Pixel Scroll 4/8/22 No One But A Blockhead Ever Scrolled Except For Pixels

(1) CANON SALUTE. “Spock Gets New Canon Full Name In Star Trek Strange New Worlds” reports Gizmodo. And that name is S’Chn T’Gai Spock.

…[This] is not an unfamiliar name to fans of classic Star Trek novels. Barbara Hambly’s Pocket Book novel Ishmael, first released in 1985, gave S’Chn T’Gai as Spock’s name. It was established that, in a similar manner to how the Bajorans naming conventions work—where, for example, Deep Space Nine’s Major Kira Nerys’ given name is Nerys, not Kira—Vulcan names are inverted, and S’Chn T’Gai is actually Spock’s family name. Spock had previously alluded to having a first name in the Star Trek season 1 episode “This Side of Paradise,” where he described it as “unpronounceable.” Not any more, apparently!…

A watermarked version of the forthcoming poster with Spock’s full name can be seen here at TrekCore.com.

Naturally, Barbara Hambly is ecstatic. As she told Facebook followers: “Now, classic Star Trek fiction is having its legacy live on in TV once more with the canonization of S’Chn T’Gai. And that makes me Mr. Spock’s godmother! This delights me as much as winning a Hugo or a Nebula. Maybe more.”

(2) A CRUEL CAREER. “’Unlivable and Untenable.’ Molly McGhee on the Punishing Life of Junior Publishing Employees” – a Literary Hub podcast.

Fiction writer and former Tor assistant editor Molly McGhee joins co-hosts V.V. Ganeshananthan and Whitney Terrell to discuss details of her recent resignation from a position she’d fought for in the industry she loves. She also talks about what’s behind #PublishingBurnout for junior employees and what that means for the future of publishing.

Molly McGhee: I had a lot of people reach out privately to me, and publicly, and express that this is something they felt as well, but that they were really nervous to burn any bridges. The thing about publishing is that no matter how high you are, especially if you’re in editorial, you had to start from the bottom. And so you have been experiencing this struggle for years and years, and then find yourself in a position of frustration where you cannot alleviate that struggle for other people below you….

(3) THE FOOD OF AFROFUTURISM. Eat the Culture presented an array of recipes in their “2022 Black History Month Virtual Potluck”.

We collaborated with more than 30 Black recipe developers as we celebrate Black History Month 2022. This Virtual Potluck explores Black food through the lens of Afrofuturism. Our collaboration of recipes explores the intersection of the Black diaspora via culture, future, geopolitics, imagination, liberation, culture, and technology…

What is Afrofuturism?

“Afrofuturism evaluates the past and future to create better conditions for the present generation of Black people through the use of technology, often presented through art, music, and literature.”

Taylor Crumpton, “Afrofuturism Has Always Looked Forward,” Architectural Digest, August 24, 2020

We tasked participants with developing recipes that honor the culinary ingenuity of our past and stretch towards an innovative culinary future.  We sought out to take familiar cultural foods and reimagine them with the ingredients we use, flavors we develop, textures we mold, and visually the way we present….

(4) CAN’T GET IT FIXED. Chad Orzel tells about a writer’s heartbreak from “The Persistence of Errata” at Counting Atoms.

… [The] problem of errors creeping in and somehow making it past the seemingly endless rounds of editing is a pretty universal one. I’ve had a few over the years, and in fact just this week got another email pointing one out. The biggest of the errors that I’ve been alerted to are:

— I’m shocked to realize that this was ten years ago, now, but all the way back in How to Teach Relativity to Your Dog, we ended up with a typo in Maxwell’s equations (on page 34 of the paperback)— there’s an incorrect sign in the Ampere-Maxwell law. In my defense, in the first round of proofs, basically every symbol in there had been replaced by some random dingbat because of a font issue, so it took quite a bit of effort to even get them close. I think the Kindle edition was still rendering a lot of them as empty boxes a few months after publication. I’ve gotten a bunch of emails about this one over the years, starting with one from Bill Phillips….

(5) NO VISIBLE MEANS OF SUPPORT. And here’s another little mistake that made it past quality control: “’The Northman’ Subway Posters Trolled For Excluding Title” at Comic Sands.

If you’ve been anywhere near the internet or TV lately, you’ve likely heard about the new film The Northman as commercials have hit the airwaves and the film’s star-studded cast have begun walking red carpets at various glitzy premieres.

The sweeping Viking epic from director Robert Eggers star-studded cast includes Alexander Skarsgård and Nicole Kidman, making the film pretty hard to miss as its opening weekend approaches.

But if you get most of your advertising from the New York city subway? …[The] film’s marketing team seems to have forgotten to put the film’s title on its poster….

Twitter is helpfully filling in the blank. This might be the best of them:

(6) EAVESDROPPING. In case you haven’t listened to BBC Radio 4’s encounter between the Archbishop and Stephen King, linked here last month, there is now a webpage with the highlights: “Ten things we learned when the Archbishop of Canterbury met author Stephen King”.

1. King’s versatility surprises people

The Archbishop confesses that he didn’t know that King wrote The Green Mile and Shawshank Redemption. He’s not alone.

“The thing that I remember best about those books,” says King “is being in the supermarket one day and going up an aisle where this woman was looking at me, and she said, ‘I know who you are. You write all those scary stories. And that’s all right. For some people, that’s fine. I don’t read those scary stories. I like uplifting things like that Shawshank Redemption.’ And I said, ‘I wrote that,’ and she said, ‘No, you didn’t.’ So that was it. That was our whole conversation!”

(7) SCRIBNER OBIT. Australian fan Edwin A. “Ted” Scribner who edited the web version of the Australian SF Bullsheet (second series) has died. The editor of the email/print version Edwina Harvey announced the news today. He and Harvey were nominated six times for the Ditmar Award for their work on the newzine, winning in 2004, 2005, and 2006. Scribner also was a member of the Sydney Futurians.

Edwina Harvey’s personal tribute to her co-editor and friend is here on Facebook.

(8) MEDIA BIRTHDAY.

1950 [Item by Cat Eldridge.] I’m reaching way back into the history of the genre this time as the Dimension X radio show premiered seventy-two years ago this evening on the NBC radio network. It was preceded by Mutual’s 2000 Plus which as the name suggests was another SF series with episodes like “Men from Mars”. That series lasted two years.

The Dimension X radio show was, according to all the articles I read, not the first SF radio series but it benefited from the deep stock of writers involved and I’m going to list all of them here: Isaac Asimov, Robert Bloch, Ray Bradbury, Fredric Brown, Robert A. Heinlein, Murray Leinster, H. Beam Piper, Frank M. Robinson, Clifford D. Simak, William Tenn, Jack Vance, Kurt Vonnegut, Jack Williamson and Donald A. Wollheim. Holy frell! 

If I may single out an episode, I will by noting June 10, 1950’s “The Green Hills of Earth“, based upon the Heinlein story of the same name, relates the life of “Noisy” Rhysling whose story y’all know. It’s wonderful to hear it told. 

The stories of course had already been published, be it in Astounding Science Fiction or the Saturday Evening Post. It was really the Golden Age of Science Fiction for these authors as they’d get paid for these stories again when they were used on the X Minus One series that followed not long after. Remember Heinlein’s adage about filing the serial numbers off. 

With a five-month hiatus from January to June of 1951, the series spanned seventeen months. Quite remarkably all fifty episodes of the series have survived and can be heard today. I’ve profiled at least six episodes of this series on File 770. Do a search here if you want to listen to one of them.

(9) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

  • Born April 8, 1942 Douglas Trumbull. Let’s call him a genius and leave it at that. He contributed to, or was fully responsible for, the special photographic effects of Close Encounters of the Third Kind2001: A Space Odyssey, Star Trek: The Motion Picture and Blade Runner, and directed the movies Silent Running and Brainstorm. And Trumbull was executive producer for Starlost which we will forgive him for. (Died 2022.)
  • Born April 8, 1943 James Herbert. Writer whose work erased the boundaries between horror and sf and the supernatural in a manner that made for mighty fine popcorn reading. None of his work from his first two books, The Rats and The Fog, to his latter work such as Nobody True would be considered Hugo worthy in my opinion (you may of course disagree) but he’s always entertaining. I will note that in 2010 Herbert was greatly honored by receiving the World Horror Convention Grand Master Award which was presented to him by Stephen King. (Died 2013.)
  • Born April 8, 1967 Cecilia Tan, 55. Editor, writer and founder of Circlet Press, which she says is the first press devoted to erotic genre fiction. It has published well over a hundred digital book to date with such titles as Telepaths Don’t Need Safewords and Other Stories from the Erotic Edge of SF/Fantasy (Wouldn’t Bester be surprised to learn that. I digress), Sex in the System: Stories of Erotic Futures, Technological Stimulation, and the Sensual Life of Machines and Genderflex: Sexy Stories on the Edge and In-Between. She has two series, Magic University and The Prince’s Boy
  • Born April 8, 1974 Nnedi Okorafor, 48. Who Fears Death won a World Fantasy Award for Best Novel.  Lagoon which is an Africanfuturism or Africanjujuism novel (her terms) was followed by her amazing Binti trilogy. Binti, which led off that trilogy, won both the Nebula and Hugo Awards. Binti: The Night Masquerade was a Hugo finalist at Dublin 2019. She was also a 2019 Hugo finalist for her work on the most excellent Black Panther: Long Live the King. Several of her works have been adapted for video, both in Africa and in North America. She wrote LaGuardia, winner of the Best Graphic Story Hugo at CoNZealand, and won a Nommo Award for writing Shuri, another graphic novel.  
  • Born April 8, 1977 Sarah Pinsker, 45. A nine-time finalist for the Nebula Award, her first novel A Song for a New Day won the Nebula for Best Novel while her story Our Lady of the Open Road won the award for Best Novelette. Her short story, “In Joy, Knowing the Abyss Behind”, won a Sturgeon Award, and “Two Truths and a Lie” won Best Novelette at DisCon III. Another novelette, “The Blur in the Corner of Your Eye” was nominated at ConNZealand, and a novella, “And Then There Were (N-One)”, was nominated at Worldcon 76. Very impressive indeed.
  • Born April 8, 1980 Katee Sackhoff, 42. Being noted here  for playing Lieutenant Kara “Starbuck” Thrace on the rebooted Battlestar Galactica though I must confess I’ve only seen in her excellent role as Deputy Sheriff Victoria “Vic” Moretti on Longmire which is now streaming on Peacock. She also played Amunet Black, a recurring character who showed up on the fourth season of The Flash. To my pleasant surprise, I see her on Star Wars: The Clone Wars in a recurring role of voicing Bo-Katan Kryze.
  • Born April 8, 1981 Taylor Kitsch, 41. You’ll possibly remember him  as the lead in John Carter which I swear was originally titled John Carter of Mars. He also played Gambit in X-Men Origins: Wolverine, and was Lieutenant Commander Alex Hopper in Battleship which was based off the board game.

(10) COMICS SECTION.

(11) BUCHA AND BOYCOTT. [Item by James Bacon.] The Will team continue to inform fans of what they are seeing and doing, as they are faced with daily news that is upsetting and horrifying. 

The massacre in Bucha has stunned many, and artist Igor Kurilin created a piece of art,

And there is one raising awareness of Russian supporters in our midst. 

Art by Igor Kurilin & TheWillProduction

(12) ALL ABIRD! “Whoopi Goldberg joins Anansi Boys TV series as Bird Woman” reports Entertainment Weekly.

… Goldberg has boarded the cast of Anansi Boysthe TV series adaptation of Gaiman’s acclaimed 2005 book at Amazon. And she’s playing a key antagonistic role that Gaiman himself promises is “going to be scary.”

Amazon revealed the actors who will portray the pantheon of deities on the show, including Goldberg’s Bird Woman, a.k.a. the God of Birds. She is the embodiment of birds, and not just the more beautiful, stately avian animals, but the dangerous ones, as well. Long ago, Anansi, the African trickster God of Stories did her dirty, and now she might finally have her chance to turn the tables….

(13) SPLICING GENRE GENES. James David Nicoll introduces Tor.com readers to “5 Captivating SFF Mystery Novels”.

I’ve noticed that many of my friends who read SFF also read mysteries. Not only that—authors who publish in SFF sometimes publish mysteries as well (which are often more profitable). Indeed, some authors even write SFF mysteries. Here are five recent SFF mysteries I liked.

One of his picks is A Study in Honor by Claire O’Dell (2018).

(14) POSSIBLE NEW FORCE IN PHYSICS. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] Back in the day, at our occasional dinners, the bioscientists on the SF2 Concatenation team would always rib our physicist, Graham Connor (who was prone to saying that physics was the> key science), by asking him had physicists found anti-gravity yet? Or, broken the speed of light? etc.  Well, now it just may be the BBC News reports that a new force in physics may have been discovered…

The new research from Fermi Lab has been published in the journal Science and it may upset the standard model of physics.

(15) SF CINEMA SFX. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] Another chance to hear Unreal: The VFX Revolution.

This is a three-part BBC Radio 4 documentary, first broadcast last year, that largely focuses on SF film special effects. It is now being repeated on BBC Radio 4 but you can access all three episodes on BBC Sounds.

Yesterday’s Part 2 episode was particularly interesting.

Oscar winner Paul Franklin explores how film entered the digital realm.

The 1970s saw the very first onscreen digital effects in films like Westworld. Those first pioneers of CGI already spoke of digital humans, indeed of entire films being made within the computer, but Hollywood was unconvinced. By 1979, some of those visionaries like Ed Catmull and Alvy Ray Smith, later founders of Pixar, were working for filmmaker George Lucas, who primarily wanted new digital tools for editing and compositing and to explore computer graphics. Their first all-digital sequence created life-from lifelessness with the Genesis effect for Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. Meanwhile Disney itself was creating TRON, a spectacular mix of state-of-the art animation and pioneering digital effects that took audiences into cyberspace for the first time. In their different ways these two films were the true harbingers of the digital revolution that would bring profound change to moviemaking within little more than a decade. And then came Terminator 2’s chrome shape shifter-the T1000. The revolution was underway.

(16) FROM LOTR TO UFO. Mashable declares “Stephen Colbert’s latest ‘Lord of the Rings’ rant is beautiful to witness”.

Stephen Colbert has nerded out over Lord of the Rings many times before on The Late Show, and frankly it’ll never get old.

The latest glorious example came on Thursday during a segment on space news, when the discovery of a new star name Earendel prompted Colbert to launch into a truly impressive rundown of the name’s importance in Tolkien’s world….

“Space News: Hubble Finds A New Star, Bret Baier Warns Of Alien Pregnancies” on YouTube.

Outer space enthusiast Stephen Colbert shares updates from beyond our world, including news about a newly-discovered star with a name borrowed from “The Lord of the Rings,” and an explosive report on unexplained alien phenomena from our buddy Bret Baier at Fox News.

[Thanks to Mike Kennedy, Martin Morse Wooster, JJ, John King Tarpinian, Rob Thornton, Chris Barkley, James Bacon, Lise Andrerasen, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Andrew Porter, Michael Toman, and Cat Eldridge for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Jim Janney.]

Pixel Scroll 6/18/19 I Started A Pixel, Which Started The Whole World Scrolling

(1) KLOOS SIGNS OFF TWITTER. Marko Kloos left Facebook seven months ago, and today deleted his Twitter account, too. He explains why in “Writing and the Internet”.

I have to come to realize that over the last few years, the Internet has had a profoundly corrosive effect on my professional output and occasionally even my emotional health.

This effect has been especially severe in two areas: social media and email, both of which basically constituted my consent to being easily and directly available to contact by anyone with an Internet connection. In Twitter’s case, that contact has also been fully public, which means that anyone with a Twitter account has been able to see and share any conversation I’ve had with people outside of direct messages.

As of today, I am withdrawing that consent by getting off social media and curtailing my availability via email.

Late last year, I got so tired of the constant necessity to curate my Facebook feed and the drama resulting from pruning my Friends list that I pulled the plug for good and deleted my account. In the seven months since then, I have not missed it, and beyond a few concerned messages from long-time Facebook acquaintances, my absence has been inconsequential to the world and a lot less aggravation and anxiety in my life. Last night, I deleted my Twitter account as well, for slightly different reasons that boil down to the strong feeling that it will have a similar life-improving consequence….

… To put it bluntly: I can no longer allow anyone with a smartphone and a data plan the potential ability to darken my day or interrupt my work by trying to pick an argument or fill my Twitter feed with aggravating stuff. Most emails and Twitter interactions with fans have been fun and positive, but there have been exceptions. And even the well-meaning emails from happy readers take a slice out of my writing time.

(2) FORTY WHACKS. Autopsies are so fun. Vulture’s Abraham Riesman wonders: “Marvel on Netflix: What Went Wrong?”

… And hoo boy, their expectations were met. That inaugural installment of Jessica Jones was a true humdinger. It was distinctive without being flashy, mature without being ponderous, ambitious without being self-satisfied, sexy without being exploitative, and just … good. I can’t tell you how much of a revelation a good superhero show was at that time. We were used to spandex outings that were inane, formulaic, and utterly uninterested in pushing a single envelope. But here was a tale that seemed like it was going to grapple with everything from PTSD to queerness and do it all with style. Showrunner Melissa Rosenberg and star Krysten Ritter genuinely seemed to be elevating the game. As soon as the screening was done, I rushed to the lobby to get reception and email my editor like an old-timey reporter clamoring for a pay phone just after getting a hot scoop. I have seen the future of superheroes, I thought, and it is Marvel Netflix.

If it ever was the future, it is now the past. This week sees the barely ballyhooed release of the third and final season of Jessica Jones, which is itself the final season of Marvel’s four-year Netflix experiment. Its death has been agonizingly and humiliatingly gradual: Over the course of the past few months, each of the five ongoing series that made it up has been given the ax, one after another. Daredevil, Jessica Jones, Luke Cage, Iron Fist, The Punisher; their fans saw them all go the way of the dodo — without fanfare….

(3) ENDS WITH A BANG. Fast Company’s article “The most expensive hyphen in history” unpacks an historic incident in the U.S. space program (that inspired a scene in Mary Robinette Kowal’s Calculating Stars.)

Mariner 1 was launched atop a 103-foot-tall Atlas-Agena rocket at 5:21 a.m. EDT. For 3 minutes and 32 seconds, it rose perfectly, accelerating to the edge of space, nearly 100 miles up.

But at that moment, Mariner 1 started to veer in odd, unplanned ways, first aiming northwest, then pointing nose down. The rocket was out of control and headed for the shipping lanes of the North Atlantic. Four minutes and 50 seconds into flight, a range safety officer at Cape Canaveral—in an effort to prevent the rocket from hitting people or land—flipped two switches, and explosives in the Atlas blew the rocket apart in a spectacular cascade of fireworks visible back in Florida.

… A single handwritten line, the length of a hyphen, doomed the most elaborate spaceship the U.S. had until then designed, along with its launch rocket. Or rather, the absence of that bar doomed it. The error cost $18.5 million ($156 million today).

(4) BATMAN AT 80. The Society of Illustrators is opening several momentous Batman exhibits at its New York museum.

Join us for a celebration of three momentous exhibits:

(5) DON’T PANIC. Now available on the Internet at the Strange Texts blog (after no small delay) is Lee Whiteside’s “A report on DON’T PANIC and DIRK GENTLY and their relation to Doctor Who”, written in 1988 to mark the US release of the Neil Gaiman / Douglas Adams book Don’t Panic and originally posted on the Magrathea BBS.

Starting out with Dirk Gently, Adams breaks away from the science-fiction/comedy genre a bit, creating a “ghost-horror-detective-time travel-romantic comedy epic” as the promotional copy on the hardback release claims.  It does combine several divergent plotlines that mostly come together at the end.  The main characters include a computer programmer, a mysterious detective, and an eccentric professor along with an Electric Monk, and an ancient ghost (as well as a more recent one).  Part of the plot line of the book is similar to the Doctor Who story “City Of Death” with the main characters involved with an alien being from the past and using a time travel machine to defeat it.  The time travelling done in Dirk Gently seems to be done by TARDIS.  The professor in the book is Professor Chronotis from the Doctor Who story Shada that was written by Douglas Adams but was never completed.  The setting of Cambridge, is also the same.  Overall, it is an enjoyable book, although a bit hard to follow at times.

With the release of the HHG Companion book, even more links with Doctor Who are made known.  Neil Gaiman has done a good job chronicling the history of the Hitchhiker’s Guide along with the rest of Douglas Adams career to date.

(6) CHANDLER AWARD. This is what the 2019 A. Bertram Chandler Award looks like – Edwina Harvey posted the photo.

(7) TREE OBIT. “The tree thought to have inspired Dr. Seuss’ ‘The Lorax’ has fallen”CNN has before and after photos:

The Lorax would be devastated to hear that the tree that inspired Dr. Seuss’ 1971 children’s book has fallen.

The Monterey Cypress tree was at Ellen Browning Scripps Park in La Jolla, California, the seaside community where author Theodor Seuss Geisel lived from 1948 until his death in 1991.

(8) TODAY IN HISTORY.

  • June 18, 1964 — The Twilight Zone aired its series finale: “The Bewitchin’ Pool”.

(9) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

  • Born June 18, 1908 Bud Collyer. He was voiced both the Man of Steel and Clark Kent on The Adventures Of Superman radio show in the Forties on the Mutual Broadcasting System. He also voiced them in the animated The New Adventures of Superman which was a Filmation production. Joan Alexander voiced Lois Lane in both shows. (Died 1969.)
  • Born June 18, 1917 Richard Boone. You likely know him as Paladin on Have Gun – Will Travel, but he does have some genre appearances including on The Last Dinosaur as Maston Thrust Jr. and in Rankin Bass’s The Hobbit the voice of Smaug. He also played Robert Kraft in I Bury the Living, a horror flick that I think has zombies and more zombies. (Died 1981.)
  • Born June 18, 1931 Dick Spelman. He was a fan who was a legendary book dealer that really hated being called a huckster. He was active at SF conventions from the late 1970s through the early 1990s. He was guest of honor at ICON (Iowa) 12. Fancyclopedia 3 says it was themed “money-grubbing capitalist con” in his honor. (Died 2012.)
  • Born June 18, 1942 Paul McCartney, 77. Well, I could include him for the Magical Mystery Tour which might be genre, but I’m not. He actually has a cameo in Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales as a character named Uncle Jack in a cell playing poker singing “Maggie May”. A shortened version of the song is on the Let It Be album. 
  • Born June 18, 1945 Redmond Simonsen. Coined term ‘games designer’. Best remembered for his design of the Seventies games Starforce: Alpha Centauri, Battlefleet Mars and Sorcerer. He cofounded Simulations Publications Inc (SPI) with James Dunnigan. (Died 2005.)
  • Born June 18, 1947 Linda Thorson, 72. Best known for playing Tara King in The Avengers.  For her role in that series, she received a special BAFTA at the 2000 BAFTA TV Awards along with the other three actresses from the series, Honor Blackman, Joanna Lumley and Diana Rigg. She’s also been in Return of the SaintTales from the DarksideStar Trek: The Next GenerationKung Fu: The Legend ContinuesF/X: The Series and Monsters
  • Born June 18, 1949 Chris Van Allsburg, 70. He won two Caldecott Medals for U.S. picture book illustration, for Jumanji and The Polar Express, both of which were made into films. Guess which one I like? He illustrated A City in Winter by Mark Helprin which won the World Fantasy Award for Best Novella.
  • Born June 18, 1958 Jody Lee, 61. Illustrator with a long career in genre work. Her first cover art was Jo Clayton’s Changer’s Moon for Daw Books in 1985. Her latest was Michelle West’s First Born that came out this year on Daw Books which seems to be her primary client. Her rather excellent website is here.

(10) COMICS SECTION.

  • Close To Home is there when diplomas are handed out at the Academy of Paranormal Studies.

(11) POP CULTURE ERASURE. NPR examines the trend in “chauvinist cuts” — misogynist, homophobic and racist cuts of blockbuster films :“‘Avengers,’ But Make It Without Women, Or Men Hugging, Or Levity In General”.

Brie Larson has vanished.

A star of Avengers: Endgame, one of the biggest movies of all time, was completely excised from a modified pirated version of the film — along with everything else in the film seen as feminist or gay.

An anonymous fan edited out shots, scenes and characters in a “defeminized” version circulating now on an illegal streaming site. As well as losing Larson’s character, Captain Marvel, the defeminized edit is missing a scene where Hawkeye teaches his daughter to shoot. (“Young women should learn skills to become good wives and mothers and leave the fighting to men,” the editor opined in an accompanying document.) The role of Black Panther is minimized. (“He’s really not that important.”) Spider-Man doesn’t get rescued by women characters anymore. (“No need to.”) And male characters no longer hug.

(12) FULL FATHOM FIVE. In case you wondered what became of the craft: “‘Boaty McBoatface’ maps deep ocean water”.

Intrepid submarine Boaty McBoatface has made its first significant discovery, say UK scientists.

The autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) has built a 3D map of deep ocean waters as they move away from Antarctica.

Researchers previously had limited data to show these currents were warming.

Boaty’s investigations can now confirm that turbulence is causing warm water at mid-depths to mix down and raise the temperature of the colder, denser water running along the ocean floor.

Scientists say they can link this behaviour to changing wind patterns.

…Boaty’s insights are important because they can now be used to fine-tune the models that describe the climate system and how it may change in the future.

(13) MONK-Y BUSINESS. BBC explains why “Belgium monks forced to sell prized beer online to beat resellers”.

Belgian monks who brew one of the world’s most coveted beers are launching a website to prevent unauthorised resellers profiting from their product.

St Sixtus Abbey in Westvleteren, Flanders, is one of the world’s 14 official Trappist beer producers.

Buyers can purchase a crate of its Westvleteren beer for around €45 (£40), around €1.80 per bottle.

As a rule, the monks ask customers not to sell their product to third parties.

The abbey’s sales have traditionally been limited to private customers who order by phone before collecting a maximum of two crates in person.

But profiteers have been ignoring their “ethical values” for selling the brew, forcing them to go online to dampen demand on the black market.

The monks were dismayed to find bottles of their beer being resold at an inflated price in a Dutch supermarket last year.

…Now the abbey is turning to an online reservation system, designed to better enforce the limit of two crates per 60 days.

(14) RETRO REVIEWS. Steve J. Wright has completed his Retro Hugo Graphic Story Finalist reviews:

Retro Hugo Best Graphic Story

(15) PITCH MEETING. Step inside the pitch meeting that led to the final season of Game of Thrones!

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

Pixel Scroll 4/12/18 But By God, Elliot, It Was A Pixel Scroll From Life!

(1) KINGFISHER. James Davis Nicoll turned the Young  People Read Old SFF panel loose on “Toad Words” by T. Kingfisher.

Young People Read Old SFF has circled back to a modern work for the final time in the phase of the project. This time the modern author is Ursula Vernon, who also publishes as T. Kingfisher. To quote her Wikipedia entry,

Digger won the Hugo Award for Best Graphic Story in 2012 and the Mythopoeic Fantasy Award for Adult Literature in 2013. She won the Nebula Award for Best Short Story and the WSFA Small Press Award for Jackalope Wives in 2015. Her story “The Tomato Thief” won the 2017 Hugo Award for Best Novelette.

I’ve read a number of Vernon’s works but not, as it happens, any of those. I have read “Toad Words”, however, and it seemed an apt choice for a modern work given what the Young People have liked in the past. But I’ve been wrong before…

(2) DEADPOOL CHOW. Adweek describes how “Deadpool’s Newest Product Pitch Takes Us Inside His Dreams, Which Center on … Frozen Food?”

Brand partnerships with superhero movies are inevitable—let’s face it, most movies are superhero movies these days—but so many of them seem like an unnatural fit. Or a lazy one, at best. There’s a car chase in the movie? Let’s use that in a car commercial! Genius!

That might initially seem like the case with Deadpool’s Devour partnership. Why would Deadpool care about frozen food? Well, he doesn’t—and that’s what makes the new 30-second spot work.

 

(3) POTTER RECAP. Martin Morse Wooster watched “Harry Potter: A History of Magic” last night on the CW:

This was a BBC documentary tied to an exhibit that is currently at the British Library and will be coming to the New-York Historical Society this fall, although what I gather from the Pottermore website is that there will be two exhibits with some overlap between the British and American versions.

The special, narrated by Imelda Staunton, had several parts.  One was when actors from the movies (including Warwick Davis, Miriam Margoyles, and David Thewlis) read excerpts from the novels.  A second thread consisted of curators from the British Library showing off their magical treasures of books and stuff from their collections.  In addition, we saw some witches and eccentrics who had things to donate to the exhibit, including two gentlemen named Dusty Miller XIII and Dusty Miller XIV who said they had created 7,500 magic-filled wands from sticks they collected in the woods.  Finally, J.K. Rowling was extensively interviewed and got to look at a lot of the stuff the curators had unearhed.

Oh, and there was a lot of Harry Potter cosplay.

Rowling had done a lot of research in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, such as a seventeenth-century herbal written by the great botanist Nicholas Culpeper.  She said that she invented everything to do with wands.  She also named two sources that inspired her.  One was C.S. Lewis’s THE MAGICIAN’S NEPHEW, and if there are references to portals and libraries in that book those are the parts she found inspiring.  A second source came from an illustration Rowling made in1990 of Professor Sprout.  Rowling said that that night she was watching The Man Who Would Be King, a film with many Masonic symbols.  A simplified version of one masonic symbol was the source for the three-part symbol that denotes the Deathly Hallows in the novels.

Finally Rowling said, “I tied to steer clear of hallucinogenic drugs in Hogwarts.”  So if you’re writing fan fiction where Harry and the gang settle in for good times with some mushrooms, you should know that such scenes are NOT canonical.

(4) AUSTRALIAN CON SURVEY. Twelfth Planet Press publisher/editor and Galactic Suburbia cohost Alisa Krasnostein tweeted

If you’ve attended an SF con or event in Australia in the last 5 years, please consider taking this survey: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/TCGQB82

…The purpose of this survey is to investigate the degree of harassment being experienced at our SF conventions and events.

(5) WOTF. Vajra Chandrasekera discourages participation in the Writers of the Future Contest. His thread starts here —

(6) NEW PERSPECTIVES. Bogi Takacs has started writing a column for Tor.com about “QUILTBAG+ Speculative Classics”.

…In this series of columns, I will review classics of QUILTBAG+ speculative fiction—often out of print, little-known and seldom discussed. Even novels which were acclaimed in their day are frequently ignored now, creating the false impression that all QUILTBAG+ SFF is very recent.

For those who may be unfamiliar with the term, QUILTBAG+ is a handy acronym of Queer, Undecided, Intersex, Lesbian, Trans, Bisexual, Asexual / Aromantic / Agender, Gay and a plus sign indicating further expansion.

…On the other hand, I also don’t want to pigeonhole QUILTBAG+ writers and only show interest in their work if it is about their specific marginalization. I want to see minority writers write whatever they want. If they (we) want to write about cephalopods in space, I am all for that! Therefore I opted to include work either by QUILTBAG+ authors (where this is known) or with QUILTBAG+ themes. Often these two coincide, but not necessarily so.

A specific difficulty is whether to include people with non-Western, culturally specific gender, sex or sexuality IDs. Often these people also use at least some Western terms to self-identify, but sometimes they don’t—especially Indigenous people. If someone has expressed a desire not to be included in Western terms, both umbrella or specific terms, I will of course respect that. But in the absence of explicitly opting out, and also if the authors use Western terms, I decided on the side of inclusion. One of my motivations in this is somewhat self-serving: I also have a culturally specific gender / sex (though I am not Indigenous, specifically) and I am interested in other people who do too!

I aim to discuss a new book every two weeks. I will begin next week with The Gilda Stories, the queer Black / Indigenous vampire classic by Jewelle Gomez, and then follow with The Fortunate Fall by Raphael Carter, possibly the first SFF novel by an intersex author—which also draws a parallel between being intersex and sharing a mind with a giant whale.

(7) TRUTHINESS. Hear about “’That High Truth’: Lewis, Williams, Chesterton, and Ray Bradbury,” in this video of a lecture given at the Wade Center by Jonathan R. Eller of the Center for Ray Bradbury Studies on April 9, 2018.

(8) PROGRAM IDEA. Amal El-Mohtar has a fresh angle for a panel discussion. Start the thread here:

(9) BECKETT OBIT. Alex Beckett (1982-2018): Welsh actor, death announced April 12, aged 35. His genre appearances include Spark Ark (2014), and The Aliens (two episodes, 2016).

(10) HEAR STAN LEE’S DENIAL. Io9 reports “In a New Video, Stan Lee Threatens to Sue Anyone Reporting on Claims of Alleged Elder Abuse”.

The Marvel mainstay came down with pneumonia in February and so his frequent convention appearances were understandably cut back. During this time, multiple reports emerged detailing how hundreds of thousands of dollars, and literal blood, were allegedly stolen from him. In a video sent to TMZ this week that’s copyrighted to Keya Morgan (Lee’s handler, who is currently in control of all of his communications), Lee says he’s prepared to take legal action against any and all media outlets that have reported on the claims that he’s being taken advantage of:

“Hi this is Stan Lee and I’m calling on behalf of myself and my friend Keya Morgan. Now, you people have been publishing the most hateful, harmful material about me and about my friend Keya and some others. Material which is totally incorrect, totally based on slander, totally the type of thing that I’m going to sue your ass off when I get a chance.

You have been accusing me and my friends of doing things that are so unrealistic and unbelievable that I don’t know what to say. It’s as though you suddenly have a personal vendetta against me and against the people I work with. Well I want you to know I’m going to spend every penny I have to put a stop to this and to make you sorry that you’ve suddenly gone on a one man campaign against somebody with no proof, no evidence, no anything but you’ve decided that people were mistreating me and therefore you are going to publish those articles.

I’m going to get the best and most expensive lawyers I can and I want you to know if you don’t stop these articles and publish retractions, I am going to sue your ass off.”

The subject video was reportedly sent to TMZ and is marked on their website as being copyrighted by Keya Morgan. The linked TMZ article is headlined: “STAN LEE DENIES ELDER ABUSE … Leave Me and My Friends Alone!!!” This copy is on YouTube, though who knows for how long?

(11) HUGOS AT ECBATAN. Rich Horton check off another nominated book in “Hugo Ballot Review: Raven Stratagem, by Yoon Ha Lee”.

The novel is interesting reading throughout, with plenty of action (and some pretty cool battle scenes), some rather ghastly (in a good sense) comic bits, and lots of pain and angst. There is a continuing revelation of just how awful the Hexarchate is, with the only defense offered even by its supporters being “anything else would be worse”. There is genocide, lots of murders, lots of collateral damage. The resolution is well-planned and integral to the nature of this universe, with a good twist or two to boot. It’s a good strong novel that I enjoyed a lot.

(12) SERVICE TO SFF. Congratulations to 2018 Chandler Award winner Edwina Harvey! The award recognizes members of the Australian speculative fiction community, both professionals and fans.

Edwina Harvey is a worthy recipient of this year’s A. Bertram Chandler Award.  She has been an active member of Australian science-fiction fandom: writing, publishing and with her amazing artwork for 40 years.

She was one of the founding members of Astrex, the Star Trek fan club of NSW, and regularly contributed fiction to the associated fanzine Beyond Antares as well as other SF fanzines from the mid 1970s onwards. She was also an active member of The Hitchers Club of Australia (Hitch-hikers Guide to the Galaxy Fanclub) from approximately 1984 onwards contributing to the newsletter Australian Playbeing through articles and comments and assisting with the copying and distribution of some issues of the newsletter.  Known locally as the Fund Raising Queens, Edwina has worked with Karen Auhl on organising fundraiser events for Medtrek 4, Huttcon 90 and two Sydney Worldcon bids. (Late 1980s – mid 1990s)  Edwina has been a contributing member of FOLCC (the Friends of Linda Cox Chan) which was an informal group donating monies raised to Diabetes Charities in Australia.  Linda Cox Chan was a Sydney-based SF fan artist and writer who passed away in 1991. From 2012 to the present time, Edwina has also run a lucky-dip at Australian SF conventions to raise money for FFANZ.

(13) EUROVISION IN SPACE. Learn about the author’s new novel Space Opera at Whatever: “The Big Idea: Catherynne M. Valente”.

My agent refers to it as the fastest deal in publishing. It was done and I was committed before I could catch a breath. As I was signing the contract, my fiance asked: “Does it really just say ‘Eurovision in space’? Do you actually have any idea how you’re gonna pull that off?”

“Yes, it does,” I said. “And no, I don’t.”

And I didn’t. Part of me was terrified. How the hell do you even begin to write that? I mean, you can’t play it straight. It’s too absurd. It’s obviously a comedy. Ah, but if you try to write science fiction comedy, the ghost of Douglas Adams appears and asks you with a stern expression if that’s really necessary. And even if it was a comedy, the core of Eurovision is that political darkness and artistic light. You can’t play it totally camp, either. And given the politics all around me, I wasn’t sure I was actually up to singing it out just this minute. What had I agreed to?

But the deadline approached. And I sat down at a blank screen. I laughed nervously.

And then I stopped trying to worry about whether I could do this thing at all and wrote some shit about Enrico Fermi and I was off, and off at breakneck speed.

(14) I’M HOME! Glen Weldon creates a mythic dialogue. Jump on the thread here:

(15) DIRECT FROM INTERNATIONAL FALLS. Here is Amazon Prime’s trailer advertising new episodes of Rocky and Bullwinkle. [Via io9.]

The world-famous talking moose and flying squirrel are back in The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle, a comedy about two goofball friends who end up in harrowing situations but end up saving the day time and again. As their silly ambitions dovetail with Fearless Leader’s sinister plans to take over the world, they are set on a collision course with his notorious super spies Boris and Natasha.

 

[Thanks to Standback, JJ, John King Tarpinian, Elizabeth Fitzgerald, Steve Green, Cat Eldridge, Martin Morse Wooster, StephenfromOttawa, Chip Hitchcock, Iphinome, Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, Errolwi, James Davis Nicoll, and Carl Slaughter for some of these stories,. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day RedWwombat.]

Stand By For Moos!

Wendy Palmer is the new editor of Australian SF Bullsheet, taking over from Edwina Harvey and Ted Scribner who put the zine on hiatus last August after publishing their 101st issue.

Palmer’s first issue will come out in February. Thereafter issues will appear on the first Sunday of the month. Check the website for electronic subscription options – Edwina says they will not be transferring over the old subscriber list for privacy reasons. (And the zine has a Twitter feed, too — @sfbullsheet.)

Bullsheet Bites the Dust

That was fast. I no sooner congratulate Edwina Harvey and Ted Scribner for scoring their hundredth issue of Australian SF Bullsheet than they announce in their next issue that the zine is going on indefinite hiatus.

Edwina and Ted took up the torch from founding editor Marc Ortlieb when he ended his 7-year tenure in 2002. Now Edwina offers “If someone else wants to ‘have a go’ at producing the Bullsheet every month, please contact us” through edwinafan (at) yahoo (dot) com.

[Source: Australian SF Bullsheet #101.]

GUFF Launches 2008 Race

Australian SF Bullsheet #79 reports the start of the GUFF 2008 (Get Up Fan Fund, this time around) race to send fan(s) from Australasia to Europe. Candidates are: Sue Ann Barber and Trevor Clark, Norah Ding, and Alisa Krasnostein. Fans can vote via Paypal or download and send in a completed ballot with a check or money order. Voting ends November 24.

Hal Spacejock

Hal Spacejock 4 coverSimon Haynes

Edwina Harvey’s supplement to Australian SF Bullsheet #75 includes Freemantle Press’ announcement that they have released the fourth novel in Simon Haynes’ “Hal Spacejock” series. They also are giving away a free download of the first novel in the series. “Giving away a free book, especially one that is on its third reprint, is not something we would normally contemplate,” said a spokesman for the Australian publishing company. “But this is a science fiction series and overseas readers aren’t going to buy the fourth novel, Hal Spacejock: No Free Lunch, if they haven’t even read the first.” Overseas buyers can get subsidized postage when they order the other books.

I’d never heard of Hal Spacejock ’til this announcement but I’m interested now, which of course was the point. What actually decided me to blog about this, however, is that Haynes also has a lot of other great content on the Spacejock website — articles, software, etc. It was a happy discovery.

Haynes has written – and gives away! – a full-featured novel-writing program named yWriter.

I really struggled over my first novel because I wrote whole slabs of text into a great big word processor file and tried to make sense of the whole thing at once. I then tried saving each chapter to individual files with great long descriptive filenames, but moving scenes around was a nuisance and I couldn’t get an overview of the whole thing (or easily search for one word amongst 32 files)

However, as a programmer I’m used to dealing with projects broken into source files and modules, and I never lose track of my code. I decided to apply the same working method to my novels … and it was just what I needed.

The screenshots and reviews have really piqued my interest. I plan to download the software soon and check it out.