Pixel Scroll 11/27/19 Mr. Turtle, How Many Ticks Does It Take To Get To The Center Of A Pixel Scroll?

(1) FACEBOOK FLIES OFF THE HANDLE. Canadian sff author Daniel Arenson somehow ran afoul of Facebook’s moderators by sharing images commemorating the Holocaust on his author page. The problem was unresolved for several days, and even now Arenson is concerned that he will be banned, as he explained in a post on his personal FB page. (As of this writing, the commemorative posts can be seen on Daniel Arenson’s author page.)

An update on my Facebook trouble… I might be banned entirely from the site. If I disappear, I want you to know why.

A few days ago, on my Author Page (separate from this account, which is my personal account) I shared a post that commemorated the Holocaust. It was a project created by a Jewish artist, and included some images of Holocaust victims. Facebook removed the photos, claiming they feature “nudity or sexual activity.”

This seemed to be the work of a bot. I figured it was just a bug in the algorithm. So I applied for a human to review this case, and to potentially restore the photos. A human took a look, told me the memorial photos (created by a Jewish artist) are “hate speech,” and that I’m banned from using Facebook for 24 hours.

Three days went by, and my Author Page was still in “Facebook jail.” Meanwhile, Facebook charged my credit card $1,100 for running ads using that page. The same page I’m locked out of.

I contacted Facebook support, and I finally got a hold of a human. I asked why I was banned, and how long the ban would last. They simply threatened to extend the ban. From their tone, it sounded like they might hit me with even more bans, maybe affecting my personal account (this one) too.

They did not provide reasons why this is happening. I explained that the photos were created by a Jewish artist, who wanted to commemorate the Holocaust. Facebook support staff simply threatened further bans against my account(s).

Today, even on my personal account, I’ve had some trouble accessing the website. Maybe it’s just a Facebook-wide issue, though, and unrelated to my troubles.

If I disappear entirely, this is why. I shared photos by a Jewish artist who wanted to commemorate the Holocaust. Since then, Facebook has been smacking my accounts around, and every time I contact them, it gets worse.

(2) VETERAN OF TM BATTLE SPEAKS OUT. Tara Crescent, after seeing news about Christine Feehan’s effort to trademark “Dark” for a series of fiction works, wrote how burdensome it was for her last year to fight someone else’s attempt to trademark “Cocky.” Thread starts here.

(3) THE AXE. Now who will make jokes about these turkeys? “Netflix Cancels ‘Mystery Science Theater 3000’ Before Your Yearly Thanksgiving Marathon”  reports ScienceFiction.com.

‘Mystery Science Theater 3000’ has once again been cancelled. This time by Netflix and right before the show’s anniversary. The series debuted on Thanksgiving in 1988 and would later grow into a yearly marathon. This year, you can still binge on this fan-favorite event but with the sad news that new episodes will not be on the horizon on Netflix.

(4) MIGNOGNA JUDGMENT. Nerd & Tie Trae Dorn reports “Vic Mignogna Ordered to Pay Almost a Quarter of a Million to Defendants in Final Judgement”.

You can read the entire order here, but it boils down to Mignogna being required to pay almost $250k to the defendants. While this is significantly less than the amounts asked for by the defendants (which was a sum roughly around $800k), it’s still a significant chunk of change. Mignogna’s representatives already attempted to file an appeal prematurely, and it is highly likely that they will attempt to do so again. If Mignogna’s potential appeal fails, he will be required to pay significantly more to the defendants as well.

(5) ACCESSIBILITY SUIT AGAINST NY LIBRARY. “Hunters Point Library hit with lawsuit over accessibility issues”Curbed New York has the story.

Disability rights advocates have filed a class-action lawsuit arguing that the brand new Hunters Point Library in Queens prevents people with mobility issues from “full and equal access” to the branch.

The lawsuit, filed in Brooklyn federal court by the Center for Independence of the Disabled New York (CIDNY), argues that the Steven Holl Architects-designed library violates the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). After two decades of planning, the $41 million branch opened in Long Island City this September to glowing architectural reviews, but soon came under fire because sections of the library are inaccessible to wheelchair users and others with limited mobility.

Disability Rights Advocates is handling the lawsuit on behalf of the plaintiffs and claims that “inaccessible features pervade” the new branch, and calls out three levels with bookshelves, a reading and small-group space in a children’s section, and a rooftop terrace for featuring accessibility barriers that prevent “full and equal enjoyment” of the library.

“Heralded as a ‘stunning architectural marvel’ and a ‘beacon of learning, literacy and culture,’ the newly-built Hunters Point Library was designed and built with a total disregard for adults and children with mobility disabilities and in flagrant contempt of the legal requirements of the Americans with Disabilities Act,” the 21-page complaint states.

(6) THE DEAR DEPARTED. There will be a special party at this weekend’s Loscon in Los Angeles –

(7) TODAY IN HISTORY.

  • November 27, 1981 Frankenstein Island preimired. Starring John Carradine and Cameron Mitchell, it’s more or less a remake of Teenage Zombies. It was co-produced, written, directed and edited by Jerry Warren who did the latter film as well. The fifteen hundred who have collectively rated it at Rotten Tomatoes give a vote of just seven. 
  • November 27, 2002 — The animated Treasure Planet premiered. It is at least the second telling of Stevenson’s Treasure Island in an SF film setting as there’s an 1987 Italian L’isola del tesoro  (Treasure Island in Outer Space)  series. It went on to be one of the costly box office failures ever as production costs alone were nearly one hundred and fifty million dollars. While it bombed at the theater, it has an impressive 71% rating at Rotten Tomatoes. 

(8) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

  • Born November 27, 1907 L. Sprague de Camp. The Tales from Gavagan’s Bar he wrote with Fletcher Pratt are my favorite works by him. Best novel by him? I’d say that’s Lest Darkness Fall. (Died 2000.)
  • Born November 27, 1935 Verity Lambert. Founding Producer of Doctor Who. (When she was appointed to Who in 1963, she was BBC Television’s only female drama producer, as well as the youngest.) After leaving BBC, she’d oversee the Quatermass series at Thames. She’d return to BBC to Executive Produce three seasons of So Haunt Me, a supernatural series.  Wiki weirdly has her producing an episode of Doctor Who called “A Happy Ending” in 2006 which doesn’t exist. (Died 2007.)
  • Born November 27, 1942 Jimi Hendrix. I wouldn’t be including him but the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction has a long and persuasive essay on him actually being influenced by SF. It has comments such as “for example the title of his second single, ‘Purple Haze’ (1967), though taken by many to encode a reference to drugs, is actually from Philip José Farmer’s novel Night of Light…” That essay is here. (Died 1970.)
  • Born November 27, 1940 Bruce Lee. His only genre role was as Kato in The Green Hornet which to my utter surprise lasted for just twenty-six episodes between 1966 and 1967. He also appeared on Batman in three episodes, “The Spell of Tut”, “Batman’s Satisfaction”, and “A Piece of The Action”. (Died 1973.)
  • Born November 27, 1951 Melinda M. Snodgrass, 68. She wrote several episodes of Next Gen while serving as the story editor during its second and third seasons. She also wrote scripts for Sliders, Strange Luck, Beyond RealityOdyssey 5, Outer Limits and SeaQuest DSV. She’s a co-editor of and frequent story contributor to George R. R. Martin’s Wild Cards series.
  • Born November 27, 1964 Rebecca Ferratti, 55. Did you know some of the Gor novels were made into films? Well they were. This actress played Takena, the co-lead, in the ones that were made, Gor and The Outlaw of Gor. They may or may not have been the worst films she was in during her film career…
  • Born November 27, 1974 Jennifer O’Dell, 45. Her only meaningful  role to date, genre or otherwise, has been that of Veronica on Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Lost World. She’s had some minor roles such on Charmed and Bones, and appearances on films such as Alien Battlefield but nothing major to date.
  • Born November 27, 1974 Alec Newman, 45. He played Paul Atreides on the Dune and Children of Dune series. He was Barnabas Collins in the Dark Shadows film, and he had the recurring role of Malik on Enterprise. He was Drogyn, Keeper of the Deeper Well, and an eternally young warrior of good on Angel

(9) COMICS SECTION.

  • Bizarro realized which profession would know how to get the most passengers in a small spacecraft.

(10) PRESENTING BILL. Gallifrey One, the annual Doctor Who convention in LA, announced a coup today — “Pearl Mackie Confirmed for 2020, and More!” 

Ms. Mackie received rave reviews from fans – and critics across the globe – playing the down-to-earth Bill, the series’ first openly gay companion character, including her tour-de-force performances later in the season during the two-part finale and the subsequent Christmas special, both hers and Capaldi’s final adventure “Twice Upon a Time.”

(11) RAPPIN’ REY. On the Tonight Show, Daisy Ridley performed a rap recapping the first eight episodes that make up Star Wars’ trilogy of trilogies. Full lyrics on YouTube here.

(12) RED-HANDED. “Great auk extinction: Humans wiped out giant seabird”.

“The great auk will always hold a place in my heart,” Dr Jessica Thomas says.

The Swansea-based scientist spent years piecing together an ancient DNA puzzle that suggests hunting by humans caused this giant seabird’s demise.

Dr Thomas studied bone and tissue samples from 41 museum specimens during a PhD at both Bangor and Copenhagen University.

The findings paint a picture of how vulnerable even the most common species are to human exploitation.

…About 80cm (2ft 7in) tall, the stubby-winged and bulbous-billed great auks used to be found all across the north Atlantic – from North America through Greenland, Iceland, Scandinavia and the UK.

“Being flightless, they were always targeted by local people for food and for their feathers,” says Dr Thomas.

“But around 1500, when European seamen discovered the rich fishing grounds off Newfoundland, hunting intensified.”

…”We looked for signatures of population decline [before 1500],” Dr Thomas said.

One of these signatures might be a lack of genetic diversity, suggesting individuals were inbreeding and the species, as a whole, was becoming vulnerable to disease or environmental change.

“But their genetic diversity was very high – all but two sequences we found were very different,” Dr Thomas said.

(13) DOOOON’T PANIC. “Russian cows get VR headsets ‘to reduce anxiety'”. Now that you mention it, I remember Carnation used to think it was important for milk to come from contented cows…

A Russian farm has given its dairy cows virtual reality headsets in a bid to reduce their anxiety.

The herd donned VR systems adapted for the “structural features of cow heads” and were shown a “unique summer field simulation program”.

Moscow’s Ministry of Agriculture and Food cited research which they say has shown a link between a cow’s emotional experience and its milk yield.

Initial tests reportedly boosted “the overall emotional mood of the herd”.

(14) GENRE BREW. [Item by Bill.] Inner Space Brewing Company, a Huntsville, AL craft brewery, has some SF themes going on.

The tap handle that looks like a Hugo rocket was fabricated by a local Huntsville woodworking shop

Woodtech on Triana Boulevard makes tap handles for local breweries in addition to specialty items for defense companies, wine crates, puzzles, wooden boxes, business signs, trays with old maps of Huntsville, cornhole-game boards and more.

Another beer-space Huntsville-local connection is the Straight to Ale craft brewery, makers of Monkeynaut Pale Ale, which was inspired by Miss Baker, who lived out her life at the local U.S. Space and Rocket Center.

Miss Baker (1957-1984) was a squirrel monkey who in 1959 became, along with rhesus macaque Miss Able, one of the first two animals launched into space by the United States and safely returned.

(15) OUR ROBOT UNDERLORDS? BBC appears to have scooped the local paper on this story — “Call to probe Boston police tests of ‘dog’ robots”.

Massachusetts State Police has been asked to explain how it is using robot dogs, by a civil liberties group.

The police force has spent the past three months testing “Spot” robot dogs alongside some of its officers.

The robots, made by Boston Dynamics, are believed to have helped with several live incidents as well as training scenarios.

The American Civil Liberties Union wants details about how and where the robots were being used.

…A video captioned with the words “MA State Police” and showing the robots opening doors and entering buildings was shared online by Boston Dynamics earlier this year.

“All too often, the deployment of these technologies happens faster than our social, political, or legal systems react,” said the ACLU in a statement given to Techcrunch.

In its letter, the campaign group said it wanted more “transparency” about the use of the robots, the ways in which they would be used and which officers would be deployed with them.

The ACLU said there was a need for regulations governing the use of the robots to ensure they did not trample on established civil rights and liberties or lead to racial injustice.

(16) KNUCKLING UNDER. According to the BBC, “Apple changes Crimea map to meet Russian demands”.

Apple has complied with Russian demands to show Crimea as part of Russian territory on its apps.

Russia annexed Crimea from Ukraine in 2014, in a move that was condemned by most of the global community.

The region is now displayed as Russian territory on Apple Maps and Weather, when viewed from inside Russia.

However, Apple Maps and Weather do not show Crimea as part of any country, when viewed outside Russia.

(17) CTHULHU’S KITCHEN. It’s time to remind everyone “How to Brine a Turkey by H.P. Lovecraft”. In his 2016 article, McSweeneys’ Robert Rooney explains the many advantages of this recipe, beginning with –

A turkey may be so prepared and preserved that, according to Artephius’s Key of Wisdom, “an ingenious Man may raise the fine Shape of a Homunculus out of its Ashes at his Pleasure, so he may, without any criminal Necromancy raise the Shape of any dead Ancestor for study and labor.”

(18) VIDEO OF THE DAY. Well, it’s a commercial. But it’s a cute commercial.

This holiday, follow the magical story of Lucy, a curious 6-year-old with a few questions for her reindeer friends. With the help of her mom’s Surface and Microsoft Translator, she finally gets her chance to ask the most important questions of the season. Microsoft technology empowers and connects everyone on the planet…well, almost everyone.

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

Pixel Scroll 10/18/19 What Pixel Should A Poor File Scroll For All Tomorrow’s Entries

(1) COLLECTIBLE PAPERBACKS SPOTLIGHTED. [Item by Andrew Porter.] This daily series of short videos concentrate on vintage and collectible paperbacks. It began barely more than a month ago, and so far, nearly 50 have been uploaded to Gary Lovisi’s YouTube channel.

Episodes have covered (starting with the most recent): Hardboiled Crime Fiction “Frank Kane” with Ron Lesser GGA covers; Dell 10¢ Paperbacks; Edgar Rice Burroughs “John Carter” inspired Pulp SF “Jon Kirk of Ares”; Sherlock Holmes Books; Sleaze “Kozy Books” Series; “The Thing” SF Horror in Paperback; ” UK Cherry Tree Books; Sexy Digest GGA Sleaze; Mysterious Bookshop NYC Tour; “Shuna” Jungle Girl Series; Best Rare US Dime Novels; Hardboiled Pulp Fiction Books; Rare British “World Fantasy Classics”; Fredric Brown early Bantam Paperbacks; “Boardman Bloodhound Books”; Checkerbooks US Paperback Book series; Gold Star “The New Tarzan Book Series”; British Gangster Digests; “Avon Science Fiction Reader” Series; Early Avon SF Fantasy & Horror.

(2) PETER RABBIT DEUX. The sequel arrives in theaters next Easter.

In PETER RABBIT™ 2: THE RUNAWAY, the lovable rogue is back. Bea, Thomas, and the rabbits have created a makeshift family, but despite his best efforts, Peter can’t seem to shake his mischievous reputation. Adventuring out of the garden, Peter finds himself in a world where his mischief is appreciated, but when his family risks everything to come looking for him, Peter must figure out what kind of bunny he wants to be.

(3) TOLKIEN GENESIS. Verlyn Flieger’s Scholar Guest of Honor Address for the 2019 Mythcon, “The Arch and the Keystone”, can be read online at Mythlore.

…Moving forward is more challenging. How can we contrive to move forward when, like Alice’s Red Queen, we have to run faster and faster just to stay in place? The growing body of writing both by and about Tolkien ensures that not only can we no longer read the unknown book I discovered in 1956, we can’t even all read the same book in 2019. We have too many opinions based on too much information from too many sources to come to a consensus. In spite of his fame, in spite of his position at the top of the heap, in spite of The Lord of the Rings’ established position as Waterstone’s Book of the Century, the world has and probably will continue to have trouble agreeing on who/what he is….

(4) BACK IN COSTUME. The Washington Post’s Tim Grieving interviews Mystery Science Theatre 3000 founder Joel Hodgson about why he returned to the series and why he is involved in Mystery Science Theatre 3000 Live, which is playing in Washington DC this weekend. “‘Mystery Science Theater 3000’ takes its audience down memory lane — with an eye on the future”.

…This weekend, Hodgson, 59, will sport the red jumpsuit for the first time since 1993 and bring the Great Cheesy Movie Circus Tour to the National Theatre, a live version of the MST3K format familiar to fans: making fun of bad movies — in this case, the British schlockfest “Circus of Horrors” (1960) and the 1986 kung fu flick “No Retreat, No Surrender” — interspersed with sketches.

(5) SF CONFERENCE IN CHINA. At Yunchtime, Mlex shares what he’s found out about “Chinese Science Fiction Conference 2019”, a November event sponsored by Science & Fantasy Growth Foundation.

…With the fourth annual conference scheduled to take place very soon in Beijing Nov 2019, I thought I would delve a little deeper into the conference and the organization behind it.

The 2019 conference will, for the first time, include participants from outside of China. These include Andrei Heim, Kevin Anderson, Leonard Mondrino, Mary Robinette Kowal, and Neil Clarke.

The Conference theme for 2019 is divided into tracks: “science fiction + culture”, “science fiction + technology”, “science fiction + science”, “sci-fi + film” “, science fiction + games”, “science fiction + youth.”

Organizationally, I get the impression that this has a professional team, strategizing about how to capitalize on the popularity of science fiction in China today, and that they are looking for not only ideas, but actual talent….

(6) BACK TO DUBLIN. I’m a bit overdue to link to España Sheriff’s conreport, “Worldcon 2019 in Dublin”.

…Besides the art show and print shop, Warehouse One was also housed several cool displays and craft items. There were half a dozen large scale lego constructions, including a massive Star Wars one by James Shields, a Community Drawing Wall, and a wall of art by Irish artist, including some Steve Dillon comic pages and Ian Clark’s wonderful Dublin 2019 artworks. There was programming in the Odean movie theatre screen rooms, and next door at the Gibson hotel, and some of it looked quite good. But ultimately when deciding what to see I factored in the walk there and back, and unless there were two items one after another there just didn’t seem worth it – by the end I attended no programming at Point Square excepting the art show and artist reception. In retrospect the 7-day LUAS transit pass would have been a good idea, but we didn’t see that option in time.

(7) BACK IN 1938. Let the LA Times’ Michael Rechtshaffen tell you about a cinematic discovery: “Review: Unreleased 1938 silent sci-fi film ‘As the Earth Turns’ boasts analog ingenuity”. The 45-minute film will be shown tonight in Glendale, CA.

Had Steven Spielberg been a 16-millimeter camera-toting teen in the 1930s, his home movies might have looked like “As the Earth Turns,” a black-and-white, silent 45-minute science-fiction film about a peace-crazed scientist named Pax who attempts to persuade the world to put down its weapons by inducing extreme climate change.

Made by Richard H. Lyford, a 20-year-old Seattle-based budding playwright and filmmaker who would go on to work as a Disney animator and Oscar-winning documentary director, the digitally restored 1938 original has been outfitted with a period-appropriate score by contemporary composer Ed Hartman.

(8) CROWDED FRAME. Variety headline: “Record 32 Animated Feature Films Submitted for Oscars”.

The Addams Family,” “Frozen II,” “Toy Story 4,” “Abominable” and “The Secret Life of Pets 2” are among the record 32 movies submitted for the animated feature film category at the 2020 Oscars.

Last year’s Academy Awards race boasted 25 entries, while 2017 had 26 and 2016 had 27 (a then-record).

(9) ROAD MAP. This week’s Nature offers “Tips from a Pulitzer prizewinner” — author Cormac McCarthy. Though this advice is for writing research papers, it’s good, general writing advice…

• Use minimalism to achieve clarity. While you are writing, ask yourself: is it possible to preserve my original message without that punctuation mark, that word, that sentence, that paragraph or that section? Remove extra words or commas whenever you can.

• Decide on your paper’s theme and two or three points you want every reader to remember. This theme and these points form the single thread that runs through your piece. The words, sentences, paragraphs and sections are the needlework that holds it together. If something isn’t needed to help the reader to understand the main theme, omit it.

• Limit each paragraph to a single message. A single sentence can be a paragraph. Each paragraph should explore that message by first asking a question and then progressing to an idea, and sometimes to an answer. It’s also perfectly fine to raise questions in a paragraph and leave them unanswered.

• Keep sentences short, simply constructed and direct. Concise, clear sentences work well for scientific explanations. Minimize clauses, compound sentences and transition words — such as ‘however’ or ‘thus’ — so that the reader can focus on the main message.

(10) WHERE’D SHE GO? NPR’s Scott Tobias sighs, “‘Maleficent: Mistress Of Evil’ Clips Angelina Jolie’s Wings”.

As Disney continues to plunder its animated IP for live-action remakes, where these films fall on the spectrum of pointlessness has to do with how closely they adhere to the source. The remakes that simply copy the material from one format to the other, like Beauty and The Beast or Aladdin, have been consistently enervating whereas the ones that attempt a full gut rehab, like Dumbo or the excellent Pete’s Dragon, at least have the benefit of an independent artistic vision. In this particular creative desert, every droplet of water counts.

The 2014 fantasy Maleficent wasn’t a remake of Sleeping Beauty so much as an alternative telling, an act of playful revisionism that relates to the original as the novel and Broadway musical Wicked relates to The Wizard of Oz. The main twist — that Maleficent isn’t evil, but a wronged fairy taking revenge on a duplicitous king — riffs cleverly on the idea that everyone has their reasons. The film also nests other bits of commentary inside, like questioning whether Prince Phillip and Princess Aurora could have fallen in love so quickly or snickering at the notion that Aurora could dodge Maleficent’s curse by hiding in the woods for 16 years. But it works best as a vehicle for Angelina Jolie, whose enhanced cheekbones and villainous cackle suggested the making of a camp icon.

…Mistress of Evil loses the emotional stakes of the first film, which were rooted in a terrible injustice and the unlikely bond between Maleficent and the cursed princess she comes to adore. There’s a good angle here about the destructive potential of myth, tied to the stories that unfairly poison Maleficent in the human world, but Jolie goes missing for long stretches of the film as Ingrith does her scheming. And while it’s a pleasure to see Pfeiffer lay into a regal villain, it’s odd to see a Maleficent film with so little Maleficent, and all the giggly little sprites in the world can’t make up for it. Jolie was born to play the role, and the best strategy would have been to let her.

(11) TODAY IN HISTORY.

October 18, 2016 — The new edition of The Star Trek Encyclopedia by Michael Okuda and Denise Okuda was released. They were production staff on Next Generation, Deep Space Nine and Voyager. It was illustrated by Doug Drexler. Now a two volume. set with a slip case, it has five hundred new entries. 

(12) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

  • Born October 18, 1917 Reynold Brown. Artist responsible for many SF film posters. His first poster was Creature from the Black Lagoon which Mike included in a recent post, with other notable ones being Attack of the 50 Foot Woman, I Was a Teenage Werewolf and Mothra vs. Godzilla. (Died 1991.)
  • Born October 18, 1938 Barbara Baldavin, 81. She was a recurring performer on Trek first as Angela Martine in “Balance of Terror” and “Shore Leave”.  She would also appear in the final season’s “Turnabout Intruder” as communications officer Lisa.  After that, she had one-offs on Fantasy Island and The Bionic Woman. She retired from the business in 1993.
  • Born October 18, 1938 Dawn Wells, 81. Mary Ann Summers on Gilligan’s Island which y’all decided was genre. She and Tina Louise are the last surviving regular cast members from that series. She had genre one-offs on The Invaders, Wild Wild West and Alf.
  • Born October 18, 1944 Katherine Kurtz, 75. Known for the Deryni series which started with Deryni Rising in 1970, and the most recent, The King’s Deryni, was published in 2014. As medieval historical fantasy goes, they’re damn great. 
  • Born October 18, 1951 Jeff Schalles, 68. Minnesota area fan who’s making the Birthday Honors because he was the camera man for Cats Laughing’s A Long Time Gone: Reunion at Minicon 50 concert DVD. Cats Laughing is a band deep in genre as you can read in the Green Man review here.
  • Born October 18, 1951 Pam Dawber, 68. Mindy McConnell in Mork & Mindy. She did very little other genre work, Faerie Tale Theatre and the Twilight Zone being the only other shows she did. She was however in The Girl, the Gold Watch & Everything as Bonny Lee Beaumont which is based off the John D. MacDonald novel of the same name. Go watch it — it’s brilliant! 
  • Born October 18, 1960 Jean-Claude Van Damme, 59. Cyborg, the Universal Soldier film franchise and Time Cop are but three of his genre films. And he’s in some films in ways that aren’t necessarily apparent, i.e. he was an uncredited stunt double in Predator, and he had a cameo in Last Action Hero. 
  • Born October 18, 1964 Charles Stross, 55. I’ve read a lot of him down the years with I think his best being the rejiggered Merchant Princes series. Other favorite works include the early Laundry Files novels and both of the Halting State novels. 

(13) COMICS SECTION.

  • The Argyle Sweater believes in ghastly puns, especially at Halloween.
  • JJ says, “Somehow I don’t think this was quite what Campbell had in mind for psience.” —

(14) CELEBRATING LONGEVITY. “Wonder Woman gets monumental, all-star 750th issue”SYFY Wire has the story.

Wonder Woman is getting a special giant-sized comic book to commemorate an upcoming landmark issue.

Today, DC Comics announced it will assemble an all-star roster of writers and artists who will pack the 96-page super-sized one-shot with stories and artwork that chronicle the Amazonian princess from the 1940s all the way through to today. Contributing to the issue are long-time Wonder Woman scribes Greg Rucka and Gail Simone, along with the book’s current writer, Steve Orlando

(15) THE LATEST COUNT. John Kelly in the Washington Post has a profile of Dick Dyszel, who played “Count Gore De Vol” in Washington’s creature feature on Channel 20 from 1979-87.  The count is still busy, with his website, (countgore.com), and streaming short films on Vimeo. “The horror! Homegrown Count Gore De Vol is back for some Halloween high jinks” (2018 article.)

…I asked Dick which movies scared him as a kid growing up in Chicago. Not many, he said. “What I really liked were the big bug movies: ‘Them.’ ‘Tarantula.’ Things like that.”

In fact, Dick said he didn’t actually see the movie that scared him the most.

“I’m being very honest: There was a trailer I saw in the movie theater,” he said. “There was a closet door opening and some thing came out of the closet. It scared the living daylights out of me. I left the theater. Let’s face it, it’s a cheap horror thing: the unknown coming out of a door.”

Cheap but effective, just like Count Gore.

(16) SOUND RETREAT. SYFY Wire hopes this house may do as much for visiting writers as it did for the original owner: “Stephen King’s Bangor home to serve as archive, writers’ retreat”.

Great news, Stephen King fans … and aspiring writers! The Victorian mansion in Bangor, Maine, that King and his wife Tabitha have called home for decades has been reorged as a nonprofit and will open its ornate bat-decorated gate to scholars and authors.

The Bangor City Council on Wednesday approved the Kings’ request to rezone their home, per a story from Rolling Stone. Going forward, the red mansion at 47 West Broadway where the Kings raised their three children will serve as an archive of King’s work, while a guest house next door would serve as a writers’ retreat. The archive was previously at the Kings’ alma mater, the University of Maine….

(17) THE TIFF SPREADS. Another country objects to a map shown in this animated movie: “Abominable: A DreamWorks movie, a map, and a huge regional row”, followup on a Pixel from a few days ago.

Malaysian censors have ordered a scene to be cut from DreamWorks film Abominable before it is screened there – because of a brief glimpse of a map.

It is the third South East Asian country to take offence at the scene in the film, a Chinese co-production.

The contentious map shows the “nine-dash line”, which China uses to show its claims in the South China Sea.

Parts of the sea and various island groups are claimed by five other Asian countries, as well as China.

Vietnam has already pulled the movie – while Philippine politicians are calling for a DreamWorks boycott.

It might be merely a backdrop in an animated movie – but it shines a spotlight on one of the world’s hottest territorial disputes.

(18) SOME HOBBY. Meet “The man who owns 1,000 meteorites”.

On Christmas Eve 1965 a 4.5 billion-year-old meteorite exploded over the Leicestershire village of Barwell.

It was one of the largest and best recorded meteorite falls in British history: witnesses reported a flash in the sky accompanied by a loud bang, followed by a thud as one of the first pieces of space rock landed on the ground. As news of what happened emerged, the media descended on the village and a frantic search for the hundreds of scattered fragments began.

For nine-year-old Graham Ensor, who lived nearby, it was an event that would change his life, sparking an enduring passion for space rocks. The former lecturer now owns about 1,000 specimens, which experts believe could be the largest private collection in the UK.

(19) LOAFING AROUND. Kitchen Overlord celebrates this literary occasion with a ghastly looking baked good: “Dune Week: Spice Stuffed Sandworm Bread”. At the end of the post there are links to even more Dune-inspired recipes.

Since you honor my sietch with your visit, I will share the secrets of creating a proud, impressive, spice-scented effigy of the Great Maker of Arrakis….

 (20) VIDEO OF THE DAY. In “The Truth About Test Screenings” on Vimeo, SHAZAM! director David F. Sandberg gives an insider’s view of when test screenings matter and when they don’t.

[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, Martin Morse Wooster, JJ, Mlex, Chip Hitchcock, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Cat Eldridge, Mike Kennedy, Michael Toman, John Hertz, and Andrew Porter for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Jack Lint.]

Pixel Scroll 6/29/16 Owner Of A Lonely Pixel

(1) CASUALTY OF INTOLERANCE. Al Davison’s writeup about being harassed on the street in his hometown of Coventry comes recommended by James Bacon with the note: “New Britain — bigots empowered — comic artist and martial arts expert Al Davison racially abused. His view and experience must be read. A decent man doesn’t want to live here anymore and fears for those who are kind to him. It’s not good.”

WHY I DON’T WANT TO LIVE HERE: Sunday night I’m almost home, it’s started raining, I’m rushing because my immune system sucks, I only have to smell rain and I get ill. Two men on the other side of the road shout ‘Fu**in’ islamist cripple! One adds, ‘takin our fu**in’ benefits’, while the other shouts, ‘What happened, didn’t your fu**in’ suicide vest do the job properly?’

They get a bit ahead walking backwards so they can keep looking at me, the older of the two, puts his hand two his mouth and laughs ‘Sorry mate, thought you were a P*ki, Sorry, ‘And what if I was’, I shout’, still looking ahead, and not at them. The other responds with, ‘why you sayin’ sorry, he’s still a fu**in’ scroungin’ cripple.” They start chanting ‘scrounger’, and and literally dance off down the road, like a couple of teenagers, the youngest was in his thirties, the other around fifty. Morons. I have a beard and wear a hat, that makes me an islamist! I know I am more than capable of defending myself, I’ve survived numerous physical attacks, but many aren’t equiped to defend themselves the way I am. ‘WE SHOULDN’T FU**KING HAVE TOO! …

(2) PRIME TIME. The CBC has the story: “Justin Trudeau joins Canadian superheroes for Marvel Comics cover”.

trudeau-comic-cover-20160628

Make way, Liberal cabinet: Prime Minister Justin Trudeau will have another all-Canadian crew in his corner as he suits up for his latest feature role — comic book character.

Trudeau will grace the variant cover of issue No. 5 of Marvel’s “Civil War II: Choosing Sides,” due out Aug. 31.

Trudeau is depicted smiling, sitting relaxed in the boxing ring sporting a Maple Leaf-emblazoned tank, black shorts and red boxing gloves. Standing behind him are Puck, Sasquatch and Aurora, who are members of Canadian superhero squad Alpha Flight. In the left corner, Iron Man is seen with his arms crossed.

“I didn’t want to do a stuffy cover — just like a suit and tie — put his likeness on the cover and call it a day,” said award-winning Toronto-based cartoonist Ramon Perez.

“I wanted to kind of evoke a little bit of what’s different about him than other people in power right now. You don’t see (U.S. President Barack) Obama strutting around in boxing gear, doing push-ups in commercials or whatnot. Just throwing him in his gear and making him almost like an everyday person was kind of fun.”

The variant cover featuring Trudeau will be an alternative to the main cover in circulation showcasing Aurora, Puck, Sasquatch and Nick Fury.

Trudeau follows in the prime ministerial footsteps of his late father, Pierre, who graced the pages of “Uncanny X-Men” in 1979. [Volume 120]

(3) VICE VERSA SQUAD. Camestros Felapton reviews “Batman versus Superman: Or Is it Vice Versa”.

I finally watched Batman versus Superman: Dawn of Justice. This was the Extended Cut and at least one review I’ve read suggest that the extra 30 minutes makes the film substantially better. Ah. Hmm. I didn’t see the theatrical version but either that was a huge mess of a film or the extra 30 minutes made the central problem far worse. This was a film that needed editing or some sort of substantial re-jigging. Perhaps what hit the theatres was a failed attempt at that?

Beyond this point there are spoilers aplenty – so don’t read on if you don’t want to discover who the alter-ego of Superman is or what house Batman lives in [HINT: its an anagram of Mayne Wanor].

(4) GAIMAN’S NEXT. “Neil Gaiman Delves Deep Into Norse Myths for New Book” announced the New York Times.

Mr. Gaiman’s forthcoming book “Norse Mythology,” which Norton will publish next February, is an almost novelistic retelling of famous myths about the gods of Asgard. The book will explore the nine Norse worlds, which are populated by elves, fire demons, the Vanir gods, humans, dwarves, giants and the dead. There are ice giants and elves, familiar deities like Thor, Odin (the wise and occasionally vengeful highest god) and Loki (the giant trickster), and a frightening doomsday scenario, Ragnarok, where the gods fight a fire giant with a flaming sword in an apocalyptic, world-ending battle.

Gaiman joked about his posed photo accompanying the article.

(5) THE FIRST. Petréa Mitchell noted in comments that The Atlantic has an article on the adoption of word processors by writers which includes anecdotes about Jerry Pournelle and Isaac Asimov, and some general comments on the effect of word processors on sf writing.

Robinson Meyer: “Who was the first author to write a novel on a word processor?” You cast that question as what drove you to write this book. Is there something close to a definitive answer for it?

Matthew Kirschenbaum: We can’t know with absolute certainty, I don’t think, but there are a couple of different answers.

If we think of a word processor or a computer as something close to what we understand today—essentially a typewriter connected to a TV set—there are a couple of contenders from the mid- to late-1970s. Notably Jerry Pournelle, who was a science fiction author. He is probably the first person to sit and compose at a “typewriter” connected to a “TV screen”—to compose there, to edit, and revise there, and then to send copy to his publisher. That was probably a novella called Spirals.

If we move back a little bit further, there’s an interesting story about a writer named John Hersey, the novelist and journalist. He did the famous book Hiroshima. He was at Yale in the early 1970s, so maybe about five years before Pournelle, and he worked on one of the mainframe systems there. He didn’t compose the draft of the novel he was working on at the keyboard, but he did edit it, and use the computer to typeset camera-ready copy.

So those are two candidates.

And yet neither of them is Kirschenbaum’s choice…

(6) MEANWHILE, BACK IN THE 21ST CENTURY. Tobias Buckell has a post on “How to collaborate on fiction in 2016 using pair programming, Skype, and Google Docs”.

I just finished a new collaboration. It’s a short story of nearly 10,000 words that will be in Bridging Infinity (you can pre-order here), edited by Johnathan Strahan “The latest volume in the Hugo award-winning Infinity Project series, showcasing all-original hard science fiction stories from the leading voices in genre fiction.”

The writer I collaborated with was Karen Lord, who currently lives in Barbados (author of Galaxy Games, Redemption in Indigo, you’re reading her, right?).

(7) NO POWER. Kim Lao argues “Why You Should Aim for 100 Rejections a Year” at Lithub.

I asked her what her secret was, and she said something that would change my professional life as a writer: “Collect rejections. Set rejection goals. I know someone who shoots for one hundred rejections in a year, because if you work that hard to get so many rejections, you’re sure to get a few acceptances, too.”

This small piece of advice struck a deep chord in my fragile creative ego. My vulnerable ego only wants to be loved and accepted, to have my words ring out from a loudspeaker in Times Square while a neon ticker scrolls the text across a skyscraper, but it’s a big old coward….

(8) LOST SERIES AND VANISHED VISUALIZATIONS. Suvudu will make you nostalgic for a TV show you likely have never heard of before: “’Out of the Unknown’: The BBC Sci-Fi Series Americans Should Have Seen”.

The Guardian’s Phelim O’Neill just published a rather nice review of the long gone BBC science-fiction and horror anthology program “Out of the Unknown”. While I’ve never seen it myself, from what O’Neill wrote, it sounds like it was a real doozy. Consisting of four seasons aired on BBC 2 from 1965 to 1971, “Out of the Unknown” adapted literary works by the likes of Isaac Asimov, Ray Bradbury, and J.G. Ballard.

Out of the 49 episodes filmed, only around 20 or so remain. As “Doctor Who” fans are already aware, it was standard procedure for the BBC to delete old episodes of what was at one time deemed disposable entertainment. Coincidentally, one of the lost episodes of “Out of the Uknown” actually featured Doctor Who’s arch nemeses: The Daleks.

(9) ISHER IN AMERICA. Jeb Kinnison, who thinks File 770 readers will be intrigued by the sf aspects of this post, is honestly not optimistic very many will agree with his political comments — “The Justice is Too Damn High! – Gawker, The High Cost of Litigation, and The Weapons Shops of Isher”.

Gawker filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy to avoid paying the bond which would otherwise be necessary to appeal the $140 million judgment against them in the Hulk Hogan sex tape lawsuit. (It’s a good thing I don’t have to explain that sentence to a time traveler from the last century — would take a long time.) There have been plenty of stories and hot takes on it, so I’ll reach back to discuss what the real problem is — the cost of justice is too damn high. ….

Today’s United States resembles the Empire of Isher more than a little — a relatively prosperous population, but with layer upon layer of accreted law, regulation, and bureaucracy, with ideals of justice corrupted in practice so that only the wealthiest can afford government-sanctioned courts…. The impunity with which Gawker operated for years while stepping on the privacy rights of people for profit is just one symptom of the inability to get justice at a reasonable price. The simmering resentments of citizens made unknowing scofflaws while going about their lives and the increasing regulatory overhead to start and run a small business are slowing growth and damaging the careers of young people who have been trained to ask permission before trying anything new….

(10) KELLY OBIT. Peter David took note of the passing of a behind-the-scenes figure: Lorna Kelley, RIP.

The chances are spectacular that you have not heard of Lorna Kelly. For the vast majority of you, there is no reason that you would have. Lorna was an auctioneer who worked for Sotheby’s for a time–one of the first female fine arts auctioneers in the world–and she recently died of a stroke at the age of 70.

The reason that the David family knew her was because every year for over a decade, she was the auctioneer at the Broadway Bears charity auction sponsored by Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS. Every year she would coax and cajole individuals into bidding ridiculous amounts of money for bears that had been lovingly costumed in exact replicas of Broadway character outfits. But that was hardly the extent of her life. She treated AIDS patients in Calcutta working with Mother Teresa. According to the NY Times, “She also traveled to Senegal, where she vaccinated thousands of children. In Cairo, she ministered to impoverished residents of a vast garbage dump; she likewise served the poor in Jordan, Gaza and the Bronx.” To say she led a well-rounded life is to understate it, and we were privileged to have met her and spent time with her.

(11) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY BOYS

  • Born June 29, 1911 – Bernard Hermann
  • Born June 29, 1920 – Ray Harryhausen

And did they ever work together? I’m glad you asked – Internet Movie Database shows Hermann did the music for Mysterious Island and Jason and the Argonauts, two films for which Harryhausen created the special visual effects.

harryhausen

(12) GUILLERMO DEL TORO. Another film available to fans and collectors.

Slashfilm covers the news: “Pan’s Labyrinth Criterion Collection Release Announced”.

The 2006 film is often looked at as the filmmaker’s best work, and understandably so. Most of del Toro’s films have plenty of heart, horror, and beauty, but Pan’s Labyrinth, narratively and dramatically speaking, it is his most satisfying work. Good luck trying not to tear up during Ofelia’s (Ivana Baquero) heartbreaking journey.

(13) STRUGATSKY ADAPTATION. In the film of Roadside Picnic, Matthew Goode takes top billing.

The Good Wife and Downton Abbey alum Matthew Goode is set as the lead in WGN America’s alien saga pilot Roadside Picnicbased on the famous novel by top Soviet/Russian science fiction writers Arkady and Boris Strugatsky.

Written by Transcendence scribe Jack Paglen, with Terminator Genisys and Game Of Thrones helmer Alan Taylor attached to direct and Neal Moritz producing, Roadside Picnic explores a near-future world where aliens have come and gone, leaving humankind to explore the wondrous and dangerous mysteries left behind. The story also explores the social ramifications of their visit, as seen through the eyes of Red (Goode), a veteran “stalker” who has made it his mission to illegally venture into the once inhabited zone and scavenge the abandoned remains of the alien culture.

(14) MST3K. Ceridwen Christensen may leave you green with envy: “I Attended the MST3K Reunion Show, and It Was Everything I Wanted It to Be” (B&N Sci-Fi & Fantasy Blog.)

Last night at the State Theatre in Minneapolis, I had the absolute pleasure to experience the Mystery Science Theater 3000 reunion show, hosted by Rifftrax, purveyors of downloadable movie-mocking commentary tracks, a company founded by several alums of the show. It also featured members of Cinematic Titanic, likewise the brainchild of ex-MST3K cast members. Last night, they got the band back together, uniting writers and actors from several eras of the show, both past and future. It was a celebration of the fact that Joel Hodgson, the original creator, recently wrapped the most successful film and video Kickstarter of all time: a successful bid to revive the show after more than 16 years off the air; squee. Hodgson riffed on a short with the new lead, Jonah Ray. I think I actually hurt my throat laughing….

(15) DAVID D. LEVINE COMING TO LA. Shades & Shadows 17 will be at Bearded Lady’s Mystic Museum in Burbank, CA on July 16. Doors at 7:30 p.m. Readings begin at 8:00 p.m. $10.

It’s summer. Everything is on fire, melting, or exploding. Everybody is one power outage away from convincing themselves we’ve entered the world of Mad Max.

Which, hey, isn’t far off from what we’re offering. Leave reality behind for a while. Come see what we have on tap as we bring in our mix of award winning authors and emerging voices in the literary scene! It’s a genre experience like no other!

Featuring: PAUL TREMBLAY, STEPHEN GRAHAM JONES, VESTA VAINGLORIA, DAVID D. LEVINE, GLEN HIRSHBERG, +1 TBA!

(16) HELP FRAN EVANS. Karen Willson alerted me that contributions are requested to the Fran Evans Assistance Fund (on GoFundMe) to help a longtime LASFSian.

This fundraiser is for a friend of mine, Fran Evans.  Fran just had brain surgery and can’t work.

She says that “the money would be used to “pay my bills/rent for the next couple of months while I recovery from having holes drilled in my head.  Whatever moneys I normally get go to my rent, this would help pay the difference and other bills.  Not many, I’m pretty frugal.   I have no credit cards.  If I can’t pay by check or debit – it doesn’t happen.  Water, for the moment, is free.

“I don’t smoke or drink or go shopping.  My idea of a big splurge is a used paperback on Amazon.  I just want  couple of months to heal without any worries about money.  The doctors said about two months before my balance begins to come back online.  I seem to spend a lot of time resting or sleeping.  Gee, wonder why.

“I’d like to get $2,000. to $2,500.  But whatever I can get would be nice.”

Fran has worked many years in the film industry and the Bob Burns Halloween show. Folks at conventions will remember her for her backstage help at many events.

Your assistance will mean a lot to Fran.  Thank you for thinking about it!

(17) PROFESSIONAL PREFERENCES. Sarah A. Hoyt advocates for writing in “First Person, Singular”.

1- The main reason I like first person singular is that for a moment it tricks you into that space behind the eyes of another person, relieving the loneliness of that narrative voice that can only ever describe your own life.

This is a universal and enduring quality.  I’ve had teachers tell me — and to an extent they’re right — that first person is “less believable” because you KNOW you haven’t done those things.

To which I counter that WELL done, with the right balance of external activity and internal dialogue, with just enough of a “touch of nature makes the whole world kin” i.e. of physical sensation that the readers, too, have experienced, it can make you feel it is happening/happened to you.

(18) TIME IN A BOTTLE. At Examined Worlds, Ethan Mills discusses the philosophical questions within the classic sf novel: “At War with Time: The Forever War by Joe Haldeman”.

In addition to the emotional scars of returning soldiers, the time dilation speaks to the feeling of aging while the world moves on around you.  This is something I feel acutely as an aging college professor constantly encountering fresh crops of young whipper-snappers with their new fangled cultural references and ways of being!  The time dilation reminds us that we are all at war with time, which is of course relative to the observer’s position.  It’s also by far the most interesting aspect of the book and allows Haldeman to write the history of the next 1,000 years.

Suffice to say there are some ruminations on this war and war in general.  Why are they fighting?  Why can’t they learn more about the alien Taurans?  How is the war the cornerstone of the economy?  Does the war make it possible for the government to control most aspects of society?

The philosophical questions are more implied than pedantically presented.  You don’t get anything quite like the classroom scenes of Starship Troopers.  I honestly would have liked a little more explicit philosophy to chew on.

(19) YOUTH REACT. James Davis Nicoll tells me his second post on Young People Read Old SF goes live 9:00 a.m. Thursday.

(20) HUGO CONTENDER. Lisa Goldstein reviews “Short Story: ‘Space Raptor Butt Invasion’” for inferior4+1. The last line is the most surprising part of her post:

I have no idea why this story was on the Rabid Puppies’ slate.

I believe a lot of readers here could explain it.

(21) SUCCESSFUL COUP IN BRITAIN. The Evening Harold has scooped the mainstream media with its report “Lord Vetinari takes control of the UK” (via Ansible Links.):

The UK is under new leadership this morning following a coup by the Patrician of Ankh-Morpork, Lord Havelock Vetinari…..

[Thanks to Karen Willson, Petréa Mitchell, John King Tarpinian, Taral Wayne, and David K.M. Klaus for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Bruce Baugh.]

Pixel Scroll 4/1/16 There Has to Be a Trophy in Here Somewhere

It’s the First of April you know.

Bruce Campbell as Doctor Who

(1) PHAKE PHANS LISTEN UP. We predict there will be a journey in your future.

PHLEGMATIC PHLEAS ANNOUNCE TPP PHUND 2016 NOMINATIONS OPEN Nominations for the Phlegmatic Phleas’ TPP Phund (Trans-Planetary Phan Phund) are open. Note: Trip awards are one way only. Another note: Current funding is available for up to a dozen winners. Fifth note: You may nominate slates rather than individuals. Pre-Fifth note: Nominate someone you feel has earned the right to go far. Post-Fifth note: Sponsored by the “You Ain’t Nothin’ But A Hound Dog” Phoundation.

(2) A TALL TAIL. The Aurora Awards left a category out of today’s announcement: “Best Canadian Squirrel in a book, story or poem”.

  • Squirrelly McSquirrelface in, An Icebreaker goes North, Nuts Are Us books
  • Fuzzy Nutcracker in, The Galactic Safe, In Trees Publishing
  • Digger Moreholes in, “A Tail of Nuts”, Rodent Magazine, issue 341
  • Zippy Treeclimber in, “The Maze of Nuts”, Squirrel Poets, issue 1
  • Warhammer Graytail in, A Song of Oaks and Pine, Random Tree Press

We are proud to announce this special new category.  Stay tuned for more details.

(3) CONNIE THE DECEPTICON. Connie Willis’ April Fool’s Day blog post ends with a list of her dozen all-time favorite April 1 jokes. One of them is fake.

That’s another key to a good April Fool’s joke–details.  The more specific the story is, the more believable, especially if it involves science.  Or a technology that’s already in our lives.  Like lasers or smartphones.  Or digital watches.   My favorite April Fool’s joke of all time was the one the BBC did where they announced Big Ben was going to go digital.  A bright green digital readout was going to replace the four Victorian clock faces.  You can imagine how that was received!

(4) A HAIRY PROBLEM. At the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum “Tribble Trial Trends Toward Trouble”.

Stardate 1604.01: At 12:01 am EDT this morning, the National Air and Space Museum began breeding tribbles. This bold, innovative, not-at-all-ill-advised experiment will run for 24 hours, until 11:59 pm tonight, allowing Museum specialists to study the galaxy’s most adorable ecological disaster in greater detail than ever before. The tribble trial utilizes five original specimens of the species Polygeminus grex from the original Star Trek television series, donated to the Museum in 1973.

 

(5) THE DECENT THING TO DO. You heard it here last: “National Geographic to Stop Publishing Nude Animal Pictures”.

The media group says that it will no longer degrade animals by showing photos of them without clothes.

(6) MIGHT CHANGE HIS MIND TOMORROW. Joe Vasicek explains “Why I stopped writing”, at One Thousand And One Parsecs.

This will probably come as a shock to most of you, but I’ve decided to give up writing. It was a good run while it lasted, but the time has come to pack it away with my other childhood dreams, like living on a houseboat or becoming a paleontologist.

Why did I give up writing? Because frankly, I just don’t have any new ideas anymore. Whenever I manage to come up with one, it turns out that someone else has already done it. Accidental marriage in space? Firefly. Trek across a desert planet? Dune. Colonizing an unexplored nebula? I don’t know off the top of my head, but I’m sure it’s been done before.

(7) IT IS THE END MY FRIEND. io9’s James Whitbrook declared “There Was Only One Decent April Fools’ Day Prank Today, and This Is It”

Friends, we’ve finally made it: The hellishly wearisome event that is April Fool’s Day is basically at its end. We at io9 despise this black day, but even our curmudgeonly souls got a smile out of this “prank” by the Canadian Library and Archives, which claimed to have dug up Wolverine’s military records from its collection.

The organization announced today that it had secured the declassified journals and military records of Canada’s most famous son: James “Logan” Howlett, better known to his legion of comic book fans a X-Man Wolverine.

(8) JOKES BECOME REAL IF YOU PAY ENOUGH. ThinkGeek offers a “Star Trek White Noise Sleep Machine”

ivmt_st_white_noise_sleep_machine

As effective as the Vulcan nerve pinch

  • Drift off to sleep to a familiar low thrum
  • 8 sounds from 5 different spacecraft
  • Projects a moving starfield on your ceiling

Is this genuine? At a price of $149.99 it must be.

(9) TODAY IN FOOLISH HISTORY.

  • April 1, 1964 The Horror of Party Beach opens on April Fools’ Day.

Party Beach

(10) THE TRUTH WILL OUT. SciFiNow ranks “The Top 10 Avengers TV Episodes”. Number 1 is “The Hidden Tiger” (Mar 1967).

“Pussies galore!” Ronnie Barker’s cat-rescue home is the centre of a magnificently ludicrous plot to turn domestic moggies into man-eating killers. A feel-good feline frolic exemplifying prime Avengers.

(11) EDELMAN HOMES IN ON THE RANGE. Scott Edelman’s latest installment of Eating the Fantastic features Carolyn Ives Gilman —

CarolynIvesGilmanEatingtheFantastic-300x300

Carolyn Ives Gilman

A new Eating the Fantastic is now live! Episode 5 was recorded with Carolyn Ives Gilman at Range in Friendship Heights, Maryland.

We discussed what’s kept her coming back to her Twenty Planets universe for a quarter of a century, how her first science fiction convention was “total sensory overload,” what it was like working with David Hartwell as an editor, why she’s not visible on social media, and more.

Edelman says, “If all goes well, the next will be Andy Duncan.”

(12) DOC WEIR. Winner of the Doc Weir award for unsung UK fan heroes is Kathy Westhead. [Via Ansible.]

(13) MYSTERY GATHERS. Deadline Hollywood says an MST3K reunion is in the works – “Full ‘MST3K’ Casts To Reunite For RiffTrax 10th Anniversary”.

In the 17 years since the cult TV series’ cancellation, the creative team behind Mystery Science Theater 3000 have never fully reunited in public. That changes this summer as part of the 10th anniversary of MST3K offshoot Rifftrax, with RiffTrax Live: MST3K Reunion Show, a live event to be performed in Minneapolis on June 28 and broadcast to theaters nationwide by Fathom Events. Tickets will be available April 15th from the official RiffTrax website.

(14) MORE FROM LEVINE. David D. Levine’s new Wild Cards novelette “Discards” is a free read at Tor.com. And more!

My superhero story “Into the Nth Dimension,” originally published in Human for a Day, has been podcast at GlitterShip — narrated by me!. The full text is also available on the web to read for free. You can read or listen here.

I will be appearing at Emerald City Comicon in Seattle next Friday, April 8 (one day only). I’ll be on the panel “Aliens and Airships and Authors, Oh My!”, followed by an autograph session. At other times you can most likely find me at the WordFire Press booth.

I’ve sold an essay, “How to Sell a Novel in Only Fifteen Years,” to the nonfiction anthology The Usual Path to Publication. It comes out in June and you can pre-order it here.

(15) BVS WINS BY LOSING. This was posted on March 30, just saying…. “Batman V Superman Sets Unwanted Box Office Record”.

‘Batman V Superman: Dawn Of Justice’ may have netted the fourth biggest opening weekend of all time, but according to business site Forbes, it’s broken a record that may be rather less welcome.

It’s recorded the worst audience drop-off over a weekend for any superhero movie in ‘modern box office history’.

Attendance has plummeted for the critically-hammered movie, which sets Henry Cavill’s Man of Steel against Ben Affleck’s Caped Crusader.

It dropped an eye-popping 55% between Friday and Sunday, a figure which even beats the 48% drop in numbers set by the much-despised ‘Fantastic Four’ last summer…

(16) POST TAFF STRESS SYNDROME. Wolf von Witting is still recovering from losing TAFF.

On the first day, it was grossly tear-jerking ballads. On the second day I went on to heavy metal and other music which blows the crap out from a brain (where there is one). But in the night before the third day, my scary godmother (she doesn’t like being called a fairy) came to me in a dream and announced that I was to become the pope of European sf-fandom. “You’re supposed to reform TAFF, not win it!” she said and hit me over the back of my head with her magic wand.

She had… a beaver sitting on her left shoulder, and suddenly it became so clear to me why I lost again. It was meant to be this way, folks. We’re not living in 1952 anymore. It’s EASY and relatively cheap crossing the Atlantic now. If the yanks wish to meet the pope of European fandom, there are two ways.

1) come to Italy – that’s where the pope lives.

2) I’d be absolutely delighted to accept any FGoH invitation they send (we have American guests all the time over here in Europe. You can afford it, if you care to meet the pope).

The Gods of fandom have resolved the issue to the best of all possible outcomings. Filkers are not stupid, mind you. They knew what they were up against. So they just did what was necessary to win and I have to both salute and bless them for that. Before my scary godmother went away, she uttered some magic mumbo jumbo in an obscure language I didn’t quite understand (could have been Albanian).I recall the final three words: “Nnn.. in come Pope!”

(17) HUGO PROBABILITY SEMINAR. Chaos Horizon’s Brandon Kempner reveals his prediction in “Estimating the 2016 Hugo Nominations, Part 5”.

By breaking these out into three groups and three turnout scenarios (40%, 60%, 80%), I produced 27 different models. To conclude, we can look to see if certain books show up in a lot models, and then I’ll make that my prediction….

So that makes the official 2016 Chaos Horizon Hugo prediction as follows:

  • Seveneves, Neal Stephenson
  • Uprooted, Naomi Novik
  • The Aeronaut’s Windlass, Jim Butcher
  • Ancillary Mercy, Ann Leckie
  • Somewhither, John C. Wright

(18) CYBORG OLYMPICS. A video of people are competing in the world’s first “cyborg Olympics.” The Cybathlon competitors, called pilots, use technology to compensate for disabilities.

(19) VERTLIEB DOCUMENTARY GAINS MOMENTUM. Diabolique online magazine is getting behind the Steve Vertlieb feature documentary The Man Who “Saved” The Movies.

vert4The first film from Gull Cottage / Sandlot’s newly minted “Gull Cottage & Flying Bear” banner, STEVE VERTLIEB: THE MAN WHO “SAVED” THE MOVIES is the feature-length documentary delving into the colorful life, career and ultimate legacy of cinema archivist, journalist, historian and film music educator STEVE VERTLIEB – who’s quiet, unassuming persona belies his growing status as one of the most respected of figures to a new generation of cinema buffs, filmmakers, and, surprisingly, even that most fickle and verbose of filmdom’s family tree –  the genre fanboy.

A former on-air TV reviewer of film, and magazine writer, Steve’s learned and literate dissertations on cinema over the last near half-century have made him a much sought after consultant on numerous projects, including an appearance in the 2006 award winning documentary KREATING KARLOFF, and as consultant on TCM’s 75th Anniversary Restoration of Merian C. Cooper’s original KING KONG. Widely considered one of the nation’s foremost experts on the legendary “Great Ape”, his numerous articles on the subject (including that in the still definitive volume THE GIRL IN THE HAIRY PAW) is referenced to this day by film makers, teachers and cinema students alike.

vert5

(20) MY APRIL 1 INSPIRATION. Star Trek: The Next Generation’s Lt. Worf Bloopers.

[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, Clifford Samuels, Glenn Hauman, Hampus Eckerman, Steve Vertlieb, and Daniel Dern for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Will R.]

Don Barton Dies

ZaatMoviePoster990wideDon Barton, director of the cult monster film Zaat, has died at the age of 83. His 1971 movie about a 7-foot-tall giant radioactive walking catfish gained fresh notoriety after being mocked on Mystery Science Theatre 3000 in 1999, making a brief return to theaters in 2001 and appearing twice on Turner Classic Movies.

Barton co-founded the Florida Motion Picture and Television Association and won several awards for documentaries. He worked as vice president of marketing at what’s now St. Vincent’s HealthCare, and later served on the hospital’s executive board.

[Thanks to John King Tarpinian for the story.]