Pixel Scroll 12/16/18 Cold-Hearted Scroll That Rules The File, Removes The Pixels From Our Pile

(1) ROLL ELEVEN. Nicholas Whyte reviews “Doctor Who, Series 11 (or 37), 2018”, beginning with an overview, followed by comments on individual episodes:

…Overall I have enjoyed it. I don’t agree with Darren Mooney that this has been the weakest series of New Who; I really think that Series 6 (2011), which started with The Impossible Astronaut and ended with The Wedding of River Song, made much greater demands onthe viewer for insufficient payoff. However I think I will agree that the highest points of this year’s stories were not as high as those of previous New Who seasons; even Series 6 had The Doctor’s Wife. On the other hand, none of the low points was quite as awful as the 2007 Daleks in New York two-parter or the 2014 Kill The Moon. I do agree with Darren Mooney that it looks in general much much better than any series of Doctor Who ever has before. The absence of continuity (no theme music in the first episode, no Tardis interior until episode two) was disruptive but also intriguing. The new music is a welcome change (not that I hated Murray Gold, but he’s been doing it since 2004)….

(2) SON’S MEMORIES OF LE GUIN. “Ursula K Le Guin remembered by her son Theo Downes-Le Guin” in The Guardian.

One of the last trips I took alone with Ursula was to New York, in 2014, when she received a lifetime commendation from the National Book Foundation. She wasn’t enthusiastic about the travel, but the award was contingent on her presence. She snarled about this requirement for a few weeks, then allowed me to book the flights. I spent a couple of days with her before the awards, visiting her beloved sister-in-law and viewing “old friends” the Metropolitan Museum and the Frick Collection. In the indifferent and harsh light of a big city, I could see for the first time how small and frail she had become. The vitality of her mind and spirit had concealed her physical state from me. I was shaken by the realisation.

Three days into our trip, I walked her to the stage on which she delivered a speech that was, even by her high standards, fearless. With limited time, in every sense, she had decided to speak plainly to the defence of freedom that courses through her work: freedom of artistic and intellectual expression, freedom from dualism, freedom from oppressors. I’d read a draft beforehand and knew that she was delivering the speech of a lifetime. The audience sensed this as well, and for a few moments after she finished, the room crackled with love, support, excitement and (for some, I’d like to think) shame.

(3) A WINNER. Seeing the movie prompted John Scalzi to have many “Thoughts on Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse”.

2. It’s also a film where its chosen medium — animation — is exactly right for it. I think there’s a still a bit of aesthetic snobbery around animation, ironically particularly when it comes to superhero films. It’s still assumed to be a compliment if you say something along the lines of “that was good enough to have been live action.” In point of fact, this particular film wouldn’t have been better served as live action; live action and all its aesthetic requirements and expectations would have made it worse. The abstracting remove from reality that animation provides fits the film’s multiverse story and allows it to be a “comicbook film” in a way that most live-action superhero films can’t manage or look silly doing (see: Ang Lee’s Hulk).In live action, this film as it is would have come across as campy; in animation, it’s just doing its thing. This is of course more about our own expectations for live action and animation than it is about the mediums themselves. But you work with what you have.

(4) THE DRAGON CURE. After receiving an anonymous letter from a neighbor claiming that her three front-yard dragons violated the “true meaning of Christmas,” fantasy author Diana Rowland decided that the only proper response was … MORE DRAGONS!

(5) JUDGING SANTA CLAUS MOVIES. SYFY Wire’s “Ffangrrls” column examines “The best, worst and weirdest Santa Claus movies.” Good. Bad. Weird. Ffangrrls takes a look at four Santa Claus movies in each of these categories. It’s a pretty good bet that you won’t have even heard of one or more of these dozen, um, let’s say “classics.” Columnist Kayleigh Donaldson provides a trailer or clip and a fat paragraph on each:

GOOD: Miracle on 34th Street
BAD: The Santa Clause
WEIRD: Santa Claus Conquers the Martians

GOOD: Rise of the Guardians
BAD: Silent Night, Deadly Night
WEIRD: The Polar Express

GOOD: The Nightmare Before Christmas
BAD: Santa’s Slay
WEIRD: Fred Claus

GOOD: The Spirit of Christmas
BAD: The Christmas Chronicles
WEIRD: Christmas Evil

(6) SPLATTERPUNK IN ITALY.At the Horror Writers Association blog: “Revelations on the New Horror Renaissance – an Interview with Italian Author/Editor/Translator/Poet Alessandro Manzetti”.

Q. As the first Italian to be awarded the Bram Stoker Award, and as a purveyor of hard-core horror and even splatter-punk how would you describe your reception amongst your Italian peers? What inroads do you hope to make in Italy with your publishing and writing?

A. Here in Italy Splatterpunk fiction represents a small market niche (same goes for poetry, and, unfortunately, also for traditional horror fiction, excluding a few big names), anyway I have a good audience, fans of the genre follow me with great passion; they’re very fond of some of my main characters, and many of them are women (even if I write hardcore/Splatterpunk horror). Somedays ago was released, from Cut Up Publishing, my first dark psycothriller novel, ‘The Keepers of Chernobyl’, something different from what I wrote so far, and I think that this kind of works could reach a larger audience. My goal is always the same: connect myself to the readers, be their accomplice.

(7) RAMBO ACADEMY. Sign up for Seanan McGuire’s workshop: “Crossing Over: Moving from Fanfic to Your Own Worlds”.

Join prolific, award-winning, and overall amazing writer Seanan McGuire for a workshop that will discuss what writing fanfic teaches you and how you can use that in fiction involving your own worlds and characters. Using lecture, discussion, and writing exercises, Sanan will provide you with inspiration as well as the tools with which to apply that inspiration to your work.

This is a single session workshop taught on Saturday, January 12, 2019 9:30-11:30 AM Pacific time.

Cost is 199 for new students; $79 for former Rambo Academy students and Patreon supporters.

Live classes are taught online via Google hangouts, are limited to 15 participants, and require reliable Internet connection, although in the past participants have logged on from coffee shops, cafes, and even an airplane. A webcam is strongly suggested but not required. If there is an on-demand version of the class, you will be provided with a free coupon for it, so you have access to those notes.

(8) THEY’REDEAD(POOL), JIM. Aw, Jeez, he’s at it again (HuffPost:Marvel’s ‘Avengers: Endgame’ Trailer Is Even Better When Everyone Is Deadpool”).

So much Deadpool. Truly a maximum effort.

And we thought the last “Avengers” trailer was better when every character was Deadpool.

Istanbul-based digital animator Saruhan Saral has outdone himself with a new take on the recently released “Avengers: Endgame” trailer. In Saral’s latest video, voice actor Mishka Thebaud brings to life the Merc with a Mouth. 

(9) WHALE TALE. ASLE-Brasil (Association of Literature and the Environment) interviewed Craig Russell about Fragment: “Craig Russell – Literature and Ecocriticism / Literatura e Ecocrítica”:

2. Z. Can you tell us about the specific characteristics of your narratives?

C. When writing, I find it’s important for me to find at least two interesting ideas that can play off of each other in the story. So in Fragment we have not only the catastrophic events that unfold when a huge part of the three-hundred-meter thick Ross Ice Shelf is thrust out into the ocean, but also the civilization changing interactions that come from humans and blue whales learning to communicate with each other. Then, I try to put my characters in a situation they can’t escape from. (Either because of physical limitations, like the three scientists who are held incommunicado aboard the submarine; or because of a sense of duty, like when Ring, the blue whale feels he has to stay near the Fragment, to warn other blue whale pods of the danger it poses to their survival. Once they’re locked into the situation I confront the characters with problems which I don’t know the solution to, and see how (and if) they can find a way to survive. 

Some authors describe this as chasing your characters up a tree, and then throwing rocks at them.

(10) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

  • December 16, 1917 Arthur C. Clarke. When I was resident in Sri Lanka courtesy of Uncle Sam in the early Eighties, nearly every American ex-pat I ran into was reading The Fountains of Paradise. I never saw him but he was well known among the small British community there. I’ll admit that I’ve not read that much by him — Childhood’s EndRendezvous with Rama  and that novel are the only long form works by him I’ve read. I’m certain I’ve read The Nine Billion Names of God collection as well. And I’ve seen 2001 myriad times but I’ve never seen the sequel. (Died 2008.)
  • December 16, 1927Randall Garrett. Ahhh Lord Darcy. When writing this up, I was gobsmacked to discover that he’d written only one such novel, Too Many Magicians, as I clearly remembered reading reading more than that number. Huh. That and two collections, Murder and Magic and Lord Darcy Investigates, is all there is of this brilliant series. Glen Cook’s Garrett P.I. is named in honor of Garrett. I’ll admit I’ve not read anything else by him, so what else have y’all read? (Died 1987.)
  • December 16, 1928 Philip K. Dick. OK, confession time. I’m not a fan of his work so the only acquaintance I’ve with him is the first Bladerunner film which I’ve watched in its various forms many times. (Died 1982.)
  • December 16, 1937 Peter Dickinson. Author who was married from 1991 to his death to Robin McKinley had a number of truly great works, both genre and not genre, including EvaThe Tears of the Salamander and The Flight of Dragons. His James Pibble upper class British mystery series are quite excellent as well. (Died 2015.)

(11) LINGUISTICS. Available as an on-demand class: Juliette Wade’s “The Power of Words”, “Everything Fantasy and Science Fiction Writers Need to Know about Linguistics at the World-building and Prose Level.”

In this class, we will discuss the study of linguistics and its relevance to genre writing. Author and linguist Juliette Wade shows how linguistics differs from the study of foreign languages, and gives a survey of eight different subfields of linguistics. She examines principles of language at levels of complexity from the most basic articulation of speech sounds to the way that language is used to participate in public forms of discourse. For each subfield, she looks at how it can be used to enhance a writer’s portrayal of characters and societies in a fictional world. After completing this examination of linguistics and its relevance to in-world languages, Wade moves to the meta-level to talk about using the principles of linguistics to hone point of view and the effectiveness of narrative language in storytelling.

(12) BUNNY TIME. Tim Goodman supplies “‘Watership Down’: TV Review” for The Hollywood Reporter.

In 1978, the film Watership Down became legendary for scaring the bejeezus out of children everywhere, drawn there by parents who either didn’t read the book or thought it would hide — not graphically triple down on — all the violence from the book. It’s funny now because so many people have harrowing stories of how that defined their early childhood.

On Christmas Day, Netflix, in a co-production with the BBC, will drop the eagerly awaited, star-studded latest version, a four-part effort that tones down the movie’s bloodshed and finds a good balance, letting Adams’ story unfold as it did in the book (with some tweaks) and suffering no loss of drama by curtailing those awful bunny screams.

Having seen the whole thing, the biggest obstacle the new version has to overcome is that the animation is decidedly flatter than what modern moviegoers are used to in the last chunk of years (decade?), and it’s often difficult to figure out which rabbit is talking or which rabbits are in peril as they fight other rabbits to survive. The saving grace to all of that, of course, is the magnificent voice cast that seems to be employing every available actor in Britain.

(13) CATCHING UP ON 2017. Lady Business delivers a blast from the past, asking contributors to recommend “Media released before 2018 that you didn’t get to until thisyear and loved.” First on the list —

Jenny

Castle Hangnail by Ursula Vernon. What a treasure. I have already yelled about that book in this space, but basically this is a gem of a middle-grade book that you’ll love if you love Eva Ibbotson. I have been responsible for at least five purchases of this book this calendar year, and three of those are me giving it as a gift for Christmas. I regret nothing.

(14) FREE READ. Vice’s Motherboard “imprint” has posted a free short story, “The Bonus,” by Liz Maier.

Two hundred extra hours of life per month, and only a few would have to be dedicated to the Company. Who would say no to not sleeping, to the bonus?

(15) APPROACHING GENRE. An NPR interview: “Lin-Manuel Miranda On ‘Mary Poppins Returns’ And Writing His Way Onstage”.

Audie Cornish: I was reading that your favorite song from the original Mary Poppins movie — maybe not favorite, maybe you have a mixed relationship with it — is “Feed the Birds.”

Lin-Manuel Miranda: [Laughing] “Openly hostile” is probably my relationship to it as a child.

I mean, that’s a little strong.

Yeah, no. I just found it so sad. The notion of this bird lady, who cares for these birds and sits on the steps of St. Paul’s Cathedral, I couldn’t bear it as a child — it was too much for me. And so, I only saw the first two-thirds of the movie many times as a kid: As soon as “Feed the Birds” came on, I would turn it off. Such was VHS technology.

If it has an equivalent in this movie — not so much that I would turn off the movie — there’s a beautiful song in our film called “Where the Lost Things Go.” Mary Poppins is singing to these children — they’ve lost their mother the year before. And she sings about it in such a smart Scott Whitman lyric, because it’s about loss and it’s about grief, but it’s also in a way that a child can understand and is not condescending, it doesn’t talk down, doesn’t baby-talk. It’s just really beautiful. If I were a kid at the time, I probably would’ve fallen apart at it.

Your character offers a kind of path of joy and advice out of that mood. I’m thinking of a song like “Trip a Little Light Fantastic.”

That’s sort of Jack’s MO, is that he sees the light in any situation. He looks for the bright side, the hope, even in a dark time or in a dark place, and it’s a lovely sentiment. It’s also eight minutes of nonstop dancing. It was one of the last numbers we shot, and we basically spent the entire movie shoot rehearsing for it.

“Trip a Little Light Fantastic” (audio only) from Mary Poppins Returns.

(16) MYTH REFURBISHED. Paul Weimer’s latest contribution to Nerds of a Feather is “Microreview [book]: In the Vanisher’s Palace by Aliette de Bodard”.

The story of the Beauty and the Beast, bound relationship to a monster as a price for a service or favor, is a story that spans the globe, and strikes at the heart of a lot of myths and tropes about family relationships, gender politics, power dynamics, autonomy, freedom, choice and a whole lot more. Beauty and the Beast is far more than dancing animated clocks and the song “Be Our Guest”. In The Vanishers’ Palace, Aliette de Bodard takes the Beauty and the Beast story in new directions, giving a strong critique of some of the tropes, interrogating others, and providing a queer friendly narrative, amongst many other strands, in a densely packed novella.

(17) SHATNER ON PARADE. Parade magazine has made their recent interview with William Shatner available online (“William Shatner on His Christmas Album, Shatner Claus, & Why Star TrekIs Still So Popular”). In the usual style of Parade interviews, breadth is emphasized overdepth. It touches on Shatner family holiday traditions, his country album Why Not Me?, recent memoir Live Long And…: What I Learned Along the Way, non-Trek movies he’s involved in, and his longstanding Hollywood Charity Horse Show.

(18) SNL. The New York Times coverage of the most recent Saturday Night Live includes two skits of genre interest.  

Several celebrity guests turned out for the final new “Saturday Night Live” broadcast of 2018, including Alec Baldwin, Ben Stiller, Matt Damon and Robert De Niro.

In the show’s opening sketch, Baldwin returned to play President Trump in a sendup of the film “It’s a Wonderful Life.”

While it’s rare to see “Saturday Night Live” offer up topical comedy in the waning moments of an episode, the show did just that in a sketch that imagined Theresa May (McKinnon), Britain’s prime minister, struggling to host a Christmas-themed talk show after having survived a party confidence vote.

As McKinnon opened the show, she said, “What a dreadful week it’s been. My Brexit deal is falling apart. I almost got voted out and no one in the world likes me at all. But it’s still Christmas so let’s try to have some cheer tonight, shall we?”

She went on to introduce guests including her predecessor, David Cameron (Damon); Elton John (Bryant); and the Harry Potter villain Lord Voldemort (Mikey Day), whom she introduced as “the one person in Britain more reviled than me.” Day apologetically resisted McKinnon’s attempts to compare her to him: “If you could maybe not lump us together, I just can’t have that be the pull-quote from this interview,” he said.

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

Pixel Scroll 10/22/18 Scrolls Are From Mars, Pixels Are From Venus

(1) STFNAL MUSIC. Out of Mind, the new album by the band Hats Off Gentlemen It’s Adequate, includes two songs inspired by Philip K. Dick and one by Ann Leckie’s Ancillary Justice. Here are the notes for “When I Was a Ship” —

This song was inspired by Ann Leckie‘s Ancillary series. The main character had once been a warship, whose artificial mind had been distributed within the ship, and also within many ancillaries – prisoners who have had their minds wiped. The ship itself and all of the other ancillaries was destroyed, leaving just one fragment of the mind left in one body.

And here’s a section of the lyrics —

That I was designed as a warrior slave
When I was an asset
I think I remember
The communal song
Of curious pleasure
The many mouths
The single phrase
Compounded eye
And reflected gaze
I am the last
I am my remains
All of my others
Dissolved in the flames

Leckie (who also likes their previous album When the Kill Code Fails) told readers of her blog where to find the new song –

You can hear “When I Was A Ship” on Spotify. You can also purchase it at Bandcamp,

Spotify requires registration.

(2) LEVAR BURTON READING SFF. The three most recent installments of LeVar Burton Reads: The Best Short Fiction, Handpicked by the World’s Greatest Storyteller feature —

  • Episode 34: “Singing on a Star” by Ellen Klages
  • Episode 35: “Yiwu” by Lavie Tidhar
  • Episode 36: “Morning Child” by Gardner Dozois

(3) A KILLER COMPLAINS. Christian Gerhartsreiter, aka Clark Rockefeller, now serving time in San Quentin for the murder of LASFS member John Sohus, has written a complaint to the New York Review of Books about Walter Kirn’s book about him.

Please forgive the extreme delay of this letter in response to Nathaniel Rich’s review of Walter Kirn’s book about me [“A Killer Con Man on the Loose,” *NYR*, May 8, 2014]. To the whole business I can only say that I barely ever knew Mr. Kirn. … His reasons for wanting retroactively to insert himself so deeply into my life, calling himself a “close friend,” seem either purely commercially motivated or perhaps speak to a deeper pathology on which I do not have the expertise to comment.

(4) FUNDING FOR A PUNK ROCK FUTURE. Editor Steve Zisson and associated editors are in the final week of a Kickstarter appeal to fund publication of A Punk Rock Future, their anthology featuring sf/f/h stories mashing up genre fiction and punk rock music.

Why now for this anthology? A punk strain not only runs through music and art but right through the heart of SFFH (think cyberpunk, steampunk, solarpunk, silkpunk, hopepunk, ecopunk, or whatever punk).

…It is the forward-thinking science fiction and fantasy community that is propelling all things punk into the future.

Want a recent published example of the kind of story you’ll read in A Punk Rock FutureThe Big So-So by Erica Satifka in Interzone. Or read Sarah Pinsker’s Nebula Award winner, Our Lady of the Open Road, published in Asimov’s. These influential stories were inspirations for this anthology.

The big news is that we will have stories from both writers in A Punk Rock Future!

The anthology will feature 25 stories by Erica Satifka, Sarah Pinsker, Spencer Ellsworth, Margaret Killjoy, Maria Haskins, Izzy Wasserstein, Stewart C Baker, Kurt Pankau, Marie Vibbert, Corey J. White, P.A. Cornell, Jennifer Lee Rossman, M. Lopes da Silva, R. K. Duncan, Zandra Renwick, Dawn Vogel, Matt Bechtel, Josh Rountree, Vaughan Stanger, Michel Harris Cohen, Anthony Eichenlaub, Steven Assarian and more to come.

The appeal has brought in $2,557, or 51 percent, of its $5,000 goal, with seven days to go.

(5) MUGGLES GOT TALENT. ULTRAGOTHA recommends this high school Harry Potter dance video posted by MuggleNet.com on Facebook.

(6) THE HOLE MAN. The Boring Company wants to give you a free ride. (No, not a Free Ride.) The Verge reports that “Elon Musk says the Boring Company’s first tunnel under LA will open December 10th.”

The rapid transit tunnel that Elon Musk’s Boring Company is digging beneath Los Angeles will open on December 10th, and free rides will be offered to the public the following night, Musk tweeted on Sunday evening.

The two-mile test tunnel underneath SpaceX’s headquarters in Hawthorne, California, is a proof of concept for an underground public transportation system, which aims to transport passengers and vehicles beneath congested roadways on autonomously driven electric platforms called “skates.” The skates will theoretically transport eight to 16 passengers, or one passenger vehicle, along magnetic rails at speeds of up to 155 mph (250 km/h), Musk tweeted.

(7) PINOCCHIO ANTIFA? “Guillermo del Toro to direct new stop-motion Pinocchio for Netflix”Entertainment Weekly has the story.

Fresh off his Best Picture and Best Director Oscar wins for The Shape of Water, Guillermo del Toro is ready for his next project — and it’s one he’s been working on for a long time. Netflix announced Monday that it’s teaming up with del Toro for a stop-motion musical version of Pinocchio that is the director’s “lifelong passion project.”

Although Disney famously created an animated version of Pinocchio in 1940 (widely regarded to be among the studio’s greatest artistic achievements), the fairy tale was first written by Italian author Carlo Collodi in 1883. Del Toro’s version in particular will draw heavily from illustrator Gris Grimly’s 2002 edition, but will still pay homage to the story’s Italian origins — this Pinocchio will be set in 1930s Italy, under the reign of fascist dictator Benito Mussolini.

(8) RONNEBERG OBIT. Joachim Ronneberg has died at the age of 99 — “Joachim Ronneberg: Norwegian who thwarted Nazi nuclear plan dies”. Described as the most successful act of sabotage in WWII, he and his team destroyed the world’s only heavy-water plant.

In 1943, he led a top-secret raid on a heavily-guarded plant in Norway’s southern region of Telemark.

The operation was immortalised in the 1965 Hollywood film Heroes of Telemark, starring Kirk Douglas.

(9) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge and JJ.]

  • Born October 22, 1919 – Doris Lessing, Writer, Poet, and Playwright born in Iran, who moved to Zimbabwe and later to England. Although considered a mainstream literary writer, she produced a number of genre novels, including the epic science-fiction quintet Canopus in Argos: Archives; about which, when it was disparaged by mainstream critics, she stated: “What they didn’t realise was that in science fiction is some of the best social fiction of our time.” She was Guest of Honor at the 1987 Worldcon, and received many literary awards, including the Nobel Prize for Literature. She died in 2013 at the age of 94.
  • Born October 22, 1938 – Christopher Lloyd, 80, Actor with genre credentials a mile deep, including as Doc Brown in the Hugo- and Saturn-winning Back to the Future movies and animated series, as Uncle Fester in the Hugo- and Saturn-nominated The Addams Family and Addams Family Values, as the alien John Bigbooté in The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension, and as the relentless Klingon nemesis Commander Kruge in the Hugo finalist Star Trek III: The Search for Spock. Other genre films in which he had roles include the Hugo-winning Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, Angels in the Outfield, InSight, The Pagemaster, the My Favorite Martian remake, R.L. Stine’s When Good Ghouls Go Bad, and Piranha 3D (which, judging by the big names attached, must have involved a hell of a paycheck).
  • Born October 22, 1939 – Suzy McKee Charnas, 79, Writer who is probably best known for The Holdfast Chronicles, a series of four books published over the space of twenty-five years, which are set in a post-apocalyptic world and are unabashedly feminist in their themes. She was a finalist for the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer in 1975 based on the strength of the first volume, Walk to the End of the World, which won a Retrospective Tiptree Award. The second volume, Motherlines, was delayed in publication because (this being the late 70s) several publishers would agree to publish it only if the main characters were changed to men – an offer which she refused. Her novella Unicorn Tapestry was nominated for a World Fantasy Award and won a Nebula, her other works have received numerous Hugo, Nebula, Mythopoeic, Tiptree, Stoker, Sturgeon, and Lambda nominations and wins, and she has been Guest of Honor at several conventions including Wiscon and Readercon.
  • Born October 22, 1939 – Jim Baen, Publisher and Editor who started his literary career in the complaints department of Ace Books, becoming managing editor of Galaxy Science Fiction in 1973, then a few years later returning to Ace to head their SF line under Tom Doherty, whom he followed to Tor Books in 1980 to start their SF line. In 1983, with Doherty’s assistance, he founded Baen Books. In defiance of ‘conventional wisdom’, starting in 1999 he made works available via his Webscriptions company (later Baen Ebooks) in DRM-free ebook format; he gave many ebooks away for free on CDs which were included with paper books, and made many books and stories available online for free at the Baen Free Library. This built a loyal following of readers who purchased the books anyway, and his became the first profitable e-book publishing service. He edited 28 volumes in anthology series: Destinies and New Destinies, and with Jerry Pournelle, Far Frontiers. He was an active participant on Baen’s Bar, the readers’ forum on his company’s website, where he discussed topics such as evolutionary biology, space technology, politics, military history, and puns. He received eight Hugo Award nominations for Best Editor and three Chesley Award nominations for Best Art Director. He was Publisher or Editor Guest of Honor at several conventions, including the 2000 Worldcon (where OGH interviewed him on the program), and was posthumously given the Phoenix Award (for lifetime achievement) by Southern Fandom. He passed away from a stroke at the too-early age of 62, but his legacy endures in the continued success of Baen Books.
  • Born October 22, 1952 – Jeff Goldblum, 66, Oscar- and Saturn-nominated Actor, Director, and Producer whose extensive genre resume includes the Hugo-winning Jurassic Park and its sequels, the Hugo-nominated The Fly and its sequel, and the Hugo-nominated Independence Day and its-very-definitely-not-Hugo-nominated sequel. Other roles include the genre films Invasion of the Body Snatchers, The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension, Earth Girls Are Easy, The Sentinel, Threshold, Transylvania 6-5000, Mister Frost, Thor: Ragnarok, and Hotel Artemis. In July 2018, a 25-foot statue of him appeared next to London’s Tower Bridge to mark the 25th anniversary of Jurassic Park.
  • Born October 22, 1954 – Graham Joyce, Writer and Teacher from England whose works ran the gamut from science fiction to fantasy to horror. His novels and short fiction garnered an impressive array of award nominations in a 22-year span, and he took home trophies for six British Fantasy Awards, one World Fantasy Award, and four Prix Imaginaire Awards, as well as an O Henry Award. He served as Master of Ceremonies at Fantasycons in the UK, and was Guest of Honor at several conventions, including a World Fantasy Convention. His thriving career was cut short by cancer at the age of 59.
  • Born October 22, 1956 – Gretchen Roper, 62, Singer, Filker, Conrunner, and Fan. Growing up in a family where mutilating lyrics was a sport prepared her for joining fandom and filkdom at the age of 18. After meeting and marrying co-filker Bill Roper, they co-founded Dodeka Records, a small publisher of filk tapes and CDs which frequently sells their wares at convention Dealer tables. She has run the filk programming for numerous cons, and has been Filk Guest of Honor at several conventions. She received a Pegasus Award for Best Humourous Song, and was inducted into the Filk Hall of Fame in 2008. She was made a member of the Dorsai Irregulars, an invitation-only volunteer convention security team which has a lot of overlap with the filking community, in 2001.
  • Born October 22, 1958 – Keith Parkinson, Artist and Illustrator who began his career providing art for TSR games, and then moved on to do book covers and other art, as well as working as a game designer. In 2002, he became the art director for Sigil Games Online. He was a finalist for a Best Original Artwork Hugo, and earned 9 Chesley Award nominations, winning for each of his covers for the first two volumes of C.J. Cherryh’s Rusalka series. He was a recipient of NESFA’s Jack Gaughan Award for Best Emerging Artist, and was Artist Guest of Honor at several conventions. Sadly, he died of leukemia just after his 47th birthday.

(10) COMIC SECTION.

  • Half Full shows why a couple of Star Wars characters don’t hang out at the beach very often.
  • This classic Basic Instructions strip teaches one to be careful of books with forewords by Stephen King
  • There should be a prize for figuring out which sff story could have inspired this Bizarro joke.

(11) TIMELAPSE SFF SCULPTURE. On YouTube, artist Steven Richter has posted time-lapse videos of his creation of a number of genre sculptures. These include:

  • Voldemort

  • Venom

And quite a few more.

(12) COLD CASE. BBC discusses “The bones that could shape Antarctica’s fate” — aka who was really there first? It could matter if the current protocols are allowed to expire in 2048.

In 1985, a unique skull was discovered lying on Yamana Beach at Cape Shirreff in Antarctica’s South Shetland Islands. It belonged to an indigenous woman from southern Chile in her early 20s, thought to have died between 1819 and 1825. It was the oldest known human remains ever found in Antarctica.

The location of the discovered skull was unexpected. It was found at a beach camp made by sealers in the early 19th Century near remnants of her femur bone, yet female sealers were unheard of at the time. There are no surviving documents explaining how or why a young woman came to be in Antarctica during this era. Now, at nearly 200 years old, the skull is thought to align with the beginning of the first known landings on Antarctica.

(13) AIRPORT ANXIETY. John Scalzi has a growing suspicion that all glory is fleeting —

(14) ROAD THROUGH TIME. BBC reports “A14 road workers find woolly mammoth bones” and woolly rhino bones. Did you know there was such a thing as a woolly rhino?

A spokesman they were “the latest in a series of fantastic finds” from the team working on the A14.

So far, they have also unearthed prehistoric henges, Iron Age settlements, Roman kilns, three Anglo-Saxon villages and a medieval hamlet.

(15) SABRINA. The entire first season– 10 episodes– of the Chilling Adventures of Sabrina become available to stream on Netflix this Friday.

(16) 1001 NIGHTS ART. NPR posts newly republished images by Danish illustrator Kay Nielsen — “Long-Lost Watercolors Of ‘1001 Nights’ Bring New Life To Age-Old Tales”. May be NSFW where you are.

To celebrate the 100th anniversary of the Nielsen’s work, Taschen published all 21 of his original illustrations, reproduced directly from the never-before-seen original watercolors.

The extra-large coffee table book delivers an experience of its own — the prints are meticulously curated and presented in a blue velvet box, as if the book itself was a tale to unveil.

(17) WITCH WORLD REVIEWED. Galactic Journey’s Rosemary Benton reviews a prime Andre Norton novel, newly released in 1963 — “[October 22, 1963] A Whole New Fantasy (Andre Norton’s Witch World)”

When the subject of magic is approached in any of Norton’s writing there is never any easy solution lying right below the surface. Her flaire for piecing out information and not revealing more than what the characters themselves know keeps the reader on edge, as well as humble. This sense that there are always bigger forces at play, yet are never fully explained, teases the rational mind of the reader and allows for there to be doubt that anything “magical” can be easily quantified by rational, scientific method. It’s very disquieting when Norton’s established and venerated forces, like the witchcraft of the Women of Power and the Axe of Volt, are threatened by something indefinable that is even older and more powerful – travel across dimensions.

(18) QUICK SIPS. Charles Payseur finds a thread running through the stories in the October Clarkesworld — “Quick Sips – Clarkesworld #145”.

The October issue of Clarkesworld Magazine is all about survival. Or, I should say, about finding out what’s more important than survival. These stories take settings that are, well, grim. Where war and other disasters have created a situation where just holding onto life is difficult. Where for many it would seem obvious that it’s time to tighten one’s belt and get down to the serious business of surviving. And yet the stories show that surviving isn’t enough, especially if it means sacrificing people. That, without justice and hope beyond just making it to another day, surviving might not be worth it. But that, with an eye toward progress, and hope for something better (not just the prevention of something worse), people and peoples can begin to heal the damage that’s been caused and maybe reach a place where they can heal and find a better way to live. To the reviews!

(19) CODEWRITERS CODE. But for Jon Del Arroz’ wholehearted endorsement — “SQLite Created a Code Of Conduct And It’s AMAZING” [Internet Archive link] – it probably wouldn’t have come to my attention that SQLite, a library of public domain resources for a database engine, posted a Code of Conduct based on a chapter from The Rule of St, Benedict.

Having been encouraged by clients to adopt a written code of conduct, the SQLite developers elected to govern their interactions with each other, with their clients, and with the larger SQLite user community in accordance with the “instruments of good works” from chapter 4 of The Rule of St. Benedict. This code of conduct has proven its mettle in thousands of diverse communities for over 1,500 years, and has served as a baseline for many civil law codes since the time of Charlemagne.

This rule is strict, and none are able to comply perfectly. Grace is readily granted for minor transgressions. All are encouraged to follow this rule closely, as in so doing they may expect to live happier, healthier, and more productive lives. The entire rule is good and wholesome, and yet we make no enforcement of the more introspective aspects.

Slashdot’s coverage “SQLite Adopts ‘Monastic’ Code of Conduct” says the response has ranged from laughter to hostility, an example of the latter being —

On the other hand, Vox Day hopes it will be widely adopted [Internet Archive link].

(20) VIDEO OF THE DAY. “First Bloom” on Vimeo is a cartoon showing an Imperial Chinese love story, directed by Ting Ting Liu.

[Thanks to JJ, Martin Morse Wooster, Chip Hitchcock, Daniel Dern, John King Tarpinian, Mike Kennedy, Cat Eldridge, Carl Slaughter, and Andrew Porter for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Kip W – have we really not used that one before? It didn’t come up on my search.]

New Stage Play Focuses on Murderer Gerhartsreiter

Christian Gerhartsreiter, who used many assumed names – the most notorious being “Clark Rockefeller” — is the subject of the new play “True Crimes” that will be performed in Toronto at Crow’s Theatre from April. 4-15.

Rockefeller was a self-aggrandizing liar who ended up being prosecuted for kidnapping his own daughter. But before that Gerhartsreiter was living in LA County under the name of Chichester and just a few years ago, after a long investigation, he was convicted of the 1985 murder of sf fan and LASFS member John Sohus. He also is suspected in the disappearance of Sohus’ wife, Linda, another LASFSian.

When someone is a successful criminal, the “successful” part inevitably outweighs the “criminal” part. There’s a long tradition of romanticizing criminals – think of all those shows about the Mafia. Woven between the crimes is a thread of populism and approval for getting over on The Man.

I never expected to have the experience of seeing this fictional polish applied to somebody who killed people I’d met. It makes me sick. When people write that something makes them feel sick, I always believe them, whether or not I have the same visceral reaction. I’ll understand if you don’t feel the same, but I assure you when I say it here, I mean it literally.

There were so many absurd pretensions and highly embroidered lies involved in the “Clark Rockefeller” part of the story they can upstage the darker part of his story. Even journalist Frank Girardot, who followed Gerhartsreiter’s LA prosecution for years and wrote a book about him, said on File 770 in 2013 right after the murder conviction was announced, “It’s a tragic story that would be a comedy if it wasn’t for the deaths of John and Linda.”

The trailer emphasizes that he was a con man – which he was, but fictionalized con men are usually thieves or impostors pretending to a title or expertise they don’t really have, not kidnappers and violent murderers. Think of movies like The Great Impostor with Tony Curtis, or Catch Me If You Can with Leonardo Di Caprio – two of Hollywood’s most attractive actors. I feel doubtful about the direction this play will be taking.

True Crime trailer:

[Thanks to Murray Moore for the story.]

Gerhartsreiter Sentencing Due

Christian Gerhartsreiter, convicted in April for the 1985 murder of LASFSian John Sohus, will be sentenced on August 15. He could receive a sentence of 27 years to life in prison.

In the meantime Gerhartsreiter has let his lawyers go and is conducting his own defense. At a hearing in June the judge refused to delay sentencing while Gerhartsreiter pored over trial transcripts looking for legal errors, saying that would be “a fishing expedition.”

Superior Court Judge George Lomeli explained to the defendant that he must identify specific points he wants to read in the transcripts.”You have to have a theory,” the judge said. “You can’t just look at the transcripts and try to find something.”

Gerhartsreiter Trial on NBC 4/17

Tonight’s Dateline on NBC promises a “sneak peak into the trial of the man who posed as ‘Clark Rockefeller’”. The episode also can be viewed online after airing.

Those who have been following the murder case may also want to visit the Charley Project, a site that profiles over 9,000 missing people. Its page about Linda Sohus has been updated since the trial. Prosecutors suspect Gerhartsreiter murdered both John and Linda Sohus although her body has never been found. The Charley Project does not investigate cases, but publicizes missing people “who are often neglected by the press and forgotten all too soon.”

[Thanks to David Klaus for the story.]

Gerhartsreiter Found Guilty

At the end of a 17-day trial in Los Angeles the jury found Christian Gerhartsreiter guilty of murdering LASFS member John Sohus in 1985. The defendant showed little emotion when the court clerk announced the jury had convicted him of first-degree murder.

Jurors told the Pasadena Star-News that two book bags were critical evidence in convincing them of the defendant’s guilt:

Los Angeles County Deputy District Attorney Balian built his case largely on circumstantial evidence, but there was a lot of it. Perhaps the most damaging was the fact that Sohus’ head was found buried in a plastic, University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee book bag. Gerhartsreiter attended the university from 1979-82 before coming to the San GabrielValley.

Juror Vincent Garcia said that bag, coupled with a University of Southern California book bag, was the most solid piece of evidence the jury saw.

“The prosecutor didn’t leave much for the defense to work with,” said juror Salvador Ruiz of Norwalk.

And another juror said:

Gema Vasquez of LincolnHeights, a nurse, said she was ready to go back to work. She also pointed to the bags as key pieces of evidence in the case and said Gerhartsreiter’s attempt to get rid of the Sohus’ pickup truck in Greenwich, Connecticut in 1988 also weighed heavily in the decision to convict him.

“That was really stupid,” Vasquez said. “If you haven’t killed him, why are you giving the truck away and taking it back? How can a person kill another person? It was really stupid.”

Ellen Sohus, John’s sister, addressed the media after the verdict (for video, here).

The victim’s sister, Ellen Sohus, dabbed her eyes with a tissue after the verdict. “It’s finally over,” she said.

Sohus, who described her late brother as gentle, fun-loving and “the original nerd” who loved gadgets and electronics, said she sat through the trial to show that John Sohus was loved. She was surrounded, she said, by Linda Sohus’ friends, whom she called a source of unexpected support.

John Sohus, she said, “would be so overwhelmed by how many people loved him and how many people were fighting for him.”

Local coverage:

LA Times: Rockefeller imposter ‘continues to maintain his innocence’

Pasadena Star-News:  Updated: Jurors say guilty verdict for phony Rockefeller was in the bag

Gerhartsreiter Case Goes To Jury

The jury began deliberations in the Christian Gerhartsreiter murder trial after listening to the prosecutor rebut the defense’s closing arguments.

The murder victim, John Sohus, was a member of the Los Angeles Science Fantasy Society who helped out in the club library when he disappeared in 1985. His body was found during a pool excavation in 1994.

Prosecutor Herbert Balian rejected the defense’s argument that Gerhartsreiter would have been too smart to bury Sohus’ body in two bags that could be tied directly to him — one bag coming from the bookstore at USC, where Gerhartsreiter attended classes, and the other from the bookstore at University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, where Gerhartsreiter was enrolled from spring 1980 to spring 1981.

“He never thought these bags would be found,” Balian said. “It’s not like he laid them on the ground for everyone to see. He buried them.”

Gerhartsreiter probably would not have been tied to the case, Balian said, if the new owners of the Lorain Road property had not wanted a pool and dug up the backyard.

Balian also answered defense attorney Jeffrey Denner’s argument that there is a possibility Linda Sohus killed her husband. First he disputed the claim, then argued it didn’t matter.

If Linda had any role in killing her husband, he argued, she would have needed help.

“Don’t be confused, don’t be mistaken. If two or three of you believe Linda is alive and the killer there is no reasonable scenario where she did it without his involvement,” Balian said. “But that is not the case. He killed. He’s guilty of murder. “

Local reports:

LA Times: Jury begins deliberation in Rockefeller impostor murder case

Pasadena Star-News: Fake Rockefeller murder trial: Prosecutor makes closing arguments

Gerhartsreiter Trial Closing Statements 4/8

The prosecutor’s closing statement called on jurors to convict Christian Gerhartsreiter, renowned as con man Clark Rockefeller, of the 1985 killing of LASFS member John Sohus, his landlady’s adult son. John Sohus, his landlady’s adult son.

John’s remains were found buried behind the guest house, out of sight from the property’s main home and from next-door neighbors.

Around the victim’s skull were two plastic bags used during the early 1980s. One was from the bookstore at USC, where Gerhartsreiter attended classes. The other was from the bookstore at the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee, where Gerhartsreiter was enrolled from spring 1980 to spring 1981.

“The defendant made some mistakes in this case,” [L.A. County Deputy Dist. Atty. Habib Balian] told jurors. “The biggest mistake he made was picking the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee to go to school.”

Balian told jurors, “You should look at each piece… Each one alone might not tell you the answer … but you put it together … and there’s going to be one singular reasonable truth – that this man Christian Karl Gerhartsreiter killed John Sohus.”

Balian emphasized the fact the defendant was in possession of the dead man’s truck when he attempted to sell it in 1988 in Greenwich, Connecticut.

Balian also noted Gerhartsreiter’s odd behavior – both as evidence of the defendant’s brilliance and to bolster a circumstantial case against him. Balian said a San Marino police officer lost an opportunity to interrogate the defendant in 1985 because the detective didn’t know how to respond to the defendant when he came to the door naked and claimed to be a nudist.

Defense attorney Jeffrey Denner argued Gerhartsreiter was a con man, but not a murderer:

 “He had quite a portfolio of illegal behavior that was following him around, so it was not surprising that he would try to stay under the radar,” Denner said in his closing arguments.

Denner stressed that there were no witnesses to the killing or burying of John Sohus, nor was there DNA or other strong forensic evidence linking Gerhartsreiter to the killing.

And he asserted John Sohus’ wife was not in the clear.

“If in fact you don’t find he actually did the murder, then an alternative theory is that Linda Sohus did it. And if Linda Sohus did it and he didn’t do it, then I’d suggest to you that the net result of this is that on some level the prosecution believes that Linda Sohus is the killer,” Denner said. “If she is the killer, she had to be alive when John was murdered. And, if she is the killer, you obviously don’t know what happened here. I suggest to you that is the stuff reasonable doubt is made of. “

However, Balian argued that Gerhartsreiter not only bludgeoned and stabbed John Sohus, he likely killed Linda too.

“What struck me as being particularly sad is that not only did the defendant kill John Sohus and not only does all the evidence indicate that he killed Linda Sohus too… not only did he end these two people’s lives, he’s going to have the gall to come in here and blame the very people that he killed. “

Local reports:

LA Times: Prosecutor urgers jurors to convict fake Rockefeller of murder

Pasadena Star-News: Prosecutor’s bombshell: Phony Rockefeller killed San Marino man AND his missing wife

LA Times: Defense: Rockefeller impostor was a con man but not a killer

Gerhartsreiter Trial Update 4/6

Witness testimony ended this week in the Gehartsreiter murder trial. All the remains is for the closing statements to be delivered, which will happen on Monday, April 8.

Gerhartsreiter, Sohus, Sohus’ wife Linda, and his mother Didi lived at the same address on Lorain Road in San Marino in 1985 when John and Linda disappeared. John’s mother later moved out. In 1994, workers digging a swimming pool unearthed John’s bones. His body had been cut into thirds. Linda Sohus has never been found.

Gerhartsreiter moved to Connecticut in 1985 with the couple’s white pickup truck and then fled Connecticut for New York in 1988 when detectives tried to contact him about the couple’s disappearance. On the East Coast he assumed other names, the last of them Clark Rockfeller.

The most significant testimony of the week came from Sandra Boss, a London-based financial expert, who was married to the imposter for nearly a dozen years.

Boss, who rarely glanced at her ex-husband in court and referred to him only as “the defendant,” testified that she met the man she knew as Rockefeller after he phoned her and invited her to a Clue-themed cocktail party at his Manhattan apartment. She went as the mystery board game’s actress Miss Scarlet. Rockefeller dressed as Professor Plum, she said. Days later, he asked her out on a date.

“He was very intelligent, funny, quirky, very charming,” she said. “I thought I was in love with him. I thought I wanted to marry him.”

They wed in 1995 in Nantucket, Mass. The pair had previously attended Episcopal services but her husband suggested a Quaker ceremony, which did not require a formal officiant, explaining that he preferred its simplicity.

Boss told about her husband’s secretiveness. Their utilities, phones and property were all in her name or the name of a trust connected to her. Bank accounts were in her name. He paid the bills using blank checks she had signed.

She also described his efforts to avoid recognition, wearing hats in public, and refusing altogether to travel to either California or Connecticut, the state where he claimed his parents had died in a car accident. Once airline passengers began having to provide official identification, her husband stopped flying, claiming he had ear problems.

Boss was afraid to leave her marriage despite earning $1.2 million a year as a consultant with a London company. “I wanted to leave him… But he told me that if i did I would never see my daughter again.”

Describing a brief separation in 1999, Boss said Gerhartsreiter was a control freak who was difficult to live with and lied “pretty frequently”.

“He was an unpleasant human being who was clearly choosing not to work,” she said. “I was clearly uncomfortable remaining in that situation.”

Boss was the prosecution’s last witness. She was followed by two defense witnesses: handwriting experts who testified that the postcards signed and sent by Linda with a Paris, France postmark were likely written by the missing woman.

Barbara Torres, a forensic document examiner for the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, testified that the handwriting on the postcards from France matched examples of Linda’s handwriting, including a Halloween card and a letter to a man who had purchased some of her fantasy artwork. Another handwriting expert, Sheila Lowe, said she had a “high degree of professional certainty … that the handwriting on the postcards is authentic.”

***

Linda Sohus’ boss, who ran a Sherman Oaks bookstore, testified that Linda did not have the money to travel abroad and had promised to open up the bookstore in the coming days before she disappeared.

“She did not write these postcards under normal circumstances,” Balian told jurors earlier in the trial.

Defense attorney Brad Bailey suggested earlier in the trial that Linda had created a “smoke screen” to cover the killing of her husband.

Both sides agreed at trial that there is no record of John or Linda Sohus entering or exiting the United States since the beginning of 1985 and that neither ever applied for a passport.

Local news reports:

Pasadena Star-News: Star Witness in Rockefeller trial likely to be accused killer’s ex-wife
Pasadena Star-News: Ex-wife: Fake Rockefeller changed from charming to downright weird
LA Times: Wife of Rockefeller impostor hired detective to look into his background
Pasadena Star-News: Fake Rockefeller trial nears end as both sides rest
LA Times: Rockefeller imposter trial focuses on handwriting evidence
LA Times: Defense rests its case in Rockefeller impostor murder trial