Boskone 62 Pocket Program (cover)[Image by Theresa Mather]
By Daniel Dern: Until Arisia 2025 this January (which, per my File 770 report, I went to), I hadn’t been to a Con since Boskone 57 back in 2020, from a mix of COVID caution and pandemic anxiety (and for some of those years, many Cons not being IRL anyway). Halfway through this year’s Arisia, I decided that I wanted to also resume going to Boskone. (I’m a Boston-area local living near public-transit, so easy-enough decisions in terms of planning/convenience.) As this Scroll shows, I did, indeed go to Boskone 62…and had a good time.
Boskone 62 was held Friday, February 14 through Sunday, February 16, 2025 at the Westin Boston Seaport District hotel in Boston, with the semi-predicted snow holding off until late Saturday afternoon.
Approaching the Westin Boston Seaport HotelSarah, On StiltsYou Are Here (Registration-level Floor Plan)
(1) A RECOMMENDATION. The Unofficial Hugo Book Club Blog has posted a review of Speculative Whiteness titled “The Nerd Reich”.
…[The sff] genre often portrays societies where eggheads and dweebs are central in the fate of society. Intellectual elites or highly skilled individuals dominate, reflecting a vision where scientific knowledge and technical prowess are the ultimate sources of power. It is not lost on us that these “nerds” are mostly depicted as male and white.
In his recent book Speculative Whiteness, Jordan S. Carroll tackles the problematic consequences of this legacy. The book traces a history of the ways in which the genre was and continues to be co-opted by the alt-right.
It’s an excellent work, and probably the most important book about science fiction written this year….
The cover price is just $20, however, its publisher, the University of Minnesota Press, has made the entire book available to read online for free here. This is UMP’s description of Speculative Whiteness:
Fascists such as Richard Spencer interpret science fiction films and literature as saying only white men have the imagination required to invent a high-tech future. Other white nationalists envision racist utopias filled with Aryan supermen and all-white space colonies. Speculative Whiteness traces these ideas through the entangled histories of science fiction culture and white supremacist politics, showing that debates about representation in science fiction films and literature are struggles over who has the right to imagine and inhabit the future. Although fascists insist that tomorrow belongs to them, they have always been and will continue to be contested by antifascist fans willing to fight for the future.
(2) REMAIN CALM. “’Doctor Who has not been shelved’ – BBC responds to rumours” – Radio Times covers the official statement. And heck, I hadn’t even heard the rumor yet! (Probably because all of you are too smart to pass along links from The Sun.)
The BBC has assured Doctor Who fans that the sci-fi drama has not been cancelled, following an “incorrect” tabloid report.
The Sun stirred up concern that the long-running series was to go dormant again for between five and ten years, as it previously did after Sylvester McCoy’s final season – and once again after Paul McGann’s 1996 standalone film.
The speculation comes after perceived disappointment over Doctor Who season 14’s viewing figures, although the BBC and showrunner Russell T Davies have previously drawn attention to the show’s strong engagement from younger viewers.
The Sun’s anonymous source claimed that star Ncuti Gatwa was eyeing a move to Los Angeles to pursue Hollywood work – and that he had filmed a regeneration sequence for the end of the current run.
However, a spokesperson for Doctor Who commented: “This story is incorrect, Doctor Who has not been shelved. As we have previously stated, the decision on season 3 will be made after season 2 airs.
“The deal with Disney Plus was for 26 episodes – and exactly half of those still have to transmit. And as for the rest, we never comment on the Doctor and future storylines.”…
… Addressing the show’s ratings, Davies said last year: “In coming back, I wanted to make it simpler and I wanted to make it younger. Those two things are often not discussed – you read reactions to it and people are missing that.
“It’s simpler and younger – and it is working. The under-16s and the 16-34 audience as well is massive. It’s not doing that well in the ratings, but it is doing phenomenally well with the younger audience that we wanted.”
Doctor Who season 15 – also known as season 2 – is expected to premiere in May 2025, with Gatwa returning alongside Boom’s Varada Sethu as a new companion and former co-star Millie Gibson….
(3) THE BLACK FANTASTIC ONLINE PANEL IS TOMORROW. The Library of America will host an online event featuring Tananarive Due, Victor LaValle, Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, and andré carrington, “The Black Fantastic: The New Wave of Afrofuturist Fiction Registration”, on Wednesday, February 19 from 6:00-7:00 p.m. Eastern. RSVP at the link. Contribution to attend: $5 (can be applied toward purchase of The Black Fantastic or any other book on the LOA Web Store.)
A new wave of science fiction and fantasy by Black writers has burst onto the American literary scene in recent decades: tales of cosmic travel, vampires, and alternate timelines set in profound social and psychological orbits. Building on the legacy of titans Octavia E. Butler and Samuel R. Delany, these visionary writers root their imagination of other worlds in the multilayered realities of Black history and experience.
Award-winning SF authors Tananarive Due, Victor LaValle, and Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah join andré carrington, editor of The Black Fantastic: 20 Afrofuturist Stories, for a conversation about genre, influence, and the fascinating and phantasmagoric universes conjured by these new voices on the vanguard of American fiction.
Winner: Hazel Milla from North Carolina for the story “Whom the Gods Wish to Destroy”
Runner-up: Michael Burianyk from Nice, France for the story “The Witches of Kyiv”
Runner-up: Bailey Maybray from Somerville, MA for the story “Hook, Line, and Clinker”
Runner-up: Brad Halverson of Utah for the story “Top Dog”
Honorable Mention: Veronika Majerová from Bratislava, Slovakia for the story “Sleepwalker’s Survival Guide”
Honorable Mention: E. R. Cook from Westminster, CO for the story “Metamorphi”
Honorable Mention: Jun Schultz of Cambridge, Massachusetts for the story “The Strid”
There were 45 entries in this year’s contest. The final judges were Jasper Fforde (B62 Guest of Honor), Kelley Armstrong (B62 Special Guest) and E. C. Ambrose (author and teacher).
(5) FUN WHILE IT LASTED. [Item by Steve Green.] The Hungry Hobbit, a Birmingham cafe neighbouring Sarehole Mill (inspiration for Tolkien’s ‘Shire’) was famously forced by New Line Cinema (producers of the Lord of the Rings movies) to change its name to the Hungry Hobb, even though ‘hobbit’ is apparently not a trademarked term. At some point, this was further shortened to the Hungry Hob, and now I learn the business closed in late October 2024. There was an announcement on Facebook, which I’m not on. A fried chicken outlet now occupies on the site.
(6) YOUNG EYEBALLS ON THE JOB. James Davis Nicoll recently had the Young People Read Old SFFpanel react to Eleanor Arnason’s 1974 Nebula finalist The Warlord of Saturn’s Moons.
…Warlord has been anthologized many times in the half century since it first saw print. I own it in three anthologies and one collection. No surprise. Rereading Warlord, I see themes relevant to the world in which we now live… as much as I might wish that were not the case.
But will young eyes see the same story I do? Let’s find out!
…Lethem digs into his reasons on re-reexamining the Brooklyn he wrote about 20 years earlier in The Fortress of Solitude, but doing so this time with the tools of a journalist including long interviews conducted amid the dislocation and isolation of the COVID lockdown, and much more:
“One of the things I was really interested in was the idea of collective psychic experience, that that people go through things in a space together and then they don’t even know what part of it is really in their own head, and what was pushed in, stuck in there, from someone else. In a way, it is a typical New York thing. We were all there, right, when Mike Piazza hit the home run after 9/11? Every one of us, 9 million people were in the stadium that day. Well, we weren’t all there. We didn’t even all have the TV on. But somehow, retroactively, you fit yourself to this experience because it’s been had so intensely by other people that you’re confused about whether it was you or someone else who was there.
“And this was true for me in exploring the myths of a neighborhood and the myths on the street: individual moments of violence or confrontation or trauma on the street like that day that this guy put this other guy in a head lock and then he pulled out a knife. Somehow, we were all on that street corner. “I saw it with my own eyes!” Well, that isn’t true. There wasn’t some, stadium full of people watching this thing. It happened in a fugitive instant, but somehow we were all firsthand witnesses. So this idea that this transmission of mythic collective experience, this was a lot of what my questions for people were about: Did something that we all remember really happen? And if so, who did it happen to? Maybe I was the victim or maybe I was just a bystander. I don’t know…“
(8) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.
[Written by Cat Eldridge.]
February 18, 1919 — Jack Palance. (Died 2006.)
Jack Palance in 1954.
Let’s talk about Jack Palance who was born of Ukrainian immigrant parents with name of Volodymyr Palahniuk. His professional surname was actually a derivative of his original name. While guesting on What’s My Line?, he noted that no one could pronounce his last name, and how it was suggested that he be called Palanski but instead that he decided just to use Palance instead. He didn’t say where his first name came from.
(OK nitpickers, I do not want to hear from you. Seriously, I don’t. His career makes a gaggle of overly catnapped kittens playing with skeins of yarn with lots of lanolin still on it look simple by comparison so I may or may not have knitted it properly here, so bear with my version of it.)
Surprisingly it looks like that he got his start in our end of things in television performances and relatively late as they started in the Sixties with the first one being Jabberwock on a musical version of Alice Through the Looking Glass. I’m sure I want to see that as it had Jimmy Durante as Humpty Dumpty, and the Smothers Brothers as Tweedledee and Tweedledum.
Next up was a Canadian production with him in the title role of The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and that in turn saw him being the lead in Dracula, also known as Bram Stoker’s Dracula and Dan Curtis’ Dracula, the last when the ego of the Director got way, way too big.
Jack Palance as Dracula (1973)
I’m going to digress here because it’s so fascinating. In 1963, The Greatest Show on Earth first aired. This Circus drama had Johnny Slate as the big boss who keeps the circus running as it moves from town to town. It was produced by Desilu, the production company founded by Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz, Sr. It lasted but one season as it was up against shows by Jack Benny and Richard Boone.
A bit of hard SF was next, Cyborg 2, released in other countries as Glass Shadow, creative but terribly uninformative, where he’s Mercy, an old renegade cyborg.
Rod Serling and Jack Palance in 1957
Remember my Birthday on the wonderful Carol Serling? Well, he was in The Twilight Zone: Rod Serling’s Lost Classics film that she made possible as Dr. Jeremy Wheaton in “Where the Dead Are”.
If Treasure Island counts as genre and yes I do count it in my personal canon, then his role as Long John Silver is definitely canon.
He got to play Ebenezer Scrooge in Ebenezer. Now the fun part is that it’s set in the Old West, where he is the most greedy, corrupt and mean-spirited crook in the old West obviously, he sees no value in “Holiday Humbug” by several reviewers. This film I went to look up on Rotten Tomatoes, but no rating there.
Not at all shockingly to me, he shows up on The Man from U.N.C.L.E. where he plays a character of Louis Strago in a two-parter “The Concrete Overcoat Affair” which got re-edited as “The Spy in the Green Hat”.
A bit of horror was next in Tales of the Haunted as Stokes in “Evil Stalks This House” was up late in career.
Finally for roles that I’m reasonably sure were of genre interest, he was on Buck Rogers in the 25th Century as Kaleel in the “Planet of the Slave Girls” episode.
One more gig for him related to genre or at least genre adjacent, though not as a performer, but as the host of Ripley’s Believe It or Not! for four years. He had three different co-hosts from season to season, including his daughter, Holly Palance, actress Catherine Shirriff, and finally singer Marie Osmond.
The New York Public Library is opening up its archives of Joan Didion and her husband Gregory Dunne to the public beginning March 26.
The Library acquired the late writers’ archives in 2023, just over three years since Didion’s 2021 death at age 87. Dunne died in 2003, aged 71.
The dual collection comprises a total of 336 boxes “most of which have never been seen publicly” and which represents “the most comprehensive collection of the authors’ materials” according to the library’s announcement.
These materials feature a vast array of both professional and personal documents from the couples’ lives, including six decades of correspondence, hundreds of photographs and 26 screenplay drafts the pair worked on together. The 1971 film “The Panic in Needle Park” and 1976’s “A Star Is Born” are among them. Visitors will also find annotated typescripts from Didion’s political reporting in the 1980s and ‘90s, and reference material for her books “The Year of Magical Thinking” and “Blue Nights.”…
There aren’t many video game developers as outspoken as Hazelight’s Josef Fares. Infamous for his expletive-laden viral rants at livestreamed awards shows, Fares is a refreshingly fiery and unpredictable voice in an all too corporate industry. As he puts it, “It doesn’t matter where I work or what I do, I will always say what I want. People say to me that that’s refreshing – but isn’t it weird that you cannot say what you think in interviews? Do we live in a fucking communist country? Obviously, you have got to respect certain boundaries, but to not even be able to express what you think personally about stuff? People are too afraid!”
Yet while gamers know him as a grinning chaos merchant and passionate ambassador of co-op gameplay, in Fares’ adopted homeland of Sweden, he is best known as an award-winning film director. His goofy 2000 comedy Jalla! Jalla! was a domestic box office success, while his 2005 drama Zozo was a more introspective work about his childhood experience of fleeing the Lebanese civil war…
… He soon took his evolving prototype to a respected game studio in Stockholm – Starbreeze. “They were like, ‘Well, maybe you can do this as a kind of test project.’ But I’m like, fuck a test, I’m going to do the whole thing!”
That passion fuelled a year and a half of intense work, with Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons being released in 2013. The co-op adventure about siblings embarking on a dangerous journey to find a cure for their sick father has now sold over 10m copies. Despite its success, many in Sweden were baffled by his artistic pivot, a transition for Fares that felt natural. “With movies, I came to a point where I felt that the passion really wasn’t there. Passion lead me to video games. It was very challenging being new in the industry and coming in with a different approach – wanting to create new mechanics. Today it’s different because [people] listen to me, but it was very hard in the beginning.”…
(12) A CULTURE WARRIOR MUSTERS OUT. Doris V. Sutherland has surprisingly devoted a full article to “The Brief Life of the Helicon Awards”. I say “surprisingly” because this was simply an award made up by Richard Paolinelli so he could give it to friends and authors he wanted to ingratiate himself with. (And that worked, because writers can’t resist anything labeled an “award” — David Weber thanked him online for his.) I have followed the Helicon Awards from start to finish – Paolinelli says it is being retired this year — and did not think its pretentions were even worth making fun of anymore. But fine minds can differ…
…Even the names chosen for some of the award categories serve as battle-standards for the culture war. The original Helicon category line-up included a Laura Ingalls Wilder New Author Award, a Melvil Dewey Innovation Award and Frank Herbert Lifetime Achievement Award.
For context, in 2018 the US Association for Library Service to Children removed Laura Ingalls Wilder’s name from an award for children’s literature in response to a controversy regarding racial attitudes in her writing, while 2019 saw Melvil Dewey’s name stricken from an American Library Association award over his history of racism, antisemitism and sexual harassment. (The Frank Herbert Award would appear to be the odd-one-out, as I’m not aware of Herbert having been particularly controversial circa 2019.)
In 2020, after Worldcon’s John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer was renamed (again, because of its namesake’s racist attitudes) the Helicon Society introduced the John W. Campbell Diversity in SFF Award. This was around for three years, the winners being Larry Correia (founder of the Sad Puppies), Orson Scott Card (controversial for his homophobia) and J. K. Rowling (no introduction needed). When the category was retired, Paolinelli admitted on his blog that it served as a “trolling the SJWs award”….
(13) RETURN ADDRESSEE UNKNOWN. [Item by Steven French.] Another argument for why Oumuamua was (most likely) not an alien spacecraft. “Many stars could have sent us ‘Oumuamua” reports Phys.Org. And here’s the take-home message:
Interstellar space may therefore be full of dagger-shaped shards of rock and ice (an exaggeration, but a fun quote for dinner parties nonetheless).
Faced with a perilous mission to save the earth, Porky Pig and Daffy Duck eschew confidence… “How could we possibly screw this up?” How could they not? …
…In the brand-new 2D animated sci-fi buddy action comedy, Porky Pig and Daffy Duck turn into unlikely heroes when their antics at the local bubble gum factory uncover a secret alien mind control plot. Against all odds, the two are determined to save their town (and the world!)… that is if they don’t drive each other crazy in the process….
[Thanks to Kathy Sullivan, Teddy Harvia, Mike Kennedy, Olav Rokne, Steve Green, Cathy Green, Steven Lee, Andrew Porter, John King Tarpinian, Chris Barkley, Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, and Steven French for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Olav Rokne.]
The New England Science Fiction Association honored the winners of two annual awards at Boskone 62 on February 15.
SKYLARK AWARD
NESFA presented the Skylark Award for 2025 at the ceremony.
2025: Ian Randal Strock
The Edward E. Smith Memorial Award for Imaginative Fiction (the Skylark) is presented annually by NESFA® to some person, who, in the opinion of the membership, has contributed significantly to science fiction, both through work in the field and by exemplifying the personal qualities which made the late “Doc” Smith well-loved by those who knew him.
Eleonor Piteira was announced as the winner by Dave Grubb. She was not there to accept but sent a video message.
The Gaughan Award honors the memory of Jack Gaughan, a long-time friend of fandom and one of the finest SF artists of the 20th century. Because Jack felt it was important to encourage and recognize new blood in the field, The New England Science Fiction Association, Inc., presents the Gaughan Award annually to an emerging artist (an artist who has become a professional within the past five years) chosen by a panel of judges.
????Hi, I'm Eleonor and I'm a freelance illustrator from Portugal! You can see my art in ttrpgs, card games, the one videogame, other assorted projects, and lately book covers :)Everything I paint is 100% human-made, as are the occasional bad jokes ?????? eleonorpiteira.squarespace.com
Tony Lewis at the 2019 Boskone. Photo by and (c) Andrew Porter.
“Dr. Tony Lewis, one of the last surviving founders of NESFA, Chairman of Noreascon, and longtime Press Czar of NESFA Press passed away yesterday at home,” announced Gay Ellen Dennett on Facebook on February 12. “Both Suford and Alice [his wife and daughter] were by his side.”
Anthony R. Lewis, called Tony, was a leader who helped organize and grow Boston sf fandom in the Sixties. While earning a Ph.D. in Nuclear Physics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology he joined MITSFS. Although the science fiction club had formed in 1949, more than a decade passed before the club finally became actively connected with fandom – their motto was “We’re not fans, we just read the stuff.” They read a lot more of it after Tony Lewis became the club librarian in 1961: within a few years their library grew to over 10,000 volumes. He also served as MITSFS’ Onseck, and he was known as the Evil Dr. Lewis, a title he relished.
Fancyclopedia 3’s entry adds this story about his MIT years:
When he was in grad school, he witnessed a test nuclear explosion in New Mexico (he told the story that he was possibly the only fan injured by an atomic bomb: he stood up too quickly after the blast and was knocked on his rear by the ground shock.) He spent most of his career in a “safer” industry, computers, as a technical writer then technical writing manager for Prime Computer.
Boston fandom’s growth was seen in the Sixties at the first Boskones, and in a joint attempt by BoSFS (which ran the con), MITSFS, and the University of Massachusetts Science Fiction Society to bid for the 1967 Worldcon. Although they lost, local fans were energized to create a group to supersede BoSFS, named the New England Science Fiction Association (NESFA). In 1967 Tony Lewis became the first President of NESFA. Among the officers was the editor of Instant Message, NESFA Clerk Susan Hereford. She became Susan Hereford Lewis in April 1968 when she married Tony — which Instant Message phrased: “ARL announced that to consolidate power he will annex the Clerk on April 7th.” By the beginning of 1969, Susan became known in fandom as Suford Lewis.
The ambition to bring a Worldcon to Boston continued to burn in a few hearts. In 1968 Charlie Brown, Ed Meskys and Dave Vanderwerf created Locus to promote the (ultimately successful) Boston in ’71 Worldcon bid. The first trial issue was scheduled for May of 1968; it featured news of Suford Lewis’ auto accident – 10 days after her marriage to Tony. That first issue was run off in the Lewis’s living room in Belmont, MA on Tony’s AB Dick mimeograph.
Tony Lewis in the 1970s. Photo by and (c) Andrew Porter.
While continuing as NESFA President and chair of Noreascon, the 1971 Boston Worldcon, Tony somehow found time to launch himself as a professional sf writer. His first published story, “Request for Proposal”, appeared in the November 1972 Analog. It is written in the form of interoffice memos about using nuclear warheads for slum clearance and urban renewal. The story’s dry political satire was so successful that it has been reprinted in five collections. In future years Tony had stories in themed anthologies edited by Martin H. Greenberg and Mike Resnick. Also, for over thirty years he contributed a calendar of upcoming events, such as sf conventions, to every issue of Analog. He was an active member of SFWA.
At the 1997 Worldcon, Mike Resnick’s panel of contributors to his Alternate Worldcons anthology (published 1994), Tony reminisced about the basis for his story “Keep Watching the Skies” — an actual Highmore, SD bid with one co-chair, Richard Harter, who gave a “speech.” Asked, “Would you like to say anything?”, Harter answered, “No.” Also, George Flynn, wearing a paper bag over his head, came up and read a piece in Frisian, which is why nobody realized it was in foul language.
Tony Lewis was active for many years in compiling the NESFA Index to Science Fiction Magazines. He invented the term “recursive SF” (any sf story that refers to sf) and wrote An Annotated Bibliography of Recursive Science Fiction (NESFA Press).
He was twice a Hugo finalist, for Space Travel by Ben Bova and Anthony R. Lewis from Writer’s Digest Books, nominated for the 1998 Best Non-Fiction Book Hugo, and Concordance to Cordwainer Smith, Third Edition by Anthony R. Lewis from NESFA Press was nominated for the 2001 Best Related Book Hugo.
Among his many talents he was a well-known (and skilled) auctioneer.
Tony and his daughter Alice Lewis as a toddler. Photo by and (c) Andrew Porter.
Lewis is generally credited with coming up with the name of the NASFiC (the North American Science Fiction Convention run when the Worldcon is outside North America).
“I was on the committee that made the report to the business meeting that set it up and I named the damn thing to keep George Nims Rayben from calling it the USCon,” he said.
Appropriately, Tony and Suford Lewis were the Fan GoHs at the Buffalo 2024 NASFiC. Prior to that they were GoHs at Conebulus (1978), and Windycon VI (1979). Tony was GoH at Lunacon 42 (1999), and Arisia ’03 (2003).
Suford and Tony Lewis at the Buffalo 2024 NASFiC. Photo by Rich Lynch.
Tony did not put himself forward as a fan humorist, being someone who always appeared wrapped in a certain amount of dignity, but he could surprise with his readiness to “unwrap” if there was an opening for a good line.
I remember at Magicon (1992) the highlight of “The Spanish Inquisition” panel of worldcon bidders was an exchange between NESFAns. Tony Lewis said a 1998 worldcon in Boston “is not going to be Noreascon 3 mark 2.” Anne Broomhead agreed, “Mark wouldn’t stand for it.” Deb Geisler said, “We won’t make the same mistakes.” Tony Lewis enthusiastically agreed, “We’ll make a whole new lot of mistakes, in new areas. We’re going to be the first people to make mistakes in these areas.”
Someone planning to kick off his new music blog by interviewing Paul Kantner of Jefferson Starship, whose Blows Against the Empire was a Hugo nominee in 1971, asked Tony Lewis, that year’s Worldcon chair and Hugo administrator, about the relationship between fandom and rock at the time. Tony provided this insight: “I was never really into rock myself, preferring baroque and bagpipe music.”
And when the Outer Space Treaty declared that the Moon belongs to all mankind, science fiction fandom did not take this lying down. At a December 1970 meeting of the New England Science Fiction Association, “[Tony Lewis] showed the moon map from the Nov 1970 issue of Sky and Telescope. Hugo Gernsback crater was identified, as were Wiener, Ley, Verne, Wells, etc. As a result of this increase in cultural knowledge it was [moved, seconded and passed] that the Moon be designated NESFA’s Moon and that the Aerospace Cadets protect it.” NESFAn Harry Stubbs, then a Lt. Col. in the Air Force, was named commander of the Aerospace Cadets, holding the title “Lord of the Wings.”
NESFA has kept a close eye on its property ever since. When there was a total eclipse of the Moon in July 1982, Tony Lewis wrote a letter protesting the unauthorized use of NESFA’s Moon. The club voted him responsibility for preventing the occurrence of any further unauthorized eclipses.
A visitor to NESFA wrote a 2007 article for Bostonist about slowly realizing that Tony was kidding them:
…The jokes can get more complicated. Wednesday, as NESFA members collated the “Instant Message” newsletter by hand (a process involving a continuous procession around a table), a visitor asked about the “Fanzine Control Number” (71-58837 791) printed at the bottom of each page. Nobody had a clue, and the matter was referred to Tony Lewis, a founding member.
“I can’t remember which President it was,” he explained, “but in the fifties there was widespread worry about the proliferation of fanzines and fanzine material. The Fanzine Control Number was introduced to limit the spread of fanzines.”
The visitor, looking for the Fanzine Control Number on his copy of Science-Fiction Five-Yearly, finally realized that Lewis was putting him on….
Andrew Porter, Suford Lewis, Tony Lewis at the 2019 Boskone. Photo by Daniel P. Dern.
However, Tony’s significance as a friend and mentor extended beyond Boston. When File 770 ran its 20th Anniversary Poll in 1998, one of the questions asked people “to name three fans who had the most influence on your fanac.” Lewis was named by four people – which was substantial given that seven was the highest number received by anyone.
His home club, where people got to see and work with him regularly, gave him their highest honors. He received the Skylark Award in 2021, given by NESFA to “some person, who, in the opinion of the membership, has contributed significantly to science fiction, both through work in the field and by exemplifying the personal qualities which made the late E. E. “Doc” Smith well-loved by those who knew him.” It is “an award for being both a pro and a ‘good guy’”.
Also, the editors of the NESFA Press book Ingathering dedicated it, “To Tony Lewis who created NESFA in his own image.”
During the 1993 Worldcon at “The Asimov Memorial Panel” Robert Silverberg offered many warm reminiscences of Isaac. Tony Lewis asked Silverberg, “Will you say nice things about me at my memorial?” Silverberg agreed, “Certainly, but don’t make it too soon. It’ll take a long time to think up nice things.” That was a humorously-meant exchange, of course, however, today everyone is finding it easy to think of nice things to say about Tony Lewis, especially on Facebook – on his personal page, the Boskone page, and individual tributes by David Gerrold and Michael A. Burstein.
(1) KRESS Q&A. Asimov’s “From Earth to the Stars” department brings us a “Q&A With Nancy Kress”
AE: What is your process? NK: For any story with real science (or rather, real-to-a-point science; if it were all real it wouldn’t be science fiction), I research first. The characters, like Kenda and Dayson, might already be in my mind, but characters have to actually do things, and the majority of those things should be connected in some way to the science. So I begin with reading, note-taking, and playing with the concepts and details of the science, be it genetic engineering, stellar physics, or—in this case—the Earth’s geomagnetic sphere (which is not a sphere but an elongated shape that extends from the center of the Earth to several hundred miles into space.) Because I knew next-to-nothing about geomagnetism, this involved a lot of study, a lot of going “Huh?” and then “Huh!” Also a lot of cursing; I am not trained as a scientist. Research not only grounds a story in actual science, it can also suggest plot ideas, and I ended up with as many pages of story ideas as research facts. Next all this gets reviewed and a loose outline emerges. Actually, to call it an “outline” is to vastly overstate. It’s one or two pages labeled MASTER SHEET which pretty much ends up mastering nothing, but at least it’s something to point out which direction I am hypothetically going and a few possible pathways to get there. Not so much GPS as a faded, dog-eared, slightly outdated Atlas roadmap that lacks all the new roads, collapsed bridges, and accidents on Interstate 90.
(2) GREENE’S REPLY. YouTuber Daniel Greene has responded in a 1-minute video to the sexual assault allegations reported in yesterday’s Scroll: “In Response To Naomi King’s Allegations”. Here is the transcript:
Hello, my name is Daniel Greene. This is an important message in response to various false allegations made against me by Naomi King of alleged sexual assault in a campaign launched on YouTube and more.
Let me be clear: I had consensual sex with Naomi King. Yes it was an affair that my then girlfriend and now fiance took several years to move on from. I also have clear and convincing evidence to prove everything was consensual.
Myself and my team are now planning to sue Naomi King in a court of law. The communication Naomi King has inaccurately used against me online has greatly damaged me and others to date. I also have many other pieces of evidence which prove my innocence.
Look for more communication from me based on truth and fact in the near future. Naomi King took time to launch a campaign against me and I will need time to communicate my truth as well more soon.
A commenter with the handle @ndrew7707 left these exceptionally worthwhile remarks after Greene’s video:
I doubt you’ll read through these comments, but just in case: I’ve never SA’d anyone, but I have cheated and sexually harassed people. I am a survivor of SA, though, and one that looked a lot like the situation described. Between this Naomi’s video about the cease and desist letter, it’s pretty clear to me that this is, in fact, a pattern of behavior that you’ve been denying for a long time. And I get it. Painful is an understatement for how it feels to fully admit to yourself the kind of person you’ve turned yourself into by following that impulse time and time again and learning new ways to hide it and justify it to yourself. So, please, take this from someone who does want you to get better: DO NOT sue them. Not just for their sake, but yours, and all the people you’ve hurt before this and the people you will hurt in the future if you don’t make real changes. Get out of the public eye, get into a treatment program, find a therapist that’s a social worker so that they can walk you through the change process and help you construct barriers to these thoughts and actions, including people who fully know the extent of what you’ve done and are willing to work with you to keep them in check. You cannot do this on your own. I know this comment section is full of people calling you a terrible person, and I don’t blame them. What you did is terrible, disgusting, all those things. But the most terrifying part of this is that you are not fundamentally, irredeemably bad. Very few people, if any, are. You are just a person who’s made a lot of bad decisions, and you are fully capable of making better ones. So, please, from one person who has unlearned abusive behavior: do not try to save your channel, your reputation, your career. Take the stability you’ve been able to build for yourself and actually get help. That is a privilege that should not be taken lightly. You might feel like you’re dying, but that’s normal. Feel that shit fully. Ask yourself for the rest of your life how you make certain you never treat someone else like that again. There is life to be lived on the other side of this, but you gotta figure out what that looks like without this attention, manipulation, and ill-gotten satisfaction you are clearly addicted to. And it is an addiction. Codependents Anonymous helped me tremendously for this reason, but I’d suggest some one-on-one treatment first before putting yourself in any group situation which will undoubtedly have survivors in it. I unsubscribed, but I’ll be back to remind you if you keep trying to do this. It’s bullshit, we all know it. It’s ok if the channel falls apart, it really is. There are a million other things one can do with the gift that is our one, finite, human life. Don’t waste yours on excuses.
…To younger fans (and by “younger” here I mean, “People in their 30s and 40s”) the Fifth Doctor has undergone a bit of a memetic evolution. Among the Doctors of the classic series, he was the Young One. We see him being chummy with David Tennant in the Children in Need “Time Crash” short, and hanging out with Tegan in “The Power of the Doctor”, and we watch Peter Davison in “The Five-ish Doctors” and he seems… nice. A bit grumpy. Definitely not on a par with the likes of McCoy, Ecclestone and Capaldi when you need a Doctor to go dark.
Yet what you forget about Tegan is that she’s the companion who left the TARDIS in “Resurrection of the Daleks” because it was too fricking violent. If you watch this charming collection of times the Doctor has shot someone to death with a gun, the Fifth Doctor is better represented than most – especially when you consider that in context, the Fourth Doctor is being framed in most of his scenes, and the Second Doctor is carrying a couple of big torches.
The show had been on the air for 20 years, and a battle was raging over whether it was going to be dark and grown-up and edgy now its audience was growing up, or be a kids’ show forever. And one of the definitive strikes in that battle was “Earthshock”, where the show killed off Adric. Sure, Adric will never rank well in our “Top 10 Least Annoying Doctor Who Companions” listicle, but if Star Trek: The Next Generation murdered Wesley Crusher, it’d still be considered a dark move.
It set the tone that would eventually lead to the All-Time-Favourites-List regular, “Caves of Androzani”….
A Lancaster teen was sentenced to four years in prison after making more than 375 hoax calls that included threats to detonate bombs, conduct mass shootings and “kill everyone he saw,” authorities said.
The calls targeted high schools, colleges and universities, places of worship, government officials and individuals across the United States, according to prosecutors.
The serial swatter, 18-year-old Alan W. Filion, pleaded guilty to making interstate threats to injure others, which frequently led to massive law enforcement responses and rendered officers unavailable to assist with other emergencies, according to the U.S. Department of Justice. He made hundreds of calls from August 2022 to January 2024, according to his plea agreement.
Filion was both a recreational swatter and a swatter-for-hire who advertised his services of mass disruption on social media platforms, prosecutors said.
In a January 2023 social media post, he claimed that when he swatted someone, he usually got police “to drag the victim and their families out of the house cuff them and search the house for dead bodies.” In some instances, officers entered the targeted buildings with their weapons drawn and detained individuals who were inside, prosecutors said.
He was arrested in January on Florida charges connected to a threat he made to a religious organization in Sanford, Fla., prosecutors said. Filion threatened to commit a mass shooting at the site and claimed to have an illegally modified AR-15, a Glock 17 pistol, pipe bombs and Molotov cocktails….
Thomson Reuters has won the first major AI copyright case in the United States.
In 2020, the media and technology conglomerate filed an unprecedented AI copyright lawsuit against the legal AI startup Ross Intelligence. In the complaint, Thomson Reuters claimed the AI firm reproduced materials from its legal research firm Westlaw. Today, a judge ruled in Thomson Reuters’ favor, finding that the company’s copyright was indeed infringed by Ross Intelligence’s actions.
“None of Ross’s possible defenses holds water. I reject them all,” wrote US District Court of Delaware judge Stephanos Bibas, in a summary judgment….
…Notably, Judge Bibas ruled in Thomson Reuters’ favor on the question of fair use. The fair use doctrine is a key component of how AI companies are seeking to defend themselves against claims that they used copyrighted materials illegally. The idea underpinning fair use is that sometimes it’s legally permissible to use copyrighted works without permission—for example, to create parody works, or in noncommercial research or news production. When determining whether fair use applies, courts use a four-factor test, looking at the reason behind the work, the nature of the work (whether it’s poetry, nonfiction, private letters, et cetera), the amount of copyrighted work used, and how the use impacts the market value of the original. Thomson Reuters prevailed on two of the four factors, but Bibas described the fourth as the most important, and ruled that Ross “meant to compete with Westlaw by developing a market substitute.”…
(6) TONY LEWIS (1941-2025). “Dr. Tony Lewis, one of the last surviving founders of NESFA, Chairman of Noreascon, and longtime Press Czar of NESFA Press passed away yesterday at home,” announced Gay Ellen Dennett on Facebook today. “Both Suford and Alice [his wife and daughter] were by his side. Further information will be posted when known.”
Tony Lewis
Fancylopedia notes Anthony R. Lewis co-founded the New England Science Fiction Association in 1967. He chaired the Boston Worldcon of 1971, Noreascon.
He was active for many years in compiling the NESFA Index to Science Fiction Magazines. He invented the term “recursive SF” (any sf story that refers to sf) and wrote An Annotated Bibliography of Recursive Science Fiction (NESFA Press).
Space Travel by Ben Bova and Anthony R. Lewis from Writer’s Digest Books was nominated for the 1998 Best Non-Fiction Book Hugo and Concordance to Cordwainer Smith, Third Edition by Anthony R. Lewis from NESFA Press was nominated for the 2001 Best Related Book Hugo.
Among his many talents he was a well-known (and skilled) auctioneer.
He was an active member of SFWA.
Tony is survived by his wife, Suford (they married in 1968) and daughter Alice.
File 770 will post a fuller tribute later this evening.
(7) MEMORY LANE.
[Written by Cat Eldridge.]
“Ill Met in Lankhmar” (1970)
Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser faced each other across the two thieves sprawled senseless. They were poised for attack, yet for the moment neither moved.
Each discerned something inexplicably familiar in the other.
Fafhrd said, “Our motives for being here seem identical.”
“Seem? Surely must be!” the Mouser answered curtly, fiercely eyeing this potential new foe, who was taller by a head than the tall thief.
“You said?”
“I said, ‘Seem? Surely must be!'”
“How civilized of you!” Fafhrd commented in pleased tones.
“Civilized?” the Mouser demanded suspiciously, gripping his dirk tighter.
— “Ill Met in Lankhmar”
Fifty-four years ago at the first Noreascon, Fritz Leiber would win the Hugo for Best Novella with “Ill Met in Lankhmar”, a Fafhrd and The Grey Mouser tale. It was also be awarded a Nebula Award for Best Novella.
The other Hugo nominees that year were “The Thing in the Stone” by Clifford D. Simak, “The Region Between” by Harlan Ellison, “The World Outside” by Robert Silverberg and “Beastchild” by Dean R. Koontz.
It was first published in the April 1970 issue of Fantasy & Science Fiction. A prequel to the series, Leiber had by that time been chronicling the pair’s adventures for some thirty years.
The story is the third one in Ace’s 1970 Swords and Deviltry paperback collection. It is available from the usual sources as are the later volumes. Audible has them as well.
(8) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.
[Written by Cat Eldridge.]
February 12, 1950 — Michael Ironside, 75 .
I most remember Michael Ironside for his role as Lieutenant Jean Rasczak in Starship Troopers. There wasn’t much great about that film but I thought that he made much of that character.
Do I need to say that I’m not covering everything he’s done of a genre nature? Well most of you get that. Really you do. So let’s see what I find interesting.
Scanners is one weird film. It really is. And he was in it as Darryl Revok, the Big Baddie, a role he perfectly played.
Next he got cast as the main antagonist in another of my favorite SF films, this time as Overdog McNab in Spacehunter: Adventures in the Forbidden Zone. Who comes with these names?
Then there was Total Recall where he was Agent Richter, the ruthless enforcer of Cohaagen, the source of everything corrupt on Mars. Great role that fit his gruff voice and frankly even gruffer looks absolutely perfectly.
One of his major ongoing roles was in the V franchise, first as Ham Tyle, a recurring role in V: The Final Battle, and then playing the same character in all episodes of V: The Series.
Now we come to my favorite of his roles, in one of my favorite series, seaQuest 2032, where he was Captain Oliver Hudson. Great series and an absolute fantastic performance by him! Pity it got cancelled after thirteen episodes.
Finally, he has one voice acting role I loved. In the DC universe, he was Darkseid, the absolute rule of Apokolis. He voiced him primarily on Superman: The Animated Series, but also on the Justice League series as well, and to my surprise on the HBO Harley Quinn series as well.
Unhappiness is a dreaded condition in the Civilization game series. Unhappy citizens stop working, stop researching scientific pursuits and, worst of all, start rioting.
In the new Sid Meier’s Civilization VII, which introduces three historical ages and a mounting series of crises during the transitions between them, my ancient Persian empire was running smoothly and expanding with ease. Then, suddenly, things struggled to feel cohesive. The game declared that my empire had fractured “as once-loyal settlements seek their own path forward.”
The unhappiness in my cities and towns grew so severe that several outlying settlements began trashing their districts and looking to outside civilizations for support. While I worked at putting out fires started by rioters, my neighbor Napoleon swooped in and quickly conquered one of my towns. This started a territorial war that only deepened the unhappiness of my population. Soon, half my towns were in revolt.
While following your chosen civilization’s path in Civilization VII, from the rough-hewed settlements of the past to the glistening megalopolises of the future, you move through ages that transform not just your technologies, government and civic policies, but also the broader identity of your civilization itself.
With its precipitous rises and falls, Civilization VII, which will be released on Tuesday for PCs, Macs and consoles, is a departure for the series. Although past iterations have had revolts, diplomatic incidents and civic upset, they tend to feel less closely connected to the ways that historical forces can boil over into crisis and conflict.
The violent and chaotic cuts here accurately reflect a world history where many things can happen all at once and often with surprising swiftness. History doesn’t always move forward in the routine, turn-based lock step of the 4X genre (explore, expand, exploit, exterminate) that Civilization popularized. More often, root causes like financial instability, cultural changes and oppressive hierarchies stay below the surface until emerging in a cacophony of war, revolution and natural-disaster-fueled chaos….
A new test of nuclear propellant fuel under space-like conditions has been hailed as a success by NASA and General Atomics Electromagnetic Systems (GA-EMS), in what is considered one more step on the road to nuclear-powered rocket engines. Such designs have long been suggested as a more efficient method of space travel and could cut interplanetary voyages down to just a few weeks.
While this latest test doesn’t make nuclear-powered rocket engines viable just yet, it’s an important step on the journey. This latest batch of tests was conducted at the compact fuel element environmental test (CFEET) facility at NASA MSFC, as per Space.com. It cycled the nuclear thermal propulsion (NTP) fuel up to 2600 Kelvin (4,220 Fahrenheit) and back down again several times, using superheated hydrogen…
Faced with the (very low probability) threat of an incoming asteroid impact, NASA is bringing out the big guns. The agency will employ its powerful Webb space telescope to monitor newly discovered asteroid 2024 YR4, which has a small chance of hitting Earth in 2032.
Based on current estimates, asteroid 2024 YR4 has a 2.1% chance of impact on December 22, 2032. Although the odds are still in our favor, there are currently no other known large asteroids with an impact probability above 1%, according to NASA. The space agency tends to take these matters quite seriously, which is why it plans to collect additional observations of the space rock using the Webb telescope in March to refine the current estimates, NASA revealed in a recent update.
The Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System (ATLAS) in Chile discovered the asteroid on December 27, 2024. Shortly after its discovery, the impact probability of the asteroid was set to 1.3%. However, additional observations increased the asteroid’s chances of crashing into Earth to 2.3% as of yesterday, before dropping slightly to 2.1% this morning. These odds are preliminary, and more observations of the asteroid are desperately needed….
A completely made-up scientific term is making the rounds in academic journals, and instead of being “oops!” one major publisher is basically saying “this is fine!”
As reported in Retraction Watch, A sharp-eyed Russian chemist (going by the extremely cool pseudonym “Paralabrax clathratus”) spotted the weird phrase “vegetative electron microscopy,” which makes about as much sense as “photosynthetic hammer” or “reproductive calculator.” The term has somehow snuck into nearly two dozen published papers, including one whose senior author is an editor at prestigious publisher Elsevier.
When called out on this obvious nonsense, Elsevier basically said “No no, it’s fine! It’s just a shorter way of saying ‘electron microscopy of vegetative structures'” which is like saying “vegetative car” is a dandy way to describe “a car that drives past vegetables.”…
[Thanks to Andrew Porter, John King Tarpinian, Chris Barkley, Daniel Dern, Mark Roth-Whitworth, Christian Brunschen, Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Steven French, Kathy Sullivan, Teddy Harvia, Mike Kennedy for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Steve Davidson.]
… Jack Gaughan was the first artist since Frank Paul in ’56 to be the convention Guest of Honor. Harlan Ellison was the toastmaster, a job he’s quite good at. A little longwinded, but always funny. On Friday, he auctioned off Bob Silverberg for $66 before Silverbob, in turn, auctioned Harlan off for $115 to a bunch of young ladies wearing Roddenberry sweatshirts….
(2) SFWA’S NEW QUARK. The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association has inaugurated a monthly public-facing roundup of the organization’s news: “Quark – A SFWA Public Digest”.
In an effort to maintain transparency and foster communications with all members of the SFF community and the public, SFWA would like to introduce Quark, a monthly digest which will give quick updates on what’s been happening within the organization….
(3) I WISH I WAS A SPACEMAN, THE FASTEST GUY ALIVE[Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] This week’s Word of Mouth over at BBC Radio 4 took a look at what it is like to be an astronaut. It began with a quick dive into the film Gravity musing on what was real – an encounter with an imaginary George Clooney who somehow imparted unknown but critical information – and what was not. But soon the programme got into the real meat of what it is like to be a spaceman with an interview with Chris Hadfield. I have to say it was one of the best interviews I have heard with an astronaut. Topics covered included: the why’s of space techno-speak, overcoming fear, sense of place and Chris’ getting into being a fiction author. All good stuff.
Colonel Chris Hadfield is a veteran of three spaceflights. He crewed the US space shuttle twice, piloted the Russian Soyuz, helped build space station Mir and served as Commander of the International Space Station.
Getting words and language right in as clear and a concise way is a matter of life and death for astronauts. Crews are traditionally made up of different nationalities and Russian is second to English on board. Chris Hadfield who flew several missions and captained the International Space Station talks about how astronauts communicate and the special language they use that he dubs NASA speak. He speaks several languages and lived in Russia for twenty years. As an author he has written several novels based on his experience in Space and as a fighter pilot the latest of which is The Defector. His books The Apollo Murders are being made into a series for TV. He tells Michael about the obligation he feels to share in words as best he can an experience that so few people have – of being in space and seeing Earth from afar.
Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft undocked from the International Space Station on Friday, Sept. 6, with separation confirmed at 6:04 p.m. Eastern time.
The reusable crew module is expected to land at 12:01 a.m. Eastern time (10:01 p.m. Mountain time) Saturday at White Sands Space Harbor at the U.S. Army’s White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico.
After months of turmoil over its safety, Boeing’s new astronaut capsule departed the International Space Station on Friday without its crew and headed back to Earth.
NASA’s two test pilots stayed behind at the space station — their home until next year — as the Starliner capsule undocked 260 miles (420 kilometers) over China, springs gently pushing it away from the orbiting laboratory. The return flight was expected to take six hours, with a nighttime touchdown in the New Mexico desert….
… A minute after separating from the space station, Starliner’s thrusters could be seen firing as the white, blue-trimmed capsule slowly backed away. NASA Mission Control called it a “perfect” departure.
Flight controllers planned more test firings of the capsule’s thrusters following undocking. Engineers suspect the more the thrusters are fired, the hotter they become, causing protective seals to swell and obstruct the flow of propellant. They won’t be able to examine any of the parts; the section holding the thrusters will be ditched just before reentry….
(5) NESFA SHORT STORY CONTEST. The New England Science Fiction Association is having a Short Story Contest (again) for non-professional writers. Deadline is September 30. Submissions must be less than 7500 words, and sent to storycontest@boskone.org. Full details here: “Short Story Contest”.
…The winner, runners-up, and honorable mentions will be announced during the awards ceremony at Boskone, in NESFA’s newsletter following Boskone, and in various electronic media, including e-zines, newszines, and the Boskone and NESFA websites, blogs, and Facebook pages.
The winner will receive a certificate of achievement, three NESFA Press books, and a free membership to their choice of the next Boskone or the Boskone after that.
Runners-up will receive a certificate and two NESFA Press books. Honorable mentions will receive a certificate and one NESFA Press book….
Horror writer William J. Donahue is the author of such novels as Burn Beautiful Soul (2020), Crawl on Your Belly All the Days of Your Life (2022), and most recently, Only Monsters Remain (2023). His short story collections include Brain Cradle (2003), Filthy Beast (2004) and Too Much Poison (2014). When not writing fiction, Donahue works as a full-time magazine editor and features writer. Over the past 15 years, his writing and reporting have earned nearly a dozen awards for excellence in journalism from the American Society of Business Publication Editors.
We discussed the artistic endeavor which had him performing under the name Dirty Rotten Bill, why the first three novels he wrote will never see the light of day, what he was doing with one of those heads from the film 8 Heads in a Duffel Bag, why he finds playing with the apocalypse so appealing, the reason he’s neither a plotter or a pantser, but a plantser, how a vegetarian is able to do damage to human flesh in his fiction, the way our journeys were different and yet we managed to wind up at the same destination, how wrestling changed his life, why we keep writing and submitting in the face of rejection, and much more.
Last year saw the formal introduction of the Best Game or Interactive Work category to the Hugo Awards, set for re-ratification in 2028. This year saw beloved RPG title Baldur’s Gate 3 win the prize (accepted by an attending dev team!), showing that this category does indeed have juice.
Still, questions remain on logistics, and how Worldcon attendees can best evaluate games in the face of the sprawling gaming industry. That’s what we hope to tackle in this (sporadic) series of guest posts, in which we plan to highlight various genre titles worthy of Hugo consideration (and plain worthy of playing). Easing into this inaugural post, here are three acclaimed indie SFF video games of note released so far in 2024 that we think voters would enjoy…
…So, what was “Stargate SG-1” about? The series picks up roughly a year after the events in [Roland] Emmerich’s movie, by which point the titular artifact has become common knowledge among the masses and the U.S. government has leveraged it to traverse distant worlds. An elite U.S. Air Force squad named SG-1 is deployed with the intention of warding off alien attacks, as the dark forest hypothesis comes into play with access to galactic civilizations both benign and malignant. The Goa’uld, the Replicators, and the Ori emerge as key threats to Earth, and the series draws heavily from history and mythology to weave intriguing cultural tapestries that intertwine, and often clash, with our own.
However, this well-oiled machine, which often ran on fumes due to budgetary constraints or a dearth of fresh creative directions, came to a halt in August 2006, when the Sci-Fi Channel (where the show had migrated to in 2002), announced that there would be no 11th season. Speculations about dwindling ratings, ever-expanding production costs, and poor marketing were cited to justify this cancellation. However, the real reason “Stargate SG-1” was axed can be traced to a network decision that had little to do with such logistical aspects. But what happened, exactly?
… In a now-archived interview with Variety, Mark Stern, former exec VP of original programming for the Sci-Fi Channel (now known as Syfy), clarified that “SG-1” cancellation was not ratings-based. “[The cancellation] was not a ratings-driven decision. We’re actually going out on a high note,” Stern said, while affirming that the cast and crew were given enough time to wrap up the narrative in a satisfactory manner, with all loose ends tied up in the series finale….
(9) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.
[Written by Dr. Valentin D. Ivanov.]
September 6, 1951 — Aleksandar Karapanchev. (Died 2021.) Aleksandar Karapanchev was a Bulgarian speculative fiction writer, journalist and poet. He was also an active fan, publisher and editor. He graduated from the University of Sofia with degrees in Turkish and Russian languages. However, the most impactful part of his career was the work at the specialized speculative fiction publishers Rollis, Orphia and Argus in the 1990s.
He joined fandom well before that and came to love and enjoy genre literature. He edited many dozens of books, served in the juries of a host of writing competitions and on the boards of non-profit organizations aimed to support and advance the speculative fiction. The last ten years of his life he was the secretary of Terra Fantastica – the society of Bulgarian speculative fiction writers.
Karapanchev authored tens of stories, published in the periodicals and in various anthologies. He was the recipient of tens of accolades and awards, including two Eurocons – for the Fantastica, Euristics and Prognotics (FEP) magazine he edited in 1989 and for his debut book in 2002. In 1996 as an editor he won, together with the team of the Argus publishing house, the most prestigious speculative genre accolade in Bulgaria – the Graviton award.
His most notable pieces of fiction are the short stories Stapen Croyd, describing the consequences of a noise catastrophe that has left the humanity in constant unrest and In the UNIMO Epoch, about the destructive effect of the consumerism. His stories have been translated in English, German and Russian. He also authored some poetry and a lot of genre-related non-fiction – reviews, articles on the history and modern tendencies of the genre.
Many young Bulgarian writers owe major improvements in their style to the diligent and careful editorial work of Aleksandar Karapanchev. His passing in 2021 was a major blow to the community.
(11) LATEST ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE NEWS. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.]“LLMs produce racist output when prompted in African American English” – a news report in Nature. “Large language models (LLMs) are becoming less overtly racist, but respond negatively to text in African American English. Such ‘covert’ racism could harm speakers of this dialect when LLMs are used for decision-making.”
From the research paper’s abstract:
Hundreds of millions of people now interact with language models, with uses ranging from help with writing1,2 to informing hiring decisions3. However, these language models are known to perpetuate systematic racial prejudices, making their judgements biased in problematic ways about groups such as African Americans4,5,6,7. Although previous research has focused on overt racism in language models, social scientists have argued that racism with a more subtle character has developed over time, particularly in the United States after the civil rights movement8,9. It is unknown whether this covert racism manifests in language models. Here, we demonstrate that language models embody covert racism in the form of dialect prejudice, exhibiting raciolinguistic stereotypes about speakers of African American English (AAE) that are more negative than any human stereotypes about African Americans ever experimentally recorded.
Primary research paper here, and it’s open access.
THE 60,000 BOOKS IN THE Joanine Library are all hundreds of years old. Keeping texts readable for that long, safe from mold and moisture and nibbling bugs, requires dedication. The library’s original architects designed 6-foot (1.8 meters) stone walls to keep out the elements. Employees dust all day, every day.
And then there are the bats. For centuries, small colonies of these helpful creatures have lent their considerable pest control expertise to the library. In the daytime—as scholars lean over historic works and visitors admire the architecture—the bats roost quietly behind the two-story bookshelves. At night, they swoop around the darkened building, eating the beetles and moths that would otherwise do a number on all that old paper and binding glue….
(13) VOLCANISM ON THE MOON 120 MILLION YEARS AGO. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] Back when the dinosaurs were scaring Raquel Welch (I have never really forgiven them for that) 120 million years ago, there was volcanic activity on the Moon. Research reported in this week’s Science looks at samples from China’s the Chang’e-5 spacecraft.
Igneous rocks on the Moon demonstrate that it experienced extensive volcanism, with the most recent precisely dated volcanic lunar rocks being 2 billion years old. Some types of volcanic eruption produce microscopic glass beads, but so do impacts. Wang et al. examined thousands of glass beads taken from a lunar sample collected by the Chang’e-5 spacecraft (see the Perspective by Amelin and Yin). They used compositional and isotopic measurements to distinguish volcanic- and impact-related beads, identifying three beads of volcanic origin. Radiometric dating of those volcanic beads showed that they formed 120 million years ago and were subsequently transported to the Chang’e-5 landing site. The results indicate recent lunar volcanism that is not predicted by thermal models.
(14) REV. B. HIBBARD’S VEGETABLE ANTIBILIOUS FAMILY PILLS. [Item by Andrew Porter.] From the site Daytonian in Manhattan. An advertisement in The Evening Post on August 25, 1837 promised in part:
They are highly appreciated for the relief they afford in affections of the Liver and Digestive Organs. The worst cases of Chronic Dyspepsia, Inveterate Costiveness, Indigestion, Dyspeptic Consumption, Rheumatism, Nervous or Sick Headache and Scurvy, have been entirely cured by a proper use of them. Also, Liver Complaints, Fever and Ague, Bilious Fever, Jaundice, Dysentery or Bloody Flex, the premonitory symptoms of Cholera, Dropsical Swelling, Piles, Worms in Children, Fits, Looseness and Irregularity of the Bowels, occasioned by Irritation, Teething, &c.
Universal Pictures on Friday debuted the first teaser for Wolf Man, its new film in which Christopher Abbott (Poor Things) transforms into the classic movie monster.
Co-starring three-time Emmy winner Julia Garner (Ozark), Sam Jaeger (The Handmaid’s Tale) and young up-and-comer Matilda Firth (Subservience), the New Zealand-shot reboot helmed for Blumhouse and Universal by Leigh Whannell (The Invisible Man) follows a family that is being terrorized by a lethal predator. Pic is slated for release in theaters on January 17, 2025….
[Thanks to Steven French, Kathy Sullivan, Teddy Harvia, N., Steven Lee, Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, John King Tarpinian, Chris Barkley, Cat Eldridge, and SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Jon Meltzer.]
RITA BULLWINKEL: Black Jesus and Other Superheroes and How to Wrestle a Girl are two of my favorite books I’ve ever read. And Dead in Long Beach, California, I just gobbled it whole in one sitting. I really feel like it is a book of science fiction. How do you feel about that genre camp?
BLACKBURN: I don’t think about genre like that, so I don’t approach any kind of work with one tone or angle as the goal. I have to have the voice that matters to me. But for this one, I did have this intention of doing this sort of high fantasy sci-fi, speculative kind of world that was tethered to our current modern world in a way. And as I kept going, I figured out, “Oh, the thing that’s nagging me, the thing that’s most hard to write is actually the part that’s closer to reality, and that’s the part I need to start investing more of my energy in.” That was a turning point during the early drafting stages, where I had to readjust the proportions and the vision and the scope. But I always knew it was going to be a little bit out of this world. Of course, the original title was “Lesbian Assassins at the End of the World,” so I was definitely going to reach far beyond what we know in this tangible universe. So that was fun to write, especially during the pandemic, when I was very disconnected from humanity. I wanted to be someplace safer, someplace where I understood everything, where I knew what was going to happen. So I started to get invested in that process and, apparently, that is a pretty cross-genre kind of way of looking at a story.
(2) LIVE FROM 1965. James Davis Nicoll fed the Young People Read Old SFFpanel James Schmitz’ “Balanced Ecology” from a 1965 issue of Analog, and one of the nominees for the first Nebula Awards (1966). What did they think? Well, they didn’t hate it.
Winners (tie): Dragana Matovic of Serbia for the story “Outside the Rain Was Relentlessly Falling” and Dr. Jennifer Grimes of Milford, MA for the story “The Simulation: Subject Ashe Klinn”.
Runner-up: Michael Barron of Parkville, MD for the story “The Last Time My Twin Destroyed the World”.
Honorable Mention: Jessica Li of Fremont, CA for the story “Wed the Sea Angels”.
Honorable Mention: Tyler Robinson of Dexter, MO for the story “Acid Memory Reflux”.
It turns out my unlimited hosting account was not as unlimited as I’d thought. In particular, it’s “not intended to be used for data backup or archiving purposes.” And 20-plus years and a quarter-terabyte of photos is clearly an archive of my own.
So I’m learning how I can rebuild the Gallery within my hosting service’s rules. It’s going to be a process, but we’ll get there.
The Jimmy Kimmel Live! host dropped a five-minute short on Monday night, directed by JKL‘s Will Burke, hyping his March 10 gig emceeing the Academy Awards — re-creating many Barbie sets and reuniting four of its castmembers in a spoof that finds a hapless Kimmel trying to make his way to the Dolby Theatre. “Since the dawn of time, men have been getting lost,” says a voice-of-God Helen Mirren, spoofing her own narration of the Margot Robbie feature. “This is the story of one such dum-dum.”…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZS15h2qeTms
(6) THE MARVELS MINI-REVIEW. [Item by Daniel Dern.] The Marvels is now on Disney+ (as in, available to subscribers – we just watched it), and, I see, also on DVD/BluRay in libraries (having just checked my local library/network).
I liked this a lot. It was (IMHO) a fun, well-done ride throughout, with some unexpected scenes and bits.
Some brief possibly-helpful non-spoiler notes:
If you haven’t already watched the Ms. Marvel series (via Disney), it would help, I’m sure, so you know who (within the Marvel video universe) Ms Marvel is (there’s some powers differences vs the comics). And it’s a good show, well worth watching.
Captain Monica Rambeau’s story starts in WandaVision. I’m not sure watching WV for this is essential (they do one-line-summarize, which feels sufficient vis-a-vis the movie). IFTM (It Feels To Me)(and it’s implied/flashbacked) that some other of Rambeau’s character/backstory takes place in the Captain Marvel movie.
(One wonders what this movie might have been like if Rachel Brosnahan had been given that Cap M. role instead of Brie Larsen, yielding The Mazel-ous Ms Marvel 🙂 )
New York’s $700 million-a-year tax break for film and TV productions isn’t providing taxpayers with a good return on investment, according to a new analysis commissioned by the state itself….
…The state’s biggest industry-specific tax break belongs to the film industry, which gets $700 million a year to film or do post-production work in the Empire State. Hochul and legislative leaders are big supporters of the program, which has helped lure hundreds of productions over the years.
The tax break can be considerable. It covers up to 30% of a film’s qualified production costs, with another 10% available if productions are filmed in certain counties north of New York City. The credit is also refundable, meaning the state pays out the excess money if it exceeds a film production’s tax bill.
Last year, TV shows “Saturday Night Live,” “Blue Bloods,” “New Amsterdam” and “God Friended Me” all claimed the tax credit, totaling more than $20 million each, according to state records.
Beyond the lackluster return on investment, PFM’s report surmised that much of the filming that occurred in New York would have happened regardless of the tax credit….
(8) MEDICAL UPDATE. Nancy Collins shared news with followers of her GoFundMe about her recovery from a blood clot in one of her lungs: “What Doesn’t Kill Me Leaves Me With Medical Bills”. Donors have given $6,708 of the $10,000 goal as of today.
February 7th, 2024 by Nancy Collins, Organizer
I had to adjust my goal upward because I just found out how much my Eliquis prescription is costing me even *with* insurance. Holy cow. As it is, I’m having trouble getting it filled. The doctor sent my prescription to the Walgreens I use Monday evening. It’s Wednesday morning and it’s still not in stock. Apparently the “Starter Pack” isn’t kept in stock at any of the Walgreens–or most pharmacies, for that matter. My PCP is trying to get me samples to tide me over. Luckily, I feel okay and have enough energy to go buy compression socks.
I am deeply touched by the response so far. Y’all are good peoples.
Today by Nancy Collins, Organizer
I saw my PCP today, and she said my lungs sound good and warned me from taking NSAIDS until I’m off the blood thinners. She also set up an outpatient appointment with a Cancer Care Center for next month, to check that my clotting issues have been resolved. Also, this is the last day I take 4 Eliquis–tomorrow I step down to 2 a day for the next 3 weeks. And it’s also Mardi Gras! Laissez les Bon Temps Roulez to all of you who have helped by donating or passing along the link!
He’s been attending science fiction conventions for half a century.
The first con he worked was IguanaCon II, the 1978 Worldcon, here in Phoenix.
He chaired HexaCon 16 and CopperCon 28 and has worked most committee positions at a host of others, especially LepreCons and CopperCons, but also multiple Westercons, World Horror, World Fantasy, Anizona, MythosCon and RandomCon. Most recently he sponsored filk GoHs at CoKoCon.
Gary loved to read poetry on panels at various conventions. He was also a gaming fan and could be found at most of the local gaming conventions.
He was the editor’s assistant for years on ConNotations.
He’s served on the boards of LepreCon, Inc., CASFS and WesternSFA and still held positions on all three when he passed.
He was honoured at LepreCon 42, who made him their Fan GoH.
Perhaps most of all, he’s known for his association with filk, especially through the Phoenix Filk Circle, which he ran for many years.
Bruce D. Arthurs adds, “Hilde and I have known Gary for years, and always tried to catch up with each other at local conventions. One more face that will be missed.”
Born February 13, 1929 — Carol Serling, (Died 2020.) I try here to write Birthdays that I’ve not done before which is how I come to be celebrating Carol Serling, wife of Rod Serling.
She was, as all her family and friends will tell you, the faithful defender and steward of his work. She was born Carolyn Louise Kramer and she married him in 1948; they were married just twenty-seven years until his heart simply didn’t survive open heart surgery at age fifty.
Upon his death, she became rather active in preserving his legacy. She would become editor and television producer for many of The Twilight Zone-related enterprises including the third iteration of TheTwilight Zone series in which she was an executive producer for the first twenty episodes.
She has but one acting credit, in Twilight Zone: The Movie’s “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet” segment, as a passenger. She was a key consultant for this film.
She was the executive producer on Twilight Zone: Rod Serling’s Lost Classics, a two-story film. Ms. Serling found these two unproduced stories by her husband in a trunk at her home.
She donated many of his television scripts and movie screenplays to Ithaca College where her husband had taught courses in creative writing and film and television criticism. The gifts helped the college establish its Rod Serling Archives.
Now we come to her print publications.
She edited five Twilight Zone anthologies (Journeys to the Twilight Zone, Return to the Twilight Zone, Adventures in the Twilight Zone, Twilight Zone: 19 Original Stories on the 50th Anniversary and More Stories from the Twilight Zone), plus the Rod Serling’s Night Gallery Reader with Martin H. Greenberg and Charles G. Waugh.
With David Brode, she wrote Rod Serling and The Twilight Zone: The 50th Anniversary Tribute.
I know that she was responsible for Rod Serling’s The Twilight Zone Magazine by licensing the name to Montcalm Publishing. She would be the associate publisher and consulting editor there.
Carol told her daughters that she would like this poem to be read at the time of her death…
Mary Elizabeth Frye’s “Do Not Stand at My Grave and Weep”
Do not stand at my grave and weep, I am not there, I do not sleep. I am in a thousand winds that blow, I am the softly falling snow. I am the gentle showers of rain, I am the fields of ripening grain. I am in the morning hush, I am in the graceful rush Of beautiful birds in circling flight, I am the starshine of the night. I am in the flowers that bloom, I am in a quiet room. I am in the birds that sing, I am in each lovely thing. Do not stand at my grave and cry, I am not there. I do not die.
John Cleese is making it clear that he – and a few other Pythons – are in complete disagreement with long-ago co-star Eric Idle, who last weekend slammed manager (and daughter of Python co-founder Terry Gilliam) Holly Gilliam for what Idle suggested were the troupe’s dwindling finances.
“We own everything we ever made in Python and I never dreamed that at this age the income streams would tail off so disastrously,” Idle posted on X/Twitter Saturday. “But I guess if you put a Gilliam child in as your manager you should not be so surprised. One Gilliam is bad enough. Two can take out any company.”
Cleese left no doubt where he stands on the matter.
“I have worked with Holly for the last ten years,” the Fawlty Towers creator tweeted today, “and I find her very efficient, clear-minded, hard-working, and pleasant to have dealings with.”
Cleese continued, “Michael Palin has asked me to to make it clear that he shares this opinion. Terry Gilliam is also in agreement with this.”
Apparently there’s no love lost between Cleese and Idle, with the latter responding, when asked by an X follower if the two remain close, “I haven’t seen Cleese for seven years.” When another follower replied saying that made him sad, Idle responded, “Why. It makes me happy.”
Today, Cleese responded with an assessment so blunt some followers wondered if it was all a gag: “We always loathed and despised each other, but it’s only recently that the truth has begun to emerge.”
Some Amazon Prime customer were angry enough at Prime Video’s introduction of ads that decided to take legal action.
The retail giant is facing a proposed class action lawsuit filed on Friday that alleges it breached its terms of service and misled customers by introducing ads into Prime Video service and then requiring users to pay $2.99 to get rid of them. The Hollywood Reporter first spotted the lawsuit, and posted a copy of the lawsuit on its site.
Amazon turned on the ads to its Prime Video service after telegraphing the move a few months earlier. Executives said the ads would allow Amazon to continue investing in content without having to raise the price of the service. Unlike other subscription streaming services, Prime Video is a feature tied to the online retail company’s Prime service, so raising prices could’ve meant charging people who don’t even use the service a higher rate.
A couple of years back, British filmmaker Rhys Frake-Waterfield learned that the 1926 book Winnie-the-Pooh — which introduced the characters Pooh, Piglet, Eeyore, and Christopher Robin — was about to fall into the public domain and decided to direct a horror film featuring the quartet. The low-budget result, Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey, became a viral sensation after stills from the film hit the internet in May 2022.
At the time he was making the film, Frake-Waterfield was unable to feature the character of Tigger, who first appeared in 1928’s The House at Pooh Corner and had not yet bounced into the public domain. Pooh’s tiger buddy does, however, feature in the director’s sequel, Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey 2, as you can see in the frightening first-look images of the horror franchise’s version of Tigger.
In the film, Winnie-the-Pooh, Piglet, Owl, and Tigger find their woodland home and their lives endangered after Christopher Robin reveals their existence. Not wanting to live in the shadows any longer, the group decides to take the fight to the town of Ashdown, leaving a bloody trail of death and mayhem in their wake….
From Australia comes a story too cool to believe. Like a vegetable version of Jurassic Park or King Kong, a copse of pine trees from a species that evolved in the Cretaceous Era were found high in the mountains.
These living fossils, to use the classic phrase, survived both the comet impact and subsequent global firestorm that killed the dinosaurs, as well as two intervening ice ages to make it to our time, and Australian botanists are treating the specimens as a top-secret national treasure.
The Wollemi pine evolved 91 million years ago and went extinct according to the fossil record 2 million years ago, but in the Blue Mountains west of Sydney, a stand of 90 specimens were found high in the more remote peaks in 1994.
For the past three decades, and in extreme secrecy, a team of specialists from the National Parks and Wildlife Service (NPWS) of Australia has been gradually planting small clumps of the Wollemi pine in other locations to help ensure it has every chance to see another 91 million years.
It helps the story that the Wollemi doesn’t look much like any pine tree you’ve seen in the woods by your house. Sporting Granny Smith apple-green foliage that grows in a pattern similar to a fern, it has a covering of bark reminiscent of Coco-puffs….
Matthew Vaughn really made a name for himself with the ultra-stylized action movie Kingsman: The Secret Service in 2014. Now he’s bringing us Argylle, with an absolutely stacked cast of actors who are sometimes in it! Argyle definitely raises some questions. Like why was Henry Cavill presented as the star of this movie when he’s in it for just a few minutes? How many twists is too many twists? What does The Division even do? Why did they let her publicly share their secrets for half a decade? What’s that cat doing here?
[Thanks to Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, John King Tarpinian, Daniel Dern, Steven Lee, Rich Lynch, Bruce D. Arthurs, Chris Barkley, Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, and Steven French for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Daniel Dern.]
The New England Science Fiction Association honored the winners of two annual awards at Boskone 61 on February 10.
SKYLARK AWARD
NESFA presented the Skylark Awards for 2023 and 2024 at the ceremony.
2023:John Scalzi
2024: Ellen Kushner & Delia Sherman
The Edward E. Smith Memorial Award for Imaginative Fiction (the Skylark) is presented annually by NESFA® to some person, who, in the opinion of the membership, has contributed significantly to science fiction, both through work in the field and by exemplifying the personal qualities which made the late “Doc” Smith well-loved by those who knew him.
Delia Sherman (left) and Ellen Kushner (right). Photo by Malka Svei.John Scalzi
Here is an example of the award trophy:
The admonition about where to stick it is, after a fashion, a genuine safety warning that dates to this Jane Yolen anecdote. The line is usually delivered by the audience with great gusto.
JACK GAUGHAN AWARD FOR THE BEST EMERGING ARTIST
2024: Alex Dos Diaz
Alex Dos Diaz
The Gaughan Award honors the memory of Jack Gaughan, a long-time friend of fandom and one of the finest SF artists of the 20th century. Because Jack felt it was important to encourage and recognize new blood in the field, The New England Science Fiction Association, Inc., presents the Gaughan Award annually to an emerging artist (an artist who has become a professional within the past five years) chosen by a panel of judges.
LUNA by Alex Dos Diaz
Alex Dos Diaz’ website, with images of many more works, is here.
FELLOWS OF NESFA
Tonight’s ceremony also included the induction of two Fellows of NESFA:
Over the February 4-5 weekend water pipes in the MIT Student Center in Boston froze and burst, causing significant damage throughout the building including to the fourth floor where the MIT Science Fiction Society club library is housed. The MITSFS Library, the world’s largest public open-shelf collection of science fiction, had an inch of water in it. Students initially were denied access to the area to rescue books for several weeks, and unable to assess how much mold damage was occurring.
MITSFS’ Kat Allen told NESFA’s Rick Kovalcik that when the initial MITSFS team got into the building in late February there was water on the floor in the entire library. While the books on shelves were mostly safe, anything in boxes was exposed to water. The books in boxes molded, and were almost a total loss. Some of the books in boxes were near shelves, and the books on those shelves including, unfortunately, in “Damnation Alley” where the bound magazines are shelved, have visible black mold.
The team removed everything obviously moldy, trashing over 1000 volumes, mostly paperbacks and unbound magazines. They isolated the bound magazines with desiccant and hope to save them.
Rick Kovalcik says since then NESFA has been in touch with MITSFS on an ongoing basis. And what’s more, NESFA just found in their dead storage an archive of multiple copies of old magazines including Astounding/Analog in remarkably good condition (given that they were stored in an unheated storage area.) They have mentioned this to MITSFS as a possible replacement for some of their damaged collection.
(1) 2022 HUGO WINNER GETS UNEXPECTED VAT BILL. [Item by Cora Buhlert.] My Hugo trophy saga continues, because I got an invoice today charging me import duties and VAT for my trophy. I’m kicking up a bit of a stink about this and tweeted at the German department of trade, because a Hugo trophy is not trade good and I have no idea why they charge me VAT (i.e. sales tax) for something that was not purchased. It’s not so much about the money — Chicon will reimburse me for the costs, but an all-volunteer non-profit organization shouldn’t have to pay import duties and German VAT either. Also, I strongly suspect that e.g. a German Oscar winner would not be charged for their trophy.
Anyway, here is my tweet (in German) to the department of trade. Any boosts would be appreciated.
(3) IT’S WEDNESDAY ON SATURDAY NIGHT. [Item by Mike Kennedy.] Saturday Night Live featured Jenna Ortega (Wednesday) as the host. So, you know they had to slip in a couple of genre/related bits.
“Exorcism”
“School vs. School”
(4) LIMELIGHT FOR FANZINES. Cora Buhlert has posted two more “Fanzine Spotlights.”
SMOF News is a weekly newsletter about geek-oriented fan conventions, published every Wednesday evening (Pacific time). A typical issue is divided into four parts:
1) The big news of the week, or, if there isn’t any, informational articles about various aspects of cons. 2) News in brief, for minor news and routine items like Convention Adds Guest, Fan Fund Opens Voting, or (sadly) Convention Goes on Indefinite Hiatus. 3) Worldwide convention listings for the next five weekends. 4) One interesting link which does not necessarily have anything to do with conventions.
The overall tone it aims for is “industry newsletter”.
Remembrance of Things Past and Future is devoted to science fiction, fantasy, and horror as published in the magazines. The history of SF especially is tied to the long history of magazine publishing; some of the old classics of the genre spent years stuck inside brittle magazine pages before getting turned to books. It’s a rather niche criterion for what can be reviewed (a story must have been originally published or reprinted in a zine), but it’s at the same time wide-spanning. I could review a Robert E. Howard serial from 90 years ago and also Elizabeth Bear’s latest (and no doubt good) outing without crossing the streams, so to speak…
(5) NESFA SHORT STORY CONTEST, 2022-23. The 2022-2023 NESFA Short Story Contest winners were announced at Boskone 60 in February. Contest administrator Steve Lee says, “Getting recognition is the best reward for authors.” From the website of past winners:
Winner: Amy Johnson of Somerville, MA for the story “Excuse Me, This is My Apocalypse”
First runner-up: Dianne Lee of Chicago, IL for the story “The Gambler”
Finalist: Chloe Oriotis of Toronto, Canada for the story “Mara’s Moon”
Finalist: Gideon P. Smith of Winchester, MA for the story “To Look Upon the Face of God”
Finalist: Lauren Zarama of Hopkinton, MA for the story “The Surrogate”
Lee says, “The winner’s story was accepted for publication online in Escape Pod a few months after submission.”
(6) IT IS YOUR DESTINY. OR MAYBE NOT. David M. de León discusses why multiverses are having a moment right now at The Yale Review: “All at Once, the Multiverse Is…”
…As sci-fi writer Ted Chiang has written, the rise of the multiverse represents a seismic change in narrative fiction. “For much of human history, stories reinforced the idea of fate,” Chiang argues. “They told us that events unfolded the way they did because of destiny or the will of God.” But the multiverse is not about destiny. Instead of showing how things must be, it imagines a place where all options are possible and equal, none better or more probable than the other, none more destined or fated….
(7) TODAY’S 10,000. I learned today from the LA Times, “Oscars: Real ‘Everything Everywhere All At Once’ laundromat” that the film was shot in a real laundromat about a mile from where I grew up. Though I’ve never been inside, I have been a customer at the family’s liquor store next door.
Majers Coin Laundry in San Fernando could be any Los Angeles-area laundromat.
It’s tucked between an auto repair shop and a mobile home park, its tall glass windows revealing vending machines stocked with M&M’s and bleach. Rows of metal carts line the front, where the wind occasionally blows them into the asphalt parking lot.
But there’s one detail that sets Majers apart from the competition: For six days in March 2020, this laundromat was home to Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert’s production of “Everything Everywhere All At Once,” now the front-runner for best picture and a host of other prizes at Sunday’s Academy Awards ceremony after sweeping top honors at the Directors, Producers, Writers and Screen Actors guild awards….
(8) HIDDEN AMPAS FIGURES. Variety explains the voting mechanism that determines “How Oscars Best Picture Winners Are Chosen”. Lots weirder than Hugo voting! (The article has today’s date, but discusses the computation that determines the finalists.) Here’s the first stage.
… Depending on how many voters participate this year, a mathematical formula determines what is needed to be a best picture nominee. For the sake of understanding, unless you’re John Nash (played by Russell Crowe in the Oscar-winner “A Beautiful Mind”), we’ll label this the “Best Picture Number,” or “BPN.” PwC oversees the entire process. After all the votes are cast, the BPN is determined by dividing the total number of ballots by 11, which is the number of available nominations plus one. Any film that receives an amount of No. 1 votes that surpasses the BPN is automatically a nominee. Believe it or not, based on how many films are released each year, there aren’t always many movies….
(9) FREE READ. Cora Buhlert has a new flash fiction story out as part of Wyngraf Magazine’s “cozy flash” fiction series. It’s called “Homecoming Gift”.
Prince Colwyn smiled as he stepped onto the pier in the harbour of Calfiris. It was good to be home.
The arrival of his ship the Sea Squall, now a lot more battered than when she had left three long years ago, had not gone unnoticed, and so a squad of guardsmen hastened down the pier to meet him….
On the chill stroke of midnight, 31 December 2021, AA Milne’s Winnie-the-Pooh went out of copyright and, like a demon from an open grave, a worryingly bad idea flew out into the world: a horror version of AA Milne’s Winnie the Pooh. Well, here it is, promising to do for Brit horror what Sex Lives of the Potato Men did for Brit comedy, with a terrifying combination of not-scary and not-funny, and a cast of Love Island types on Xanax apparently reading the dialogue off an optician’s chart held up behind the camera….
(11) ON THE FRONT. [Item by Patrick McGuire.] The Princeton alumni magazine has a rather sfnal cover relating to AI, including a picture of Asimov. It looks to me rather like something F&SF might have run as a cover, maybe in the 1950s. Of course, now that we’re here in The Future, one can argue that it’s no longer sfnal. Princeton Alumni Weekly, March 8, 2023.
— Princeton Alumni Weekly (@pawprinceton) March 3, 2023
(12) MEMORY LANE.
2019 – [Compiled by Cat Eldridge.] Marvin Lachman’s The Heirs of Anthony Boucher: A History of Mystery Fandom.
Our Beginning this Scroll is that of Marvin Lachman’s The Heirs of Anthony Boucher: A History of Mystery Fandom. Boucher’s Sunday mystery review column for the New York TimesBook Review was the first such column for fans of that genre.
Boucher’s column inspired the first fan magazine, The Armchair Detective, and Boucher then enthusiastically encouraged it and reviewed it. Many say that the column itself led to the creation of mystery fandom.
It’s an amazing book (available at the usual suspects) that collects all of the columns that he wrote. As they’re not spoilers, I’ll give the full text of one such entry sans the wonderful photo of Len and June Moffatt that was with it.
JDM Bibliophile (1965–2004) A more hard-boiled writer than Patricia Wentworth became the subject of a fan magazine in March 1965 when Len and June Moffatt of Downey, California, first published the JDM Bibliophile (JDMB), devoted to the work of John D. MacDonald.
MacDonald starting writing for pulp magazines in 1946 during their waning days. He then switched to JDMB, a mimeographed magazine at the time, was described in its initial issue as a “non-profit amateur journal devoted to the readers of John D. MacDonald and related matters.” A goal was to obtain complete bibliographic information on all of MacDonald’s writings, and this was partly achieved with The JDM Master Checklist, published in 1969 by the Moffatts. They had help from many people, including MacDonald himself. Though he kept good records, he, like most authors, didn’t have complete publishing data on his own work. Especially helpful to the Moffatts were William J. Clark and another couple, Walter and Jean Shine of Florida. The Shines published an updated version of the Checklist in 1980, adding illustrations, a biographical sketch, and a listing of articles and reviews of MacDonald. JDMB offered news and reviews of MacDonald’s writings and their adaptation to various media. There were also contributions from MacDonald, including reminiscences and commentary. The Moffatts contributed a column (“& Everything”), as did the Shines (“The Shine Section”). Other JDM fans sent articles, letters, and parodies. One issue, #25 in 1979, included the Shines’ “Confidential Report, a Private Investigators’ File on Travis McGee,” describing information gleaned from the McGee canon about his past, interests, cases, and associates. MacDonald once said of Walter Shine, “He knows more about Travis than I do.”
After the Moffatts had published twenty-two issues of JDMB, it was transferred in 1979 to the University of South Florida in Tampa, with Professor Edgar Hirshberg as editor. It continued until 1999. One final issue, #65, was published as a memorial to Hirshberg who had died in June 2002. It was edited by Valerie Lawson. On February 21, 1987, about a hundred McGee fans gathered at his “address,” Slip F-18 at the Bahia Mar Marina in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, where McGee kept his houseboat The Busted Flush. The mayor of Fort Lauderdale unveiled a plaque honoring McGee.
Now here’s the Beginning
Preface
All knowledge is contained in fandom.—Anthony Boucher
This history of mystery fandom is called The Heirs of Anthony Boucher because it was to Boucher that fans turned before “The Fan Revolution” was launched in 1967. There were fans before 1967, and I shall discuss them. However, it was in 1967 that the mystery developed a fandom that was not limited to specific authors or characters such as Sherlock Holmes.
Boucher was an excellent mystery writer, but he gave up writing novels—though he continued to write the occasional short story—to review mysteries for the San Francisco Chronicle in 1942. In 1951 he became the mystery critic for the New York Times Book Review. In addition, he reviewed for Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. He was considered the outstanding reviewer of crime fiction in America and on three occasions received Edgars from Mystery Writers of America for his writing.
Boucher mentioned fan activities in his column, but there were few except for those involving Sherlock Holmes. Boucher reviewed what was perhaps the earliest general fan scholarship, A Preliminary Check List of the Detective Novel and Its Variants (1966), an annotated list of recommendations by Charles Shibuk. In 1966 Boucher also wrote of a bibliography of the works of John Dickson Carr, compiled by Rick Sneary of California.
(13) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.
[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]
Born March 12, 1886 — Kay Nielsen. Though he’s best known for his work with Disney, for whom he did many story sketches and illustrations, not the least for Fantasia, and The Little Mermaid be it thirty years after his death, I’d be remiss not to note his early work illustrating such works as East of the Sun and West of the Moon, Hansel and Gretel and Andersen’s Fairy Tales. East of the Sun and West of the Moon is my favorite work by him. (Died 1957.)
Born March 12, 1914 — John Symonds. Critic of Alistair Crowley who published four, yes four, books on him over a fifty-year period starting in the Fifties: The Great Beast, The Magic of Aleister Crowley, The King of the Shadow Realm and The Beast 666. Needless to say, the advocates of Crowley aren’t at all happy with him. Lest I leave you with the impression that was his only connection to our community, he was a writer of fantasy literature for children including the feline magical fantasy, Isle of Cats with illustrations by Gerard Hoffnung. (Died 2006.)
Born March 12, 1925 — Harry Harrison. Best-known first I’d say for his Stainless Steel Rat and Bill, the Galactic Hero series which were just plain fun, plus his novel Make Room! Make Room! which was the genesis of Soylent Green. I just realized I’ve never read the Deathworld series. So how are these? (Died 2012.)
Born March 12, 1933 — Myrna Fahey. Another who obviously died far too young, of cancer. Though best-known for her recurring role as Maria Crespo in Walt Disney’s Zorro, which I’ll admit is at best genre adjacent, she did have some genre roles in her brief life including playing Blaze in the Batman episodes of “True or False-Face” and “Holy Rat Race”. Her other genre appearances were only on The Time Tunnel and Adventures of Superman. (Died 1973.)
Born March 12, 1933 — Barbara Feldon, 90. Agent 99 on the Get Smart series, who reprised her character in the TV movie Get Smart Again! (1989), and in a short-lived series in 1995 later also called Get Smart. Other genre credits include The Man from U.N.C.L.E. She didn’t have that much of an acting career though she was in the pilot of Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In. It amazing how many performers guested on that show.
Born March 12, 1952 — Julius Carry. His one truly great genre role was as the bounty hunter Lord Bowler in The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr. oh but what a role it was! Over the course of the series, he was the perfect companion and foil to Bruce Campbell’s Brisco County, Jr. character. He did have one-offs in The Misfits of Science, Earth 2, Tales from the Crypt and voiced a character on Henson’s Dinosaurs. (Died 2008.)
Born March 12, 1955 — Jim Mann, 68. Living in the Pittsburgh area, a con-running fan who has worked on quite a few Boskones, chairing Boskone 25 and Boskone 47 as well being involved in Confluences and Worldcons. He’s edited quite a few books NESFSA, I’ll just single out Robert Bloch’s Out of My Head, Anthony Boucher’s The Compleat Boucher (which I highly recommended) and Cordwainer Smith’s The Rediscoveryof Man.
Born March 12, 1960 — Courtney B. Vance, 63. I know him best from Law & Order: Criminal Intent, in which he played A.D.A. Ron Carver, but he has some interesting genre roles including being Sanford Wedeck, the Los Angeles bureau chief of the FBI in the pilot of FlashForward, Miles Dyson: Cyberdyne Systems’ CEO who funds the Genisys project in Terminator Genisys, and The Narrator in Isle of Dogs. He had a recurring role in Lovecraft Country as George Freeman. He earned a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Guest Actor in a Drama Series nomination for that role.
(15) GAMERS BEWARE. A message from the Ukranian company GSC Game World Team warns about a Russian hacking incident against their work product S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chernobyl.
— S.T.A.L.K.E.R. OFFICIAL (@stalker_thegame) March 12, 2023
(16) THE HIP BONE’S CONNECTED TO THE THIGH BONE. Galactic Journey’s installment “[March 12, 1968] Be Seeing You (The Prisoner)” begins with an overview by Kris Vyas-Myall, and concludes with this reaction by Fiona Moore:
…Lots of people who tuned in to The Prisoner and watched to the end are, apparently, disappointed. Those people are missing the point. The Prisoner isn’t a spy series, or an sf series, or a metaphor… and yet, it is all of those things. The Village is a real place… and yet it’s also a state of mind, a cloying conformity that, as the series itself demonstrates, could be found in London or the Wild West as much as in Portmeirion, where the series was actually filmed. The point many critics are missing is, The Prisoner is first and foremost a Rorshach test…..
(17) THE LAST SOVIET. In a twist, the podcast will be voiced by former *NSYNC member, Lance Bass, who trained as a cosmonaut himself. (Though he never made his trip due to funding falling through.) “A cosmonaut was stranded in space. Now a pop star tells the story.” at Mashable.
When a Russian spaceship docked as a lifeboat for three stranded men at the International Space Station in February, one may have wondered if Sergei Krikalev, heading the rescue mission, felt any deja vu.
If that name doesn’t ring a bell, he’s also sometimes known as “the last Soviet” for his more than 311 days spent in space as the Soviet Union collapsed 250 miles beneath him in 1991. He was only meant to be at the Mir station for five months. Instead, he remained for close to a year, never abandoning the outpost.
Today, Krikalev, the former cosmonaut, is the executive director of human spaceflight for the Russian space agency. That means it’s on his watch to make sure NASA astronaut Frank Rubio and cosmonauts Sergey Prokopyev and Dmitry Petelin get back home safely after their ship sprang a leak at the station in December 2022. The three marooned crew members were supposed to return this month. But their mission will now stretch for a year, until a new crew arrives to relieve them on a separate spacecraft in six months.
Krikalev’s story of being stranded in space is now getting a perhaps overdue spotlight with a new podcast series called “The Last Soviet.” And it’s being told by another cosmonaut, Lance Bass.
If that name doesn’t ring a bell, he’s also sometimes known as the other blond heartthrob in NSYNC. That’s right: the Lance Bass, who sang “Tearin’ up my heart” with JT, who had a cameo in Zoolander, a satire on the very serious ambitions of beautiful people….
(18) PUCKER UP AND… This is old news (September 2022), but if you haven’t seen it already, the video is interesting. This was an over-inflation-to-destruction test for a inflatable space habitat, so in this case “blow up” has a double meaning. “Why NASA blew up a space habitat in Texas” at Mashable.
When a future house for astronauts explodes, a celebration might seem inappropriate, but engineers at a commercial space company couldn’t be prouder of their shredded outer space house.
Sierra Space, working on one of three NASA contracts to develop commercial space stations, just completed something called the “Ultimate Burst Pressure” test on a mockup of its low-Earth orbit space dwelling. The LIFE habitat(Opens in a new tab), short for Large Inflatable Flexible Environment, could one day serve as rooms on Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin space station, Orbital Reef(Opens in a new tab). If all goes well, the companies hope to start building the station in 2026.
But first NASA has to run the structure through a gauntlet to ensure it’s safe for humans….
There are times when you look back at pop culture phenomena and can’t resist the urge to ask: Can you believe this actually happened? Tackling a notorious fiasco in one of the galaxy’s most popular franchises, Jeremy Coon and Steve Kozak’s amusing and exhaustive documentary ”A Disturbance in the Force” unpacks 1978’s “Star Wars Holiday Special.”
You don’t have to be an obsessive “Star Wars” fan to enjoy this behind-the-scenes look at how the special — which premiered Nov. 17, 1978 on CBS, and has never been re-run on any broadcast or cable outlet — came to exist. To be sure, the fans will appreciate it a lot more than casual viewers. But it’s also an irresistible hoot for anyone with fond memories of star-studded 1970s musical/variety TV specials — a specific type of highly popular general audience entertainment that, truth to tell, very often showcased more campy excess than anything in the “Star Wars Holiday Special.”…
Speaking of penny-pinching: You know that scene in which Bea Arthur flirts with what appears to be a large rat? The rodent’s head was recycled from a low-budget 1976 sci-fi melodrama, Bert I. Gordon’s “Food of the Gods.” No, really. Then as now, the show must go on.
(20) VIDEO OF THE DAY. A trailer dropped for Marvel Studios’ Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 last month, but I think we haven’t linked to it yet. Written and directed by James Gunn. Only in theaters May 5.
[Thanks to Cat Eldridge, Mike Kennedy, Patrick McGuire, Cora Buhlert, Jennifer Hawthorne, Hampus Eckerman, John King Tarpinian, Chris Barkley, Andrew Porter, and Michael Toman for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Daniel Dern.]
