, the first being in Batman Forever as Harvey Dent / Two-Face. He’s also Colonel Chester Phillips in Captain America: The First Avenger as well. He most recently appeared as Cliff McBride in Ad Astra.  Oh, and he’s in A Prairie Home Companion as Axeman. 
  • Born September 15, 1962 — Jane Lindskold, 59. My first encounter with her was the Zelazny novel she finished,  Donnerjack. It’s excellent though how much it’s Zelazny is open to debate which we did the last time I posted her Birthday. Of her own novels, I recommend The Buried Pyramid, Child of a Rainless Year and Asphodel as being very good.

(10) COMICS SECTION.

  • Bizarro shows a distant world where the movie theaters are open.

(11) GENESIS STORIES. The Salt Lake Tribune profiles four comics sellers in “How Utah’s independent comic book stores champion fandom, literacy and fantastic storytelling”.

Charles Prows was a Utah State University student in May 2013 when he decided to open a comic book store.

The almost lifelong Utah resident was on a road trip with his brother one weekend, complaining to his brother about the long path ahead: finishing his undergraduate degree and veterinary school, starting his own practice and — eventually — making enough money to retire and open a comic book store.

“That’s a really roundabout, weird way to open a comic book store,” his brother said.

His brother “ended up convincing [him]” that he should drop out of school and chase his real dream, Prows said. And he did just that — jumping in with only a few hundred dollars to his name….

(12) FINAL EXAM. James Gunn’s last book was released this summer: The Reading Protocols of Science Fiction: Discourses on Reading SF.

“The invitation came online, probably an e-mail. I was aware of the existence of SFF.net, a website that specialized in discussions of science fiction issues, often by authors who were too impatient to get their opinions published in the SFWA Bulletin, which got published every two months and was the battleground for some classic debates and sometimes name-calling… The invitation was to join a discussion–in midstream–about the protocols for reading science fiction. One of the exchanges online included a reference to the fact that I had written about the protocols in a recent article… I didn’t read the website regularly, mostly because I didn’t have time; these were busy days for me, both teaching and publishing, and my days as president of SFWA and then of SFRA were long over, and the debates were still raging about mostly the same issues. But the debates about the protocols of reading science fiction were still fresh and the discussion about them, if they existed, was still fresh. And the discussion was brisk and sharp, particularly from Damon Knight, with whom I had an interesting relationship since I had read his fiction and his critical opinions… We had met in a bar at the World Science Fiction Convention…”

And so begins James Gunn’s definitive and fascinating study of the reading protocols of science fiction — the way readers read science fiction differently than other kinds of fiction. (Or, do they?) The journey may seem academically dry, but is anything but, as it involves all sorts of beloved personalities and brawling debates about reading, writing, the very definition of science fiction itself, and what sets it apart from other fiction, and, ultimately, what makes us what we are as humans.

The lively debate involves Damon Knight and many other professional science fiction writers and critcs. The book includes Samuel R. Delany’s key essay on the subject, and several by James Gunn, to thoroughly explore the subject.

This is James Gunn’s last book, finished just before his death, and a most fitting capstone to his incredible career, all carefully put together with his friend and associate, Michael R. Page.

(13) DOROTHY DISAPPEARS. If they only had a heart. Litigation forces a DC-area brewer to rename its best-known beer. The Washington Post tells the story: “Oz forces 7 Locks Brewing beer name change”.

There’s something poignant about the new name for an old beer made by Rockville’s 7 Locks Brewing. What was originally known as “Surrender Dorothy” is now simply called “Surrender.” The Wicked Witch won and 7 Locks had to throw in the bar towel.

In this case, it was Turner Entertainment that was no friend of Surrender Dorothy. Its lawyers dropped a house on 7 Locks Brewing’s effort to trademark the name of their signature beer. (I think I may have mixed metaphors there.) “Basically, Turner owns the rights to ‘The Wizard of Oz,’” said Keith Beutel, co-founder of 7 Locks. “They claimed that we were using the term ‘Surrender Dorothy’ and they didn’t want any confusion with their branding.”…

(14) UNOFFICIAL COMPANION. A Kickstarter appeal has been launched to fund publication of Across Time and Space: An Unofficial Doctor Who Companion by Unbound.

Across Time and Space is a beautifully designed, 800-page paperback containing reviews of every televised Doctor Who story up to the present day. It is based on a blog called The Patient Centurion started by the writer Tony Cross in 2011, which now runs to over 200,000 words. The book includes an introduction from Doctor Who podcast host, Sunday Times bestselling author and all-round good guy Daniel Hardcastle

It is an unofficial book not in any way associated with the BBC – this is a project by a fan for the fan community . We hope it will encourage some fans to follow Tony’s journey and start watching all 852 episodes in order . . .

Everyone that pledges at the standard level will receive a copy of the book and other perks. At this writing they’ve raised $4,815 of the $32,557 goal.

(15) GIVE YOUR ANSWER IN THE FORM OF A HAT. “Helen Mirren to Host ‘Harry Potter’ Quiz Show for WarnerMedia”The Hollywood Reporter has the story.

The Oscar-winning actress has been tapped to host four-part competition series Harry Potter: Hogwarts Tournament of Houses for WarnerMedia. The previously announced series, which marks the 20th anniversary of the first film in the Harry Potter franchise, will air first on Cartoon Network and TBS before making its debut on HBO Max at a date to be determined.

“I knew someday I’d get a Harry Potter role, and I’m so pleased to take part in the 20-year film celebration,” Mirren said. “The films inspired such enchantment and wonder for so many of us, and it will be such a treat to reignite that magic for the countless fans who continue to revel in this spellbinding world.”

(16) DRAGON, PARTY OF FOUR. The Associated Press says it will happen tonight: “4 will circle Earth on 1st SpaceX private flight”.

SpaceX’s first private flight will be led by a 38-year-old entrepreneur who’s bankrolling the entire trip. He’s taking two sweepstakes winners with him on the three-day, round-the-world trip, along with a health care worker who survived childhood cancer.

They’ll ride alone in a fully automated Dragon capsule, the same kind that SpaceX uses to send astronauts to and from the International Space Station for NASA. But the chartered flight won’t be going there.

Set to launch Wednesday night from Kennedy Space Center, the two men and two women will soar 100 miles (160 kilometers) higher than the space station, aiming for an altitude of 357 miles (575 kilometers), just above the current position of the Hubble Space Telescope….

(17) THE PAST THROUGH YESTERDAY. DUST presents “Atropa” Episode 1.

When Off-World Officer Cole Freeman finds the missing research vessel ATROPA, he discovers an inconsistency in the ship logs. He wakes the crew from hypersleep, and they soon find themselves caught up in a much bigger mystery. Series Description: A troubled Off-World cop, running from his past, finds himself slammed directly into it when he boards the mysterious spaceship ATROPA.

(18) VIDEO OF THE DAY. [Item by Martin Morse Wooster.] In “The Netflix Executive Tutorial” on Screen Rant, Ryan George plays Netflix executive Perry LaCroix, who explains all the advantages of being an executive at Netflix. Your deltoids get a good workout from all the bags of cash you’re carrying around. Everyone is your friend as you throw hundreds at them, “You get very familiar with the anguished cries of former CEOs” who leave pleading voice mails.  But is it possible you could be replaced by an ATM that says “yes” on the front?

[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, Cat Eldridge, Mike Kennedy, rcade, N., Michael J. Walsh, Rich Lynch, SG Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Andrew Porter, Martin Morse Wooster, JJ, and Michael Toman for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to contributing editor of the day Kip Williams.]

Pixel Scroll 7/5/21 If You Pixel Something Hard Enough, It Will Scroll Over

(1) THAT NEVER HAPPENS. James Davis Nicoll introduces the Young People Read Old SFF panelists to “‘Repent, Harlequin!’ Said the Ticktockman” by Harlan Ellison. “A surprising YP: they liked this one,” said James.

…“Ticktockman” represents a sea-change in the nature of works deemed worthy of Hugo Awards. Whereas previous entries were, for all their virtues, what one might call meat and potatoes SF, Ticktockman is a non-linear example of what was called the New Wave…. 

(2) BEST RELATED. Nicholas Whyte analyzes the category’s history in “The Hugo for Best Related Work, including my own votes for this year” – and partially pulls back the curtain on decisions administrators made while he was still the Division Head overseeing this year’s Hugo Awards.

…Now we have reached 2021. I relinquished my WSFS duties this year a bit earlier than planned, and so am in a position to give some commentary on eligibility decisions regarding works that ended up on the 2021 ballot. (Commentary on disqualifications will have to wait until the final results are announced; at this stage I will not even confirm or deny if there were any this year, let alone which categories might have been affected.)…

(3) HIS CHIEF COMPLAINT. Camestros Felapton’s Debarkle reaches Chapter 47: “August Part 1” and the antics of Lou Antonelli.

…Among the retrospectives was a podcast/live-stream by the Superversive SF blog on August 1. …Later, the discussion turned toward Worldcon guest of Honour novelist and screenwriter David Gerrold who had been consistently critical of the Puppy campaigns. It was at this point that events took another twist. Hugo finalist Lou Antonelli had this to say:

… I personally wrote a letter addressed to the police chief in Spokane and said I thought the man was insane and a public danger and needs to be watched when the convention’s going on, and I mean it. I attached my business card. I said this guy’s inciting to violence….

The other guest did not react strongly to Antonelli’s comment and he didn’t elaborate on why he felt the need to contact the police department of Spokane (where Worldcon was being held). However, in a post on his own blog the following day elaborated on what he saw as a commercial threat from the critics of the Puppy campaigns…

(4) AUTHOR REDDING. Catherynne M. Valente will discuss her new book The Past is Red in a Zoom webinar on July 20 at 7:00 p.m. Eastern. Register here.

Catherynne M. Valente, the bestselling and award-winning creator of Space Opera and The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland returns with The Past is Red, the enchanting, dark, funny, angry story of a girl who made two terrible mistakes: she told the truth and she dared to love the world. The future is blue. Endless blue…except for a few small places that float across the hot, drowned world left behind by long-gone fossil fuel-guzzlers. One of those patches is a magical place called Garbagetown.Tetley Abednego is the most beloved girl in Garbagetown, but she’s the only one who knows it. She’s the only one who knows a lot of things: that Garbagetown is the most wonderful place in the world, that it’s full of hope, that you can love someone and 66% hate them all at the same time. But Earth is a terrible mess, hope is a fragile thing, and a lot of people are very angry with her. Then Tetley discovers a new friend, a terrible secret, and more to her world than she ever expected.

(5) IT’S A MYSTERY. Hannah Marder says there are “32 Questions I Still Have About Harry Potter”. She shares them with Buzzfeed readers.

4. What would’ve happened if someone just, like, shot Voldemort?

Or the Death Eaters?? I feel like they should’ve at least tried it. Like, remember that Buffy episode where some mythical monster dude is like “no weapon forged can kill me” and Buffy literally just blows him up with a bazooka? We needed that energy.

(6) SERVING TEA ON THE TOPLESS TOWERS OF ILIUM. Spoon & Tamago celebrates that “Terunobu Fujimori’s latest tea house is a Trojan pig” – although my first thought was – if Henry V had Imperial Walkers, they’d have looked just like this.

Architect-extraordinaire Terunobu Fujimori currently has a retrospective at the Museum Villa Stuck in Munich. There, amongst a comprehensive documentation of the architect’s work since 1986, rests the mobile tea house “Walking Café.” Fujimori’s latest structure remains strongly affixed to his fascination with the tea house, but with a European twist, hence the name.

… Fujimori’s tea house is somewhat of a dichotomy – a structure meant to encourage moderation and, in some cases, even asceticism, being constructed in the symbol of gluttony and sloth. However, it’s important to remember that in the case of the Trojan horse, it’s not what was on the outside but what was on the inside that mattered most.

(7) RICHARD DONNER (1930-2021). Director Richard Donner died July 5 at the age of 91. His genre movies included The Omen (1976), Superman (1978) and Superman II (1980), Ladyhawke (1985) and The Goonies (1985). For TV he directed six episodes of The Twilight Zone, four episode of The Man from U.N.C.L.E., and an episode of The Wild Wild West.

[He directed]  in the same year (1985) the medieval period adventure Ladyhawke and the seminal kids adventure pic The Goonies, the pic with a script penned by Chris Columbus based on a story by Steven Spielberg.

“Dick had such a powerful command of his movies, and was so gifted across so many genres,” Spielberg said in a statement today on Donner’s death. “Being in his circle was akin to hanging out with your favorite coach, smartest professor, fiercest motivator, most endearing friend, staunchest ally, and — of course — the greatest Goonie of all.  He was all kid. All heart. All the time. I can’t believe he’s gone, but his husky, hearty, laugh will stay with me always.”

(8) MEMORY LANE.

  • 2006 —  Fifteen years ago, Charles Stross wins the Sidewise Award in Best Long Form Alternate History for his Merchant Princes series. Other nominated works were Robert Conroy‘s 1862, Jo Walton’s Farthing, Harry Turtledove‘s The Disunited States of America and Paul Park’s The Tourmaline. There are eight novels out in the series with a ninth, Invisible Sun, due out in the fall. 

(9) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

  • Born July 5, 1904 — Milburn Stone. Though you no doubt best remember him as Doc on Gunsmoke, he did have several genre roles including as a German Sargent in The Invisible Agent, Captain Vickery in Sherlock Holmes Faces Death, Mr. Moore in The Spider Woman Strikes Back and Capt. Roth in Invaders from Mars. (Died 1980.)
  • Born July 5, 1929 — Katherine Helmond. Among her roles was Mrs Ogre in Time Bandits and Mrs. Ida Lowry in Brazil. Now I’ll bet you can recall her scene in the latter…  She also have a voice role in the Cars franchise, and one-offs in True BloodThe Six Million Man and Faerie Tale Theater, and yes it’s not really genre, appeared in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. (Died 2019.)
  • Born July 5, 1930 — John Wood. His first genre role was in Slaughterhouse-Five as an unnamed English Officer, his next in Ladyhawke as the Bishop of Aquila and then in the awful Avengers film as Trubshaw. He’d actually been on the earlier Avengers series as Edgar Twitter in “The Bird Who Knew Too Much” episode. He’s had one-offs in DoomwatchYoung Indiana Jones Chronicles and Out of the Unknown. (Died 2011.)
  • Born July 5, 1950 — Huey Lewis, 71. He’s here because he has a brief role in Back to the Future as the band audition judge in that scene. On Jimmy Kimmel Live, Huey Lewis reprised that role in a segment where the two actors as their characters arrive in the time machine and talk to the host.
  • Born July 5, 1957 — Jody Lynn Nye, 64. She’s best known for collaborating with Robert Asprin on the ever so excellent  MythAdventures series.  Since his death,  she has continued that series and she is now also writing sequels to his Griffen McCandle series as well. She’s got a space opera series, The Imperium, out which sounds intriguing. Her latest two novels are both written with with Travis Taylor, Moon Beam and Moon Tracks.
  • Born July 5, 1958 — Nancy Springer, 63 . May I recommend her Tales of Rowan Hood series of which her Rowan Hood: Outlaw Girl of Sherwood Forest is a most splendid revisionist telling of that legend? And her Enola Holmes Mysteries are a nice riffing off of the Holmsiean mythos. She won an Otherwise Award for her Larque on the Wing novel, and her latest, The Oddling Prince, came out several years ago on Tachyon. 
  • Born July 5, 1962 — Marc Gascoigne, 59. Winner of the World Fantasy Special Award—Professional for his Angry Robot press, and later he won the British Fantasy Award in the category Best Independent Press, again for Angry Robot. If you’re a gamer, you’ll be impressed by knowing that he co-wrote Games Workshop’s original Judge Dredd RPG, and wrote the original Shadowrun source book.
  • Born July 5, 1964 — Ronald D. Moore, 57. Screenwriter and producer who’s best remembered  for his work on Star Trek: The Next Generation where he fleshed out the Klingon race and culture, on the rebooted Battlestar Galactica, and Outlander. He’s the creator and writer of For All Mankind. He was one of the folks who won a Hugo at Intersection for the Next Generation’s “All Good Things…” and among the group nominated for one at LoneStarCon 2 for First Contact. His latest Hugo was won at Interaction for Battlestar Galactica’s “33”.

(10) COMICS SECTION.

  • The Far Side has a Game of Thrones-style twist on a famous nursery rhyme.
  • The Duplex finds beer blurs the boundaries of science.

(11) TEXT-FILLED BUBBLES. In the Washington Post, Theresa Vargas discusses Jupiter Invincible, a comic written by Pulitzer-winning poet Yusef Komunyakaa about an immortal who experiences the horrors of slavery. “Jupiter Invincible: Newest comic superhero is an enslaved man”.

…Komunyakaa’s name usually appears alongside a long list of accolades and accomplishments. Winning the Pulitzer Prize in 1994 for his poetry is just one of them. So he understands why people might be surprised to see his name at the bottom of a comic book. His own daughter was.

Komunyakaa admits to hesitating before agreeing to work on the project, which was dreamed up by filmmaker and publisher Ram Devineni during a stay in Maryland. But then, Komunyakaa says, he thought about how he read comic books as a child and about his own upbringing in Louisiana. His family didn’t talk about slavery, but he found ways to learn about it through books and eventually taught African American history. A common theme in his poems is Black resilience….

(12) HIATUS. Mutts creator Patrick McDonnell tells why he is putting his strip on hiatus in “A Special Announcement From Patrick”.

I have a special announcement to share with all of you: I’m working on a literary graphic novel with His Holiness the Dalai Lama. The tentative title is Heart to Heart and it will be published by HarperOne in the fall of 2022. The book is about the environment, animals, and (mostly) compassion. It has a strong, timely message and I’m honored and enthused to be part of this important project. As the book reveals itself, you will be the first to see its progress.

MUTTS has been my primary focus for over 26 years now and I have loved every minute — even the crazy pressure of the daily deadline. Like my hero Charles Schulz, I thought I’d never take a break from drawing my strip.

However, because of the time needed to focus on this book project, I’ll be taking my first sabbatical — starting July 5. Some of my favorite (handpicked) strips will run during this six-month period. On January 1, 2022, I’ll be back and excited to share new adventures with Earl, Mooch, and the gang. My short leave will be over before we know it.

(13) WE ATTRACT. “Why does Mercury have such a big iron core? Magnetism!” says Phys.org News.

…William McDonough, a professor of geology at the University of Maryland, and Takashi Yoshizaki from Tohoku University developed a model showing that the density, mass and iron content of a rocky planet’s core are influenced by its distance from the sun’s magnetic field. The paper describing the model was published on July 2, 2021, in the journal Progress in Earth and Planetary Science.

“The four inner planets of our solar system—Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars—are made up of different proportions of metal and rock,” McDonough said. “There is a gradient in which the metal content in the core drops off as the planets get farther from the sun. Our paper explains how this happened by showing that the distribution of raw materials in the early forming solar system was controlled by the sun’s magnetic field.”

McDonough previously developed a model for Earth’s composition that is commonly used by planetary scientists to determine the composition of exoplanets. (His seminal paper on this work has been cited more than 8,000 times.)

McDonough’s new model shows that during the early formation of our solar system, when the young sun was surrounded by a swirling cloud of dust and gas, grains of iron were drawn toward the center by the sun’s magnetic field. When the planets began to form from clumps of that dust and gas, planets closer to the sun incorporated more iron into their cores than those farther away….

(14) IT FOLLOWS. [Item by Martin Morse Wooster.] Heineken has introduced a beer robot for people who think carrying a six-pack is too much work.

Put the can back into summer with a cooler that carries itself. The Heineken B.O.T. (Beer Outdoor Transporter) is a limited-edition autonomous robot cooler that dutifully follows its owner wherever they go with ice-cold cans of Heineken.

(15) REVENGE IS A DRINK BEST SERVED COLD. In another beer-tech breakthrough, Michael Reeves hacks Boston Dynamics’s Spot so that it can pee beer in a cup. Because: revenge!

…I emailed them. I even tweeted at them. I would do anything for a Boston Dynamics robot dog to just be here. And what did they say? “We’re only giving it out to construction companies.” And of course I was bummed about that. What am I gonna do? So I just accepted it, moved on. And then two weeks later what do I see but Adam Savage gallivanting around with the robot dog. Does he look like a construction company? No. Those bastards lied to me. And so I waited and I waited and I waited until Spot became publicly available and then with the help of offline tv and the sponsor I lied to about where their entire budget was going, there’s a Boston Dynamics robot dog right here and it’s the coolest [ __ ] I’ve ever seen in my entire life… Still, you lied to me Boston Dynamics and so you’re going to have to watch as I turn your state-of-the-art robot dog into a machine that pisses beer into a cup for me to drink….

(16) VIDEO OF THE DAY. [Item by Martin Morse Wooster.] In “The Tomorrow War Pitch Meeting” on Screen Rant, Ryan George, in a spoiler-filled summary, has the writer tell the producer that the aliens in this film are NOT bottles of hard seltzer because the hard seltzer is White Claw, and the villains in this movie are “white spikes.” This dropped yesterday.  And I decided if Ryan George or the Screen Junkies say their videos have spoilers I will listen to them.

[Thanks to Michael Toman, John King Tarpinian, Cat Eldridge, Moshe Feder, N., Nicholas Whyte, James Davis Nicoll, Rich Lynch, Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, Martin Morse Wooster, and JJ for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to contributing editor of the day John A Arkansawyer.]

Pixel Scroll 6/27/21 Credentials Of The Pneumo Gnomes

(1) HAVE YE SEEN THE MOVIE? The cetacean film star is hardly ready to retire: Phil Nichols discusses “Moby Dick at Sixty-Five!” at Bradburymedia.

Sixty-five years ago today – 27th June 1956 – John Huston’s film version of Moby Dick was released, with a screenplay co-written by Ray Bradbury. As regular readers of Bradburymedia will be aware, Ray’s experience of working on this film cast a very long shadow.

Bradbury became somewhat obsessive over Herman Melville’s story, and was driven to write his own prose version of Moby Dick in the form of Leviathan ’99, which was initially a radio play, then a stage play and opera, and eventually a novella….

Nichols follows with a roundup of links to his many posts about various connections between Bradbury and the making of Moby Dick.

(2) FANZINE IPA. [Item by Steven Johnson.] Not a fanzine called IPA, or an apa called IPA, but an limited release Pacific Northwest IPA called Fanzine IPA, from Fort George Brewery in Astoria and Great Notion Brewing of Portland, Oregon. Imagine my surprise when my brother pulled out two pint cans of Fanzine IPA, adorned with bizarre comic strip panels. Images of the cans are at the brewery website. (Click for larger images.)

In an ever hazier world, West Coast IPAs have nearly gone the way of the landline and fax machine. As the condensation slowly evaporates from the window of the indie punk bookstore, Fanzine IPA comes into focus – a crisp, clear, West Coast style collaborative presentation from Fort George Brewery and Grains of Wrath Brewery.  Fanzines are deeply rooted in the DIY ethos of the fiercely independent, small run, self-published, xeroxed and stapled testaments to the object of a true fan’s reverence. The Fanzine IPA can features the art of independent folk legend Michael Hurley, who himself is the subject of a Fanzine. A piney bitterness backs up the heavy hop additions, with grapefruit and other citrus notes. Mild sweetness from the malt bill lingers with a taste of orange juice.

(3) WARREN ELLIS COMEBACK QUASHED. The Mary Sue reports “Image Comics Reneges on Warren Ellis Comeback Series”.

One year ago, British comic book writer Warren Ellis (TransmetropolitanGlobal FrequencyRedwas accused by writer Katie West of coercion, manipulation, and sexually predatory behavior on Twitter. West’s tweet was immediately met with responses from dozens of women and non-binary individuals who shared similar experiences with Ellis, establishing what appeared to be a broad pattern of a giant in the comics industry abusing the power he held over fans and followers. Since then, victims of Ellis have formed So Many of Us, a group of over 60 people who accused Ellis of years of grooming and emotional manipulation.

Ellis issued an apology and largely withdrew from public life, but like most canceled men of the Me Too movement, he has resurfaced. News broke that Image Comics would be bringing Ellis back to finish his mid-2000s series Fell with artist Ben Templesmith. Templesmith made the announcement on his Patreon account, where he wrote of Ellis, “I’m glad he’s going to be doing some comics again. I don’t think anyone thought he’d bugger off and work in a shoe factory or anything, … He is after all, one of the most important comics writers of the past few decades. It means a lot to me to finish this thing, finally, so I couldn’t say no. I guess we’ll let the market speak as to how things go.”

Image Comics initially stood by the announcement, saying “Warren Ellis and Ben Templesmith’s Image Comics series Fell will indeed return for its long awaited final story arc in graphic novel format. We will have more details to share about this very soon.”

But as public outrage grew, they backtracked and issued a new statement saying, “This week’s Fell announcement was neither planned, nor vetted, and was in fact, premature, … While finishing Warren Ellis and Ben Templesmith’s Fell is something we’ve been looking forward to for years, Image Comics will not be working with Warren on anything further until he has made amends to the satisfaction of all involved.” I guess the market has spoken….

(4) GAME WRITER SUES FANS FOR LIBEL. Those of you who have been wondering where to apply all of your recently accumulated knowledge about California defamation lawsuits and the state’s anti-SLAPP provisions learned while following JDA’s case can apply it to a new California case.

The attorneys for video game writer Christoper Avellone filed a libel suit against two women for statements they made in social media about what happened at a Dragon Con, of a nature that can be deduced from the denial:

…These false statements are of or about Avellone and are libelous on their face…. The reader would reasonably understand the statements to be about Avellone and to mean that Avellone targeted young women, including women under the age of consent, by forcing them to become intoxicated for the purpose of engaging in non-consensual sexual contact….

A PDF copy of the complaint, which was filed June 16 with the Superior Court of the State of California, County of Los Angeles, can be read here.

D.M. Schmeyer, who identifies himself on Twitter as an attorney, has an extensive critique of the lawsuit in a thread that starts here. The following are a couple examples of his skeptical take on the suit.

(5) MEMORY LANE.

1982 – In 1982 at Chicon IV where Marta Randall was Toastmaster, C. J. Cherryh would win the Best Novel Hugo for Downbelow Station whichwas set in Cherryh’s Alliance–Union universe during the Company Wars period. It was published by Daw the previous year and originally had been called The Company War by the author. Other nominated works were The Claw of the Conciliator by Gene Wolfe, The Many-Colored Land by Julian May and Little, Big by John Crowley. 

(6) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

  • Born June 27, 1909 — Billy Curtis. You’ll best remember him as the Small Copper-Skinned Ambassador in Trek’s “Journey to Babel” episode. His genre experienced goes all the way back to Wizard of Oz where he was a Munchkin, and later on he’s a mole-man in Superman and The Mole-Men, and later on a midget in The Incredible Shrinking Man. He had lots of one-offs, be it on Batman (twice there), BewitchedGilligan’s IslandPlanet of The Apes or Twilght Zone. (Died 1988.)
  • Born June 27, 1941 — James P. Hogan. A true anti-authoritarian hard SF writer in the years when that was a respectable thing to be. The group that gave out the Prometheus Award certainly thought so with fifteen nominations and two Awards for two novels, The Multiplex Man and Voyage from Yesteryear.  I’m sure that I’ve read at least a few of his novels, most likely Inherit the Stars and The Gentle Giants of Ganymede. A decent amount of his work is available at the usual suspects. (Died 2010.)
  • Born June 27, 1952 — Mary Rosenblum. SF writer who won the Compton Crook Award for Best First Novel for The Drylands, her first novel. She later won the Sidewise Award for Alternate History Short Form for her story, “Sacrifice”. Water Rites and Horizons are the only ones available at the usual suspects. (Died 2018.)
  • Born June 27, 1959 — Stephen Dedman, 62. Australian author who’s the author of The Art of Arrow-Cutting, a most excellent novel. I really should read Shadows Bite, the sequel to it.  He’s the story editor of Borderlands, the tri-annual Australian science fiction, fantasy and horror magazine published in Perth. Kindle has The Art of Arrow-Cutting and a few other titles.
  • Born June 27, 1966 — J. J. Abrams, 55. Let’s see… He directed and produced the rebooted Star TrekStar Wars: The Force Awakens and Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker (he was a co-writer on the latter two), but I think I will single him out as the executive producer of the Fringe series. And he was an executive produced the Lost series as well. Did you know he was the executive producer of Person of Interest too? 
  • Born June 27, 1972 — Christian Kane, 49. You’ll certainly recognize him as he’s been around genre video fiction for a while first playing Lindsey McDonald on Angel before become Jacob Stone on The Librarians. And though Leverage ain’t genre, his role as Eliot Spencer there is definitely worth seeing. 
  • Born June 27, 1975 — Tobey Maguire, 46. Spider-Man in the Sam Raimi trilogy of the Spidey films. His first genre appearance was actually in The Revenge of the Red Baron which is one seriously weird film. Much more interesting is his role as David in Pleasantville, a film I love dearly. He produced The 5th Wave, a recent alien invasion film. 
  • Born June 27, 1987 — Ed Westwick, 34. British actor who has roles in the dystopian Children of MenS. Darko (a film I couldn’t begin to summarize), Freaks of Nature (a popcorn film if ever there was one), the “Roadside Bouquets” episode of the British series Afterlife (which I want to see) and The Crash (which may or may not be SF).

(7) COMICS SECTION.

  • Frank and Ernest would be debating about an Einstein quote if they had someone to take the other side.
  • Off the Mark show the problem with aliens who do look like something humans have seen before.
  • Bizarro drops a frosty gag in the middle of summer.

(8) WILL THIS WORK? “Relativity Space Reveals Fully 3D Printed Reusable Rocket” says Fabbaloo.

…How did Relativity Space achieve this? They built a proprietary metal 3D printing system they call “Stargate” that can, as most 3D printers can do, produce arbitrary objects. The company has used it to produce working Aeon 1 engines for their previous and much smaller rocket, the Terran 1.

The advantage here is that they are literally 3D printing the entire rocket with Stargate. The engines, the fuselage, plumbing and more. This approach allows them to bypass many complications during the build process and subsequent operation: there are far fewer parts to assemble, fewer joints to fail, fewer seams to leak, and so on. The parts are also designed using generative techniques to ensure they are lightweight as possible….

(9) GET JEMISIN’S GREEN LANTERN. (Item by Daniel Dern.) N K Jemisin’s “Far Sector” Green Lantern twelve-issue miniseries from DC Comics is done, and it’s excellent. (Note, Sojourner “Jo” Mullein , Jemisin’s Green Lantern, has just shown up in one of the regular Green Lantern titles.)

Want to get/read it? As always, with comics, there’s a range of ways, depending on where your slider is between Sooner and Frugaler (also paper vs. pixels):

For sale as paper comics. From your local comic shop, or via distant/online sellers. List price $3.99 each, so x12 for the whole run.

In digital form, via ComiXology.com (the engine behind DC and Marvel’s digital sites; owned by Amazon, FYI.)  Hmmm, issues 1-9 are currently on sale from $3.99 each down to $0.99, with 10-12 still $3.99 each, so cheaper than buying the paper comics (assuming they’re still available at list price) — Far Sector (2019-) Digital Comics – Comics by comiXology

Digitally, via DC’s digital streaming site/service DC Universe Infinite — $7.99/month or $74.99/year; free 1-week trial

Good deal for the patient and moderately frugal — like Marvel, new issues don’t get posted here until (at leaat) 6 months after print release date.

So far, the first 9 issues of Far Sector are up here. Wait 3 months, they’ll all be up.

Collected into a book ( = has ISBN, for sale in stores, libraries can/will buy it): Far Sector (9781779512055): Jemisin, N.K., Campbell, Jamal: Books. Not available until October 2021, trade paperback, list $29.99

At that point, for the patient and ultra-frugal, also, a) your library (or library network) can order it for you, b) the digital version will likely be available via Hoopla (hoopladigital.com).

Here’s some review links

(10) A MODERN STONE AGE FAMILY HOME. “Settlement reached in Flintstone House case” – the San Jose Mercury-News says the city and the owner of a house in Hillsborough, California modeled after the Flintstones have finally resolved their litigation.

A menagerie of prehistoric animals now stands guard at the famous Flintstone House, Tuesday, March 13, 2017, in Hillsborough, Calif. Three dinosaurs, a giraffe and a mastadon were added by Florence Fang, the home’s new owner. (Karl Mondon/Bay Area News Group)

After a years-long legal battle, the quirky, colorful prehistoric decor dotting the so-called Flintstone House will be allowed to stay.

According to the Palo Alto Daily Post, Florence Fang and the town of Hillsborough recently settled a 2019 lawsuit stemming from allegations that Fang had failed to get approval to add dinosaurs and a large sign reading “Yabba Dabba Doo,” among other things, to the yard surrounding her whimsical orange and purple home, which is very visible from Interstate 280.

The settlement agreement reportedly says Hillsborough will pay Fang, a retired media mogul whose family used to own the San Francisco Examiner, $125,000 to cover costs associated with the lawsuit and approve permits for the changes made to the home. Fang, who is in her mid-80s, will drop her claims. She has said the city had stymied her initial attempts to get permits, and she suggested that she was discriminated against for being Asian….

(11) MARATHON MAN. Author Miles Cameron has mixed his thoroughly modern career with ancient avocations —

After the longest undergraduate degree on record (1980-87), I joined the United States Navy, where I served as an intelligence officer and as a backseater in S-3 Vikings in the First Gulf War, and then on the ground in Somalia, and elsewhere. After a dozen years of service, I became a full time writer in 2000. I live in Toronto (that’s Ontario, in Canada) with my wife Sarah and our daughter Beatrice, currently age fourteen. I’m a full time novelist, and it is the best job in the world.

I am also a dedicated reenactor; it is like a job, except that in addition to work, you must pay to participate. You can follow some of my recreated projects on the Agora. We are always recruiting, so if you’d like to try the ancient world or the medieval world, follow the link to contact us. Come on. You know you want to.

Below, that’s us, at Marathon in Greece in 2011.

Cameron’s new SF novel Artifact Space was release this month:

Out in the darkness of space, something is targeting the Greatships.

With their vast cargo holds and a crew that could fill a city, the Greatships are the lifeblood of human occupied space, transporting an unimaginable volume – and value – of goods from City, the greatest human orbital, all the way to Tradepoint at the other, to trade for xenoglas with an unknowable alien species.

It has always been Marca Nbaro’s dream to achieve the near-impossible: escape her upbringing and venture into space.

All it took, to make her way onto the crew of the Greatship Athens was thousands of hours in simulators, dedication, and pawning or selling every scrap of her old life in order to forge a new one. But though she’s made her way onboard with faked papers, leaving her old life – and scandals – behind isn’t so easy.

She may have just combined all the dangers of her former life, with all the perils of the new . . .

(12) EEL CHOW CALL. “When an Eel Climbs a Ramp to Eat Squid From a Clamp, That’s a Moray” is the New York Times’ lyrical headline.

Moray eels can hunt on land, and footage from a recent study highlights how they accomplish this feat with a sneaky second set of jaws.

….And morays climbing out of water came as no surprise to some observers. Lana Sinapayen, an artificial life researcher who grew up in the Caribbean island of Martinique, said local fishermen often caught morays by placing squids on the shore and waiting for the eels to arrive. “You only need a solid stick to take your pick,” she wrote in an email. Dr. Sinapayen was not involved in the research but wanted to emphasize that many local people have long known that morays can hunt on land.

[Thanks to JJ, Michael Toman, John King Tarpinian, Hampus Eckerman, Jennifer Hawthorne, Daniel Dern, Cat Eldridge, Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, and Martin Morse Wooster for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to contributing editor of the day Daniel Dern.]

Pixel Scroll 2/14/21 Oh Mandalorian, You Came And You Gave Without Taking That Too-Cute Baby Yoda

(1) UNBOXING DAY. Juliette Wade’s copies have arrived!

(2) IF IT WASN’T FOR THE HONOR OF THE THING. John Scalzi unpacks his “General Unstructured Thoughts On ‘Being Cancelled’” at Whatever.

…2. ‘Canceling’ is certain people discovering that capitalism doesn’t love them as much anymore. I don’t want to say that capitalism is value-neutral, because, whoooooo boy, it is not, buuuuuuut it is pretty much 100% percent accurate that capitalism will always, always, follow the money. And where is the money? Well, in America two decades into the 21st century, the large capitalist structures have decided that the money will be multicultural* and socially inclusive* and politically liberal*, and all those asterisks are there because it should be understood that the capitalist take on each of these concepts is heavily modified and strained through the “to the extent we can make money off this” filter, i.e., don’t expect capitalism to lead us to a multicultural American utopia, just expect it to be happy to rent-seek inclusively on the way there….

(3) ANCESTORS. Ann Leckie is interested in genealogy. Look who fell out of her family tree —

(4) IT’S NOT BLOWIN’ IN THE WIND. At Vector, Paul Kincaid tries to deduce the elusive answer to “When Was Westworld?”

There is no particular issue with the timeline of the original 1973 film, Westworld, written and directed by Michael Crichton. It is set in the then near future, 1983, and the linear action takes place entirely within the Delos theme park. But when the film became the basis for the television series created by Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy, Westworld (2016-present), time became a complex and confusing issue.

Nolan had already displayed a rather cavalier attitude towards time in his earlier television series, Person of Interest (2011-2016). The first series, first broadcast in the autumn of 2011, was set in 2012, but contained multiple flashbacks to events over the previous decade. Although these flashbacks are often dated, it can be difficult to construct a coherent timeline for the two principal characters, Harold Finch (Michael Emerson) and John Reese (Jim Caviezel). But when it came to Westworld, that tendency to play fast and loose with chronology became an often understated but defining characteristic of the series.

To date there have been three series of Westworld (it has subsequently been renewed for a fourth season)…each of which presents time in a different way, even though theoretically each is a direct sequel to the series before….

(5) GOONAN MEMORIAL SCHEDULED. There’ll be a Zoom memorial held for Kathleen Ann Goonan on March 7 at 3:00 p.m. Eastern. Register here. Those who wish to speak should reach out to [email protected].

(6) SNYDER’S JUSTICE LEAGUE. HBO Max released a new trailer for The Snyder Cut of Justice League which includes new footage of Jared Leto as the Joker.

(7) MEDIA BIRTHDAY.

  • February 14, 1988 — On this date in 1988 on BBC 2, the Red Dwarf series premiered. It was created by Rob Grant and Doug Naylor and it aired on BBC Two between 1988 and 1999, and on Dave since 2009. It is a sort of a SF comedy. We think. It’s based off Dave Hollins: Space Cadet, a BBC Radio 4 series. The official website explains the convoluted cast changes over three decades far better than we could. The audience reviewers at Rotten Tomatoes give it an excellent rating of eighty percent. (CE)

(8) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge and John Hertz.]

  • Born February 14, 1906 – John Gould.  Three hundred interiors for us; much else in a long career for the pulps (so called because printed on cheap wood-pulp paper) and others e.g. RedbookThe Saturday Evening Post.  Advertising and fine art too.  Here is a cover for The Spider (no, not that one).  Here is an interior from the Jan 31 Astounding (illustrating C.D. Willard, “The Eye of Allah”).  Here is a 1948 toucan.  Here is a 1960 page for General Electric’s celestial-guidance system.  (Died 1996) [JH]  
  • Born February 14, 1919 – Dave Kyle.  A Pictorial History of SF and The Illustrated Book of SF Ideas and Dreams – a title which is like him.  Three novels, ten shorter stories.  A dozen anecdotes of “The Worldcon from the Beginning” (1939, 1956-57, 1962-63, 1969, 1974, 1977, 1982, 1986-88) in the souvenir book for Noreascon Three the 47th Worldcon; chaired NYCon II the 14th, was Fan Guest of Honor at ConStellation the 41st; by 2011 had attended more Worldcons than anyone else fan or pro.  Two dozen fanhistory articles in Mimosa; see here.  Big Heart (our highest service award; later administered it, 2000-16; after his death, named for him).  Our Gracious Host’s appreciation here.  Notes by me here.  (Died 2016) [JH]
  • Born February 14, 1925 – J.T. McIntosh.  A score of novels, a hundred shorter stories.  Journalist under another name.  I wish I could tell you that “Men Like Mules” was about Bel Riose, or even that “200 Years to Christmas” was about Eratosthenes, but it’s not so.  Nevertheless his early work warrants revival.  (Died 2008) [JH]
  • Born February 14, 1942 Andrew Robinson, 79. Elim Garak on Deep Space Nine. He wrote a  novel based on his character, A Stitch in Time  and a novella, “The Calling” which can be found in Prophecy and Change, a DS9 anthology edited by Marco Palmieri. Other genre credits include Larry Cotton in Hellraiser, appearing in The Puppet Masters as Hawthorne and playing John F. Kennedy on the The New Twilight Zone. (CE)
  • Born February 14, 1951 John Vornholt, 70. I was musing on the difference between fanfic and profic (if such a word exists) when I ran across this writer. He’s written in a number of media properties with the most extensive being the Trek verse where he’s written several dozen works, but he’s penned works also in the Babylon 5BuffyverseDinotopiaEarth 2Marvel metaverse… Well you get the idea. All authorized, but really no different than fanfic on the end, are they? Other than they pay a lot better. (CE) 
  • Born February 14, 1952 Gwyneth Jones, 69. Interesting person that she is, let’s start with her thoughts on chestnuts she did when she was Winter Queen at Green Man. Just because I can. Now regarding her fiction, I’d strongly recommend her Bold As Love series of a Britain that went to pieces as it now certainly is, and her twenty year-old Deconstructing the Starships: Science, Fiction and Reality polemic is still worth reading. (CE) 
  • Born February 14, 1954 – Jeff Easley, age 67.  A hundred covers, two dozen interiors.  Here is the Jul 84 Amazing.  Here is the Dec 98 Dragon.  Here is Legions of Space.  Here is Empire of Imagination.  [JH]
  • Born February 14, 1963 Enrico Colantoni, 58. Any excuse to mention Galaxy Quest is one I’ll gladly take. He played a delightful Mathesar on that film and that was his first genre role, lucky bastard. Up next for him was A.I. Artificial Intelligence as The Murderer followed by appearing in the most excellent animated Justice League Dark as the voice of Felix Faust where his fate was very, very bad. He had an amazing role on Person of Interest as Charlie Burton / Carl Elias. Not genre, but his acting as Sgt. Gregory Parker on Flashpointa Canadian police drama television series is worth noting as it that excellent series. (CE) 
  • Born February 14, 1970 Simon Pegg, 51. Best known for playing Montgomery Scott in the new Star Trek franchise. His first foray into genre was Shaun of the Dead which he co-wrote and had an acting role in. Late gernre roles include Land of the Dead where he’s a Photo Booth Zombie, Diary of the Dead where he has a cameo as a Newsreader, and he portrays Benji Dunn in the ongoing Mission: Impossible franchise. (CE) 
  • Born February 14, 1972 – Sarah Shun-lien Bynum, age 49.  A novel (won the Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize) and two shorter stories for us; another novel, eight other shorter stories.  “I’m always looking and hoping for the swerve [alluding to Joan Retallack].”  [JH]
  • Born February 14, 1975 M. Darusha Wehm, 46. New Zealand resident writer who was nominated for the Nebula Award and won the New Zealand Sir Julius Vogel Award for The Martian Job novel. They say it’s interactive fiction. You can read the standalone prequel novella, Retaking Elysium, on their website which can be found here. (CE)
  • Born February 14, 1991 – Roshani Chokshi, age 30.  Nine novels (three NY Times Best-Sellers), half a dozen shorter stories; two poems in Strange Horizons and Uncanny.  Top of her class in law school, so dropped out and wrote.  Greek and Hindu myth, magic in 19th Century Paris.  Has read EmmaFrankensteinIvanhoeLolitaMoby-Dick, M. Tatar’s Annotated GrimmComplete Stories & Poems of Lewis Carroll.  [JH]

(9) COMICS SECTION.

  • Off the Mark shows how kaiju celebrate Valentine’s Day.
  • Sarah C. Andersen thinks the action really happens on Valentine’s Night.
  • Lar De Souza depicts the surprising truth:

(10) NOTES FROM A BOSKONE 58 INTERVIEW.

(11) THE JETSONS. SYFY Wire eavesdrops as “SpaceX founder Elon Musk teases a lofty Tesla upgrade in the future” in a podcast.

During a recent appearance on The Joe Rogan Experience podcast, Musk commented that he’d love to have upcoming Tesla Roadster hover “like a meter above the ground.”  Musk always makes the most of his visits to Rogan’s online program and it’s usually a treasure of interesting antics and sound bites.

“Maybe it can hover like a meter above the ground, or something like that,” he explained to the popular comedian and host. “If you plummet, it’ll blow out the suspension, but you’re not gonna die.”

Clearly not completely satisfied with the Roadster’s current roster of options, Musk has previously claimed that a next-generation version might be offered with a SpaceX package with rocket-like thrusters employing pressurized air to assist in acceleration, deceleration, and handling.

(12) THE BREW THAT IS TRUE. “Archaeologists unearth world’s oldest known beer factory in Egypt”Yahoo! has the story.

American and Egyptian archaeologists have unearthed what could be the oldest known beer factory at one of the most prominent archaeological sites of ancient Egypt, a top antiquities official said on Saturday.

Mostafa Waziri, secretary general of the Supreme Council of Antiquities, said the factory was found in Abydos, an ancient burial ground located in the desert west of the Nile River, more than 280 miles south of Cairo.

He said the factory apparently dates back to the region of King Narmer, who is widely known for his unification of ancient Egypt at the beginning of the First Dynastic Period (3150BC-2613BC)….

(13) VIDEO OF THE DAY. In “How Wonder Woman 1984 Should Have Ended” on YouTube, the How It Should Have Ended team takes on the many problems of Wonder Woman 1984.

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

Pixel Scroll 1/21/21 Underpeople S’top And S’tare, They Don’t Bother Me

(1) 45 PROOF. [Item by Rich Lynch.] A couple of years ago, in SFPA, I ran an essay titled “Of Beer and the Beltway” which was reprinted in the current (25th) issue of My Back Pages.

In it, I mentioned that a local craft brewery, 7 Locks, was producing a Rye Pale Ale they had named “Surrender Dorothy”, the name a riff on The Wizard of Oz but also a homage to a stunt that happened at a Washington Beltway railroad bridge overpass back in the 1970s.  Here’s what the beer’s logo looks like:  Surrender Dorothy RyePA – 7 Locks Brewing

In that same issue of MBP, I noted that there had recently been modern day pranksters at work who had updated the “Surrender Dorothy” Beltway bridge stunt by spray-painting that same bridge with “Surrender Donald”.  And now 7 Locks has produced a limited-run Rye PA with that same name:  Surrender Donald 6-packs | 7 Locks Brewing Online Shop

I didn’t find out about it until today, when it was described in a short news item in The Washington Post.  And since it was a limited run, it’s unfortunately no longer available.  I see they have beer glasses with that logo listed, so I may try to get one of them.  But damn!  Wish I’d known about it before today!

(2) SUPER TRAILER. The CW dropped a trailer for Superman & Lois.

(3) VIRTUAL CAPRICON. Capricon 41 begins two weeks from today. It’s usually in Chicago, but will be held this year in virtual space.

We have some really amazing program lined up for you, with awesome panelists from all over the world. Check out the full schedule at https://guide.capricon.org/. This is a mostly final schedule, but note that there may still be a few changes to times and panelists to come

Don’t Forget to Register! Everyone must register to access the virtual convention space. Register here.

(4) BERNIE SITS IN. A meme-driven website lets you “Put Bernie Anywhere!” The New York Times explains: “Bernie Sanders Is Once Again the Star of a Meme”.

Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont is a fierce advocate of fair wages and a former presidential candidate who lost the Democratic nomination to now-President Biden. And thanks to his practical clothing choices he is also now the center of a seemingly endless flood of altered pictures that dominated some corners of the internet in the hours after Mr. Biden’s socially distanced inauguration on Wednesday.

Amid the dark suits and bright coats dotting the Capitol steps, Mr. Sanders was photographed sitting masked, cross-legged and bundled up in a bulky coat and mittens against the frigid weather in Washington, D.C. Soon after, the image, taken by the photographer Brendan Smialowski for Getty Images, began to circulate on social media inserted into a wide array of photographs and scenes from movies and artworks….

(5) NIGHTMARE FROM DEL TORO. “Searchlight Sets Guillermo del Toro’s ‘Nightmare Alley’ for December” reports Yahoo! Entertainment.

Searchlight Pictures has updated its 2021 release calendar, dating Guillermo del Toro’s “Nightmare Alley” for December 3. The date puts del Toro’s latest in the thick of the 2021-2022 awards season. Searchlight appears to be following the same release plan it gave del Toro’s last movie, “The Shape of Water,” which started its U.S. theatrical rollout on the first weekend of December. “The Shape of Water” debuted at the Venice Film Festival, winning the Golden Lion, and it seems likely “Nightmare Alley” will show up on the fall film festival circuit.

Del Toro’s “Nightmare Alley” is adapted by the filmmaker, and film critic Kim Morgan, from the 1946 William Lindsay Gresham novel of the same name. The ensemble cast includes Bradley Cooper, Cate Blanchett, Toni Collette, Willem Dafoe, Richard Jenkins, Ron Perlman, Rooney Mara, and David Strathairn…

(6) CASE IN POINT. The Hugo Book Club blog is going through all the Hugo-shortlisted dramatic presentations in order to see how the art of SFF cinema has evolved over time. The third post in the series is: “Hugo Cinema Club: 1960 Gets In The Zone”.

In 1960, for example, Twilight Zone creator Rod Serling seems to have been mostly unaware of the award until some two weeks later when a delegation of California-based fans who had just returned from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania visited the CBS offices to hand him a three-pound chrome rocketship on September 22.

The fans — including Bjo and John Trimble, Rick Sneary and Forrest J Ackerman — were greeted warmly by the television legend, who had also earned his fourth Emmy that summer….

(7) DISTAFF SUPERHEROES. The Women of Marvel podcast announced a special celebrating Marvel’s heroes will debut in April. Women Of Marvel #1 will spotlight iconic characters from the X-Men to the Avengers in a collection of tales by an all-female lineup from throughout the entertainment industry.

Kicking things off will be comics legend Louise Simonson with a must-read introduction. Simonson will be followed by some of the hottest rising stars in the graphic novel industry. Nadia Shammas punches the glass ceiling with an action-packed She-Hulk adventure, Elsa Sjunneson grits her way to the front line with a tale about Captain Peggy Carter, Sophie Campbell goes feral with a bone-grinding Marrow story, video game and comics writer Anne Toole gets gritty in the streets of Hell’s Kitchen, and Natasha Alterici of Heathen fame charges sword-first into the Marvel Universe with a revelatory tale about Rogue and Mystique. With astonishing art from new and established artists Kei Zama (TransformersDeath’s Head), Eleonora Carlini (Power RangersBatgirl), Skylar Patridge (ResonantRelics of Youth), Joanna Estep (Fantastic FourFraggle Rock) and more, readers are sure to come away powered up and ready to slay.

(8) MEMORY LANE.

  • 2006 — Fifteen years ago at L.A.con IV, Serenity wins the Hugo for Best Dramatic Presentation, Long Form. Serenity was the film that finished off the story that started in the much beloved by fans Firefly series that aired briefly on FOX. Other finalists that year were Wallace & Gromit in the Curse of the Were-RabbitThe Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the WardrobeBatman Begins and Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. It currently holds a phenomenal ninety-one percent rating among audience reviewers at Rotten Tomatoes. 

(9) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge and John Hertz.]

  • Born January 21, 1858 – Anna Dodd.  Short stories, novels, essays and other nonfiction e.g. criticism for The Art JournalIn and Out of Three Normandy InnsTalleyrand.  Fluent in French and Italian.  Some say Edward Bellamy’s Looking Backward was inspired by AD’s novel for us The Republic of the Future, subtitled Socialism a Reality, but it’s no joyous forecast.  (Died 1929) [JH]
  • Born January 21, 1921 – Charles Eric Maine.  A score of novels, as many shorter stories.  Here is a cover for his fanzine The Satellite – not to be confused with this.  Many applaud his Mind of Mr Soames.  Also detective fiction, engineering, radio, television, film.  (Died 1981) [JH]
  • Born January 21, 1923 – Judith Merril.  Four novels, thirty shorter stories; book reviews for The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction; half a dozen collections e.g. The Best of JM and posthumous Homecalling; a dozen annual Year’s Best SF (“a practically flawless anthologist” – Anthony Boucher).  Introduced and commented on Canadian broadcasts of Doctor Who.  Co-founded Milford Writers’ Conference.  Toronto Public Library’s Merril Collection named for her.  SF Hall of Fame.  (Died 1997) [JH]
  • Born January 21, 1925 Charles Aidman. He makes the Birthday Honors for having the recurring role of Jeremy Pike on The Wild Wild West, playing him four times. Other SFF appearances include Destination SpaceThe InvadersTwilight ZoneMission: Impossible and Kolchak the Night Stalker to name but a few of them. (Died 1993.) (CE)
  • Born January 21, 1929 – Arthur Jean Cox.  Two novels, a score of shorter stories.  Active in his local club – a six-year string of perfect attendance at weekly meetings, eight terms as an officer – and cons e.g. Pacificon I the 4th Worldcon.  Essays, letters, reviews in AmazingAstoundingFantasy TimesF & SFRiverside QuarterlySF ChronicleSF Review.  (Died 2016) [JH]
  • Born January 21, 1938 Wolfman Jack. Here because I spotted him showing up twice in Battlestar Galactica 1980 presumably as himself if I trust IMDb as it doesn’t list a character for him. He does have genre character roles having been in the Swamp Thing and Wonder Women series plus two horror films, Motel Hell and The Midnight Hour. (Died 1995.) (CE)
  • Born January 21, 1939 Walter C. DeBill, Jr., 82. An author of horror and SF short stories and a contributor to the Cthulhu Mythos. Author of the Observers of the Unknown series about a Lovecraftian occult detective which is collected is two volumes, The Horror from Yith and The Changeling. They don’t appear to be in print currently. (CE) 
  • Born January 21, 1947 – Cherith Baldry, age 74.  Sixty novels, seventy shorter stories, for us, some under different names; a dozen other books; plays; essays, letters, reviews in Banana WingsFocusVector.  [JH]
  • Born January 21, 1956 Geena Davis, 65. Best remembered genre wise I’d say for being in Beetlejuice but she also appeared in Earth Girls Are Easy and Transylvania 6-5000. She’s done some one-offs on series including Knight RiderFantasy Island and The Exorcist. Yes, they turned The Exorcist into a series.  (CE)
  • Born January 21, 1956 Diana Pavlac Glyer, 65. Author whose work centers on C. S. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien, and the Inklings. She teaches in the Honors College at Azusa Pacific University in California. She has two excellent works out now, The Company They Keep: C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien as Writers in Community and Bandersnatch: C. S. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien, and the Creative Collaboration of the Inklings. (CE)
  •  Born January 21, 1972 –Tracy Falbe, age 49.  Ten novels.  Has read DraculaEmpire of the Summer MoonNineteen Eighty-FourParadise LostTwenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea.  “I want to create someone you want to root for and then give him some disappointing traits.  I might infuriate a reader….  I’ll at least know that I provoked emotion.”  [JH]

(10) COMICS SECTION.

(11) BAD FLASHBACK. Sam Besanti, in “What Is Marvel’s Heroes Reborn And Why Can’t We Shake This Feeling of Impending Doom?”  at AV Club, says Marvel Entertainment (the whole company, not just the movie or comic book divisions) sent out a Cryptic Tweet with a teaser announcing the birth of “Heroes Reborn” and speculators are speculating what Marvel means by this.

Today, Marvel Entertainment—that’s the whole company, covering the movies, the comics, and the games—posted a curious teaser that simply had the name Heroes Reborn and “whatever happened to Earth’s mightiest heroes?” underneath. We don’t know specifically what that means, but there is one obvious implication, and based on the… oh, let’s say mixed reaction that the post is getting on Twitter, a lot of Marvel fans are coming to the same conclusion….

(12) X-MEN. X-Men Legends #1 hits stand on February 17. The series “will dive into the rich history of the X-Men to tie up loose ends, resolve long-standing plot danglers, and reveal shocking truths that will change the past and future of the X-Men!” Take a first look at the interior artwork here.

X-Men history will be revisited and revealed when X-MEN LEGENDS #1 debuts next month. This first-of-its-kind series will feature the return of the franchise’s most influential creators—including Louise Simonson, Chris Claremont, and more— in all-new, in-continuity stories set during their groundbreaking runs. Starting things off will be Fabian Nicieza with a two-part tale that finally reveals the truth behind one of the most talked-about mutant mysteries: Adam-X and his startling connection to the Summers bloodline!

Introduced during Nicieza’s explosive work on the X-Men in their nineties heyday, the beginnings of this storyline can be traced back to 1993’s X-Men #23. Since then, X-Men fans have endlessly speculated, theorized, and debated what became known as the “third Summers brother” mystery. Now, all will be answered as one the most infamous comic book plot danglers of all time is resolved!

(13) BIG SHOT. [Item by JJ.] Arnold Schwarzenegger posted video of himself receiving his first dose of coronavirus vaccine at the Dodger Stadium mass vaccination site. He celebrated the moment by slipping in a line from his film — “Come with me if you want to live!”

(14) NARNIA IS NOT INERRANT. Joe R. Christopher has a short essay titled “Was Aslan Wrong about Jadis’s Plan of Attack?” published in Mythprint 57:4, Whole No. 395 (Winter 2020): 8-9 (for sale at the link.) The answer is “Yes, he was.”

(15) HE MUST BE GOING. Larry Correia says Facebook “banned me from my own group because of what I MIGHT say.” Correia has been temporarily banned from FB from time to time, but I’ve never before heard of a ban where a person can still post on his own wall, which is where Correia announced he’ll be curtailing his FB presence. Not actually ending it: “There’s a few groups I use here that I can’t get the equivalent resource anywhere else yet.” All that he told his FB followers has been turned into a post for Monster Hunter Nation: “A Farewell to Facebook” [Internet Archive link].

Jon Del Arroz in a new YouTube video said he is amused by this turn of affairs, because he claims Correia had long ago kicked him out of his group. 

…The post is kind of making the rounds that Larry Correia was banned from his own Facebook group after a couple of years. I’m kind of laughing about this, I’m not, going to lie, because Larry Correia actually ordered that I would be banned from his Facebook group a couple years ago for my quote wrong think or wrong meaning as it were this always happens with the libertarian crowd…

Truthfulness is not JDA’s strong suit, however, he’s banned here, so why not from Larry’s FB group, too?

(16) BIG AND GRAY. Satellite images may take over from aircraft when it comes to surveying this endangered population: “Elephants counted from space for conservation”.

…And all the laborious elephant counting is done via machine learning – a computer algorithm trained to identify elephants in a variety of backdrops.

“We just present examples to the algorithm and tell it, ‘This is an elephant, this is not an elephant,'” Dr Olga Isupova, from the University of Bath, said.

“By doing this, we can train the machine to recognise small details that we wouldn’t be able to pick up with the naked eye.”

The scientists looked first at South Africa’s Addo Elephant National Park.

“It has a high density of elephants,” University of Oxford conservation scientist Dr Isla Duporge said.

“And it has areas of thickets and of open savannah.

“So it’s a great place to test our approach.

“While this is a proof of concept, it’s ready to go.

“And conservation organisations are already interested in using this to replace surveys using aircraft.”

Conservationists will have to pay for access to commercial satellites and the images they capture.

But this approach could vastly improve the monitoring of threatened elephant populations in habitats that span international borders, where it can be difficult to obtain permission for aircraft surveys.

(17) A ROSE WAR BY ANY OTHER NAME. The Folger Shakespeare Library podcast Shakespeare Unlimited brings us “Shakespeare and ‘Game of Thrones’”.

Based on his knowledge of Shakespeare’s Henry VI plays, Harvard’s Dr. Jeffrey R. Wilson knew just how HBO’s Game of Thrones would play out. Jon Snow, the illegitimate son, was a Richard III type, who would win the crown (and our hearts, in a love-to-hate-him kind of way). But Daenerys Targaryen, as a kind of Henry VII, would defeat him in battle and win it back, restoring peace and order. Turns out he was wrong about all of that.

But as Wilson kept watching, he began to appreciate the other ways Game of Thrones is similar to Shakespeare—like the way that both Shakespeare and George R.R. Martin’s stories translate the history of the Wars of the Roses into other popular genres….

(18) JEOPARDY! Andrew Porter witnessed another stumper on tonight’s Jeopardy!

Final Jeopardy: British Writers

Answer: When Agatha Christie disappeared for 11 days in 1926, this British fellow writer tried to find her with the help of a spiritual medium.

Wrong questions: Who is George Orwell? and Who is George Bernard Shaw?

Correct question (only 1 contestant got it right): Who is Arthur Conan Doyle?

(19) A MISSION. Pierre Pettinger, the well-known costumer who along with his wife Sandy received the International Costumers Guild’s 2000 Lifetime Achievement Award, published a new space opera in October, The Road From Antioch.

The pilgrim ship Antioch is destroyed just short of the New Vatican. Someone is stealing critical shipments in the Chemosh Empire. Two worlds of the Laanyr Clan Heer have been attacked. Small vessels are buzzing the Rivnyera World Ships.

Who is behind these incidents? Terrorists? Rebels? The mysterious Cherek? Or someone else entirely? The nations of the Orion Arm must join forces and find the culprits.
The investigation ranges from the space around the planet Ans to the fields of Inohr Dan Nool to the supposedly primitive planet of Cordwainer. Join an Admiral, a Catholic Sister, a Knight Militant, an Ensign, a Great Mind, an Inspector and a Herdmaster as they seek out the perpetrators of these odd occurrences.

(20) VIDEO OF THE DAY. Jimmy Kimmel Live aired this wild animation last night – “Goodbye Donald Trump”.

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

Pixel Scroll 8/25/20 Headless Pixel

(1) NEW BEOWULF. Maria Dahvana Headley’s “new, feminist translation of Beowulf“ was released today by Macmillan.


Nearly twenty years after Seamus Heaney’s translation of Beowulf—and fifty years after the translation that continues to torment high-school students around the world—there is a radical new verse translation of the epic poem by Maria Dahvana Headley, which brings to light elements that have never before been translated into English, recontextualizing the binary narrative of monsters and heroes into a tale in which the two categories often entwine, justice is rarely served, and dragons live among us.

Read Headley’s Introduction here.

…And so, I offer to the banquet table this translation, done by an American woman born in the year 1977, a person who grew up surrounded by sled dogs, coyotes, rattlesnakes, and bubbling natural hot springs nestled in the wild high desert of Idaho, a person who, if we were looking at the poem’s categories, would fall much closer in original habitat to Grendel and his mother than to Beowulf or even the lesser denizens of Hrothgar’s court.

I came to this project as a novelist, interested specifically in rendering the story continuously and clearly, while also creating a text that feels as bloody and juicy as I think it ought to feel. Despite its reputation to generations of unwilling students, forced as freshmen into arduous translations, Beowulf is a living text in a dead language, the kind of thing meant to be shouted over a crowd of drunk celebrants. Even though it was probably written down in the quiet confines of a scriptorium, Beowulf is not a quiet poem. It’s a dazzling, furious, funny, vicious, desperate, hungry, beautiful, mutinous, maudlin, supernatural, rapturous shout.

In contrast to the methods of some previous translators, I let the poem’s story lead me to its style. The lines in this translation were structured for speaking, and for speaking in contemporary rhythms. The poets I’m most interested in are those who use language as instrument, inventing words and creating forms as necessary, in the service of voice. I come from the land of cowboy poets, and while theirs is not the style I used for this translation, I did spend a lot of time imagining the narrator as an old-timer at the end of the bar, periodically pounding his glass and demanding another. I saw it with my own eyes.

(2) RAISEDWULF. Raised By Wolves continues to look wild as hell in new trailer for Ridley Scott’s HBO Max series” says A.V.Club.

Members of the very small but very vocal group of Alien: Covenant supporters (and its smaller Prometheus chapter) are probably a little extra excited for Raised By WolvesHBO Max’s new sci-fi series is executive produced by Ridley Scott, who also directed the first two episodes of a story that definitely looks like it’s treading thematic territory similar to Covenant—or what might’ve come after Covenant if Scott had been allowed to complete his trilogy. Scripted and created by Aaron Guzikowski (Prisoners), Raised By Wolves follows a pair of androids (including one played by Amanda Collin, serving serious Michael Fassbender android vibes) raising human children on a distant planet, where they’re teaching the little kiddos to be atheists. Everything is just fine until some other humans show up with their strong religious views and hatred of robots:

(3) ADDRESSEE UNKNOWN AT BAKER STREET. Netflix dropped a trailer for Enola Holmes, based on the novels by Nancy Springer about Sherlock Holmes’s little sister.

When Enola Holmes—Sherlock’s teen sister—discovers her mother missing, she sets off to find her, becoming a super-sleuth in her own right as she outwits her famous brother and unravels a dangerous conspiracy around a mysterious young Lord. Starring Millie Bobby Brown, Sam Claflin, with Henry Cavill and Helena Bonham-Carter.

(4) FOCUS ON FEAR. S.M. Carrière lets everyone know “Fans Can Be Scary” at Black Gate.

…However, there is absolutely no way that fans should get to dictate the way a story unravels. They do not get to demand of an author to end the series in the way that is not what the writer envisioned, or what the story demanded of them. Fans have no right to force the inclusion of events that do not ring true for that author or the story they’re trying to tell.

Yet, large clusters of fans believe that it is, in fact their right. Those folks, it seems, are not above threatening to end the careers of the author(s) that displeased them, some even going so far as to send death threats. No example of this sticks in my mind than the threats sent to author Veronica Roth, who displeased fans by killing off her protagonist (bold move. I can respect that), leaving the love interest to deal with that trauma.

…What scares me even more, however, is the idea that someone with too much time and a deeply entrenched sense of entitlement might show up at my door one day. I’ve heard first hand accounts of this happening to YouTubers and other celebrities, and the idea alone is enough to make me hyperventilate. Perhaps my home in the country will be an underground bunker…

This fear is, of course, compounded by gender. I’ve worked my fair share of gigs in retail with overly amorous clientele. I’ve been stalked by blokes who thought that a friendly sales person was actually a flirt. I’ve been hounded by men insistent that I am their future wife and they would treat me so well, if only I could be made to see it. I’ve had some of those men turn aggressive and threatening when I state in no uncertain terms that I am not interested. I’ve lost sleep and had panic attacks (and before anyone decides to explain to me that it’s not that bad, I highly recommend a little site called When Women Refuse).

Fans showing up at my door, even if just for a chat or an autograph, would absolutely trigger all of this nonsense. They would be a thoroughly unwelcome presence in my space. The utter lack of concern they show for a person’s need for privacy and even their mental well-being is frightening. Just thinking about it is making me get clammy.

(5) NASA. A Dublin 2019 Worldcon Special Guest is in the news.

(6) GET UP TO SPEED. Nisi Shawl’s “A Crash Course in the History of Black Science Fiction” is an annotated list of 40 black science fiction works that are important to an understanding of the history of Black Science Fiction. Shawl comments in the introduction —

…Just one caveat before you start ordering and downloading and diving into things: some of these works could be construed as fantasy rather than science fiction. The distinction between these two imaginative genres is often blurred, and it’s especially hard to make out their boundaries when exploring the writing of African-descended authors. Why? Because access to the scientific knowledge from which SF often derives has been denied to people of the African diaspora for much of history. And the classification of what is and is not scientific knowledge hasn’t been under our control–it’s frequently a matter of dispute. Also, it’s sometimes difficult to understand the history of black science fiction without reference to the history of black fantasy.

Keeping in mind how inextricably the two genres are interwoven, I include works of fantasy in this history of black science fiction crash course reading list, though I’m careful to note their presence with a parenthetical F at the end of each entry, thusly: (F).

(7) STAY THE COURSE. And Worlds Without End has created a “A Crash Course in the History of Black Science Fiction Reading List” to help readers track their progress, plus a “Roll-Your-Own Reading Challenge” on reading “Speculative Fiction by Authors of Colour”. (Note: You must be a logged in member of WWEnd to join this challenge. Join WWEnd).

(8) ESSENCE OF WONDER. This week’s Essence of Wonder with Gadi Evron features “Nisi Shawl on Music, Spirituality, and the Creative Process”.

Nisi Shawl will join Gadi to co-host a show on music and spirituality in the creative process. Nisi will be joined by Iya Oshunmiwa for a discussion of West African religious traditions and how Nisi’s work relates to those traditions. Oshun Miwa is a Priest of Oshun and professional storyteller?. Nisi and Gadi will explore the role of music in Nisi’s life and work, and we’ll also have a reading from Nisi’s work.

(9) CLASHING THE SYMBOLS. Ros Anderson holds forth “On the Difficulty of Finding a Distinct Human Voice for an AI heroine”, and finds help in a thousand-year-old book.

…I stopped reading the AI books once I hit the first unfathomable equation. Instead, I found myself carrying The Pillow Book around with me, as if it were a balm that I wanted always to have on hand. In Japan, The Pillow Book is a set school text. It has been hailed as one of the earliest works of literature by a woman. But I believe that what has truly given it longevity—across a whole millennium—is Sei’s own distinctive, seductive voice.

Her writing feels like a witty and perceptive friend, cutting in her opinions, but never too serious. Some have even called Shonagon—mistakenly—shallow. The Pillow Book has been described as a 1,000-year-old proto-blog. It has some of that same immediacy and intimacy. That sense of fun.

When I went to my friends’ café each morning to write my own book, The Pillow Book would be tucked in my bag. Something of its timeless narrator slipped a circuit and made it into my writing too. Sylv.ie’s voice began to emerge: a mix of politeness, restraint and disarming honesty. Naïve and rather snobbish, but with a clear, outsider’s eye.

(10) FANFUND AUCTION AT COLUMBUS VIRTUAL NASFIC. [Item by Michael J. Lowrey.] The Fanfund Auction at the Columbus in 2020 Virtual NASFIC has closed, with total sales of US$549.01. Items sold ranged from chapbooks, to naming rights in a new shared universe. to a knitted lace shawl, to private cocktail classes, to a crocheted Irish steampunk textile postcard.

Even though it was a NASFIC, participants included (at a minimum) fen from Germany, Ireland, Poland, the U.S., the U.K. and Australia.

(11) DE-BOOK ‘EM, DANNO. Smithsonian Magazine has “The Inside Story Of The $8 Million Heist From The Carnegie Library”.

…There are two types of people who frequent special collections that are open to the public: scholars who want to study something in particular, and others who just want to see something interesting. Both groups are often drawn to incunables. Books printed at the dawn of European movable type, between 1450 and 1500, incunables are old, rare and historically important. In short, an incunable is so valued and usually such a prominent holding that any thief who wanted to avoid detection would not steal one. The Oliver Room thief stole ten.

Visitors and researchers alike love old maps, and few are more impressive than those in Theatrum Orbis Terrarum, commonly known as the Blaeu Atlas. The Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh’s version, printed in 1644, originally comprised three volumes containing 276 hand-colored lithographs that mapped the known world in the age of European exploration. All 276 maps were missing….

(12) MEDIA BIRTHDAY.

  • August 25, 1951, Space Patrol’s “A Big Wheel Named Ferris” first aired. The series was created by Mike Moser who was the series writer along with Norman Jolley. The principal cast was Ed Kemmer, Lyn Osborn, Ken Mayer, Virginia Hewitt, Nina Bara and Bela Kovacs. Although aimed at children, it had a sizeable adult following for its fifteen-minute and half-hour versions. Books, comic books and a radio series were soon to be added. Even toys would be offered to the viewers. You can watch this episode here.

(13) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge and John Hertz.]

  • Born August 25, 1909 Michael Rennie. Definitely best-remembered as Klaatu in The Day the Earth Stood Still. He would show up a few years later on The Lost World as Lord John Roxton, and he’s got an extensive genre series resume which counts Lost in Space as The Keeper in two episodes, The Batman as The Sandman, The Time TunnelThe Man from U.N.C.L.E. and The Invaders. (Died 1971.) (CE)
  • Born August 25, 1913 – Walt Kelly.  Having acknowledged Herriman’s Krazy Kat as immortal and unique, what does that leave for Kelly’s Pogo?  There is something sublime about the Kat; but Pogo is superb.  If the Kat is brandy, say Delamain, Pogo may be bourbon, say Willett.  Here is a sample.  Here is another.  Judith Merril put Pogo in No. 6 of her Year’s Best SF.  Fantagraphics is up to vol. 6 of a complete run.  (Died 1973) [JH]
  • Born August 25, 1930 Sir Sean Connery, 90. Best film? From Russia with Love. Best SF film? Outland. Or Time Bandits you want go for silly. Worst film? Zardoz. These are my choices and yours no doubt will be different. (CE) 
  • Born August 25, 1947 – Michael Kaluta, 73.  Fifty covers, two hundred fifty interiors.  Interviewed in Realms of Fantasy.  Artbooks The Studio (with Jones, Windsor-Smith, Wrightson), The MK CollectionMK Series 2Dream Makers (with Grant, Heller, Moore, Vess, Wrightson), EchoesWings of TwilightMK Sketchbook vols. 1-4.  Comics, music albums, role-playing games, collectible cards; airplane-nose art and flight-unit patches.  Here is the Baycon ’87 Program Book.  Here is Davy.  Here is Vector 276.  Here is Deep Signal.  Shazam Award.  Inkpot.  Chesley for Artistic Achievement.  Spectrum Grand Master.  [JH]
  • Born August 25, 1955 Simon R. Green, 65. I’ll confess that I’ve read pretty much everything he’s written save his NYT best-selling Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves. (Shudder! I did see it.) Favorite series? The NightsideHawk & Fisher and Secret History are my all-time favorite ones with Drinking Midnight Wine the novel I’ve re-read the most. His only active series now is the Ishmael Jones fantasy mystery and it’s quite excellent. (CE) 
  • Born August 25, 1956 – Chris Barkley, 64.  Con-goer; several hundred including some three dozen Worldcons when I last tried to count; I often find him doing Press Relations.  Campaigned for a Young Adult award; we now have the Lodestar.  Accessibility and diversity, too, get his labors.  Vigorous contributor to File 770.  Fan Guest of Honor at Windycon 2019.  “You have to walk a fine line between your utter conviction that you are right AND feeling flexible enough in your beliefs that you can admit you are wrong or can compromise.”  [JH]
  • Born August 25, 1958 Tim Burton, 61. Beetlejuice is by far my favorite film by him. His Batman is interesting. Read that comment as you will. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is definitely more Dahlish than the first take was, and Sleepy Hollow is just damn weird. (CE)
  • Born August 25, 1959 – Georges T. Dodds, Ph.D., 61.  Essays, reviews, in ArgentusSF SiteWARP.  Edited The Missing Link and Other Tales of Ape-Men.  Did an adaptation of Lemina’s To-Ho and the Gold Destroyers.  Note that his reviews include The Ghost Book of Charles Lindley, Viscount Halifax; Mary Shelley’s Last Man; and Brooks’ Freddy the Detective.  [JH]
  • Born August 25, 1967 – Laura Anne Gilman, 53. Thirty novels, six dozen shorter stories, some with co-authors, some under other names; more outside our field.  Managed a wine-tasting room awhile.  Interviewed in After HoursApexElectric VelocipedeFantasyInterGalactic Medicine ShowStrange Horizons.  “Writer, editor, tired person”.  Amen.  [JH]
  • Born August 25, 1970 Chris Roberson, 50. Brilliant writer. I strongly recommend his Recondito series, Firewalk and Firewalkers. The Spencer Finch series is also worth reading. He’s also written two Warhammer novels, Dawn of War and Sons of Dorn, and Is publisher with his wife Allison Baker of Monkey Brain Books. He won a Sidewise Awards for Alternate History for his O One novella which I’ve not read. (CE)   
  • Born August 25, 1971 – Lisa Papademetriou, 49.  A dozen novels, some under another name; more outside our field; many for young adults, but your mileage may vary.  Ranks The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy about the same as The Wave in the Mind.  [JH]
  • Born August 25, 1987 Blake Lively, 33. She was Adaline Bowman in The Age of Adaline, a neat meditation upon life and death. She also played Carol Ferris in that Green Lantern film but the less said about it the better. Her very first role was as Trixie / Tooth Fairy in The Sandman at age eleven. (CE)

(14) COMICS SECTION.

(15) THEME PARK ON THE ROCKS. “Evermore faces financial ruin after failing to pay contractors”Utah Business has the story.

“My wife [Patrice] and I have cried many nights over this project,” says Ken Bretschneider, founder and CEO at Evermore Park. “This is not a position we wanted or should have gotten into.” 

Only eight years ago, Bretschneider invested more than $37 million (and counting) of his own fortune largely from the sale of his previous startup DigiCert in 2012 to build a sort of live-action theme park in Pleasant Grove, Utah. He hired dozens of contracted construction workers to bring his medieval vision to life, but as plans became more and more grandiose, Bretschneider found himself strapped for cash and unable to make payments to the teams building the park.

Bretschneider claims he’s been fighting for additional funding something he says has been hard to procure for a unique project such as this but until he does, he owes millions of dollars in construction, mechanic, and landscaping fees to workers across the valley who have yet to be paid, sparking a number of controversies across the state…. 

(16) DREAM FOUNDRY WRITING CONTEST. The Dream Foundry Writing Contest is taking submissions through October 11, 2020. The contest  will be judged by Neil Clarke of Clarkesworld Magazine. Full guidelines here.

We’re looking for complete and finalized stories of speculative fiction of up to 10,000 words. This year, we’re proud to announce monetary prizes for 1st, 2nd, and 3rd places.

1st: $1000; 2nd: $500; 3rd: $200

There is no submission fee. All rights remain with the creators.

At the Dream Foundry blog there’s “An Interview with the Dream Foundry’s Writing Contest Coordinator Vajra Chandrasekera”.

Professional development spaces for emerging writers are not necessarily easily accessible to those who need it most. How do you see opportunities like the Dream Foundry’s writing contest fitting into the professional development of new and upcoming writers?

I think nine-tenths of “professional development” for a short story writer at the beginning of their career is learning how to make their own practice effective. This means figuring out what they want to write about and what they’re good at writing, and writing more stories where they do those things, ideally at the same time. Sometimes it’s just that a contest gives you a clearly defined set of constraints to work within, which can be very productive. Sometimes it’s good to hang out in a discord with a bunch of other people who are trying to solve the same problems you are—so you can commiserate and share experiences and animal pictures, if you’re into that sort of thing, and even if not, these are good spaces to eventually share knowledge about the industry, too.

(17) DREAM FOUNDRY ART CONTEST. The new Dream Foundry Art Contest coordinator is Dante Luiz, an illustrator and occasional writer from southern Brazil. He is one of the two Art Directors for Strange Horizons, and his first graphic novel was published in 2020 by comiXology Originals (CREMA, written by Johnnie Christmas).

The Dream Foundry Art Contest will run from 1 September 1 to November 1, 2020. The first place winner for the art contest will receive $1000. Guidelines are located here.

(18) LIFESAVING APP. From the creator of The Oatmeal.

About

This app was designed by Matt Inman, creator of The Oatmeal.

It was built and developed by Nick Inman, Matthew’s brother.

FAQ

When will it be available in the Google Play store?
It will be available at some point in space and time.

The app didn’t work for me! What should I do?
Try vigorously shaking your phone and rebooting your router.
If that fails, try blowing profusely into your phone’s charge port.
If that fails, accept that the universe is fundamentally against you.
Just please don’t email us about it.

Does this app work on dogs?
No. That’s why it has the word “cat” in the title.

What about tigers?
Yes, it is tiger-compatible.

(19) ANOTHER ORDINARY DAY ON THE INTERNET. Think of your experiences on Facebook. Ever wonder how you got into arguments you don’t even want to be in? Ever had to block someone? Now think of having to deal with 800 times as much of it as you do. Okay. Now you’re ready to hear Larry Correia explain “About My ‘Tone’ On Social Media” [Internet Archive] on Monster Hunter Nation.

…I had one last month, with 8,000 comments, where I ended up blocking over 100 people in 24 hours. That was nuts.

Apparently, where all these people come from, blundering into a stranger’s living room and screaming in his face is a “conversation”. And if you don’t put up with their endless abuse, you’re obviously a bad person.

Awesome.  I’ll be the bad guy.

And it is bipartisan. Though I’d say 80% of the time I’m yelled at by annoying leftists, 15% it’s annoying right wingers, and 5% Too Fucking Insane To Register On Any Regular Political Scale.

That’s for controversial posts. For regular, boring, not controversial posts at all, I can count on getting lots of “helpful” suggestions. These mean well, but then never stop coming, and most of them are so awful they really make my head hurt. You’re right, sir, I should totally install more electrical outlets into my closet. Why thank you, ma’am, I should totally disregard my decade of professional experience and write my books according to your really awful suggestions.

Then there’s the people who think they are funny, who aren’t. I’ve heard the same tired jokes 10,000 times. I can’t post about the availability of a new product without Shut Up And Take My Money memes, and I can never mention food spicier than white bread without listening to dozens of people whine about how weak their bowels are…

(20) BE ON THE LOOKOUT. Gizmodo warns “Trillions of Rogue Planets Could Be Careening Through Our Galaxy”. And none of them are insured.

A new estimate suggests the Milky Way contains more free-floating planets than stars. It’s a big claim, but an upcoming mission might actually prove it.

Rogue planets in our galaxy could number in the tens of billions and possibly even trillions, according to new research published in the Astronomical Journal. If confirmed, it means the Milky Way hosts more unbound, starless planets than it does stars. This estimate was developed in preparation for the Roman Galactic Exoplanet Survey (RGES), a five-year mission that’s scheduled to start in about five to six years.

(21) THE SHAPE OF THINGS THAT ARE PRESENT. “Johannes Kepler and COVID-19: 400 Years of Mathematical Modeling” on the Library of Congress Blog.

…Because viruses have such small genetic codes they have to be very efficient when it comes to building their shapes. Many, such as COVID-19, have polyhedral designs. A polyhedron is a three-dimensional shape with flat faces that are made of two-dimensional polygons. They have straight edges and sharp corners. As geometric figures, they have been studied since the time of the ancient Greeks.

In the early 17th century the astronomer Johannes Kepler, perhaps best known for his derivation of the laws of planetary motion, was fascinated by these shapes. In 1619, exactly 400 years before the outbreak of COVID-19, he produced a book called “Harmonices Mundi” (“Harmony of the Worlds”) that peered into and tried to understand these simple yet mysterious forms. The Library has copies of this work in the Rare Books and Special Collections Division.

(22) DOMESTIC FELICITY. What will SJWs think of the idea you can heat your home with cats? “Cat v panel heater: Which is better?” at New Zealand blog One Roof.

… How many cats do you need to heat an energy-efficient home?

It’s the question on everybody’s lips. Well, maybe not everyone’s lips, and it’s possible this is a niche topic, but it is relevant.

A 3kg cat has a heat output of 14.8 watts, or 129.65 kilowatt-hours – the metric commonly used by power companies to show you how much energy you’re using.

These numbers are important when it comes to the design and building of energy-efficient homes, as the heat output of random things like cats can lead to overheating.

For example, to be certified Passive House, a building must have an annual heating demand of less than 15kWh per square metre to maintain a comfortable temperature.

For a typical Kiwi house of 150sqm, the annual energy demand would be 2250kWh. The number of cats required, therefore, would be 17.35, but let’s avoid chopping cats and round up to 18 whole cats.

(23) WILL THEY MAKE YOU GLAZE OVER? Food & Wine  promises “These New Dunkin’ Beers Are Made with Actual Donuts”.

At this point, an endless parade of brands is dabbling in craft beer collaborations: bands like The Flaming Lips, clothing lines like L.L. Bean, and even the mustard maker French’s. But few companies have been as aggressive in their beer collab-ing ways as Dunkin’. After some early experiments in 2017 (a pumpkin brown ale with Catawba Brewing and a coffee stout with Wormtown Brewery), the donut and coffee chain found a lasting (and larger) partner in 2018 with the Massachusetts-based Harpoon Brewing. That year, the two brands released their Dunkin’ Coffee Porter. Then, in 2019, Harpoon Dunkin Summer Coffee Pale Ale hit shelves.

Now, for the 2020 fall season, Harpoon and Dunkin’ are releasing a full lineup of four beers—including three new brews, two of which are billed as the first beers to ever be made with actual Dunkin’ donuts. And tapping into craft beer’s biggest trend, one of those is even a donut-infused hazy IPA!

Arriving this September, Harpoon and Dunkin’ are bringing back their popular Coffee Porter for the third consecutive year—and it arrives alongside a trio of new creations: Harpoon Dunkin’ Pumpkin, Harpoon Dunkin’ Boston Kreme, and Harpoon Dunkin’ Jelly Donut. The first of the three is described as a “Spiced Latte Ale” inspired by the seasonal espresso drink. The “light in color and easy-drinking” 5.2 percent ABV ale is “brewed with real pumpkin, pumpkin pie spices, and a splash of coffee” to create “a perfect blend of all the autumn flavors we love, with just a touch of espresso-like roast.”…

(24) VIDEO OF THE DAY. In “Honest Game Trailers:  Fall Guys, Ultimate Knockout” on YouTube, Fandom Games takes on a multi-player game where you “use five percent of your brain” to maneuver your character through a course “that’s somewhere between Battle Royale and a Japanese game show.”

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

Pixel Scroll 4/13/20 Pixels, Get Ready, There’s A Scroll A’comin’

(1) PRESSING IN. Cat Rambo’s video “Why Small Press Books Don’t Almost Always Suck” challenges negativity about small presses with examples from her own career.

Cat talks about some of the small press books she’s appeared in or worked with, and what she likes about them

So far as I can tell she doesn’t identify any particular person as holding this opinion. But it might be more than a coincidence that a few weeks back Nick Mamatas wrote a column for LitReactor titled “Why Are Small Presses Almost Always So Awful?”

(2) IN CASE OF EMERGENCY. [Item by Dann.] Regarding Archive.org, Brian Keene has gone through the process of figuring out how to get his works removed from the National Emergency Library. To make it easier for other authors, he supplied the process in The Horror Show with Brian Keene – episode 259.

  • Authors need to send an email to [email protected].
  • The subject line should read “National Emergency Library Removal Request”
  • Authors need to include the URL(s) from within the National Emergency Library so they will know which work(s) they need to remove.

It’s kind of crappy to force authors to jump through hoops to prevent copyright infringement, but I guess it’s better to have hoops available than to just ignore the infringement and drive on as if nothing is wrong.

(3) IMPROVING SHORT FICTION. The Odyssey Writing Workshop interviews guest lecturer Sheila Williams, editor of Asimov’s.

…You’ve read quite a number of short stories over the years as an editor. For writers looking to improve their understanding of how short stories work, how would you suggest critically reading stories with an eye to improvement and understanding? Are there particular elements critical readers should look for?

This is a great question. Years ago I heard of an author who retyped a famous story to figure out what the author was doing. I don’t think the writer has to go that far, but critical reading is essential. Pick a favorite story that wowed you and read it a few times. Take notes. Look for the foreshadowing. Look for the metaphors and the similes. Pay attention to the arc. Pay attention to every clue. A professional author rarely wastes a word in a work of short fiction. It takes practice to pick up on most of the details the first time through a tale, but it’s a lot easier to see these details once you know what’s coming.

(4) NOT A DESIRABLE CHAPTER. Publishers Weekly reports on the troubles of a major book printer: “LSC Files Chapter 11”

LSC Communications announced this morning that it has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York. The filing has been expected for several months as the country’s largest book printer—and one of its largest printers overall—has struggled under the weight of its failed merger with Quad Graphics and the outbreak of the new coronavirus. LSC’s subsidiaries in Mexico and Canada are not included in the filing, and will continue to operate normally.

LSC said it has received commitments for $100 million in debtor-in-possession financing from certain of its revolving lenders, subject to the satisfaction of certain closing conditions. If approved by the bankruptcy court, LSC said, the new financing, combined with cash on hand and generated through its ongoing operations, “is expected to be sufficient to support the company’s operational and restructuring needs.”

Since LSC’s deal with Quad was called off last summer following objections from the Justice Department, the company has worked to streamline its business, a process that has included closing eight facilities and signing new contracts, noted Thomas Quinlan III, LSC chairman, president, and CEO. Quinlan added that a review of its operations determined that the best way forward was to pursue a restructuring of its financial structure.

And Quad, LSC’s would-be merger partner, hit the wall two weeks ago: “Quad Closes Book Printing Operations”.

Publishers were dealt an unhappy surprise last week when Quad unexpectedly closed its book printing facilities, sending publishers scrambling to find a replacement. Quad did not respond to requests for comment from PW on whether it had plans to re-open the book plants.

The closure comes at a time when the loss of printing capacity is one of the many concerns publishers are facing because of the new coronavirus outbreak. Overall, most printers are printing, although on different schedules as they adjust to state policies, staffing, and types of books.

Quad put its book printing business up for sale last fall following the collapse of its proposed merger with the country’s largest book printer, LSC Communications, after the U.S. Department of Justice filed an antitrust suit. Quad has yet to respond to requests for comment from PW on whether it has found a buyer, but to date, none has been announced.

LSC, meanwhile, is continuing to operate, though it is dealing with its own financial challenges. 

(5) WORLD FANTASY AWARD NOMINATIONS OPEN. The World Fantasy Convention chairs still plan to hold their con in Salt Lake City from October 29-November 1.

WFC 2020 is still six months away. Every day brings new developments and, we sincerely hope, progress toward controlling and conquering the virus. We have every hope that the current crisis will be over long before 29 October. Besides our own continuing discussions and plans, we’re monitoring the efforts of other conferences and similar gatherings, and will adapt all measures that make sense to keep our membership safe. We know this is a difficult time, and everyone’s plans are in a state of flux. Be assured we have no plans to raise membership rates during this worldwide emergency.

Download Progress Report #2 from the website.

Members of the 2018, 2019, or 2020 World Fantasy Conventions may nominate books, stories, and individuals for the 2020 World Fantasy Award between how and May 31. Voting instructions here.

(6) THE LOOK OF DUNE. Vanity Fair posted on Instagram the first photos of Timothee Chalamet as Paul Atreides in Denis Villeneuve’s production of Dune.

(7) FERRELL OBIT. Former OMNI editor Henry Keith Ferrell (1953-2020) died of an apparent heart attack while fixing his roof, before the storm currently sweeping up the East Coast. He is survived by his wife, Martha, and son, Alec, who made the announcement on Ferrell’s website.

…Graduating from Raleigh’s Sanderson High in 1971, he attended the Residential College of the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, where he met Martha Sparrow — a woman of equal beauty and intellect — at a Halloween party in the basement of Guilford dormitory. His face covered in wax, she overheard him mentioning the name “Lawrence Talbot” and she got the reference, having no idea what Keith looked like. On their first date, they ditched a French play to go see King Kong instead. They fell in love, moved off campus, and started their lives together. They were married on July 20, 1974, and would remain together for almost 47 years.

…Now a family man, Keith set out on his career in publishing, first at Walnut Circle Press as a print salesman, then as editor of trade magazine The Professional Upholsterer, onward to feature writer of COMPUTE! Magazine, where he was at the forefront of reporting on the burgeoning home computing industry throughout its emergence as a household staple. All the while, he raised his son and loved his wife, planted many gardens, and wrote and wrote and wrote.

From 1983 through 1987, Keith published four critically-acclaimed biographies of legendary writers for young adults through M. Evans and Company: H.G. Wells: First Citizen of the Future; Ernest Hemingway: The Search for Courage; George Orwell: The Political Pen; and John Steinbeck: The Voice of the Land. These were the first of many printed works to bear his name in the byline.

In 1990, COMPUTE! was acquired by General Media out of New York City, and Keith was recruited and ultimately served as Editor-in-Chief of OMNI Magazine, the preeminent science and technology publication of the day — a career-defining accomplishment. During his tenure at OMNI, Keith worked with (and edited) many of the heroes of his youth and forged friendships across the fields of anthropology, gaming, evolutionary studies, telecommunications, and writers of all stripes. Keith stewarded OMNI as a vehicle for the vanguard of cutting-edge technology and futurism until its final issue…

He wrote until his dying day, which turned out to be April 11, 2020, at 2:32pm. His heart gave out after fixing a hole in his roof, but finished the job before doing so….

(8) TODAY IN HISTORY.

  • April 13, 2012 Lockout premiered. Also known as MS One: Maximum Security, It directed by James Mather and Stephen Saint Leger, and written by Mather, Saint Leger, and Luc Besson. It was both Mather’s and Saint Leger’s feature directorial debuts. The film stars Guy Pearce, Maggie Grace, Vincent Regan, Joseph Gilgun, Lennie James, and Peter Stormare. It did poorly at the box and critics were not fond of it either; it holds a 46% rating among audience reviewers at Rotten Tomatoes. So why write up here? Because John Carpenter successfully sued the film’s makers in the French courts for the film having plagiarized both Escape from New York and Escape from L.A.., a verdict held upon appeal. 

(9) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

  • Born April 13, 1923 Mari Blanchard. Remembered best as B-movie femme fatale, she did a number of genre films including Abbott and Costello Go to Mars where she was Queen Allura, She Devil where she had the lead role of Kyra Zelas and Twice-Told Tales, a Vincent Price horror film where she had a not major role as Sylvia Ward. (Died 1970.)
  • Born April 13, 1931 Beverley Cross. English screenwriter responsible for an amazing trio of films, to wit namely Jason And The ArgonautsSinbad And The Eye Of The Tiger and Clash Of The Titans. He also wrote the screenplay for The Long Ships which is at genre adjacent. (Died 1998.)
  • Born April 13, 1949 Teddy Harvia, 71. Winner of the Hugo for Fan Artist an amazing four times starting in 1991 at Chicon IV, then in 1995 at Intersection, next in 2001 at the Millennium Philcon and last at in 2002 at ConJosé. He was honored with the Rebel Award by the Southern Fandom Confederation in 1997 at that year’s DeepSouthCon
  • Born April 13, 1951 Peter Davison, 69. The Fifth Doctor and one that I came to be very fond of unlike the one that followed him. And he put a lot of gravitas into the voice of Mole he did for The Wind in the Willows animated special Mole’s Christmas. For twenty years now, he has reprised his role as the Fifth Doctor in myriad Doctor Who audio dramas for Big Finish.
  • Born April 13, 1954 Michael Cassutt, 66. Producer, screenwriter, and author. His TV resume includes notable work for the animated Dungeons & DragonsMax HeadroomThe Outer LimitsBeauty and The BeastSeaQuestFarscape and The Twilight Zone. He’s also written a number of genre works including the Heaven’s Shadow series that was co-written with David S. Goyer.
  • Born April 13, 1959 Brian Thomsen. He was an American science fiction editor, author and anthologist. Founding editor of the Questar Science Fiction line for which he was a Nolacon II Hugo finalist in the Best Professional Editor category. I’ve read and will recommend The American Fantasy Tradition which he did, and likewise Masters of Fantasy which was co-edited with Bill Fawcett. I see he helped Julius Schwartz put together his autobiography,  Man of Two Worlds. (Died 2008.)
  • Born April 13, 1950 Ron Perlman, 70. Hellboy in a total of five films including three animated films (Hellboy: Sword of StormsHellboy: Blood and Iron and the Redcap short). Still by far the best Hellboy. He’s got a long association with the genre as his very first film was Quest for Fire in which he was Amoukar. The Ice Pirates as Zeno was followed quickly by the role of Captain Soames in Sleepwalkers and Angel  De La Guardia in the Mexican horror film Cronos. Several years later, I see he’s Boltar in Prince Valiant, Johnher in Alien Resurrection and Reman Viceroy in Star Trek: Nemesis. And I should note he was in Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them as Gnarlack, a goblin gangster if I read the Cliff notes to that correctly. No, I’m not forgetting about his most amazing role of all, Vincent in Beauty and The Beast. (Having not rewatched for fear of the Suck Fairy having come down hard on it.) At the time, I thought it was the the most awesome practical makeup I’d ever seen. And the costume just made look him even still more amazing. 
  • Born April 13, 1960 Michel Faber, 60. Dutch born author of three genre novels, Under the SkinThe Book of Strange New Things and D: A Tale of Two Worlds. He was a finalist for the 2015 Arthur C. Clarke Award for The Book of Strange New Things.

(10) COMICS SECTION.

(11) THERE’S NOTHING HALFWAY ABOUT THE IOWA WAY. Shaenon K. Garrity tweeted, “The Iowa Digital Library has a collection of sci-fi fanzines from the 1930s and 1940s, and my entertainment needs through the rest of the pandemic are taken care of.” Thread starts here.

(12) SECOND THOUGHTS. Cora Buhlert continues her assessment of this year’s finalists in “Some Thoughts on the Hugo Award Finalists, Part II: The 2020 Hugo Awards”.

…This year, however, I’m largely happy with the Best Related Work finalists. Joanna Russ by Gwyneth Jones, The Lady from the Black Lagoon: Hollywood Monsters and the Lost Legacy of Milicent Patrick by Mallory O’Meara and The Pleasant Profession of Robert A. Heinlein, by Farah Mendlesohn are exactly the sort of finalists I want to see in this category. All three were also on my longlist, two of them were on my ballot.

Becoming Superman: My Journey from Poverty to Hollywood by J. Michael Straczynski was not on my ballot, but is a highly deserving finalist, since autobiographies of people of genre relevance have always been a part of Best Related Work – see also the recent nominations for Carrie Fisher’s and Zoe Quinn’s respective autobiographies….

(13) LOOKING FOR A JOB IN WASHINGTON. If Lou Antonelli doesn’t get voted in as SFWA director-at-large, he’s got a fallback position. Lou has declared himself a Libertarian candidate for Congress in Texas’ 4th District. Ballotpedia shows he’s up against a Republican incumbent.

Brianna Wu is running for Congress as a Democrat in a Boston-area district once again. It would be an interesting coincidence if they were both on the floor of the House to start the 2021 term.

(14) SCARED STRAIGHT. “Indonesian village uses ‘ghosts’ for distancing patrols” according to the BBC.

A village in Indonesia has reportedly taken to using volunteers dressed as ghosts to try to scare people into social distancing over the coronavirus.

Kepuh village, on Java Island, started deploying the patrols at night last month.

In Indonesian folklore, ghostly figures known as “pocong” are said to represent the trapped souls of the dead.

Indonesia so far has about 4,500 cases and 400 confirmed virus deaths, according to Johns Hopkins University.

But there are fears, according to experts, that the true scale of the infection across the country is much worse.

According to Reuters news agency staff who travelled to see the pocong in action, the unusual tactic initially had the opposite effect to that intended – with people coming out to try to spot the volunteers.

But locals say matters have improved since the team began deploying unexpectedly.

“Since the pocong appeared, parents and children have not left their homes,” resident Karno Supadmo told Reuters. “And people will not gather or stay on the streets after evening prayers.”

(15) FLAT NOTES. Today’s thing to worry about — “Coronavirus: What’s happening to the beer left in pubs?”

Pubs, like other public venues, look set to stay shut for the foreseeable future. But what’s going to happen to the contents of their cellars?

Fifty million pints – give or take.

That’s the amount of beer expected to go unused in barrels if pubs remain closed into the summer because of coronavirus. Publicans are currently unable to sell their lagers, ales and ciders – save for takeaways and home deliveries.

“It’s a very sad waste of all the work and talent that goes into producing great beer,” says Tom Stainer, chief executive of the Campaign for Real Ale (Camra). “People won’t get to drink it and all those resources have been used up for nothing.”

Mr Stainer estimates the UK’s 39,000 pubs have, on average, 15 barrels in their cellar at any given time. Most are kegs containing 11 gallons (88 pints) each – although many real ales come in nine-gallon (72-pint) casks. The best-before dates on pasteurised beer – including most lagers – are usually three to four months after delivery.

Those for real ales and other unpasteurised beer are usually set at six to nine weeks.

So most stock could go to waste if social distancing measures remain in place for several months.

(16) PLAYING POLITICS. My daughter used to play this game by the hour: “Animal Crossing removed from sale in China amid Hong Kong protests”.

The Nintendo Switch’s current best-selling game has been removed from Chinese online stores after activists used it to criticise the state.

Animal Crossing: New Horizons lets players customise their own island and invite others to visit.

Some players in Hong Kong have used the platform to stage protests.

Players in mainland China had previously been able to buy foreign editions of the title from online marketplaces.

The country’s censors strictly regulate video games and had yet to approve the title’s formal release in the country.

Now, even local sites which had advertised imported copies have removed the listings.

It is not clear, however, whether this is because there has been an intervention by the authorities or whether the stores are proactively removing the product.

(17) GROUNDHOG DAY. Bill Murray in another Jeep commercial.

Wake up. Wash hands. Miss groundhog. Repeat. Every day is probably starting to seem the same, but the more we all remember to stay inside, the sooner we can get back outside.

(18) HOUSTON, WE USED TO HAVE A PROBLEM. “Apollo 13: Enhanced images reveal life on stricken spacecraft” — many pictures at link.

Image enhancement techniques have been used to reveal life aboard Nasa’s stricken Apollo 13 spacecraft in unprecedented detail.

Fifty years ago, the craft suffered an explosion that jeopardised the lives of the three astronauts aboard.

Unsurprisingly, given they were locked in a fight for survival, relatively few onboard images were taken.

But imaging specialist Andy Saunders created sharp stills from low-quality 16mm film shot by the crew.

One of the techniques used by Mr Saunders is known as “stacking”, in which many frames are assembled on top of each other to improve the image’s detail.

(19) IT’S A GAS. In “‘Pinocchio’ at 80: 5 things you never knew about the Walt Disney classic” on Yahoo! Entertainment, Ethan Alter reports that if Disney followed Carlo Collodi’s story, Jiminy Cricket would have died in the film, and that Mel Blanc was originally cast as Gideon the cat but his lines were cut and replaced by burping.

Eighty years ago, moviegoers discovered exactly what happens when you wish upon a star when Walt Disney’s second animated feature, Pinocchio, premiered in theaters on Feb. 23, 1940. Flush with cash from the enormous success of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Disney gambled his studio’s future on an adaptation of Italian author Corlo Collodi’s 19th century story of a walking, talking marionette who longs to be a real boy. At the time, the gamble didn’t entirely succeed: While Pinocchio received instant critical acclaim, it didn’t attract the same crowds that turned out in droves to see Snow White….

(20) VIDEO OF THE DAY. “Wong Ping’s Fables 2” on Vimeo tells the story of the cow who became rich and the rabbit who wanted to be a judge.

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