Pixel Scroll 4/25/21 Files Runs The Pixel Down

(1) FUTURE UNIONS. “Workers of All Worlds Unite,” a public talk about labor unions in science fiction with Olav Rokne, is a free Zoom event happening Thursday, April 29 at 7:30 p.m. Mountain time. Join the Zoom free here. Or you could also support the event by getting tickets here.

Workers Of All Worlds Unite!

Science fiction is filled with depictions of standard capitalist employment relationships, but little thought seems to have been given to how workers in the future will assert their rights. Join Olav Rokne as he explores the troubled history of labour unions in science fiction, and makes an argument as to why this history matters.

(2) ELLISON TRUST VICTORY. Two weeks ago J. Michael Straczynski, Executor of the Harlan and Susan Ellison Trust, updated fans about a successful action to fight off opportunistic banks.

(3) EXTREMELY HONEST. Ian Moore takes the first step in his Hugo finalist Mt. Tsundoku 12-step program by admitting powerlessness:

(4) HE’LL BE IN SCOTLAND AFORE YE. Recorded April 15, Shoreline of Infinity brings you “Ken MacLeod’s Road Trip”.

Ken MacLeod’s Road Trip takes us from Scotland through the north of England and London to the far side of the Earth. Three talkative passengers – Charles Stross, Justina Robson and Tasha Suri – read from their work, and over the car radio Hannah and Sam Bennett play drive-time music live from the wonderful world of tomorrow. Hosted by Shoreline of Infinity – science fiction magazine and publisher based in Scotland for the world to enjoy.

(5) WHAT DID YOU DO IN THE WAR? People have been trying to answer that question about these familiar names for years.“L. Ron Hubbard, Robert Heinlein and the Kamikaze Group Think Tank – Not So ‘Nothing’ After All?” at The McClaughry’s Blog is a 2017 post, but it’s news to me!

… Not that Hubbard was some kind of White Knight or anything, far from it. Even a brief perusal of our work here at the blog would tell you very quickly that we don’t go easy on Mr. Hubbard. But, I don’t think that we need to discredit his actual bad acts by throwing out wrong characterizations and outright lies about him either.

Hubbard has two big holes in his Navy history that none of the so-called ‘experts’ ever noticed that I documented in my post. Either one of which could easily have been this Aleutians business, and I’m guessing it was the second “hole” from November 3 to November 25, 1944.

It actually fits well with then being tasked with Heinlein to deal with anti-Kamikaze tactics. Heinlein details that two assignments came to him from Naval Intelligence, practically back to back. The problem is, people have put wrong times for when these were. Times that don’t fit with KNOWN dates and events.

Heinlein and other science fiction writers were utilized several times for Naval Intelligence projects…

Right on the back of that is when Heinlein formed his Think Tank on Kamikazes with Hubbard etc. which was also called a “crash” project.

In 1944, Heinlein recruited Hubbard, Sturgeon and others for a project: “Op-Nav-23, a brainstorming job on antikamikaze measures.” [46] The Bradbury Chronicles by Sam Weller, p. 12

I had been ordered to round up science fiction writers for this crash project-the wildest brains I could find, so Ted was a welcome recruit. Some of the others were George O. Smith, John W. Campbell Jr., Murray Leinster, L. Ron Hubbard, Sprague de Camp, and Fletcher Pratt…

– Stephen Dedman in May the Armed Forces Be with You

Ok, first question would be when were these kamikaze attacks?

Although there had been spotty “kamikaze” actions by Japanese fighter pilots with engine troubles etc. earlier in WWII, the first inklings of an actual program appears to have been decided upon by August 1944 but not acted upon until Vice-Admiral Takijiro Onishi, took command of the 1st Air Fleet in the Philippines on October 17, 1944. Onishi had initially opposed the idea, but changed his mind when he took command.

Three days later kamikaze attacks – kamikaze means “Divine Wind” – were introduced October 20 of 1944 and on October 25 the first formal (and mass) kamikaze attacks launched in the Phillippines….

(6) MEMORY LANE.

  • 1976 – Forty-five years ago at MidAmeriCon, the Hugo for Best Novella went to Roger Zelazny for “Home Is the Hangman” which was published in Analog, November 1975.  It would also win the Nebula the same year. The other nominated novellas were “The Storms of Windhaven” by George R. R. Martin and Lisa Tuttle [Analog, May 1975] “ARM” by Larry Niven [Epoch, 1975] “The Silent Eyes of Time” by Algis Budrys [F&SF, Nov 1975] and “The Custodians” by Richard Cowper [F&SF, Oct 1975]. It is collected with the other two novellas in this series, “The Eve of RUMOKO“ and “Kjwalll’kje’k’koothaïlll’kje’k“ in My Name in Legion which is available from the usual suspects. 

(7) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge and John Hertz.]

  • Born April 25, 1897 Fletcher Pratt. He’s best remembered for his fiction written with L. Sprague de Camp, to wit Land of Unreason, The Carnelian Cube and The Complete Compleat Enchanter. I’m rather fond of The Well of the Unicorn and Double Jeopardy. I see that he and Jack Coggins were nominated for International Fantasy Award for their Rockets, Jets, Guided Missiles and Space Ships, a non-fiction work published in 1951. Anyone known about this? (Died 1956.) (CE) 
  • Born April 25, 1915 Mort Weisinger. Comic book editor best known for editing  Superman during in the Silver Age of comic books. He also served as story editor for the Adventures of Superman series,  Before that he was one of the earliest active sf fans, working on fanzines like The Planet (1931) and The Time Traveller (1932) and attending the New York area fan club  known as The Scienceers. (Died 1978.) (CE) 
  • Born April 25, 1915 – Leslie Croutch.  Television & radio repairman.  Half a dozen stories.  Contributor to The AcolyteFuturian War DigestSpacewaysTin TacksVoice of the Imagi-NationLe Zombie.  Various fanzines of his own, notably Light.  See here and Harry Warner’s appreciation here (PDF).  (Died 1969) [JH]
  • Born April 25, 1920 John Mantley. He wrote but one SF novel, The 27th Day,  but it rated a detailed write-up by Bud Webster in The Magazine of F&SF which you can read here. (He wrote the screenplay for the film version of his novel which gets an abysmal score of twenty-five percent among audience reviewers at Rotten Tomatoes.) He also produced a number of episodes of The Wild Wild WestBuck Rogers in the 25th Century and MacGyver. (Died 2003.) (CE)
  • Born April 25, 1925 – Margery Gill.  A dozen covers, as many interiors for us; much else.  Here is Four-and-Twenty Blackbirds.  Here is The Saracen Lamp.  Here is Over Sea, Under Stone.  Here is English Fairy Tales.  Here is an interior from A Little Princess.  See this appreciation in the Illustrators Wiki.  (Died 2008) [JH] 
  • Born April 25, 1929 Robert A. Collins. Edited a number of quite interesting publications including the Fantasy Newsletter in the early Eighties, the IAFA Newsletter in the late Eighties and the early Nineties along with the Science Fiction & Fantasy Book Review Annual with Rob Latham at the latter time. He also wrote Thomas Burnett Swann: A Brief Critical Biography & Annotated Bibliography. (Died 2009.) (CE) 
  • Born April 25, 1941 – Stella Nemeth, age 80.  Book reviews and occasional drawings in The DiversifierLan’s LanternSF BooklogZeor Forum; seen in Algol.  More recently in Art With a Needle.  [JH]
  • Born April 25, 1957 – Deborah Chester, age 64.  Three dozen novels for us (some under different names); several others.  Has a recipe in Anne McCaffrey’s Serve It Forth.  Professor at Univ. Oklahoma.  [JH]
  • Born April 25, 1961 Gillian Polack, 60. Australian writer and editor. She created the Ceres Universe, a fascinating story setting. And she’s a great short story writer as Datlow demonstrated when she selected “Happy Faces for Happy Families” for her recommended reading section in the ‘04 Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror. She’s reasonably stocked at the usual suspects. (CE) 
  • Born April 25, 1975 – Courtney Schafer, age 46.  Three novels, one shorter story.  Electrical engineer, worked in aerospace.  While at Cal Tech (California Inst. of Technology) she also learned rock climbing, skiing, SCUBA diving; later, figure skating.  Favorite series, the Lymond Chronicles; has also read Hidden FiguresThe Little PrinceWatership Down.  [JH]
  • Born April 25, 1979 – Christopher Hopper, age 42.  Half a dozen novels, a score more with co-authors; one shorter story.  Encouraged by his wife he has two million words published; also plays in her band.  He’s breakfasted with Winnie Mandela, kite-surfed in Hawai’i, photographed white rhinos in South Africa, climbed the Great Wall of China.  [JH]
  • Born April 25, 1981 Silvia Moreno-Garcia, 40. Canadian of Mexican descent. She’s the publisher of Innmouths Free Press, an imprint devoted to weird fiction. Not surprisingly, she co-edited with Paula R. Stiles for the press, the Historical Lovecraft and Future Lovecraft anthologies. She won a World Fantasy Award for the She Walks in Shadows anthology, also on Innsmouth Free Press. She was a finalist for the Nebula Award 2019 in the Best Novel category for her Gods of Jade and Shadow novel. And finally with Lavie Tidhar, she edits the Jewish Mexican Literary Review. Not genre, but sort of genre adjacent. (CE) 

(8) COMICS SECTION.

  • Bizarro finds something at the window gently tapping.

(9) X-MEN NEWS. Christian Holub, in the Entertainment Weekly story “Marvel reveals the results of X-Men fan election” says Marvel sent out a bunch of mini-comics before deciding whether Banshee, Strong Guy, Boom-Boom, or other rookies got to join the X-Men team. Those Twitter comics are linked at the end of the article.

…Election season is finally over for the X-Men. Back in January, Marvel conducted a public vote for fans to choose a member of the newest X-Men team that is set to debut at the much-anticipated Hellfire Gala in June’s Planet-Sized X-Men #1. As with any election, there can only be one winner, and unfortunately lots of losers. But at least fans get to see how each of the candidates — Banshee, Polaris, Forge, Boom-Boom, Tempo, Cannonball, Sunspot, Strong Guy, Marrow, and Armor — responded to the results in a new series of mini-comics published to Marvel’s social media accounts over the past week.

Written by Zeb Wells (Hellions) and illustrated by a variety of artists (including Rachelle Rosenberg who colored them all), each installment of these Twitter comics featured two candidates each reckoning with their loss. First up was Strong Guy and Forge, illustrated by Mike Henderson. Despite the fact that Forge has used his mutant affinity with technology to develop all kinds of bio-organic resources for the new mutant nation-state on the living island of Krakoa, Strong Guy points out that they’re equal in defeat….

(10) WHY DID YOU DESIGN? There’s a Kickstarter to fund production of “The Prisoner Retro Style Action Figures by Wandering Planet Toys”, with versions of Number 6 as he was attired in different episodes, a boxed pair with Number 6 and his nemesis Number 2, and even a Rover figure.  

In 1967 the cult classic TV series, THE PRISONER, came bursting onto the screen. The series, about an unnamed British intelligence agent who awakes to find himself trapped in an idyllic seaside village, was not only an instant hit with viewers at the time, it went on to be watched and re-watched obsessively by fans, quickly gaining cult status.

While there have been several collectables released over the decades, THE PRISONER has never received a line of OFFICIALLY LICENSED ACTION FIGURES… and Wandering Planet Toys is working with our licensing partners at ITV Studios to bring to life 4-inch RETRO STYLE ACTION FIGURES that celebrate Patrick McGoohan’s brilliant series. 

… Want to get information about these figures? Good, because by hook or by crook you will!

No discussion of THE PRISONER is complete without mention of the Village’s spherical guardian and menace, ROVER. In order to evoke the iconic moment of NUMBER 6 pushed up against the gelatinous side of the guardian, we’ve created a Limited Edition plastic packaging unit depicting our hero in the belly of the beast. This package is a resealable clamshell so the figure can be removed for display, then reinserted.

(11) SENATOR, YOU’RE NO JACK KENNEDY. But he makes a pretty good John Scalzi.

(12) REDRUM. It’s official! “NASA’s first color photo from the Mars Ingenuity helicopter is… red” reports Mashable. Images at the link.

Mars is often referred to as the “Red Planet” because of the rusty, reddish-orange sandscape blanketing the planet. That comes into sharp focus in our first color photo snapped by the Mars Ingenuity helicopter.

That was taken about 17 feet above the ground. You can clearly see the sandy red-orange Martian surface. And if you look at the bottom of the image, you’ll clearly see Ingenuity’s shadow, with two of its spindly legs visibly jutting out from it’s rectangular body.

Those patterns in the ground that look like tracks are in fact… tracks left by the Perseverance rover, the remote-operated research vehicle that carried Ingenuity safely to Mars. Once it deposited its flying robot friend the Perseverance headed off to a new location, first to monitor the helicopter for a month and then to proceed with its other duties.

Here’s a closer look at those tracks….

(13) JOSH FIGHT. There can be only one… Josh! Wikipedia explains yesterday’s “Josh fight”. Which is sounds a little like a Pennsic Wars where all the combatants have the same first name.

On the chosen day, several hundred people, including many named Josh, congregated at Air Park.[4][6] Attendees came from as far as New YorkHouston,[7] and Washington[8] with some dressed in superhero and Star Wars costumes.[9][10] The gathering also included a fundraising element for Children’s Hospital & Medical Center in Omaha, which raised over $8,000 USD,[3][11] and a food drive that collected over 200 pounds (90 kg) of food for a nearby food bank.[12][13]

Three ‘fights’ were held – one game of rock paper scissors for those named Josh Swain, a second with pool noodles for all attendees named Josh, and a third and final all-in battle for anyone in possession of a pool noodle willing to participate.[14] Only two Josh Swains were in attendance – Josh Swain, the event’s creator, beat a rival Josh Swain from Omaha in the rock paper scissors event.[12] A local four-year-old boy named Josh Vinson Jr., dubbed ‘Little Josh’, who had been treated at Children’s Hospital & Medical Center in Omaha for seizures when he was two years old, was declared the winner and crowned with a paper crown from Burger King as well as a replica AEW World Championship belt

(14) WHAT IF MY ‘PARTNER’ HAS A JOB AND I DON’T? In “AI ethicist Kate Darling: ‘Robots can be our partners’” – a Guardian interviewer goes for the jugular:

But companies are trying to develop robots to take humans out of the equation – driverless robot cars, package delivery by drone. Doesn’t an animal analogy conceal what, in fact, is a significant threat?

There is a threat to people’s jobs. But that threat is not the robots – it is company decisions that are driven by a broader economic and political system of corporate capitalism. The animal analogy helps illustrate that we have some options. The different ways that we’ve harnessed animals’ skills in the past shows we could choose to design and use this technology as a supplement to human labour, instead of just trying to automate people away.

(15) DOME IMPROVEMENTS. The New Yorker asks “Do Brain Implants Change Your Identity?”

The first thing that Rita Leggett saw when she regained consciousness was a pair of piercing blue eyes peering curiously into hers. “I know you, don’t I?” she said. The man with the blue eyes replied, “Yes, you do.” But he didn’t say anything else, and for a while Leggett just wondered and stared. Then it came to her: “You’re my surgeon!”

It was November, 2010, and Leggett had just undergone neurosurgery at the Royal Melbourne Hospital. She recalled a surge of loneliness as she waited alone in a hotel room the night before the operation and the fear she felt when she entered the operating room. She’d worried about the surgeon cutting off her waist-length hair. What am I doing in here? she’d thought. But just before the anesthetic took hold, she recalled, she had said to herself, “I deserve this.”

Leggett was forty-nine years old and had suffered from epilepsy since she was born. During the operation, her surgeon, Andrew Morokoff, had placed an experimental device inside her skull, part of a brain-computer interface that, it was hoped, would be able to predict when she was about to have a seizure. The device, developed by a Seattle company called NeuroVista, had entered a trial stage known in medical research as “first in human.” A research team drawn from three prominent epilepsy centers based in Melbourne had selected fifteen patients to test the device. Leggett was Patient 14….

(16) ANIMATION INSPIRATION. “David Letterman Interviews Mel Blanc in 1982” from Late Night.

Even in his 70’s, Mel never lost those little voices. It amazes me how he could go from one to another so quickly and effortlessly.

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

Pixel Scroll 11/8/20 I Know This Defies The Law Of Pixel Scrolling, But I Never Studied Law

(1) GETTING PAID. Joby Dorr advises his fellow artists, “You Should Probably Be Charging More For Your Art”.

The truth is that a huge population of artists are severely undercharging for their work

 Even as the discussion surrounding wealth inequality and fair pay reaches a cultural tipping point, a huge number of independent artists are allowing their services to be hired out at starvation wages. 

 At some point in your journey, every independent artist should write out the following simple equation:

What goes into the equation is your net income over a year, divided by the number of hours spent on producing and marketing your art.

What should come out of the other side of this equation is a per hour rate greater than minimum wage. 

If you’ve never written out this equation for yourself, or you have and your per hour rate is below minimum wage, then please keep reading on. …

(2) CLASSIC SERIES REVIVED. [Item by Cora Buhlert.] A sword and sorcery magazine called Tales from the Magician’s Skull has announced that they will be publishing new Fafhrd and Gray Mouser stories authorized by the estate of Fritz Leiber: I’m not sure how I feel about this, considering I’m a big fan of the originals. “All-New Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser Stories to be  Published in Tales From The Magician’s Skull”.

… The first story in this new series will appear in issue #6 of Tales From The Magician’s Skull. Author Nathan Long has written a new short story starring Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser. This entertaining tale finds the twain engaged in somewhat honest employment in the theatre trade, in order to pursue somewhat dishonest aims involving the sorcerer’s guild, with a somewhat incomplete plan that only Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser could devise.

(3) QUANTUM UNLEAPED. Australian Geoff Allshorn “ponder[s] the nature of ‘queer science fictions’ and our place as creators, audiences, and participants” in “From Queer to Eternity”.

… My background in science fiction demonstrates my own intersections of the personal with the political. In 1999, as the founder of a Melbourne-based LGBTI science fiction club called Spaced Out, I authored the club’s draft charter. Its goals included a recognition of diversity and a challenge to our science fictional friends and peers:

“We recognise that science fiction is a fun and popular medium and we no longer wish to be excluded from its fiction, art, cyberworlds or other creative forms…” Spaced Out, 1999.

I recall the energy and enthusiasm of the club’s early days: we published a number of newsletters and two fanzines, and our website won an Australian science fiction ‘Ditmar’ award. A professional author and other local luminaries became guests at our meetings while we, in turn, hosted panels at a Worldcon (Aussiecon 3). Our very existence, as both geeks and queers, identified us as a minority grouping within both communities; it was fun to confront double prejudice and it was interesting to see who supported us in either context.

…The irony of how life can come full-circle was emphasised to me in 2012, when the Australian Broadcasting Corporation commissioned a six-part series entitled, Outland, telling the story of an imaginary ‘gay science fiction fan club’ that was curiously located within the Australian city which really did have such a club. The series was advertised as being an exploration of inclusion but it excluded its real-life counterparts: its generic disclaimer dissociated its fictional characters from any real-life role models, and its fictional ‘otherness’ was further emphasised by its predominantly white male characters displaying very little real diversity. To me, its stories lacked the excitement of our real-life exploits in Spaced Out, where we had taken ‘one small step’ into groundbreaking territory and attempted to ‘boldly go where no fan had gone before’. Ultimately, Outland inverted media science fiction subtext: whereas LGBTQIA+ SF fans had traditionally sought to interpret ‘otherness’ as metaphoric queerness; we could now interpret our queerness as comprising metaphoric ‘otherness’.

(4) RIBBON BLOCK. “Medal by medal, Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard’s ‘stolen valor’ is laid bare” at The Underground Bunker.

…A 20-year military veteran, PickAnotherID was frustrated not only by Hubbard’s “stolen valor,” but also the incomplete and incorrect criticisms of the medals and ribbons that the Church of Scientology claimed were earned by the Scientology founder.

In the first part, Pick went over the Navy marksmanship awards, which have caused a lot of confusion over the years. And now, he’s on to the medals and ribbons that Scientology claimed for Hubbard when it delivered a photo of them to New Yorker writer Lawrence Wright for his 2011 feature story, “The Apostate.”

Bronzen Kruis
(Bronze Cross – Netherlands)

The Bronze Cross of the Kingdom of the Netherlands was instituted on 11 June 1940 by Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands while residing in London during the German occupation of the Netherlands. The Bronze Cross is the third highest military decoration still being awarded by the Netherlands for bravery.

The medal itself is not shown in the picture provided by Scientology. It only includes the ribbon at position ‘R4’ of the ribbon block.

The Bronze Cross is a special award for military who behaved courageously or meritoriously in facing the enemy in service for the Kingdom of the Netherlands. It may also be awarded to civilians or foreign military who acted in special interest for the safety of the Netherlands. The cross, which corresponds to the British D.S.C., M.C., D.S.M., and M.M., can be given for a single outstanding act, as well as for bravery and enterprise in action over a period of time. It is received after a Royal Decree that is controlled by the Commissie Dapperheidonderscheidingen van het Ministerie van Defensie (Special Committee of the Ministry of Defence) which advises the Minister of Defence and the Dutch Queen. A number of American, Canadian, British and Polish ground and air military personnel have been awarded the Bronzen Kruis for service during WWII. The majority of those awarded to Americans were for actions during the failed Operation Market-Garden, 17-25 September 1944. Several members of the 508 Parachute Infantry Regiment involved in this operation received the Bronzen Kruis. A few were also awarded to Americans, as well as other nationalities, for actions during the the later liberation of the Netherlands.

Hubbard never participated in Market-Garden, or the liberation of the Netherlands. The Commissie Dapperheidonderscheidingen van het Ministerie van Defensie has not included his name among those who have received this award.

Verdict: Stolen Valor

(5) SMALL BUT MIGHTY. Plagiarism Today sorts out conflicting claims in “Hero Forge and the Controversy Over Miniature Copyright”.

…One site, Sky Castle Studios’ Hero Forge, allows users to design and perfect their own custom heroes (using pre-made assets provided by Hero Forge) and then either have Hero Forge send them a physical version of it or, if they prefer, they can download a digital version for printing on their own 3D printer.

However, with this new service came a new controversy: Copyright

The Hero Forge terms of service led many to believe that the site was laying claim to any and all creativity the user brought to the site. However, it’s something of a tempest in a teapot as Hero Forge’s terms of service really only impact a small subset of users and those would-be users likely came to the site with questionable intentions to start with.

(6) YOU DROOGS ARE WARNED. “‘Don’t read Clockwork Orange – it’s a foul farrago,’ wrote Burgess”The Guardian previews a book of Anthony Burgess’ poetry, some appearing in print for the first time.

Previously unpublished love poems written by Anthony Burgess to each of his two wives have been discovered, along with a verse in which he dismissed A Clockwork Orange, the savage satire for which he is best known, as “a foul farrago”, urging people to read Shakespeare and Shelley instead.

They are among dozens of unknown poems that have been found, the majority in his vast archive held by the International Anthony Burgess Foundation, an educational charity in Manchester, where the writer was born in 1917.

One poem was found tucked into a book in Burgess’s library, others were on scraps of paper or card, including cigar-boxes and matchbooks. The discoveries will be included in a 450-page book to be published in December, entitled Anthony Burgess: Collected Poems, which brings together around 350 verses, of which a fifth are unpublished.

… Biswell said: “Most of his other books are non-violent and not about teenage boys. But, thanks to the popularity of the film, people were always asking him about A Clockwork Orange.” The previously unpublished poetry includes A Sonnet for the Emery Collegiate Institute, a verse letter urging students not to read that novel: “Advice: don’t read/ A Clockwork Orange – it’s a foul farrago/ Of made-up words that bite and bash and bleed./ I’ve written better books… So have other men, indeed./ Read Hamlet, Shelley, Keats, Doctor Zhivago.”

(7) A TIMELORD IN RETIREMENT. In The Guardian: “Tom Baker: ‘Being loved pleases me very much indeed'”. Registration required to read full interview.

“I miss Waitrose terribly,” Tom Baker says in those unmistakable tones. “And Boots, and the places I used to go without realising how dependent I was on them.”

The year of coronavirus is treating the veteran actor well on the whole, he explains, “because I live in the country and have a garden and some woodland and a cat and a wife”. But there is a melancholy and a reminder of his own mortality when he does venture out. “When my wife and I go for a spin, I drive to Tenterden [in Kent] and – we don’t sob exactly – but it gets solemn as we catch a glimpse of the hardware store, and Boots, and Waitrose, and then we turn round and come home again. Then I go down to the paradise of my woods and think: ‘Well, eventually it will pass.’ Another voice, of course, says: ‘Yes, but by then you’ll be gone.’”

(8) TREBEK DIES. Jeopardy! host Alex Trebek has died at the age of 80 reports CNN:

The cause of death was not immediately announced. Trebek revealed in March 2019 he had been diagnosed with stage 4 pancreatic cancer, triggering an outpouring of support and well wishes at the time.

While Trebek did make a few minor genre acting appearances (like, delivering one line as a Man in Black on an X-Files episode), he was far more profoundly connected to sff through the many fans who competed on his game show over the years. For example, here is a link to Part I of Steven H Silver’s “A Fan in Jeopardy! from File 770 #134 (March 2000).

(9) MEDIA ANNIVERSARY.

  • 1975 – Forty-five years ago this weekend, the pilot film for the Wonder Woman series (The New Adventures of Wonder Woman after the first season) aired to quite splendid ratings.. It was called The New Original Wonder Woman and starred Lynda Carter as Wonder Woman/Diana Prince, Lyle Waggoner as in the roles of Steve Trevor Sr. & Steve Trevor Jr., and Debra Winger as Drusilla/Wonder Girl. It was the second Wonder Woman film as Cathy Lee Crosby had been her in one a year earlier that did poorly in the ratings.   This series would last for three seasons with the first being on ABC and the last two on CBS. In all, sixty episodes including the film were produced. 

(10) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge and John Hertz.]

  • Born November 8, 1847 – Bram Stoker.  Famous for Dracula, which however accurately or inaccurately based on legend has itself become legendary.  Four other novels, forty shorter stories.  Outside our field, assistant to Sir Henry Irving; theater manager.  (Died 1912) [JH]
  • Born November 8, 1898 Katharine Mary Briggs. British folklorist and author who wrote A Dictionary of Fairies: Hobgoblins, Brownies, Bogies, and Other Supernatural Creatures , and the four-volume Dictionary of British Folk-Tales in the English Language, and the Kate Crackernuts novel. Her The Anatomy of Puck: An Examination of Fairy Beliefs among Shakespeare’s Contemporaries and Successors is fascinating read. (Died 1980.) (CE)
  • Born November 8, 1914 Norman Lloyd, 106. Yes, he’s really that old. His best remembered genre role was as Dr. Isaac Mentnor on the Seven Days series. He’s been on Star Trek: The Next GenerationGet Smart! in the form of the Nude Bomb filmand The Twilight Zone, and in a fair of horror films from The Dark Secret of Harvest Home to The Scare. (CE)
  • Born November 8, 1922 – Sol Dember.  A score of covers.  Here is the Mar 58 Galaxy.  Here is the Jul 61 If.  Here is the Aug 63 Worlds of Tomorrow.  Here is the Nov 68 Galaxy.  (Died 2011) [JH]
  • Born November 8, 1932 Ben Bova, 88. He’s the author of more than one hundred twenty fiction and nonfiction books. He won six Hugo Awards as editor of Analog, along with once being editorial director at Omni. Hell, he even had the thankless job of SFWA President. (Just kidding. I think.) I couldn’t hope to summarize his literary history so I’ll single out his Grand Tour series that though it’s uneven as overall it’s splendid hard sf, as well as his Best of Bova short story collections put out recently in three volumes on Baen. What’s your favorite works by him?  (CE)
  • Born November 8, 1936 – Edward Gibson, Ph.D., 84.  Science pilot of Skylab 4.  Two novels.  Edited The Great Adventure, nonfiction by astronauts, cosmonauts.  Humboldt Foundation prize.  Two honorary doctorates.  U.S. Astronauts Hall of Fame.  [JH]
  • Born November 8, 1952 Alfre Woodard, 68. I remember her best from Star Trek: First Contact where she was Lily Sloane, Zefram Cochrane’s assistant. She was also Grace Cooley in Scrooged, and polishing her SJW creds, she once voiced Maisie the Cat in The Brave Little Toaster Goes to School. And yes, I know she’s portrayed a character in Marvel Universe. I just like the obscure roles. (CE) 
  • Born November 8, 1954 – Sir Kazuo Ishiguro, 66.  Author, jazz composer.  Three novels for us; five others, nine shorter stories, five screenplays, a dozen songs (with Jim Tomlinson).  Holtby, Whitbread, Booker Prizes.  Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Letters.  Nobel Prize in Literature.  Order of the Rising Sun.  [JH]
  • Born November 8, 1955 Jeffrey Ford, 65. Winner of seven World Fantasy Awards including for The Fantasy Writer’s Assistant and Other Stories, an excellent collection, and The Shadow Year which in turn is an expansion of “The Botch Town”, a novella that also won a WFA. His Nebula winning novelette, “The Empire of Ice Cream”, can be heard here. Did you know that he has written over one hundred and thirty short stories?  A wide selection of his writing are available at the usual digital suspects. (CE) 
  • Born November 8, 1956 Richard Curtis, 64. One of Britain’s most successful comedy screenwriters, he’s making the Birthday List for writing “Vincent and the Doctor”, a most excellent Eleventh Doctor story. He was also the writer of Roald Dahl’s Esio Trot which isn’t really genre but it’s Roald Dahl which sort of make it genre adjacent. And he directed Blackadder which certainly should count as genre.(CE) 
  • Born November 8, 1978 – Kali Wallace, Ph.D., 42.  Four novels, a dozen shorter stories.  Interviewed in Lightspeed.  Photographer, though she depreciates her ability.  “I now live in southern California.  I do miss having seasons.”  [JH]
  • Born November 8, 1982 – Lauren Oliver, 38.  A dozen novels, four novellas.  Phi Beta Kappa at Univ. Chicago.  Wrote her first book on a BlackBerry during subway trips.  NY Times Best Seller.  Has read Austen, Brontë, Hemingway, Huxley, James, Joyce, and thirty Agatha Christie novels.  [JH]

(11) COMICS SECTION.

(12) COMICS IN THE DAYS OF THE TWO GERMANIES. Cora Buhlert has an article about East and West German comics at Galactic Journey“[October 28, 1965] Knights, Adventurers And Anthropomorphic Animals: Comics In East And West Germany”.

…Inspired by the success of the Disney comics, in 1953 West German artist Rolf Kauka created his own comic magazine called Till Eulenspiegel, named after a popular trickster character from German legend. However, a pair of clever foxes named Fix and Foxi quickly became the most popular characters and in 1955, the magazine was retitled as Fix und Foxi. The two foxes quickly adopted a whole menagerie of animal friends such as the wolf Lupo and his cousin Lupinchen, the mole Pauli and the sister Paulinchen, the raven Knox, the hare Hops, the hedgehog Stops and the mouse Mausi. Other characters to appear in the magazine are “Tom and Klein Biberherz” (Little Beaverheart), a cowboy character and his indigenous friend, and “Mischa im Weltraum” (Mischa in Outer Space), a humorous science fiction comic. Those who have read the Archie comics will find that Mischa looks very familiar.

(13) WAR AND FANTASY. Paul Weimer serves up “Microreview: Legacy of Ash by Matthew Ward” at Nerds of a Feather.

…Expanding on that, the physical conflicts, battles and otherwise, is where a lot of the story strength is spent and spent well. With the theme of a impending invasion by the neighboting, dominant Empire and the internal conflict within the Republic, complete with insurgency, and the very violent, Renaissance level world means that there are action sequences that run from duels in a street all the way to set piece battles. The latter is particularly well done, showing the ebb and flow of war and its fortunes, flaws and follies. The pulse pounding roar of physical action is where the narrative kicks into overdrive, and all of the point of view characters (and in at least one case very unexpectedly) get their turns to shine, or at least get dunked in the experience. War is hell, and this book makes no bones about it and secondary characters often have a shockingly short but realistic  life expectancy.

(14) POWERED BY A TARDIGRADE? No, but it should be: “Scientists 3D print microscopic Star Trek spaceship that moves on its own”CNN has a picture.

…The miniature Voyager, which measures 15 micrometers (0.015 millimeters) long, is part of a project researchers at Leiden University conducted to understand how shape affects the motion and interactions of microswimmers.

Microswimmers are small particles that can move through liquid on their own by interacting with their environment through chemical reactions. The platinum coating on the microswimmers reacts to a hydrogen peroxide solution they are placed in, and that propels them through the liquid.

“By studying synthetic microswimmers, we would like to understand biological microswimmers,” Samia Ouhajji, one of the study’s authors, told CNN. “This understanding could aid in developing new drug delivery vehicles; for example, microrobots that swim autonomously and deliver drugs at the desired location in the human body.”

(15) THE FINISHED LINE. Adri Joy gives Nerds of a Feather readers her assessment in “Microreview [book]: Master of Poisons by Andrea Hairston”.

Master of Poisons took me approximately forever to read. Very little of that is the book’s fault: while Andrea Hairston’s writing style does require more attention than some, packing a great deal of worldbuilding and information into deceptively simple but poetic prose, its certainly no more than I would expect to give to an author of this calibre. It’s not like Master of Poisons doesn’t open with some super intriguing stuff: right off the bat, we’ve got poison deserts, scheming advisors, a deceptively confident first protagonist and a plucky young second one all conspiring to draw me in….

(16) WAYS INDIE BOOKSTORES ARE SURVIVING. On the CBS Sunday Morning news today: “Independent booksellers write a new chapter during COVID-19”.

The Strand Book Store is a New York institution, with four floors of books, and 93 years of tradition. But while it survived a Great Depression, World War II, 9/11 and Amazon, it has struggled during the era of COVID-19. New Yorker contributor Kelefa Sanneh talks with the Strand’s owners, and with the owners of EyeSeeMe, an African-American children’s bookstore in St. Louis, about how independent booksellers are finding ways to cope during the coronavirus pandemic, and about the community of readers that wants them to survive.

(17) MORE TO COME. Clarion West is hosting several more online workshops before the end of 2020, ranging in price from free to $325.

Thursday, November 12 at 4:00 p.m. PDT: Submission Tools with Bonnie Jo Stufflebeam 
You’ve written, finished, and edited your short story. What now? Join prolific submitter and rejection expert Bonnie Jo Stufflebeam for a two-hour seminar on the submissions process: formatting, finding markets, writing cover letters, tracking submissions, managing acceptances and rejections, and exploring reprints.
 
Saturday, November 14 at 10:00 a.m. PST: Interactive Fiction with E. Lily Yu 
Award-winning author and narrative designer E. Lily Yu discusses the intricacies, opportunities, complications, and markets for interactive fiction and other branching narratives. How do we bring playfulness? What are the types of nonlinear narrative, and how do we use them? During this class, you’ll outline, implement, and workshop your own Twine game. Basic technical knowledge of how to edit Twine or a Wikipedia article required.

Saturday, November 14 at 12:00 p.m. PDT : Fix It, Jesus! With LP Kindred 
Repurposing the Self, Clichés, Tropes, and Unexamined Bias for New Story – LP Kindred walks you through how to fix these biases in an interactive workshop! 

Sunday, November 15 at 12:00 p.m. PDT: Intro to Freelance Video Game Writing with Whitney “Strix” Beltrán 
Acquiring and creating your first pieces of freelance work: what does that entail? This course focuses on the creative and logistical aspects of freelance game work. Fee structures and appropriate pay will be taught in a later workshop.

Friday, November 20 – Sunday, November 22: Writing the Other Weekend Intensive: Quick & Clean with Nisi Shawl and Tempest Bradford
Nisi Shawl and K. Tempest Bradford lead this weekend-long workshop on creating more compelling, well-rounded characters whose identities and cultural experiences are unlike the author’s own, from gender to ethnicity, sexuality to socioeconomic class. Avoid pitfalls of tokenism and appropriation while building your confidence to write the lives of characters with respect and panache.

Sunday, Nov 29, 10:00 a.m. Pacific: Negritude in the 6th Dimension: An Afrofuturist Excursion
A panelshop in partnership with Voodoonauts

The Voodoonauts (Yvette Lisa Ndlovu, Shingai Njeri Kagunda, LP Kindred, and Hugh “H.D.” Hunter) host a panel and break-out workshop sessions to explore time and craft through a Black Indigenous lens.

(18) SECOND FOUNDATION OF THE WEB. “How Discord (somewhat accidentally) invented the future of the internet” at Protocol.

…Eventually, a lot of those gamers realized something. They wanted to talk to their gaming friends even when they weren’t in a game, and they wanted to talk about things other than games. Their gaming friends were their real friends. As luck would have it, in early 2015, a new tool called Discord showed up on the market. Its tagline was not subtle: “It’s time to ditch Skype and TeamSpeak.” It had text chat, which was cool, but mostly it did voice chat better than anybody else.

Early users set up private servers for their friends to play together, and a few enterprising ones set up public ones, looking for new gamer buds. “I don’t have a lot of IRL friends that play games,” one Discord user, who goes by Mikeyy on the platform, told me. “So when I played Overwatch, I started my first community … to play games with anyone on the internet. You’d play a couple of games with someone, and then you’re like, ‘Hey, cool, what’s your Discord?'”

Fast-forward a few years, and Discord is at the center of the gaming universe. It has more than 100 million monthly active users, in millions of communities for every game and player imaginable. Its largest servers have millions of members. Discord’s slowly building a business around all that popularity, too, and is now undergoing a big pivot: It’s pushing to turn the platform into a communication tool not just for gamers, but for everyone from study groups to sneakerheads to gardening enthusiasts. Five years in, Discord’s just now realizing it may have stumbled into something like the future of the internet. Almost by accident….

(19) DEEP PURPLE STATE. In the Washington Post, Steven Zeitchik says that some in Hollywood have decided that with the pandemic and the election we need soothing entertainment, so Barney the dinosaur is coming back in a remake! “Hollywood wants to put you to sleep”

… For much of this entertainment century, Hollywood has had a clear objective: work viewers into as much of a lather as possible. The highest-grossing movies of all time are “Avengers: Endgame” and “Avatar. The most-watched pay-cable show of this era is “Game of Thrones.” All three offer tense standoffs, climactic battle scenes and other high-burn elements. They try to make us sweat.

Such content, researchers have found, can leave a deep mark. A study from Linder College in Oregon revealed that clips from “aggressive” movies activate mental aggression, while research conducted by University College London indicated that action movies can even take a toll on the cardiac muscle.

So modern entertainment leaders have tried another way. Executives at ViacomCBS streaming service Pluto TV licensed a well of content from Ross, the ultimate soothe-meister, and created a channel devoted to him. If you want to see happy little trees spring up everywhere — all 380 episodes of them — they are now available on the platform.

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

2019 Writers and Illustrators of the Future Contest Winners

The 2019 Writers and Illustrators of the Future Contest Award Event was held April 5 in Los Angeles.

2019 Writers of the Future Golden Pen Award was won by Andrew Dykstal for his story “Thanatos Drive.”

The Illustrators of the Future Golden Brush Award went to Aliya Chen for her illustration of Elise Stephens’ story “Untrained Luck.”

Each winner received a trophy and a $5,000 check.

Also, the L. Ron Hubbard Lifetime Achievement Award was presented to artist Bob Eggleton.

Pixel Scroll 8/15/18 I Just Scrolled Into San Jose And Boy Are My Pixels Tired

(1) ROAD TRIP. Made it to San Jose, delayed by a flat tire coming down the Grapevine, which led to getting help from AAA and buying replacement tires in Bakersfield (the temporary spare has limited mileage). I had time to realize that I was on the I-5 just about opposite where Bruce Pelz’ van had a flat on the return trip from the Vancouver Westercon of 1977. Fannish symmetry.

(2) IT’S LIT. Now all I need is an explanation….

(3) NOT YOUNG PEOPLE. James Davis Nicoll continues to flip the script, having “old people” read and react to Amal El-Mohtar’s “”Seasons of Glass and Iron”.

The third piece in Old People Read New SFF is Amal El-Mohtar’s 2016 Seasons of Glass and Iron. To paraphrase Wikipedia:

Seasons won the 2016 Nebula Award for Best Short Story, the 2017 Hugo Award for Best Short Story, and the 2017 Locus Award for Best Short Story. It was also shortlisted for the 2017 World Fantasy Award—Short Fiction, the 2017 Aurora Award for Best Short Fiction, and the 2017 Theodore Sturgeon Award.

A fairy tale—two fairy tales—retold to modern sensibility, it scratched the same itch for me Tanith Lee’s Red as Blood did decades ago. It was therefore almost certain that I would enjoy it. The laundry list of awards suggested that I was not alone in this. If there is one thing I’ve learned from this ongoing project, it’s that reality and expectations often diverge. What did my Old People actually think of this story?

(4) CLARION W. Frank Catalano tells GeekWire readers about Clarion West: “How this workshop creates some of the world’s top sci-fi and fantasy writers, inside a Seattle house”.

This and every summer around the first of August, 18 students leave a house in Seattle’s University District, after an intense six weeks in a crucible of creativity. Graduates over the past three decades have gone on to write bestselling novels, win science fiction and fantasy’s major awards, and become well-respected editors.

The Clarion West Summer Workshop may be the least-showy, most-influential contributor to the worlds of science fiction, fantasy, and horror in the universe.

“Probably our most famous current grad is Ann Leckie because her first book, right out the door, got the Nebula, the Clarke Award, the Hugo and the British fantasy and science fiction award,” said Neile Graham, Clarion West workshop director since 2001.

Catalano says, “I felt Clarion West is an under-appreciated gem in both Seattle proper, as well as in the tech community in general. So I wanted to draw attention to its decades of work.”

(5) DIRDA COLUMN. The Washington Post’s Michael Dirda says “This is getting weird: Critics on horror, science fiction and fantasy”:

Fantasy, horror and science fiction are porous genres, allowing for, and even encouraging, cross-fertilization. H.G. Wells’s “The Island of Dr. Moreau,” for instance, could be classified under any of these three rubrics. To circumvent so much categorical fuzziness, John Clute, the theoretically minded co-editor of “The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction,” came up with the useful umbrella term “fantastika.” What follows here, then, is a briefly annotated list of some recent critical books about fantastika.

No one knows more about M.R. James, author of the best ghost stories in English, than Rosemary Pardoe. In The Black Pilgrimage and Other Explorations (Shadow Publishing) she collects her “essays on supernatural fiction,” many of which reflect her careful research into the textual complexities and historical context of James’s imaginative writing.

(6) LIGHTNING STRIKING AGAIN AND AGAIN. Sci FI Bloggers’ Alice Rosso picks the “TOP 5 Ways to Destroy New York City”.

Number 1: Apocalypse, The Day After Tomorrow.

Man has pushed it too far; because of a non-returning point reached in the Global Warming, the earth is doomed to experience a new Ice Age, in which waters and freezing temperature will devastate the entire planet. The first scene that comes to mind when thinking about this movie is the gigantic wall of water that invades New York City, destroying everything on its way, soaking the Statue of Liberty and trapping our protagonists in the famous Public Library. The world is devastated by nature and New York is the first to become an icicle.

(7) DUNE ON TABLETOP AGAIN. Eric Franklin says, “It’s been about twenty years since we had a new licensed Dune game (the Dune Collectible Card Game was released in 1997, the RPG was released in 2000), so it’s about time.” IcV has the story: “Frank Herbert’s ‘Dune’ Comes To Tabletop”.

“This is only the beginning of our big plans in tabletop for this captivating franchise,” said John-Paul Brisigotti, CEO of GF9. “Dune is a rich and wonderful universe, and we expect to produce an equally expansive and inspired line of games for years to come.”

“Gale Force Nine has consistently demonstrated a skill and passion for building successful tabletop game series alongside category leading partners and we are thrilled to announce this exciting addition to the Dune licensing program,” said Jamie Kampel, Vice President of Licensing & Partnerships for Legendary. “Legendary looks forward to a fun and meaningful contribution to this revered legacy property.”

The full range of products, including board and miniatures games, are scheduled to release just prior to the upcoming Dune theatrical release in 2020. GF9 plans to align with other game companies in numerous categories and formats for future releases as well.

(8) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS

  • Born August 15, 1896 – Leon Theremin. Inventor of the instrument figuring in such genre films as The Thing From Another WorldThe Day The Earth Stood Still, The 5,000 Fingers Of Dr. TForbidden Planet, Batman Forever, Mars Attacks! and Ghostbusters.
  • Born August 15 – Zeljko Ivanek, 61. First genre role was on The X-Files, some of his other genre appearances include Millennium, From the Earth to the Moon miniseries, Hannibal, Twilight Zone, Lost, Heroes, Revolution, True BloodX-Men: Apocalyse and Twelve Monkeys. 
  • Born August 15 – Natasha Henstridge, 44. Genre work includes series such as Homeboys in Outer Space, The Outer Limits, Time Jumper (anyone seen this?), The Secret Circle, the newest Beauty and the Beast and Medinah.
  • Born August 15 – Jennifer Lawrence, 28. First genre role was in the Medium series, also has appeared in the Hunger Games and X-Men film franchises.

(9) HE LIKES THE BUS. James Davis Nicoll (working overtime today!) told Tor.com readers “Not On Your Life: Six Means of SF Transportation I Would Not Use”. He does not want to be a plasma jet / He would not ride that on a bet…. Here’s an example:

Subatomic Particle Energy

Bob Shaw’s A Wreath of Stars (1976) and Gregory Benford’s The Stars in Shroud (1978) use similar conceits, if for rather different purposes. In Wreath, conversion from regular matter to anti-neutrinos3 affords its protagonist escape from an irate dictator. He finds himself in an intangible world (which is doomed, so it wasn’t much of an escape). In the Benford novel, conversion to tachyons allows faster than light travel. In addition to issues I will discuss in a later essay, both of these technologies have the same apparent drawback, namely: unless the process is absolutely instant (I don’t see how it could be) this would probably shear all the complex molecules and chemical structures in one’s meatsack body, as different bits are converted at slightly different times. Do not want to be converted to mush, fog, or plasma. No thanks.

(10) 1948. Pros at the first Toronto Worldcon.

(11) VIDEO OF THE DAY. “Rang-Tan: the story of dirty palm oil” on YouTube is a cartoon narrated by Dame Emma Thompson about orangutans produced for Greenpeace

[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, amk, JJ, Eric Franklin, James Davis Nicoll, Cat Eldridge, Martin Morse Wooster, Mike Kennedy, Chip Hitchcock, Carl Slaughter, and Andrew Porter for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Patrick Morris Miller.]

Pixel Scroll 7/3/18 Too Bad I Don’t Have A Scrollographic Memory

(1) THE PRICE OF LIBERTY. It isn’t cheap — Gizmodo has the story: “USPS Ordered to Pay $3.5 Million After Putting Artist’s Weird ‘Sexier’ Lady Liberty on Stamps”.

The USPS put a Getty Images photo of artist Robert S. Davidson’s Las Vegas version of the sculpture on roughly 3.5 billion stamps before the incongruity was noticed in 2011. In his original civil complaint, art market platform Artsy wrote last year, Davidson wrote the USPS never asked permission and that his version is materially different than the one from 1875 and thus protected under copyright—specifically that it is “more ‘fresh-faced,’ ‘sultry’ and even ‘sexier’ than the original located in New York.” (Davidson very weirdly added that he took the inspiration for this sex bomb Lady Liberty from, umm, “certain facial features of his close female relatives.”)

(2) BRAM STOKER HISTORY TOUR. The Horror Writers Association has revamped their Bram Stoker Awards site. HWA President Lisa Morton says:

For the first time ever, you can now find all the information you need on the awards gathered in one place, with each winner/nominee listed individually, cross-linked to year and category. The site also includes galleries of photos going all the way back to the beginning of the awards, trivia, rules, and more.

…We expect this site to be a continuing work in progress as we add more data and fun stuff.

As the “Fun Facts” article shows, Stephen King is the Babe Ruth of the Stoker Awards:

  • The top number of nominations by any one author: Stephen King, with 32 total nominations.
  • The top number of wins by any one author: Stephen King, with 12 total wins.
  • The top number of losses by any one author: Stephen King, with 20 total losses….

(3) LEAKAGE. ScienceFiction.com says the Time Lords are in hot pursuit of the leaker of the missing minute: “BBC Goes To Court To Find Who Leaked ‘Doctor Who’ Footage Of Jodie Whittaker”.

‘Doctor Who’ fans are breathless with anticipation, awaiting the first trailers or clips from the upcoming eleventh season.  Excitement is extra high this time around because for the first time in the show’s 54-year history, said Doctor will be a woman, Jodie Whittaker.  But fans want to abide by the BBC’s plans to unveil what they choose to at their discretion.  (Whittaker will be present for a panel at San Diego Comic-Con, so chances are high that there will be some new footage shown.)  But when a pirate released a minute-long clip featuring the first scenes of Whittaker’s thirteenth Doctor on American messaging app Tapatalk, which then found its way to Twitter, fans revolted, attacking the poster for spoiling the new season.  The BBC quickly had the post deleted but they aren’t stopping there.  They want to know who leaked the footage and they’re going after them!

The British Broadcasting Company “requested a clerk at the California federal court issue a subpoena to Tapatalk, a mobile community platform.”  The BBC is demanding that records be turned over which could help identify the responsible persons.  They have also enlisted the aid of law firm Kilpatrick Townsend & Stockton, which has made a name for itself over the past few years for going after pirates of major events like these.

(4) WORLDCON 76 PROGRAM. The committee is making a list and checking it twice —

(5) THE SHEEP LOOK OUT. Let a Filer be your guide. “I was asked to write a travel blog for the Dublin 2019 site,” he says. The result is: “Touring Tuesdays: Round Renvyle with Nigel Quinlan”.

This week Nigel Quinlan takes us into the wilds of Connemara…

Drive vaguely and meanderingly northwest out of Galway city, following signs for Connemara or Clifden or Sheep On The Road or Invasive Species Do Not Eat. Through Oughterard with its pleasant riverside park on the far side, Maam Cross with a rather musty replica of the cottage from John Ford’s The Quiet Man and the film itself on repeat in the bar at the hotel, turning right down the genuinely spectacular Inagh Valley where your attention will be divided between the splendid bleak majesties of the open boglands, the rocky glories of the mountains and watching out for the sodding sheep that are ON THE ROAD.

(6) HOW TO VOTE FOR AN SF AWARD. The SF & Fantasy Poetry Association’s SPECPO blog tries to make “Approaching the Elgin Voting” less daunting and more accessible. Between the Elgin’s two categories, members have 51 finalists to consider. SFPA President Bryan Thao Worra’s guidance could also be adapted for use by newbie Hugo voters.

History demonstrates that often, readers, reviewers and literati of any given age have varying degrees of success identifying works of enduring merit and literary impact. Who actually survives into the next decades, let alone the next centuries as “must read” authors is often very surprising, whether it’s in mainstream literature, pulp fiction and genre offerings.

That being said, here are some grounding principles:

  • You don’t have to read a book that’s not grabbing you all of the way through. With a full-length chapbook or book, we’re looking for works that are consistently outstanding, not one filled with one amazing gem to rival “The Raven” and 99 uninspiring verses filling out the rest of the set.
  • This isn’t the search for the greatest of all time, but within the set of this year. You don’t necessarily need to fret about how well a given book stands up against the great works of the last 5 to 100 years. You can leave that concern at the door. But are you reading a book where you can see yourself recommending it to another, and returning to it regularly yourself?
  • Try breaking your options into batches. Picking 3 out of 30 is difficult, but when one starts by sorting it into more manageable batches of approximately 5 to 6 books, it becomes easier to pick your 2 favorites of that batch, and then in the final set, identifying your three favorites.
  • Each member has their own tastes, preferred literary traditions and forms, and if you come across a text that isn’t meeting your tastes, that’s fine. Fans of a particular style are more likely to vote it up into the effective running than those who aren’t. So if you’re not a scifaiku fan, feel free to weigh in if you want, but you can also “sit it out” on that text if you don’t feel strongly about what you’re reading.

(7) LEARNING CURVE. “11 Essential Books On Writing, Based On The Genre You Want To Write” at The Bustle.

Now, before we dig into these books, please note that I’m talking about genre and not subgenre. No matter if you write steampunk, space westerns, or post-apocalyptic stories, you’re looking for the Science Fiction recommendation below. Similarly, whether you want to make your mark on sword and sorcery, paranormal, or grimdark, the book listed under Fantasy is for you. I know that all six of those subgenres are very clearly defined and different from one another, but I’m aiming for broad utility here.

For example, if you want to write Fantasy, read Wonderbook by Jeff VanderMeer.

(8) TODAY IN HISTORY

  • July 3, 1985 Back to the Future was released.
  • July 3, 1996 Independence Day landed in theaters.

(9) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS

  • Born July 3—Tom Cruise, 56. Genre films include Interview with the Vampire: The Vampire Chronicles, Minority Report, War of the Worlds, OblivionEdge of Tomorrow and, shudder, The Mummy.
  • Born July 3 – Olivia Munn, 38. A surprising number of roles in genre films including Insanitarium, Scarecrow Gone Wild, Iron Man 2X-Men: Apocalypse and the latest Predator reboot.

(10) RETRO LAW AND ORDER. David Doering rediscovered these forgotten charges against L. Ron Hubbard in Fantasy News Annual, v. 7, issue 1, whole no. 150, July 27, 1941.

HUBBARD MAKES MURDEROUS ATTACK ON SHEA!

PERPETRATOR OF WEIRD LITERARY CRIME SEEKS REFUGE IN U.S. ARMED FORCES!

Harold Shea, popular fantasy hero, created by L. Sprague de.Camp and Fletcher Pratt, was subjected in the August UNKNOWN to an assault with intent to kill by L. Ron (“Golden Egg”) Hubbard, author of the lead novel, “The Case Of the Friendly Corpse”.  The red-haired adventurer-author caused his competitor’s character to be seized and swallowed by a gigantic snake into which a magic wand carried by one of his minor characters turned.

Shea’s creators, however, with fiendish snickers, have announced that they are taking suitable steps to rehabilitate their hero, and obtain revenge for this bit of outrageous literary impertinence, They are working on a story which will tell what r?e?a?l?l?y? happened to Shea in the College of the Unholy Names, site of the crime. (This institution is headed by the President J. Klark, believed to be the astral body of Dr. John D. Clark, well-known Philadelphia fan.)

“Just wait”, sneered Pratt, “till you see what we do to Hubbard’s characters!” They explained that, as the explorer and bear-tamer is now Lieut. Hubbard, USN, he probably would not have time to reply in his turn.

“You see”, leered de Camp, “we’re altruists. That means we believe in doing unto others what they would like to do unto us, and doing it first!”

(11) ON LOCATION. Joe Flood, writing in the Washington Post, says he enjoyed watching the Wonder Woman shoot at the Hirshhorn Museum last weekend, but “what wasn’t so cool was Wonder Woman 1984 shutting down Pennsylvania Avenue all weekend long, blocking off bike lanes with no alternate accommodations.” — “There are no superheroes in D.C.”

And then, there were Gadot and Pine, wearing the same clothes as the stand-ins but anointed with the familiarity of stars. You know them, but you don’t. Their images are the only things truly accessible.

They duplicated what the stand-ins did. Walk, talk, react. Pine gawked at whatever was in the sky but with considerably more subtlety than the stand-in. That’s probably why he’s the movie star.

(12) BAGGED THEIR LIMIT. A handsome hunting credential poses with its SJW:

(13) RECIPE FOR HUMOR.

(14) MARVEL PANELS AT SDCC. If you’ll be at San Diego Comic-Con this month you’ll have a chance to see these Marvel Comics panels.

MARVEL: Making Comics the Marvel Way
Thursday 7/19/18, 12:00pm-1:00pm
Room 25ABC

Editor-in-Chief C.B. Cebulski and Talent Scout Rickey Purdin join a multitude of Mighty Marvel Guests to take you behind-the-scenes and show you how a Marvel comic book is made! Learn about every aspect of production including writing, penciling, inking, coloring, lettering, editing, and more – with creators on hand to offer personal insights and anecdotes. If you’re interested in the ins-and-outs of the comic book industry, this is the one panel you can’t miss!

MARVEL COMICS: Spider-Man
Friday 7/20, 12:30-1:30pm
Room 5AB

Editor Nick Lowe with his Amazing Friends Nick Spencer (Amazing Spider-Man) and Donny Cates (Venom) swing into SDCC with all the hottest spider-news! Nick Spencer ushers in a new era for Spidey that takes the web-head back to basics, while all-new Venom writer Donny Cates lays out what’s in store for the symbiotic hero in both the past and present in his definitive take on the character. PLUS, learn the latest about your favorite spider-heroes from across time and space as they crawl closer and closer towards the Edge of Spider-Geddon!

MARVEL: Cup O’Joe – Marvel Knights 20th Anniversary
Friday 7/20, 1:30-2:30pm
Room 5AB

Join Joe and fellow comics legend Jimmy Palmiotti as they reflect on the industry-redefining MARVEL KNIGHTS imprint as it celebrates its 20th anniversary.  What was it like to pioneer this bold new storytelling style for Marvel’s heroes, and how has it impacted Marvel comics, movies, and television series over the last two decades?  Learn about all this and more at this must-attend retrospective – and bring your own burning questions!  NOT to be missed by any fan of the Mighty Marvel Manner!

MARVEL COMICS: Next Big Thing
Saturday 7/21, 1:45-2:45pm
Room 6A

Editor-in-Chief C.B. Cebulski and star Executive Editor Nick Lowe are joined by Donny Cates (Cosmic Ghost Rider, Death of Inhumans) and Margaret Stohl (Life of Captain Marvel) to discuss the startling stories and initiatives that are truly the NEXT BIG THINGS in the Marvel Universe!  In Fantastic Four, the Richards family is heading back to Earth, but they still have one more cosmic obstacle to overcome. Meanwhile, the specter of death hangs around the Inhumans and the Ghost Rider of a dark future in Donny Cates’ Death of Inhumans and Cosmic Ghost Rider. And as the Infinity Wars ignite, are any characters truly safe? All this, plus learn more about the definitive origin of Captain Marvel as Margaret Stohl opens up about Life of Captain Marvel!  If you want to learn about the biggest Marvel stories of 2018, this is THE panel not to miss!

MARVEL COMICS: Meet the Editor-in-Chief!
Saturday 7/21, 3:00pm-4:00pm
Room 6A

This is your chance to meet the new head of editorial at Marvel! In this exclusive one-on-one interview led by Skottie Young (Deadpool), freshly-minted Editor-in-Chief C.B. Cebulski will talk about anything and everything involved in what’s next for Marvel. Want to know where to search for the Infinity Stones? Dying to find out what’s next for Wolverine? What does Forbush Man really look like without his helmet? Ask C.B. these questions and more in the Q&A!  PLUS – don’t miss a surprise exclusive giveaway variant comic!

MARVEL: True Believers*
Sunday 7/22, 10:00am-11:00am
Indigo Ballroom, Hilton San Diego Bayfront

Join Executive Editor Nick Lowe along with creators Ryan North (Unbeatable Squirrel Girl), Robbie Thompson (Spider-Man/Deadpool), and Jeremy Whitley (Unstoppable Wasp) for a private panel discussion of what’s happening inside the Marvel Universe.  Get FREE merchandise, never-before-seen sneak peeks of upcoming comics, Q&A session and more!  Not to be missed! Open only to Marvel Unlimited Plus members and Marvel MasterCard cardholders.

*Panel line-up is subject to change. Free items available while supplies last.  Must have valid ID and one of the following for entry: Marvel MasterCard Member – Event Invite, Marvel MasterCard, or event RSVP confirmation; Marvel Unlimited Plus Members – membership card, or MU+ order confirmation email.

MARVEL COMICS: X-Men
Sunday 7/22, 11:15am-12:15pm
Room 5AB

Editor-in-Chief C.B. Cebulski, Sina Grace (Iceman), Seanan Maguire (X-Men Gold Annual), Matthew Rosenberg (Astonishing X-Men), and Tom Taylor (X-Men Red) take you through the full spectrum of current X-Men madness! The Red, Blue, and Gold teams confront Atlanteans, uncertainty, and Extermination, and the secrets of a NEW X-team are revealed! Deadpool and X-23 both rediscover their roots, and the Astonishing team faces ever stranger challenges! PLUS- Stay for the whole panel for an exclusive giveaway variant comic!

Don’t miss your chance to hear all the news and excitement from Marvel Comics at San Diego Comic Con!

(15) REMAKE. Cnet frames the art: “Star Wars: The Last Jedi remake poster mocks angry fans”.

An artist is poking fun at Star Wars fans clamoring for a remake of The Last Jedi.

Fernando Reza — an LA-based graphic artist — on Monday tweeted an image of his poster for the project, which centers on a muscled Luke Skywalker wielding a lightsaber and massive handgun.

 

[Thanks to Cat Eldridge, Chip Hitchcock, JJ, David Doering, John King Tarpinian, Mike Kennedy, Martin Morse Wooster, Carl Slaughter, Daniel Dern, and Andrew Porter for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day OGH, taken from an email he wrote to Steve Davidson after being told he repeated a Scroll title Steve submitted in 2016.]

Pixel Scroll 11/21/2017 Come On Over For Scrolled Pixel With All The Trimmings

(1) TOWARD A MORE GRAMMATICAL HELL. McSweeney’s John Rauschenberg explains it all to you in “Dante’s Nine Circles of Hell, Reimagined for Linguistic Transgressions”.

First Circle (Limbo):
Autocorrect

Here wander the otherwise virtuous souls who were forced into grievous errors by autocorrect programs. They sit in silent masturbation, only rising once every hour to chant eerie koans such as “ducking auto cat rectal.”

Second Circle:
The Serial Comma

One half of this circle is populated by souls who are cursed to make arguments that nobody cares about except their own mothers, howling gorgons and the infernal mistresses of hell. The other half are cursed to make arguments that nobody cares about except their own mothers, howling gorgons, and the infernal mistresses of hell. The difference between these two situations seems to matter a lot to both halves. Neither side will listen to you when you suggest that they could avoid this level entirely.

And so on.

(2) EVEN PIXAR. The Hollywood Reporter’s Kim Masters, in “John Lasseter’s Pattern of Alleged Misconduct Detailed by Disney/Pixar Insiders”, says that longtime Pixar CEO John Lasseter has been suspended following sexual harassment allegations.

Rashida Jones is still credited as a writer on Toy Story 4, the next installment in the beloved franchise. But, sources tell The Hollywood Reporter, the actress and her writing partner at the time, Will McCormack, left the project early on after John Lasseter, the acclaimed head of Pixar and Walt Disney Animation, made an unwanted advance.

Jones and McCormack did not respond to repeated requests for comment. Disney declined to comment on the alleged incident though a studio source said the departure was over “creative differences.” Multiple sources spoke with THR but asked not to be named out of fear that their careers in the tight-knit animation community would be damaged.

Based on the accounts of former Pixar insiders as well as sources in the animation community, the alleged incident was not an isolated occurrence. One longtime Pixar employee says Lasseter, who is well-known for hugging employees and others in the entertainment community, was also known by insiders for “grabbing, kissing, making comments about physical attributes.” Multiple sources say Lasseter is known to drink heavily at company social events such as premiere parties, but this source says the behavior was not always confined to such settings.

(3) MELTDOWN AT LITTLE ROCK’S COSPLAY CON. PopCultHQ extensively covers last weekend’s most disappointing event — “Chaos at Cosplay Con & Anime Experience #CCAE2017”.

November 17 & 18th was the weekend for the Cosplay Con and Anime Experience in North Little Rock, AR. This convention didn’t have a stellar list of top-name celebrities, but it had a good line-up. Their headliner was Ciara Renee from DC’s Legends of Tomorrow. Other guests included Cig and George from SYFY’s Faceoff, Joshua Monroe from Cosplay Melee, and actor/voice actor Robert Axelrod.

Ticket prices weren’t bad for a new convention. The day of the con weekend passes were only $30, Friday passes were $15, and Saturday were $25.

This cosplay con and anime experience promised to be, “The ultimate community focused convention” and was marketed as “…a celebration of comic books and pop culture that showcases the exceptional works of talented Cosplayers, writers, artists, illustrators and creators of all types.”

Instead, this turned into a complete disaster that caused so much stress and anxiety for some that at least one person ended up in the hospital. There are so many things with this con, that I’m just going to give you a list of what I have heard so far and then I will expound on a few of them;

  • Bad communication all around
  • Guests weren’t paid
  • Caterer wasn’t paid
  • No break relief for vendors
  • Vendors were not allowed food or drink at their booths
  • Vendors were forced to accept ‘vendor bucks’ without compensation
  • No Load-in information or map provided for Vendors
  • Guests were kicked out of the hotel when the convention credit card was rejected
  • Not all of the Costume contests occurred
  • Owner avoided guests and wasn’t even seen in the vicinity of the convention for a large portion of the show
  • Owner suspected to be operating with a false identity
  • Continual schedule changes during the event
  • Staff wasn’t paid
  • Volunteers didn’t get fed
  • VIP packages weren’t entirely as promised

The article delivers a paragraph or more about each bulleted complaint and accusation, largely gathered from the victims’ Facebook comments.

(4) FOR CERTAIN VALUES. Camestros Felapton dissects the moral values of the new Netflix series in “The Punisher – An Artfully Crafted Moral Vacuum”.

But this is not a general review. What I wanted to discuss was the wisdom of making the show in the first place. I certainly had my doubts when it was announced and it was also clear that Marvel were nervous about making a show centered on a character defined by his gun-fueled killing sprees. While any of the TV/Movie versions of Marvel characters have some scope for re-invention, The Punisher has to act as a one man extra-judicial death squad. A plot line can expand his motivation or show other aspects of his character and he doesn’t even need his distinctive skull logo but sooner or later if he doesn’t kill lots of bad guys then he simply isn’t The Punisher.

…But this fourth space for superheroes to occupy for non-otherworldly threats poses problems for Marvel (and for DC). This vacuum was eluded too but not examined in Captain America: Civil War. Captain America’s stance not to sign the Sokovia Accords was not well examined or explained. Instead, the rightness of his stance is largely just assumed as an extension of Steve Rogers own integrity. That manages to just about work in that film so long as you don’t pay too much attention to it but on closer examination Rogers really has to choose to be either an agent of the state or a vigilante. If you call yourself ‘Captain America’ then you can either be a soldier employed and held accountable by the state or your indistinguishable from a nutty ‘militia’ hiding in a compound and plotting against the BATF.

The Punisher series gets this. It really is genuinely aware of these issues – mainly because they become unavoidable when your central character uses military equipment to murder criminals without trial.

(5) TRANSHUMAN. C.P. Dunphey’s The Year’s Best Transhuman SF 2017 Anthology is out from Gehenna & Hinnom.

As technology progresses, so does its connection with mankind. Augmentations, cybernetics, artificial intelligence filling the void that the absence of flesh will leave behind. In Transhumanism, we fine our imminent future. Whether this future is to be feared or rejoiced, depends on the individual.

Will technology replace mankind? If AI becomes self-aware, is a war imminent?

C.P. Dunphey, critically acclaimed author of Plane Walker and editor of the bestselling Year’s Best Body Horror 2017 Anthology and Hinnom Magazine¸ has collected 25+ stories from the best up-and-coming authors in science fiction for Gehenna & Hinnom’s sophomore collection, The Year’s Best Transhuman SF 2017 Anthology. From veteran award-winning authors like Julie Novakova, to popular horror authors like Chad Lutzke, the anthology presents no shortage of entertaining, mind-bending science fiction.

(6) THE REST OF THE FOOTAGE. Ethan Alter, in the Yahoo! Entertainment story “Steven Soderbergh Reveals The BackStory on His Viral Lucasfilm Rejection Letter”, interviews Soderbergh, who says the rejection letter from Lucasfilm (reported in the Scroll awhile back) was for some short films Soderbergh sent them and he’s actually not surprised that Lucasfilm rejected the films.

The inspirational message went viral, no doubt encouraging every dreamer with Hollywood ambitions. But the question remains: just what was on the videotape that Soderbergh submitted to Lucas? A proposed sequel to Return of the Jedi? A pitch for a standalone Ewok movie? Soderbergh’s theory for how Han Solo completed the Kessel Run in less than 12 parsecs? Speaking with Yahoo Entertainment, Soderbergh revealed that the tape in question had nothing to do with that galaxy far, far away. “I sent them a 3/4-inch tape that had two of my short films on it,” the director says, chuckling at his youthful hubris. “I was not surprised that it got kicked back! There aren’t enough decimal points to count how many packages George Lucas was getting at that point, and probably still gets.”

Soderbergh adds that the short films in question didn’t have any science-fiction elements, although one of them told a story that might have resonated with the director of the nostalgia-drenched teen classic American Graffiti….

(7) YELLOW LIGHT. The Washington Post’s Steven Zeitchik, in “Why ‘Justice League’ failed — and where DC goes from here”, says that the low box office returns for Justice League has cast Warner’s plans for greenlighting 10 “DC Creative Universe” films, including Flashpoint, Cyborg, and Justice League 2 into question.  Part of the problem is that DC has no one equivalent to Kevin Feige at Marvel implementing quality control and that th stand-alone success of Wonder Woman leads DC and Warner to support quality “stand-alone films” rather than insisting that all its superhero properties “feed into a universe.”

A little more than three years ago, Warner Bros. announced ambitious plans for its DC Comics properties.

The film studio would undertake no fewer than 10 DC movies, chief executive Kevin Tsujihara said. It would introduce various characters and build up to a pair of “Justice League” ensemble pictures, which in turn would allow it to spin off more stand-alone movies. The template? Rival Marvel, which began with “Iron Man” in 2008 and four years later evolved into a massively successful “Avengers” film, which then became the gift that kept on giving (17 movies and counting, including the current smash “Thor: Ragnarok.”)

This past weekend, all those plans blew up.

(8) MISSING KIT REED. One of the writer’s students tells about how he kept in contact with the author: “Alexander Chee on the life, work and loss of his mentor, Kit Reed” in the LA Times.

The first day of Kit Reed’s advanced fiction class, sitting in the yellow Victorian house I would come to know simply as “Lawn Avenue,” was my first time for so many things. I had never been taught by a professor in her own home, for example, and I remember I couldn’t stop looking at it all. I had never been in a home full of that much art, or with walls painted white or black, or in rooms full of chrome furniture, Lucite lamps, and mirrors— there was an offhand glamour to it all that I loved from the start. This was the kind of home you hoped professors at Wesleyan University had, or at least I did, and I sat nervously, excited, aware that I was lucky to be there as she listed off her rules for the class. We had to turn in 20 pages every other week—she ran the class like a boot camp—and she told us never to call her before noon, as she was writing and wouldn’t answer.

Another first: I’d never had a professor tell me I could call at all, and I don’t know that any of them ever did tell me, besides her. It never occurred to me to call my professors outside of class. Her willingness to accept a call was an openness to another kind of connection and conversation with us, one that, for many of us, would go on for the rest of the time we knew her.

(9) BEWES OBIT. Rodney Bewes (1937-2017): British actor and writer, died November 21, aged 79. Genre appearances included Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1972), Jonah and the Whale (1975), Jabberwocky (1977), The Spaceman and King Arthur (aka Unidentified Flying Oddball, 1979), Doctor Who (two episodes, 1984).

(10) CASSIDY OBIT. David Cassidy (1950-2017): US singer and actor, died 21 November, aged 67. Genre appearances included The Flash (one episode, 1991), Kim Possible (voiced one episode, 2004).

(11) REESE OBIT. Is playing an angel considered genre? From CNN: “Della Reese, ‘Touched by an Angel’ star and singer, dies at 86”.

For nine seasons on CBS, Reese played Tess on “Touched by an Angel,” tasked with sending angels to Earth to help people redeem themselves.

“We were privileged to have Della as part of the CBS family when she delivered encouragement and optimism to millions of viewers as Tess on “Touched by an Angel,” CBS said in a statement to CNN. “We will forever cherish her warm embraces and generosity of spirit. She will be greatly missed. Another angel has gotten her wings.”

(12) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY BOY

  • Born November 21, 1924 – Christopher Tolkien

(13) GENRE WHIFF. Poul Anderson always advised writers to engage all five senses. But what is a signature science fictional smell? “Ellis Brooklyn’s “Sci Fi” perfume convinced me, a fragrance monogamist, to switch scents”.

I tried “Sci Fi” from Ellis Brooklyn. Everything about this perfume is intriguing. The name, the packaging, the fact that it’s vanilla but in no way smells like what I imagined a vanilla-forward scent to be. When I think of “vanilla perfumes,” I think of the Body Fantasies body spray I bathed myself in during middle school. But Sci Fi’s vanilla is something utterly different.

Sci Fi, like a Ray Bradbury novel, pulls you in and confounds you. It begins with notes of vanilla bean, swirls into a cloud of orange and freesia, and then finishes with a bright smack of green tea. One day of wearing Sci Fi and I knew this was my next scent. I was making the switch.

(14) DISHING ABOUT THE DISH. NASA Watch has the good news: “NSF Decides Not To Shut Down Arecibo”.

Statement on NSF Record of Decision on Arecibo Observatory, NSF

“On Nov. 15, 2017, the National Science Foundation (NSF) signed its Record of Decision for the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico. This important step concludes the agency’s decision-making process with respect to the general path forward for facility operations in a budget-constrained environment and provides the basis for a future decision regarding a new collaborator.”

(15) COSMIC STOGIE. You’re not from around here, are you — “Bizarre shape of interstellar asteroid”.

These properties suggest that ‘Oumuamua is dense, comprised of rock and possibly metals, has no water or ice, and that its surface was reddened due to the effects of irradiation from cosmic rays over long periods of time.

Although ‘Oumuamua formed around another star, scientists think it could have been wandering through the Milky Way, unattached to any star system, for hundreds of millions of years before its chance encounter with our Solar System.

(16) MANSON, HUBBARD AND HEINLEIN. Click-seeker Jeet Heer finds them this week with “Charles Manson’s Science Fiction Roots” in New Republic.

In 1963, while a prisoner at the federal penitentiary at McNeil Island in Washington state, Charles Manson heard other prisoners enthuse about two books: Robert Heinlein’s science fiction novel Stranger in a Strange Land (1961) and L. Ron Hubbard’s self-help guide Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health (1950). Heinlein’s novel told the story of a Mars-born messiah who preaches a doctrine of free love, leading to the creation of a religion whose followers are bound together by ritualistic water-sharing and intensive empathy (called “grokking”). Hubbard’s purportedly non-fiction book described a therapeutic technique for clearing away self-destructive mental habits. It would later serve as the basis of Hubbard’s religion, Scientology.

Manson was barely literate, so he probably didn’t delve too deeply into either of these texts. But he was gifted at absorbing information in conversation, and by talking to other prisoners he gleaned enough from both books to synthesize a new theology. His encounter with the writings of Heinlein and Hubbard was a pivotal event in his life. Until then, he had been a petty criminal and drifter who spent his life in and out of jail. But when Manson was released from McNeil Island in 1967, he was a new figure: a charismatic street preacher who gathered a flock of followers among the hippies of Haight-Ashbury in San Francisco.

…As vile and sociopathic as he was, Charles Manson did have a gift for absorbing the zeitgeist, which is one reason he held such a powerful sway over the cultural imagination. Manson picked up Stranger in a Strange Land in the same spirit that he learned to strum a guitar and offer exegeses on Beatles lyrics. It was a way for him to ride the wave of cultural change. Manson remained infamous all these decades not just because he inspired mass murder, but also because he did so by manipulating some of our most powerful myths.

(17) BAD LUCK. Wrong place, wrong time? A civilian’s frustration at trying to shoot the demolition of the Georgia Dome — “‘Move bus, get out the way!'” (video).

An unlucky camera operator waited 40 minutes to film a stadium demolition – but was thwarted at the last moment.

(18) VIRTUAL MOVIE MUSEUM. Yourprops.com is the “free online museum for your movie props, costumes and wardrobe.” There are myriad photos of movie props (original and replica), wardrobe (original and replica costumes), production used items (crew jackets, shirts and gifts, storyboards, artwork, etc.).

For example: “The Dark Tower, Hero light up Breaker Kid’s Devartoi Watch”.

(19) WHEN NORTH MEETS EAST. At Adweek, see “Sensei Wu Saves Santa, Who Saves Christmas, in Lego’s Fun Holiday Ad”.

Lego Australia is out with a largely winsome addition to the Christmas advertising pile—a stop-motion animation about a Lego Santa finding his way home to save Christmas, thanks to a little surprise help from a spirited stranger.

The minute-long spot from CHE Proximity opens with a Lego North Pole—or Lego Christmas Town, as the brand calls it—set on a living room floor. It’s abuzz with holiday activity, when a human-Godzilla foot comes crashing down on the blissful scene, causing a specific Lego reindeer to squirt very specific Lego poop in fear—graphic sound effects included—while general catastrophe ensues everywhere.

(20) TODAY’S VIDEO. A lure to the dark side in these snippets of The Last Jedi – “Tempt.”

[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, Alan Baumler, Chris Barkley, David K.M. Klaus, Chip Hitchcock, JJ, Cat Eldridge, Carl Slaughter, Martin Morse Wooster, Steve Green, and Andrew Porter. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Anna Nimmhaus.]

Pixel Scroll 11/5/17 I’m The Pixel Of Scrolls. What Were You The Pixel Of Again?

(1) RANTS AND RAVES. Three days ago S.T. Joshi ranted about an alleged Lovecraft hater in “The Multifarious Illiteracies of Brian Keene”.

For the past two or three weeks I have been in misery. In short, I have been reading the novels of Brian Keene. Were I not driven by my sacred duty as a literary critic to assess the work of this grotesquely prolific blowhard for my treatise, 21st-Century Horror, I would have been relieved of this excruciating agony; but the job is done, as is my chapter on Keene, which can be found here.

…The only horror in Keene’s work is that there is so much of it. Since 2000, Keene has published at least forty-three novels, twelve short story collections, and sundry other material—an impressive achievement if his books were of any substance or even bare competence, but quite otherwise if, as appears to be the case, the books in question are nothing but crude and slapdash hackwork. A fair number of his books have been published by Leisure Books, a firm that habitually churns out pablum of all sorts for the great unwashed. It seems to be a match made in hell….

Today Brian Keene answered with “The Ballad of S.T. Joshi, or, Saruman and Wormtongue Meet the Great Unwashed”.

…With that being said, the probable origins of Lovecraft’s work are, in my opinion, repugnant. Lovecraft was racist and xenophobic…. These beliefs fueled his fiction, and the creation of his mythos. So much of Lovecraft’s work is driven by fear and disgust of “the other” or of genetic mutation. And in turn, so much of that work shaped and molded this field.

Despite their repugnance (or perhaps because of it) I think those origins are worth discussing. Joshi does not. He threatened to boycott a recent convention because the programming included a panel discussing the racist themes prevalent in Lovecraft’s work (and then reportedly defied his own personal boycott by signing books in the dealer’s room of that same convention). Because I wondered aloud on my podcast why he’s against discussion of such things, it further inured me as a “Lovecraft Hater”. Joshi also railed against the World Fantasy Awards discontinuing their bust of Lovecraft. When I stated on my podcast, “If I was a person of color, and I won that award — an award from my peers recognizing my work — I wouldn’t want a man who thought I was sub-human glowering down at me from my brag shelf”, this further fueled Joshi and Brock’s insistence that I am, in fact, a Lovecraft Hater.

It’s also important to note that Lovecraft’s racism is not a new topic, brought up by some supposed younger, newer generation of political Progressives or SJWs. The great Robert Bloch himself discussed Lovecraft’s racism in his seminal “Heritage of Horror” essay. Joshi doesn’t seem to have a problem with that. Based on his actions, he seemingly only has a problem with people discussing it if they are women (Ellen Datlow), LGQBT (S.j. Bagley), persons of color (Daniel José Older and Nnedi Okorafor), or apolitical “white trash” Appalachians (myself). I find that interesting…

So, again, for the record, I am not a “Lovecraft Hater”. I respect the man’s work. I don’t, however, respect the man.

…Which brings us to last Friday, and the reason why so many of you are asking me, “Who is S.T. Joshi?”.

Why did Joshi turn his attention toward me? I don’t know. Maybe it was our coverage of his antics on my podcast (where he is a recurring source of amusement). Perhaps he was offended that I sandwiched him between “Lovecraft Haters” Ellen Datlow and S.j. Bagley in the inaugural chapter of History of Horror Fiction. Or maybe he was driven half-mad by Jason Brock’s incessant whining.

Regardless, I woke up at 5am Friday morning. Publisher and author Ross Lockhart had sent me the link to Joshi’s tirade overnight. I clicked the link and read Joshi’s Introduction, where he states that I am “A grotesquely prolific blowhard” and that my work left him in “excruciating agony.” This pleased me. I thought it was funny enough to craft a cover blurb out of, so I did. Then some readers asked for it on a t-shirt, so I made this. And that was pretty much it….

(2) AMBIFORCESTROUS. Continuing a thought from yesterday – this comes from Mark Hamill himself.

(3) THOR SCORE. Daniel Dern submitted his non-spoiler review of Thor: Ragnarok for today’s Scroll:

(“Non-spoiler” as in “assuming you’ve seen at least one of the trailers already, but IMHO no how-it-ends spoilers in any case)

My short-short summary: Way loads of fun! Go and enjoy.

  • Among the best snappy multi-character dialog, and lots of it.
  • Basically sticks to one plot from start to finish (unlike, say, Guardians of the Galaxy II).
  • Nice to NOT see Manhattan/NYC trashed/destroyed/etc for a change. Similarly, no S.H.I.E.L.D. helicarriers harmed (or even sighted) in this movie.
  • Lots of bright colors, great costumes/garb/accessories.
  • a good balance of talking, fighting/battling, and both-at-once.
  • It’s contemporary fantasy and sci-fi. Thor pilots spaceships, etc.
  • prior knowledge needed of Marvel, any of the previous movies, etc. Yeah, knowing some can’t hurt. E.g., Loki and Thor briefly mentioning the time L turned T into a frog was real — one of Walt Simonson’s great arcs (a bunch of issues) in the Thor comic series.
  • In terms of “Marvel movie big picture,” this is sequentially following the events of Avengers/Age of Ultron.
  • Best Stan Lee cameo to date, IMHO.
  • Mentions Avengers by name at times, etc., but only Hulk actually in the movie. Most of the action is off-Earth, so no need to explain why the other A’s aren’t putting in their oar, so to speak.
  • Lots of Jeff Goldblum! Lots!

Offhand I don’t have any complaints or criticisms.

(4) REVIVAL MEETING, And everything considered, this seems a good time to ponder “The Norse gods’ unlikely comeback” as Mark Peters does in the Boston Globe.

Part of why the Norse myths continue to compel so many readers, writers, and artists is their sheer entertainment value, featuring high adventure, low comedy, apocalyptic nightmares, and ample drinking. Karl E. H. Seigfried, adjunct professor and pagan chaplain at Illinois Institute of Technology and author of the Norse Mythology Blog, said by e-mail that the Norse myths resonate on three levels: dramatically, emotionally, and spiritually. Of the three, the spiritual element is often overlooked.

Underneath the troll-smiting mayhem, the Norse myths have an uplifting core, insists Seigfried, who is also a priest of Thor’s Oak Kindred in Chicago. “In contrast to the gloomy Nordic worldview often portrayed in popular culture,” he said, “the wandering god [Odin] never stops searching for knowledge and never ceases to rage against the dying of the light. The old gods may die at Ragnarök, but the myth is life-affirming. We will not live forever, but our children will survive us, and their children will survive them.”

(5) HUBBARD. Alec Nevala-Lee, “author of Astounding, a forthcoming book on the history of science fiction, digs into the writing career of L. Ron Hubbard, gaining new insights into the life of the controversial founder of dianetics and the origins and nature of Scientology itself” in “Xenu’s Paradox: The Fiction of L. Ron Hubbard and the Making of Scientology” at Longreads.

And it gets even stranger. When we turn to the stories themselves, we find that most of them have nothing in common with the tale of Xenu. In the pages of Astounding, Hubbard tended to write comic fantasies or adventures staged on a very modest scale, with situations lifted straight from the nautical or military fiction that he was publishing elsewhere. Aliens and galactic empires rarely played any significant role. When he employed these conventions, it was as a target for parody or as a kind of painted backdrop for the action. Yet when the time came to give Scientology a founding myth, he turned to space opera, referring to it explicitly in those terms, and the result didn’t look or sound much like anything he had ever written before.

(6) ONE TOKE OVER THE LINE. Fran Wilde has a tip for convention attendees, idiots, and assholes:

Other reactions:

(7) PROBLEM WITH COMPLAINT-DRIVEN CON POLICIES. A New Mexico event promoter says complaints led him to change a policy — “Comic Con ditches free passes for military, first responders”. How well do you think that worked?

An offer for local military and first responders to enjoy the Albuquerque and Santa Fe Comic Cons for free is about to end.

The promoter, Jim Burleson, said he was getting threats for giving free admission to only military, police and firemen.

Burleson took to Facebook this week with an announcement that’s angered many, saying: “This will be the last year we are offering free admission to police, military and firefighters.”

The decision stems from people — other than military and first responders — who complained about not getting a discount over the years, which, he says, led to threats.

“We actually got threatened at our Santa Fe Comic Con. Somebody threatened to call their dad who was a lawyer to prove that we were discriminating,” he said.

Now, there’s even more backlash from people who said he shouldn’t have given into the criticism, with some claiming they won’t be attending comic con anymore.

(8) COMICS SECTION.

  • Mike Kennedy found a scientific breakthrough in Monty.
  • John King Tarpinian passes on the Star Wars nutritional advice he found in Brevity.

(9) LEAF BY TOLKIEN. Glen Dixon of the Washington Post Magazine writes about the death of the Baltimore City Paper which just folded, in “Baltimore City Paper is closing after 40 years. Will it be missed?” The following scene is inside the City Paper’s offices….

The wisdom of the crowd converged when Brandon Soderberg puzzled over the mysterious provenance of Gray Haven, the latest strain of marijuana to cross his palate. Soderberg is both the paper’s editor and one of its pot critics. He knows his weed, but he hadn’t been able to uncover the first thing about this particular variety. Perhaps the name held a clue? He read off some loopy texts from a helpful stoner friend, a Tolkien fan who said there is a place called Grey Havens in Middle-earth. The messages were pipe dreams billowing with head-spinning arcana. “I’ve read ‘The Lord of the Rings,’ ” said art director Athena Towery, dryly. “I don’t think that’s in there.” The room erupted with laughter, then settled on another Tolkien work — “The Silmarillion” — as the source. Photo editor J.M. “Joe” Giordano added that the bud shares its name with a neighborhood in Dundalk, Md.

(10) SPRING AHEAD, FALL OOPS. Joe Haldeman shared this on Facebook – pretty funny, even if the joke is about the wrong time change:

Another busy night at all the British henge sites as staff work all night to move the stones forward by an hour.

(11) FEDERATION POLITICAL SCIENCE. I don’t remember if I’ve run this before but it sure is fun. And like some Tumblr posts, it needs to be read from the bottom up; the pivot is a Klingon asking the Vulcans why they let humans run the Federation; the answer includes because the last thing they did is ” getting published in about six hundred scientific journals across two hundred different disciplines because of how many established theories their ridiculous little expedition has just called into question. also, they did turn that sun into a torus, and no one actually knows how”

(12) CREDENTIAL RENEWED. Kim Huett advises his article “Temple of the Sphinx”, with some thoughts on the William F. Temple story, “The Smile Of the Sphinx,” is now online.

In a fit of possibly misplaced enthusiasm I have created a website in order to post my Bill Temple article online for all the world to see. Those of you already familiar with this article might like to note that it has been rewritten here and there in order to fix a few errors and to add a little more depth to the story. In regards to the latter I would like to in particular thank Rob Hansen for all his hard work on THEN as that history made my job so much easier. The website in question can be found here at the URL below. Feel free to pass the URL on if you want as I think this is a story well worth sharing. This is especially true since it allows us to increase our count of times the word “cat” has appeared on this blog.

For all this Gillings did publish one story that I find absolutely fascinating, though perhaps not for the usual reasons. The story in question is a novelette by William F. Temple, his third published story. The Smile of the Sphinx appeared in Tales of Wonder #4 (Autumn 1938). In the introduction Gillings wrote:

‘…in the light of his logical reasoning, his fanciful notion loses its air of incredibility, and you will find yourself seriously considering whether it might not easily be fact…’

The story was well regarded at the time of publication. For example noted science fiction fan of the day (and later editor of New Worlds), Ted Carnell was so taken by The Smile of the Sphinx that in Novae Terrae #28 (December 1938) he was moved to claim:

‘For just as Bill Temple’s yarn in TOW will long be remembered as the cat story…’

Now at first glance all this makes very little sense as The Smile of the Sphinx is a rather absurd tale about an intelligent race of cats from the Moon who secretly rule the Earth.

(13) CHOCOLATE EMERGENCY. Adweek shares the laughs — “Snickers Got a Whole TV Channel to Act Weird When It Was Hungry in Great Media Stunt”.

The network is called Dave, and it normally features a millennial-focused grab bag of fun-loving programs. But one day recently, at exactly 3:28 p.m. (which Snickers says is “the hungriest time of day”), Dave suddenly and inexplicably turned into Rupert—a network showing boring and nonsensical shows including chess championships, vintage film noir and an art appraisal program.

Frankly, it seemed like Dave had become PBS.

 

[Thanks to JJ, DMS, Daniel Dern, Martin Morse Wooster, Cat Eldridge, Carl Slaughter, Mike Kennedy, and John King Tarpinian for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Jon Meltzer.]

Pixel Scroll 7/5/17 I’m A Yankee Doodle Pixel…Scrolled On The Fifth Of July

(1) PROTECT YOUR BRAND. At the SFWA Blog Shanna Swenson advises “Don’t Tweet Your Rejections”.

Rejection is one of the worst parts of writing. When you get a story or novel rejected by an editor or agent, it stings. Your first instinct may be to go online and seek comfort and commiseration by letting your followers know what you’re going through. But stop and think before you spread the news of your rejection all over social media.

You never know who might be reading what you post. An author’s social media platform can be a selling point, so people considering representing or buying a novel are likely to look you up to see what you post and what your audience is like. Even if they aren’t seeking information on you, publishing is a small world, and you never know what someone might see because someone else liked, shared, commented on, replied to, or retweeted it. It’s safest to assume that anyone you might submit to may see everything you post.

Anything you say in a public forum becomes a part of your image, and do you want to associate rejection with your personal “brand”? But it’s not just about image. It’s about strategy. When you inform potential buyers that someone else doesn’t want something you’ve produced, you make it less valuable. It’s human nature to value things more when they’re in demand and less when others don’t want it.

(2) ALTERNATIVE HISTORY THINGIE. Jo Lindsay Walton asks us to “Imagine if one day I actually finished this novel”.

What if Beyonce Knowles had not been tragically taken from us at the age of only twenty-four? Would she have continued to grow and flourish as an artist? Or would she have reposed comfortably into a middle-of-the-road R&B career trajectory? What kind of world might we live in today? This story is not about that.

As seasons have given way to seasons, my belly has grown less of liability. There is still something hidden beyond its curvature. There is still some genital structure ever beyond the horizon, whose properties I can only infer from the beliefs of the girlfriends who mount its numinous ink. But the belly which I once dragged around with me shamefully crashes before me gloriously. My belly announces me, tugs me laughingly by my hand along by white-flowered hedgerows. It is as if my whole life often is no more than a small pretty pink ribbon flapping in the wake of the one boulder that finally manages to mows into Indiana Jones.

I would like to nominate as the title of such a novel The Leftover Pre-incarnation Lives of Mycroft Canner. Just a thought.

(3) SPEAKING OF MYCROFT. Standback hopes you will read his essay about the themes and social dynamics in Too Like The Lightning which, like all Gaul, is divided into three parts:

Too Like The Lightning constructs a utopian society?—?but not one it thinks can survive. It plots the course of that society’s collapse?—?but not because they did anything wrong.

Consolidation, here, is when a system starts out with a bunch of different agents, competing and cooperating and interacting between them, and gradually evolves into a system with only a few major actors, each stronger and more solid than before.

Though it is seldom directly in focus, much of the underlying structure of Too Like The Lightning portrays this process of consolidation. Terra Ignota’s society began with a near-infinite assortment of options and identities….

In our previous parts, we discussed the thought experiment of a pluralistic utopia?—?and Too Like The Lightning’s conclusion that peaceful coexistence is an inherently unstable social structure.

And yet, while it can be doleful, it is not bleak. An invigorating current of optimism runs through Too Like The Lightning, and completes its theme.

(4) CROC OF THE WALK. Madagascar was a tough neighborhood in the Jurassic.

A giant ancient crocodile which measured 24 feet in length and possessed razor sharp T-Rex teeth was once the top predator in Jurassic Madagascar, a new study has found.

But unlike modern crocodiles, this killer beast walked on its hind feet as it hunted prey or scavenged for food….

(5) GENTLE GIANT. On the other hand, Atlas Obscura says the dinosaurs of the Cenozoic period can be very cute: “Fall in Love With the World’s First Animated Dinosaur”.

In February 1914, [Winsor] McCay debuted “Gertie the Dinosaur” on the vaudeville circuit. Created from over 10,000 drawings, “Gertie” became an instant hit. It is often credited as being the first animation to feature a character with a distinct personality and as the first work of key frame animation.

In his vaudeville act, McCay would walk onto the stage with a whip, calling out for Gertie. The cartoon started playing. McCay gave Gertie a series of commands, which she then performed in-screen.

 

(5) LOADS OF QUESTIONS. Podcaster Shaun Duke will be a very busy fellow when the NASFiC starts in Puerto Rico tomorrow: “My NASFiC / San Juan 2017 Schedule and Podcast Interviews”.  This is just part of his schedule:

  • TH 18:00 – San Geronimo   Social Justice and SFF: It’s been there from the beginning.
    • Social Justice Warriors are destroying SFF with these new-fangled ideas! Um, no. SFF has always been used as a tool to examine social and political issues. Come discuss how works like 1984, Brave New World, Animal Farm, and the Handmaid’s Tale explore oppressive regimes, and what, if any hope SFF can give us. (bilingual)
    • Panelists:  Shaun Duke, Marie Guthrie (m), Isabel Schechter, Javier Grillo-Marxuach
  • FR 11:00 – San Geronimo   A Chat with Tobias Buckell
    • Shaun Duke interviews GoH Tobias Buckell
    • Panelists:  Tobias S. Buckell, Shaun Duke
  • FR 13:00 – San Cristobal   Whitewashing and White Savior Fail: How did Benedict, Tilda, and ScarJo become people of color?
    • Avatar, the James Cameron version and the Last Airbender one. The new Star Trek 2nd movie. Doctor Strange. Ghost in the Shell. Iron Fist. These and more feature POC characters, yet when they are made into movies and tv, the actors cast are always white. Let’s discuss why this is and why representation matters. (bilingual)
    • Panelists:  Shaun Duke, Isabel Schechter (m), Javier Grillo-Marxuach, Pablo Vazquez

(6) TRIVIAL TRIVIA

Dr. Seuss wrote the book Green Eggs and Ham after his publisher bet him $50 that couldn’t write a book using only 50 words. (Source: Wikipedia)

(7) ONE THOUSAND AND ONE. When John W. Campbell started Unknown, L. Ron Hubbard asked him for exclusive rights to submit stories written in the world of the Arabian Nights. Are today’s readers that aware of Islamic fantasy traditions? Muhammad Aurangzeb Ahmad thinks not — “This is the Muslim tradition of sci-fi and speculative fiction”.

Think invisible men, time travel, flying machines and journeys to other planets are the product of the European or ‘Western’ imagination? Open One Thousand and One Nights – a collection of folk tales compiled during the Islamic Golden Age, from the 8th to the 13th centuries CE – and you will find it stuffed full of these narratives, and more.

Western readers often overlook the Muslim world’s speculative fiction. I use the term quite broadly, to capture any story that imagines the implications of real or imagined cultural or scientific advances. Some of the first forays into the genre were the utopias dreamt up during the cultural flowering of the Golden Age. As the Islamic empire expanded from the Arabian peninsula to capture territories spanning from Spain to India, literature addressed the problem of how to integrate such a vast array of cultures and people. The Virtuous City (al-Madina al-fadila), written in the 9th century by the scholar Al-Farabi, was one of the earliest great texts produced by the nascent Muslim civilisation. It was written under the influence of Plato’s Republic, and envisioned a perfect society ruled by Muslim philosophers – a template for governance in the Islamic world.

As well as political philosophy, debates about the value of reason were a hallmark of Muslim writing at this time. The first Arabic novel, The Self-Taught Philosopher (Hayy ibn Yaqzan, literally Alive, Son of Awake), was composed by Ibn Tufail, a Muslim physician from 12th-century Spain. The plot is a kind of Arabic Robinson Crusoe, and can be read as a thought experiment in how a rational being might learn about the universe with no outside influence. It concerns a lone child, raised by a gazelle on a remote island, who has no access to human culture or religion until he meets a human castaway. Many of the themes in the book – human nature, empiricism, the meaning of life, the role of the individual in society – echo the preoccupations of later Enlightenment-era philosophers, including John Locke and Immanuel Kant.

(8) LIVING OUT STORIES. A group believes live-action role playing can be used to break stereotypes about Palestine, and as a means of social and cultural exchange — “LARP in Palestine: let’s challenge the reality with fiction”.

…Over the past 6 years, a group of volunteers have been coming together to build a Larp community in Palestine with support from Nordic Larpers. “Birth of Larp in the Arab World” is a book summarizing our projects both in Arabic and English.

Using Larp, We played many stories : Finland was occupied (check out Halat Hisar). Hundred of kids were pretending to be animals, and fighting oppressive lions with magical water balloons. A wedding between a Palestinian girl and a Norwegian man (see here). A man was killed by his sister because he had a relationship with another girl. Children with superhero’s powers are attending a boarding school. A tribe that lived in Jericho 3,000 years ago and used dancing battles as a mean to solve conflicts. And many other stories…

Learn more about us in this feature in This Week in Palestine here.

Larp is a tool for participatory storytelling that allows us to be whatever we want. We believe in using Larp as an effective tool to promote dialogue and participatory art.

Our Larp community took the decision to institutionalize itself in a non-profit organization called Bait Byout. Bait Byout is the Arabic name for the role-playing kids play pretending to be adults. Bait Byout aims at contributing to a free society through creating positive impact in the lives of individuals using creative and critical tools within an entertaining, loving and safe space for everyone….

(9) LEGO ADS WIN AWARDS. Adweek has “The Story Behind Lego’s Brilliant Print Ads From the Cannes Festival”.

Lego makes some of the most delightful advertising around, and this series of print ads from Ogilvy Bangkok are just about perfect, from concept to execution.

The work, which won three silver Lions (in Print & Publishing and Outdoor) and a bronze (in Design) at the Cannes festival last month, shows kids literally envisioning their future careers by building them from the inside with Legos.

The tagline: “Build the future.”

 

(10) HE’S NOT CHICKEN. Gina Ippolito, in a Yahoo piece called “Hodor Can’t Hold Off The Lunch Crowd In New KFC Commercial Inspired by ‘Game of Thrones'”, says that all sorts of advertisers, including KFC and a weird Icelandic vodka, are eager to hire Game of Thrones actors to hawk their products.

A new KFC commercial starring Kristian Nairn, aka Hodor from Game of Thrones, has the actor reenacting a scene from the famous “Hold the Door” episode of the show.

In the commercial, Nairn fretfully looks at the clock because lunchtime is coming and he knows there will be crowds. As hungry people file in, all shouting that they want “chicken and fries,” it all becomes too much for Nairn, who repeats “chicken and fries” over and over with a faraway look in his eyes, eventually turning the phrase into “chicken and rice.” The spot is a play on the heartbreaking revelation on Game of Thrones about how Hodor came to be known as Hodor — and why it’s the only word he seems to be able to speak.

(11) ANOTHER SUPERHERO COMMERCIAL. When they’re clever, they’re a lot of fun.

(12) SPIELBERG REVIVAL. Director Steven Spielberg’s “Close Encounters of the Third Kind to celebrate 40th anniversary in theaters” says SyFy.

What is not clear is which version of the movie will be re-released. There are three: the original 135-minute theatrical version, a 132-minute “Special Edition” and a 137-minute “Collector’s Edition” cut, which Spielberg says is his preferred version.

The director is not a huge fan of either the original cut or the Special Edition, so it seems likely that the Collector’s Edition, which he calls his definitive version, is the one that would get reissued (I would take either the original or the Collector’s Edition; the Special Edition — for which Columbia Pictures wrongly insisted that Spielberg include a look inside the alien mothership — I could do without).

The Collector’s Edition was created primarily for home video release and given only a very limited theatrical run in 1999, so now would be a chance for it to reach a wider audience (and probably promote sales of a new Blu-ray reissue as well).

For fans of this masterpiece — one of Spielberg’s best films, and regularly listed as one of the top sci-fi movies of all time — seeing a fresh new theatrical print on the big screen will be a terrific way to celebrate the movie’s 40th anniversary.

(13) COMIC CON BOOSTS READING. Denver Business Journal’s Monica Mendoza, in “Denver Comic Con draws 115,000, packs a $10 million economic punch”,  notes that Denver Comic Con, held on June 30-July 2, is a subsidiary of a nonprofit, Pop Culture Classroom, which encourages literacy among Denver residents.

Pop Culture Classroom had an idea of hosting a comic convention to raise money for its organization and get children interested in reading. In its first year, there were 30,000 attendees to the convention that features comic book, science fiction and fantasy writers and artists. There are comic cons around the world and more than 20 in cities across the U.S.

(14) PUSH-BACK. It’s a good thing Denver’s local Comic Con is doing so well, because Mile Hi Comics (which calls itself “America’s Largest Comics dealer” and had space at the Denver con held a week ago) has given up on San Diego Comic-Con after 44 years of involvement.

To explain a bit more, my first little one-table booth in 1973 cost $40 to rent for the weekend. When we received our booth renewal for last year, our costs for our 70′ of space had been raised to over $18,000. While quite costly, that one factor alone would not have precluded us from returning, as we had paid $16,500 in rent the previous year.

What made the situation nearly impossible, however, was that foot traffic in the exhibit hall declined dramatically last year. Even at its peak on Saturday afternoon, our end of the building (which was primarily comics) was uncrowded. The San Diego Fire Marshals were partially to blame, as they put much stricter controls on the number of badge holders allowed in the building at any given time. That might not have been such a bad idea, except that it amplified the harm already being caused by the incredible proliferation of off-site events that are now being set up for upwards of eight blocks all around the convention center. When you can see GAME OF THRONES, POKEMON, and hundreds of other exhibits across from the convention hall for free, why bother going in to the hall? Many fans did not.

(15) A WRITER’S DEDUCTIONS. Tax planning pro tip:

He also gets to deduct all his purchases of faster-than-light spacecraft and red velour shirts

(16) WHITEFAIL. Not sure how I only scored 31 points Buzzfeed’s 100-question quiz: “How Stereotypically White Are You?” Maybe I need to drink more, because I could not truthfully say I ever drunkenly sang the lyrics to an Elton John song, though I’ve done that plenty of times cold sober.

[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, JJ, Martin Morse Wooster, Standback, Cat Eldridge, and mlex for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Arie Quinn.]

Resnick To Receive Hubbard Lifetime Achievement Award

Mike Resnick at Imaginales 2016 in France.

Mike Resnick will receive the L. Ron Hubbard Lifetime Achievement Award during the Writers and Illustrators of the Future awards ceremony on April 2.

John Goodwin, President and Publisher of Galaxy Press, publishers of the fiction works of author L. Ron Hubbard, noted when making the announcement “Mike Resnick [is] the genre’s all-time leading award-winner for short fiction, authoring 62 novels, over 250 short stories and editing more than 40 anthologies.”

The Science Fiction Awards Database credits him with 162 awards nominations. He has won six Hugos, a Nebula, and 34 other awards, many given by international groups for his work in translation.

2017 Audiobook of the Year Audie Award Finalists

The Audio Publishers Association announced the finalists for 2017 Audiobook of the Year, as well as for Excellence in Design, Excellence in Marketing, and Excellence in Production on March 22. These are in addition to the individual nominees posted in February.

Genre works are up for Audiobook of the Year and all three Excellence categories, including audiobooks of novels by Kameron Hurley, John Scalzi, and Colson Whitehead.

Audiobook of the Year

  • Boys in the Trees, written and narrated by Carly Simon, published by Macmillan Audio
  • The Girl with the Lower Back Tattoo, written and narrated by Amy Schumer, published by Simon & Schuster Audio
  • Hamilton: The Revolution, by Lin-Manuel Miranda and Jeremy McCarter, narrated by Mariska Hargitay, with the authors, published by Hachette Audio
  • The Underground Railroad, by Colson Whitehead, narrated by Bahni Turpin, published by Penguin Random House Audio / Books on Tape
  • Year of Yes, written and narrated by Shonda Rhimes, published by Simon & Schuster Audio

Excellence in Design

  • The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, by Mark Twain, design by David Drummond, published by Audible Studios
  • Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, by Lewis Carroll, design by Levente Szabo, published by Audible Studios
  • Alien: Out of the Shadows: An Audible Original Drama, by Tim Lebbon and Dirk Maggs, design by James Jackson, published by Audible Studios
  • Geek Feminist Revolution, by Kameron Hurley, design by Jessica Daigle, published by HighBridge/Recorded Books
  • Grimm’s Fairy Talesby the Brothers Grimm, design by Divya Srinivasan, published by Listening Library

Excellence in Marketing

  • Alien: Out of the Shadows: An Audible Original Drama, by Tim Lebbon and Dirk Maggs, narrated by Rutger Hauer, Corey Johnson, Matthew Lewis, Kathryn Drysdale, Laurel Lefkow, Andrea Deck, and Mac McDonald, published by Audible Studios
  • Battlefield Earth: A Saga of the Year 3000, by L. Ron Hubbard, narrated by Josh Clark, Scott Menville, Jim Meskimen, Phil Proctor, Stefan Rudnicki, Fred Tatasciore and a full cast, published by Galaxy Audio
  • Bob Honey Who Just Do Stuff, by Pappy Pariah, narrated by Sean Penn, published by Audible Studios
  • The Dispatcher, by John Scalzi, narrated by Zachary Quinto, published by Audible Studios
  • Hamilton: The Revolution, by Lin-Manuel Miranda and Jeremy McCarter, narrated by Mariska Hargitay, with the authors, published by Hachette Audio

Excellence in Production

  • Alien: Out of the Shadows: An Audible Original Drama, by Tim Lebbon and Dirk Maggs, narrated by Rutger Hauer, Corey Johnson, Matthew Lewis, Kathryn Drysdale, Laurel Lefkow, Andrea Deck, and Mac McDonald, published by Audible Studios
  • Battlefield Earth: A Saga of the Year 3000, by L. Ron Hubbard, narrated by Josh Clark, Scott Menville, Jim Meskimen, Phil Proctor, Stefan Rudnicki, Fred Tatasciore, and a full cast, published by Galaxy Audio
  • Beric the Briton, by G.A. Henty. narrated by Brian Blessed, Brian Cox, Tom Baker, Honeysuckle Weeks, John Rhys-Davies, and a full cast, published by Heirloom Audio Productions
  • The Oedipus Plays: An Audible Original Drama, by Sophocles, narrated by Jamie Glover, Hayley Atwell, Michael Maloney, Samantha Bond, Julian Glover and David Horovitch, published by Audible Studios
  • The Secret History of Twin Peaks, by Mark Frost, narrated by a full cast, published by Macmillan Audio
  • A Wild Swan, by Michael Cunningham, narrated by Lili Taylor and Billy Hough, published by Macmillan Audio