SFWA Announces the 59th Nebula Awards Finalists

The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association (SFWA) announced the finalists for the 59th Annual Nebula Awards® in a livestreamed presentation on March 14.  

The awards will be presented in a ceremony on Saturday, June 8, that will be streamed live as it is held in-person in Pasadena, CA, as part of the 2024 Nebula Conference Online. Winners in each category will be determined by the vote of Full, Associate, and Senior members of SFWA.

Here is the complete list of finalists:

Nebula Award for Novel

  • The Saint of Bright Doors, Vajra Chandrasekera (Tordotcom)
  • The Water Outlaws, S.L. Huang (Tordotcom; Solaris UK)
  • Translation State, Ann Leckie (Orbit US; Orbit UK)
  • The Terraformers, Annalee Newitz (Tor; Orbit UK)
  • Shigidi and the Brass Head of Obalufon, Wole Talabi (DAW, Gollancz)
  • Witch King, Martha Wells (Tordotcom)

Nebula Award for Novella

  • The Crane Husband,  Kelly Barnhill (Tordotcom)
  • “Linghun”,  Ai Jiang (Linghun)
  • Thornhedge, T. Kingfisher (Tor; Titan UK)
  • Untethered Sky,  Fonda Lee (Tordotcom)
  • The Mimicking of Known Successes,  Malka Older (Tordotcom)
  • Mammoths at the Gates,  Nghi Vo (Tordotcom)

Nebula Award for Novelette

  • “A Short Biography of a Conscious Chair“, Renan Bernardo (Samovar 2/23)
  • I Am AI, Ai Jiang (Shortwave)
  • “The Year Without Sunshine“, Naomi Kritzer (Uncanny 11-12/23) 
  • “Imagine: Purple-Haired Girl Shooting Down The Moon“,  Angela Liu (Clarkesworld 6/23)
  • “Saturday’s Song“, Wole Talabi (Lightspeed 5/23)
  • “Six Versions of My Brother Found Under the Bridge“, Eugenia Triantafyllou (Uncanny 9-10/23)

Nebula Award for Short Story

  • “Once Upon a Time at The Oakmont“, P.A. Cornell (Fantasy 10/23)
  • “Tantie Merle and the Farmhand 4200“, R.S.A Garcia (Uncanny 7-8/23)
  • “Window Boy“, Thomas Ha (Clarkesworld 8/23)
  • “The Sound of Children Screaming”,  Rachael K. Jones (Nightmare 10/23)
  • “Better Living Through Algorithms”, Naomi Kritzer (Clarkesworld 5/23)
  • “Bad Doors”, John Wiswell (Uncanny 1-2/23)

Andre Norton Nebula Award for Middle Grade and Young Adult Fiction

  • To Shape a Dragon’s Breath, Moniquill Blackgoose (Del Rey) 
  • The Inn at the Amethyst Lantern, J. Dianne Dotson (Android)
  • Liberty’s Daughter, Naomi Kritzer (Fairwood) 
  • The Ghost Job, Greg van Eekhout (Harper)

Nebula Award for Game Writing

  • The Bread Must Rise, Stewart C Baker, James Beamon (Choice of Games)
  • Alan Wake II, Sam Lake, Clay Murphy, Tyler Burton Smith, Sinikka Annala (Remedy Entertainment, Epic Games Publishing)
  • Ninefox Gambit: Machineries of Empire Roleplaying Game, Yoon Ha Lee, Marie Brennan(Android) 
  • Dredge, Joel Mason (Black Salt Games, Team 17)
  • Chants of Sennaar, Julien Moya, Thomas Panuel (Rundisc, Focus Entertainment)
  • Baldur’s Gate 3, Adam Smith, Adrienne Law, Baudelaire Welch, Chrystal Ding, Ella McConnell, Ine Van Hamme, Jan Van Dosselaer, John Corocran, Kevin VanOrd, Lawrence Schick, Martin Docherty, Rachel Quirke, Ruairí Moore, Sarah Baylus, Stephen Rooney, Swen Vincke (Larian Studios) 

Ray Bradbury Nebula Award for Outstanding Dramatic Presentation

  • Nimona, Robert L. Baird, Lloyd Taylor, Pamela Ribon, Marc Haimes, Nick Bruno, Troy Quane, Keith Bunin, Nate Stevenson (Annapurna Animation, Annapurna Pictures)
  • The Last of Us: “Long, Long Time”, Neil Druckmann and Craig Mazin (HBOMax)
  • Barbie, Greta Gerwig, Noah Baumbach (Warner Bros., Heyday Films, LuckyChap Entertainment)
  • Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves, Jonathan Goldstein, John Francis Daley, Michael Gilio, Chris McKay (Paramount Pictures, Entertainment One, Allspark Pictures)
  • Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, Phil Lord, Christopher Miller, Dave Callaham (Columbia Pictures, Marvel Entertainment, Avi Arad Productions)
  • The Boy and the Heron,  Hayao Miyazaki (Studio Ghibli, Toho Company)

Author Martha Wells graciously declined her nomination as a novel finalist this year for System Collapse published by Tordotcom. In 2022, Wells also declined a nomination for novella and felt that the Murderbot Diaries series has already received incredible praise from her industry peers and wanted to open the floor to highlight other works within the community.

[Based on a press release.]

Pixel Scroll 3/13/24 Pixel Would Like A Word With Engineering

(1) SFWA NEBULA FINALIST ANNOUNCMENT TOMORROW. The Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers Association (SFWA) will announce the 2023 Nebula Award finalists (to be presented this year in Pasadena) on the SFWA Youtube channel, tomorrow, March 14, starting at 5:00 p.m. Pacific. 

Once again, we’ll be calling upon a talented group of SAG-AFTRA narrators to take us through an evening filled with a variety of outstanding speculative fiction works. 

It’s sure to be a night to remember! We hope you’ll join us!

(2) NEBULA CONFERENCE SCHOLARSHIP DEADLINE. Also tomorrow — March 14, is the deadline to apply for the scholarships SFWA is offering for members of under-served communities to attend the Nebula conference! The 2024 Nebula Conference will take place June 6-9 in Pasadena, CA and online. If you or someone you know may benefit from these scholarships, please apply here or share this link: https://airtable.com/appqxO86fh6JpPBNR/shrjMcYbZyuTxhwVH

Scholarship applications must be completed on this form by March 14th, 2024. The scholarship recipients will be selected from the applicant pool by lottery. Applicants may be considered for more than one scholarship if they identify with more than one of the following groups.

Here are the categories of scholarships being offered and the number of online conference scholarships available for each:

  • Scholarship for Black and/or Indigenous Creators: This scholarship is open to Black and/or Indigenous creators in the United States and abroad. (quantity: 15 online scholarships)
  • Scholarship for AAPI Creators: This scholarship is available to Asian creators, Asian American creators, and creators from the Pacific Islands. (quantity: 15 online scholarships)
  • Scholarships for Hispanic/Latinx Creators: This scholarship is available to creators with backgrounds in Spanish-speaking and/or Latin American cultures. (quantity: 15 online scholarships)
  • Scholarship for Writers Based Outside of the U.S.: This scholarship is available to creators who live outside the United States. (quantity: 15 online scholarships)
  • Scholarship for members of the LGBTQIA+ Community: This scholarship is available to creators who identify as LGBTQIA+. (quantity: 15 online scholarships)
  • Scholarship for creators with disabilities: This scholarship is available to creators who identify as having a disability. (quantity: 15 online scholarships)
  • Scholarship for creators who face financial barriers: This scholarship is available to creators whose financial situations may otherwise prevent them from participating. (quantity: 15 online scholarships)
  • Scholarship for in-person registration are available in limited quantities for creators who identify with one of our online scholarship groups. This scholarship does not include funds for travel, lodging or other related expenses to attend the conference, only for registration.

SFWA says, “Our support of underserved communities isn’t possible without your help. If you are able, please consider making a donation at sfwa.org/donate to help us fund additional scholarships in the future.”

(3) COMPLETE TOLKIEN POEMS VOLUME PLANNED. “Collected poems of J R R Tolkien to be published for first time”The Bookseller has details.

HarperCollins will publish The Collected Poems of J R R Tolkien, edited by Christina Scull and Wayne G Hammond, in September 2024, the first time all the author’s poems will appear in one volume. 

HC, which holds world all-language rights to Tolkien’s works, said: “Poetry was the first way in which Tolkien expressed himself creatively and through it the seeds of his literary ambition would be sown.” One of Tolkien’s  poems “The Voyage of Éarendel the Evening Star”, begun in 1914, is where the “Silmarillion” first appears and both The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings “are enriched with poems both humorous and haunting, magical and moving”. Tolkien scholars Scull and Hammond will provide analysis of each poem. 

Scull and Hammond were hired for the project by Christopher Tolkien’s, J R R Tolkien’s son and executor of his literary estate until Tolkien died in 2020. They said: “Charged at first to review only his early poems, we soon saw the benefits of examining the entire poetic opus across six decades, vast though it is with hundreds of printed and manuscript sources…Not long before his death, we were able to send Christopher a trial portion of the book, which he praised as ‘remarkable and immensely desirable’.”…

(4) SPEAKING OF. “The Oral History of ‘Repo Man,’ the Greatest Indie Sci-Fi Movie Ever Made” at Inverse.

Somewhere in the California desert, a police officer pulls over a 1964 Chevrolet Malibu as it lurches wildly across the highway. After interrogating the driver, he opens the trunk and is instantly vaporized by a blinding light that reduces him to a skeleton, leaving behind only a pair of smoldering leather boots.

Thus begins Repo Man, a sci-fi cult classic sci-fi with a nihilistic worldview and a punk rock soundtrack that by all accounts probably shouldn’t exist….

Dick Rude (plays Duke): I was a teenager going to the Lee Strasberg Theatre Institute in Los Angeles. I wrote a script called Leather Rubberneck with a friend of mine from school, about two kids who get drafted. Alex [Cox, writer and director] wanted to make the film, but it didn’t pan out. So he incorporated it into Repo Man. A lot of the characters, some of the dialogue, some of the ideas, there was quite a bit of it that was used in Repo Man….

Jonathan Wacks: We went through the Yellow Pages and looked up studios and producers and we sat and typed letters. We knew they wouldn’t pick up our phone. We sent hundreds of letters out and got zero responses. So we decided to raise $500,000 and shoot it at UCLA so we could use the equipment for free.

Peter McCarthy: The thing with UCLA is you never wanted to get your diploma. Once you did, you couldn’t go back and use anything….

Olivia Barash: I was talking to Alex, and I said, “Who are you going to have do the title track?” And he goes, “There’s one of two people. David Byrne, we have something out to his agent. But I really want Iggy Pop, we just don’t know where to find him.” And I said, “I know where to find him. He’s in my building. He’s my neighbor.” So Alex came over, and we rang the intercom outside, and Iggy answered. And that’s how we got Iggy….

(5) J-LO AND AI. “’Atlas’ trailer: Jennifer Lopez uses AI to save humanity in sci-fi thriller” – here’s Mashable’s introduction:

The first trailer for Netflix’s futuristic sci-fi thriller Atlas is here, featuring Jennifer Lopez having a very bad day.

Atlas follows the titular character Atlas Shepherd (Lopez), a government data analyst with a healthy distrust of artificial intelligence. However, after a mission to capture a rogue robot from her past goes wrong, she soon finds herself having to trust AI in order to save humanity. If AI wrote propaganda, this is probably what it would sound like….

(6) IT’S A TIE. “Reading with… Liz Lee Heinecke” at Shelf Awareness.

…Favorite book when you were a child:

It’s a three-way tie, with a few runners-up.

As a kid, I desperately wanted a horse but knew I would never have one, so I lived vicariously through Maureen and Paul Beebe’s adventures in Misty of Chincoteague by Marguerite Henry and illustrated by Wesley Dennis.

Dragonsong by Anne McCaffrey had it all as far as I was concerned: a gifted girl who isn’t allowed to be a musician because of her gender, tiny, colorful dragons called fire lizards, and a nearby planet that rained down flesh-eating parasites frequently enough to keep things exciting. I probably read it 20 times.

The Tombs of Atuan is the second book in Ursula K. Le Guin’s Earthsea series and features a female protagonist who struggles against the confines of a role that’s been chosen by others. Most of the story takes place in a nightmarish underground labyrinth, where Le Guin’s hero Ged (Harry Potter’s prototype) struggles to steal a talisman. I loved everything about it.  

I was always on the lookout for books about girls on adventures. When visiting the library, I often checked out Astrid Lindgren’s Pippi Longstocking books or the Danny Dunn series by Raymond Abrashkin and Jay Williams, which features a girl who loves physics.  

Your top five authors:

Ursula K. Le Guin: She caught my attention as a middle-grade reader with her Earthsea fantasy series and has kept me captivated as an adult.

She uses science fiction to escape the social confines of our planet and explores themes of colonization, race, environmental destruction, political systems, gender roles, and sexuality without ever losing sight of the story. The Word for World Is ForestThe Dispossessed, and The Left Hand of Darknessare three of my favorites.

Amy Tan: I can’t recall whether The Kitchen God’s Wife or The Joy Luck Clubwas my first Amy Tan book. I adore the funny, relatable stories she tells about women and family, and enjoy learning about Chinese culture and history. The Bonesetter’s Daughter, which weaves science and anthropology into the story, was fantastic too. I became an even bigger fan after hearing Tan sing with the Rock Bottom Remainders at First Avenue a few years ago.  

J.R.R. Tolkien: I can’t count how many times I’ve re-read The Lord of the Rings. I love losing myself in Middle-earth, with its mountains and languages and monsters and lore, and I’ve always been a sucker for a well-told hero’s journey.

Margaret Atwood: Sometimes I think she can see the future. The Handmaid’s Taleis a masterpiece in so many ways. I heard her speak once, and I recall her saying that she grew up reading science fiction stories with her brother. It’s amazing how the books we read as children shape us as adults.

Ann Patchett: She has been one of my favorite authors for years. As a reader interested in themes of music, science, and theater, she’s hit the mark over and over again with books like Bel CantoState of Wonder, and Tom Lake. I can’t wait to see what she writes next….

(7) THE WRITERS’ PRIZE. A non-genre work, Liz Berry’s The Home Child, was announced as the winner of the poetry category (£2000) and The Writers’ Prize Book of the Year (£30,000) at the London Book Fair on March 13.

Born in the Black Country and now living in Birmingham, The Home Child was inspired by the story of Berry’s great-aunt Eliza Showell, one of the many children forcibly emigrated to Canada as part of the British Child Migrant Schemes. This beautiful novel-in-verse about a child far from home was described as ‘absolutely magical’ by Fiona Benson.

The book achieved the highest number of votes from the 350+ celebrated writers in the Folio Academy, who exclusively nominated and voted for the winners of The Writers’ Prize 2024.

(8) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

Born March 13, 1956 Dana Delany, 68. I remember Dana Delany best for her role as nurse  Colleen McMurphy on China Beach, set at a Vietnam War evacuation hospital.  It aired for four seasons starting in the late Eighties. Great role, fantastic series. I rewatched it a decade or so ago on DVD — it held up very well.

Dana Delany

So let me deal with her main genre role which was voicing Lois Lane. She first did this twenty years ago in Superman: The Animated Series for forty-four episodes, an amazing feat by any standard.  That role would come again in Superman: Brainiac AttacksJustice League: The Flashpoint Paradox (avoid if you’ve got even a shred of brain cells), in a recurring role on the Justice League and Justice League Unlimited series, The Batman and even in the Superman: Shadow of Apokolips game.

Her other voice role of note was for Wing Commander Academy as Gwen Archer Bowman. And she wasn’t Lois Lane but Vilsi Vaylar in Batman: The Brave and the Bold’s “The Super-Batman of Planet X!”. 

She’ll have a one-off on Battle Galactica as Sesha Abinell; more significantly she has a starring role as Grace Wyckoff in the Wild Palms series. 

Oh, she showed up on Castle as FBI Special Agent Jordan Shaw in a two-part story, the episodes being “Tick, Tick, Tick…” and “Boom!”. 

So I’m going to finish with her role in Tombstone, Emma Bull and Will Shetterley’s favorite Western film along with the Deadwood series. It’s an inspiration she says for her Territory novel. And I love it as well. Delany played magnificently Josephine Sarah “Sadie” Earp, the common-law wife of Wyatt Earp. The final scene of them dancing in the snow in San Francisco is truly sniffles inducing. 

(9) CREATOR CANNED. Variety reports “X-Men ’97 Creator Beau DeMayo Fired Ahead of Premiere on Disney+”. Article does not give a reason.

Beau DeMayo, the showrunner and executive producer behind Disney+’s upcoming animated series “X-Men ’97,” has been fired ahead of the March 20 premiere, Variety has confirmed.

DeMayo had completed work on Seasons 1 and 2 of “X-Men ’97” ahead of his exit. He will not attend the March 13 Hollywood premiere for the show. His Instagram account, on which he had been previewing artwork and answering fan questions about “X-Men ’97,” has also been deleted.

He wrote and produced “X-Men ’97,” which is a continuation of the popular “X-Men: The Animated Series” that aired on Fox Kids in the ’90s. It is unclear why DeMayo was fired from “X-Men ’97” so close to the premiere, but he will no longer promote the show or be involved with future seasons….

(10) NO MICHELIN STARS FOR MORDOR. CBR.com chronicles “Every Meal Hobbits Eat In Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings”.

Peter Jackson and actor Billy Boyd found a memorable way to convey that love in The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring. As Aragorn leads the Hobbits toward Rivendell, Pippin asks about “second breakfast” and a litany of additional meals that will presumably be skipped as they continue. Tolkien specified six meals in the Prologue to The Fellowship of the Ring — which roughly match European traditions — but two of them are essentially the same meal. Here’s a rundown of each one to give a good idea of what Pippin is missing….

Here’s the one I’m always interested in:

Second Breakfast

Tolkien mentions second breakfast in The Hobbit, with Bilbo settling down to his just as Gandalf appears to tell him that the Dwarves have already left for The Lonely Mountain. It serves as a quiet joke — stressing that Hobbits in general and Bilbo in particular enjoy eating — as well as emphasizing the comfortable lifestyle he’s leaving behind to go on his adventure with the Dwarves. It also serves as the inspiration for Pippin’s line about second breakfast in The Fellowship of the Ring, which he doesn’t deliver in Tolkien’s text.

(11) PRAISE FOR STARMEN. [Item by Francis Hamit.] Demetria Head is a book blogger, one of that legion of reviewers who do it without pay and for the joy of it.  Ms. Head actually read the entire book and delivered an almost forensic analysis.  I think her work deserves wider exposure.

Demetria Head Review from BookBub and A Look Inside book blogs

“STARMEN” by Francis Hamit is a sprawling epic that seamlessly blends elements of magical realism, historical fiction, and sci-fi fantasy to create a mesmerizing tale that will captivate readers from start to finish. Set against the backdrop of the American Southwest in 1875, the novel introduces us to a cast of richly drawn characters whose lives become intertwined in a web of intrigue, adventure, and supernatural mystery.

At the heart of the story is George James Frazer, a budding anthropologist working for the Pinkerton National Detective Agency, whose quest to contact a local Apache tribe leads him on a journey beyond the realms of ordinary reality. When a mysterious hot air balloon appears over the town of El Paso, owned by the British Ethnographic Survey, Frazer finds himself drawn into a world of ancient magic and hidden truths.

The characters in “STARMEN” are truly the heart and soul of the novel, each one fleshed out with depth and nuance that makes them feel like living, breathing individuals. From the determined and resourceful Frazer to the enigmatic Apache witches and the ruthless Pinkerton agents, every character brings their own unique perspective to the narrative, driving the plot forward with their conflicting desires and motivations.

Plot development in “STARMEN” is masterfully executed, with Hamit weaving together multiple storylines that intertwine and intersect in surprising and unexpected ways. From the quest to find a missing heir to the discovery of a town inhabited by extraordinary gunfighters, each twist and turn of the plot unfolds with breathtaking intensity, keeping readers on the edge of their seats until the very last page.

What truly sets “STARMEN” apart is its seamless blend of genres, incorporating elements of historical fiction, magical realism, and hard sci-fi into a cohesive and compelling narrative. From the romantic entanglements to the political intrigue and the mind-bending concepts of quantum mechanics and string theory, the novel offers something for every reader, appealing to fans of both traditional historical fiction and speculative fiction alike.

Overall, “STARMEN” is a tour de force of storytelling that will transport readers to a world of adventure, mystery, and wonder. With its unforgettable characters, intricate plot, and bold exploration of complex themes, it is a must-read for anyone seeking an immersive and thought-provoking literary experience.

(13) SHAKEN TO THEIR CORE. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] I have not seen it yet (but have downloaded to mem stick for home viewing – it might be rubbish???) In the TV series Pending Train, “100 People Accidently Time-Travel By Train to a Destroyed Earth in 2063”. See video at the link.

In Tokyo, train passengers find themselves fighting for their very survival after their train car jumps into an apocalyptic future

(14) ON THE AIR. Breathe (2024) with Jennifer Hudson, Milla Jovovich, Sam Worthington, Common, and Quvenzhané Wallis. In Theaters, On Digital, and On Demand April 26.

(15) VIDEO OF THE DAY. How It Should Have Ended brings us up to date with “Previously On – DUNE”.

[Thanks to Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, John King Tarpinian, Francis Hamit, 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 Cat Eldridge.]

2024 SFWA Infinity Award Goes to Tanith Lee

Tanith Lee. Photo: © Daughter of the Night

The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association (SFWA) will recognize the works and career of Tanith Lee (1947–2015) with the 2024 SFWA Infinity Award on June 8 at the 59th Annual Nebula Awards® Ceremony.

This will be the second presentation of the Infinity Award, created by the SFWA Board to posthumously honor acclaimed creators who passed away before they could be considered for a Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master Award. This new award aims to recognize that even though those celebrated worldbuilders, storytellers, and weavers of words are no longer with us, their legacies will continue to inspire.

SFWA President Jeffe Kennedy remarked, “Tanith Lee was writing combinations of science fiction, fantasy, romance, horror, queerness, and sex long before the current trends. She was a true trailblazer in multiple cross-genres and influenced so many of today’s authors. It’s a sorrow to me that she passed before we could celebrate her as she should have been, but a bittersweet joy to at least be able to give her this honor today.”

An aspiring writer from the age of nine, Lee’s first professional sale was “Eustace,” a ninety-word vignette which appeared in The Ninth Pan Book Of Horror Stories (1968), edited by Herbert van Thal.

While working as an assistant librarian, Lee wrote a children’s story which was accepted for publication. A number of additional stories were also purchased, but none of them were ever published, due to a slump in the publishing firm’s sales. In 1971, Macmillan published The Dragon Hoard, a children’s novel, followed by Animal Castle, a children’s picture book, and Princess Hynchatti & Some Other Surprises, a short story collection (both 1972).

DAW published The Birthgrave in 1975, beginning a relationship that lasted until 1989 and saw the publication of 28 books altogether. Following the publication of her second and third books from DAW, Don’t Bite The Sun and The Storm Lord (both 1976), Lee quit her day job to become a full-time freelance writer.

Tanith Lee has won or been nominated for a variety of awards, including the World Fantasy Award, the August Derleth Award and the Nebula. She has appeared as Guest of Honour at a number of science fiction conventions, including Boskone XVIII in Boston in 1981, and the 1984 World Fantasy Convention in Ottawa.

Rather than a physical award, SFWA will make a donation to a cause that an Infinity Award honoree supported or that their loved ones request. This year, it has been requested by the family that the donation be split between two charitable causes, Pasadena Humane and the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation

[Based on a press release.]

SFWA Awards 2024 Givers Fund Grants

The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association (SFWA) Grants Committee has awarded 34 organizations, activities, and public interest programs with Givers Fund Grants. These micro-grants ranged from $375 to $2900 each, for use for projects taking place in 2024. The total amount given this year was $30,205.

Givers Fund Grants are intended to aid projects that align with SFWA’s mission to promote, advance, and support science fiction and fantasy writing around the world. This fund is made possible with the generosity of donors from the community and partnerships within the publishing landscape. SFWA thanks all of the donors who help make this program a reality. If you’d like to donate to this endeavor or another SFWA charitable fund, please do so at www.sfwa.org/donate.  

The recipients of the 2024 SFWA Givers Fund Grants are as follows: 

  • Ad Astra Institute for Science Fiction & the Speculative Imagination
  • Arisia, Inc.
  • Arizona State University Interplanetary Initiative
  • Association of Nigerian Authors, Bayelsa State Chapter
  • Black Science Fiction Society
  • Clarion West
  • Dream Foundry
  • Firkin Press
  • GigaNotoSaurus
  • If This Goes On (Don’t Panic) podcast
  • Jericho Town Library
  • Maryland Writers’ Association
  • Muslim Arc
  • Red Ogre Review
  • Santa Clara City Library Foundation and Friends
  • Science Fiction and Fantasy Poetry Association
  • Space Cowboy Books
  • Superstars Writing Seminars
  • The Rocket Words Society (Can*Con)
  • The Story Hour
  • University City Public Library
  • University of Wyoming (Launchpad)
  • Willamette Writers
  • Writing Excuses

Congratulations to all the 2024 Givers Fund Grant recipients, and to donors for supporting the projects they are undertaking to elevate the speculative fiction genres and their writers. Applications are always open for Givers Fund Grants, and previous recipients are welcome to reapply. The deadline to apply for the 2024 awards is October 1, 2024.

To learn more about all of SFWA’s benevolent funds, head here.

[Based on a press release.]

Pixel Scroll 3/5/24 But The Pixels We Climbed Were Just Shoggoths Out Of Time

(1) COMING IN FOR A LANDING. Los Angeles Magazine tells why “George Lucas’ Billion Dollar Museum Is About Way More Than ‘Star Wars’”. A year ago this design looked unique. But today? I bet you can guess what building it reminds me of now.

We’re still maybe a year out from the grand opening of the new museum created by film director George Lucas and his wife, executive Melody Hobson. But anyone visiting the Coliseum, Natural History Museum, USC, or riding the Expo Line has seen the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art rising above Exposition Park. The absolutely massive structure by Beijing-based architect Ma Yansong encloses some 300,000 square feet over a building ranging from three and five floors set atop an underground parking garage (with 600 more spaces than the surface lot the building replaced) all nestled in a green garden….

Artist’s rendering of Lucas Museum of Narrative Art

(2) A SHORE THING. A trailer has dropped for The Wild Robot. Arrives in theaters on September 20.

The epic adventure follows the journey of a robot—ROZZUM unit 7134, “Roz” for short — that is shipwrecked on an uninhabited island and must learn to adapt to the harsh surroundings, gradually building relationships with the animals on the island and becoming the adoptive parent of an orphaned gosling.

(3) LEARNEDLEAGUE SFF QUESTION. [Item by David Goldfarb.] It’s the hundredth season of LearnedLeague. The first question of match day 15 asked us:

“What name is the last word uttered in the final installment of the Star Wars sequel trilogy from 2019, as well as the last word of the film’s title?”

Way to nerf the question with that last clause, eh? Although even with that, the question had a 67% get rate, with 12% giving the most common wrong answer of “Jedi”. (Presumably thinking of the second movie in the trilogy.)

My opponent quite rightly assigned me 0 points for this one, as did I for him.

(4) HANDS (OR LEGS) UP FOR “YES”? NO? [Item by Mike Kennedy.] Is the giant spider in Netflix’s Spaceman real or just a figment of the title character’s imagination? The main creatives each have an answer but it may not be your answer. Beware — spoilers ahead.

There’s an obvious question at the heart of Spaceman, Netflix’s science fiction movie where Adam Sandler’s forlorn astronaut character spends half the story talking to a tennis ball communing with a giant alien spider that he names Hanuš. But even without watching the movie, viewers may wonder: Is Hanuš actually real?

Normally, when a movie revolves around this kind of question, the director and stars hedge when asked for their opinions. For instance, No One Will Save You writer-director Brian Duffield has been clear that he wants viewers to interpret that film’s startling ending in whatever way they think fits best, without his input. Andrew Haigh has been careful about weighing in on the controversial ending of All of Us Strangers. And that’s entirely reasonable — often filmmakers want to keep viewers guessing, thinking, debating, and interpreting.

But not always. Polygon couldn’t resist asking Spaceman director Johan Renck and stars Adam Sandler and Paul Dano what they think about the movie’s central debate point — and we were surprised at how definitive their answers were. We’ll get into the details after a spoiler break….

(5) MPSE GOLDEN REEL AWARDS. The Motion Picture Sound Editors presented their Golden Reel Awards on March 3. Here are the winners of genre interest:

EFFECTS & FOLEY

  • Oppenheimer

DIALOGUE & ADR

  • Oppenheimer

ANIMATION

  • Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse

(6) IN THE YEAR 2024. “Plane commutes, world peace and 100-year-old predictions about 2024” at USA Today.

Well, we’re finally here. Is this the future that you envisioned?

Nearly 100 years ago, a group of visionaries dared to imagine what life would be like in 2024. Some of their prophecies fell woefully short while others proved to be strangely accurate. 

Join us now as we gaze into that crystal ball from 1924….

A growing problem

Arthur Dean, whose parental advice column appeared in newspapers across the country, expressed concerns about American dietary habits.

“I sometimes wonder what our stomachs will look like and be like 100 years from now,” he wrote. “Will we have any teeth at all? Will there be any color on our face except paint? Will the men have any height to speak of or will they be all girth? Will people have mostly an east and west appearance – all latitude and lassitude and no longitude?”

(7) SFWA ESTATES LEGACY PROGRAM. The Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers Association has informed members that Mishell Baker is stepping down from her lead position on the Estates Project but will remain available for consultation. Going forward, the remaining Estates Project volunteers will cover her duties as needed.

Mishell is a winner of the Kevin J. O’Donnell Service to SFWA Award, and she served as the primary contact for SFWA’s Estate Project since 2016. She liaised with publishers interested in reprinting works by science fiction and fantasy authors who are no longer with us and acted as an intermediary for individual heirs who wished to keep their contact information confidential. Mishell gained a well-deserved reputation for handling these communications with consistency and sensitivity, providing help in sometimes difficult and confusing situations.  

The Estates-Legacy Project wishes to thank Mishell for her many years of exceptional service on behalf of writers, their heirs, and the readers now enjoying the work of past masters as a result of her efforts.

(8) RICHARD BOWES (1944-2023). In “Richard Bowes—A Remembrance” at Uncanny Magazine, Lynne M. Thomas and Michael Damian Thomas, Christopher Barzak, Matthew Cheney, Sam J. Miller, and Matthew Kressel share their memories and feelings about Bowes, who died December 24. Here is an excerpt fro Kressel’s segment:

I’m fairly certain I met Rick Bowes at a Fantastic Fiction at KGB reading on November 15, 2006. That night, Lucius Shepard and Catherynne Valente were reading. This may seem awfully specific, but I have proof. Ellen Datlow captured this moment in a photo that resides on her Flickr stream. For a Halloween party I’d bleached my hair and dressed up as Roy Batty from Blade Runner. In the photo, Rick leans in, hands pressed like a sage, telling me something with authority, while I, with my Billy-Idol-blonde hair, listen rapt. (In the background, Rajan Khanna, whom in this moment I have yet to befriend, stares at the camera.) And this is how I will remember Rick. Telling stories. His depth of knowledge always astounded me. Right away, I knew I was in the presence of a sharp mind….

(9) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

Born March 5, 1951 Margaret Astrid Lindholm Ogden, 73. Let’s talk about Margaret Astrid Lindholm Ogden who writes under the pen names of Megan Lindholm and Robin Hobb. Thirty-six years ago at the age of thirty, as Megan Lindholm, her second novel, a fantasy set in Seattle was published. That was the extraordinarily excellent Wizard of the Pigeons, a novel that bring a smile to the face of even the Suck Fairy. 

In a sense, it is a direct evolution from her fiction as children’s writer which published in magazines as Jack and JillHighlights for Children and Humpty Dumpty as she notes. Her Robin Hobb persona, she claims is a little more gentle than her Meghan Lindholm persona which, as she told a Bookseller interviewer, is “a little more snarky, a little more sarcastic, a little less optimistic, less emotional”.

So let’s stay with her writing under the Lindholm name. Her first writing as that persona was short fiction was in 1979, “Bones for Dulath”, followed in 1980 by “The Small One” and in 1981 by “Faunsdown Cottage”. She’s written (and coauthored) twenty-six stories exclusively as Lindholm. That includes five works in Emma Bull and Will Shetterly’s Laivek franchise, some co-written with Stephen Brust or Gregory Frost. 

Lindholm’s first novel, Harpy’s Flight, was published forty-one years as ago, and was the first in her Windsingers series about the characters Ki and Vandien, and, yes, I like these novels a lot. 

Now remember these Birthdays are, if I choose, are what I’ve read by a given writer and this is what I’m doing here as I’ve read enough her to be reasonably knowledgeable about her.

The final novel by her that I’ve read is the one she did with Stephen Brust, The Gypsy. It’s based on Romany folklore, and it’s more or less a mystery. It got its own soundtrack courtesy of Boiled in Lead, vocals by Adam Stemple, son of Jane Yolen. Superbly crafted work. 

So now her other persona, Robin Hobb, and may I now say that I like both of the creators that she choose to be? Really I do.

Her first work as Hobb was the Farseer trilogy, narrated in first person, my favorite way to experience this sort of fiction, involves  FitzChivalry Farseer, illegitimate son of a prince. Great character, ever better series.  The first volume of the trilogy, Assassin’s Apprentice, sets up them well.

Ok, I’ll admit I’ve read much of the Realm of the Elderlings franchise, though by no means all, that talking about it coherently isn’t possible. What I will say is nothing by her is anything by really, really good.  I will say, despite Margaret Astrid Lindholm Ogden saying Hobb is the gentler of the two, that trigger warnings for brutality and even rape are necessary here. Really they are.

Both personas in the end aren’t, despite her claims, really that different. The only novel that is decidedly different I can say as a reader is The Gypsy but that was co-written with Brust as were the four Laivek works. Co-written works are such that one never knows how much that the one has influenced it and how much the other has.

(10) A NEW MEANING FOR WC. “What Is WcDonald’s, McDonald’s Anime Counterpart?” at Food Network. One of these comics was on my bag today!

… This month, McDonald’s is embracing what has become a common … homage, shall we say, to its golden arches in anime films and series: WcDonald’s.Swapping in a “W” — or, rather, an upside-down “M” — has become a cheeky way for animators and illustrators to let their characters dine at or otherwise interact with what the audience can immediately identify as a McDonald’s without licensing the actual name of (or getting sued by) McDonald’s itself. Starting next week, however, McDonald’s is embracing its cartoon counterpart at its real-life restaurants in the U.S. and beyond…. A New McNugget Sauce: To pair with “WcNuggets,” a new, limited-edition Savory Chili WcDonald’s Sauce is coming to the menu, described as a “unique combination of ginger, garlic and soy with a slight heat from chili flakes.” Manga-Inspired Packaging: Japanese illustrator Acky Bright designed original artwork of WcDonald’s crew members for the McDonald’s/WcDonald’s items. Packaging will also feature a QR code with access to digital WcDonald’s manga content weekly featuring Bright’s cast of WcDonald’s characters (yes, one is a mecha).

The promotional website WcDonald’s has a lot of content. Here are some of the newest characters.

(11) LAST DARKNESS FALL — PERMANENTLY. “Solar eclipse glasses: Why you need them, and why you should buy them right now” – advice from Slate. “The eclipse is happening on April 8—and last time, the glasses sold out many places.”

Few natural phenomena bring sci-fi-esque buzz like a solar eclipse. Some people talk about this astronomical event as if it comes straight out of a Ray Bradbury story. And those people are right! Solar eclipses are, without hyperbole, awesome. And just in case you haven’t heard, there’s one happening on April 8.

Of course, a cardinal rule of day-to-day life still applies to eclipses: You must absolutely not look at the sun directly—even if it’s partially obscured by the moon. It can cause permanent retinal damage.

Photoreceptors in the eyes register and convert light to electrical signals detected in your brain. The powerfully incandescent sun overwhelms those photoreceptors, bombarding them with far more light than they can convert. Any light your photoreceptors don’t absorb filters through to the back of your eye, producing heat. Although the moon partially blots out the sun, that doesn’t make the rays that are visible any less potent. Look at a partial eclipse long enough and you can burn the sun into your retinas, which can result in a permanent hole in your vision called a scotoma. Since your retinas lack pain receptors, you won’t know that the damage has been done until it’s too late. Looking through conventional binoculars or telescopes doesn’t mitigate this risk….

(12) ROLL THE CREDITS. “Superman movie to film in Ohio, hire more than 3,000 locals” at NBC4i. The state will reward this decision with a big tax credit.

It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s Superman! A new movie on the comic book hero is filming in Ohio this year and has been awarded about $11 million in tax credits, with plans to hire more than 3,000 locals.

The DC Studios movie titled simply “Superman” is filming in Cincinnati and Cleveland this spring and summer and will receive $11,091,686 in tax credits, according to an Ohio Motion Picture Tax Credit application filed under the project’s code name, “Genesis.” The film is expected to hire 3,254 Ohio residents to take part in the production.

DC’s Ohio-related expenses are projected to exceed $36 million, which makes up about 10% of the movie’s total budget of more than $363 million….

(13) TECH BROS. “’Musk needs to be adored … Zuckerberg is out of his depth’: Kara Swisher on the toxic giants of Big Tech” in the Guardian.

…In the book, Swisher says Zuckerberg is “the most damaging man in tech”. Elon Musk, by contrast, is maligned as the “most disappointing”, which reflects Swisher’s long period of thinking of the founder of Tesla and SpaceX as one of the tech industry’s most promising sons. In 2016, she contacted him ahead of the big meeting with Trump, warning that the president-elect would “screw” him; two years later, Musk told her she had been right. All told, she seemed to believe that he operated on a higher level than most of his peers.

“Here’s someone who actually was doing serious things,” she says. “There’s a lot of people in Silicon Valley who are always doing a dry cleaning app. He was thinking of everything from cars to space to solar. Even the silly stuff like [his imagined high-speed transport system] Hyperloop: what a great idea. What an interesting idea.” She also mentions Neuralink, the venture working on computer interfaces that can be implanted in people’s brains. “How could we upgrade our intelligence? That’s a big, fascinating problem.”…

(14) SFWA INSTAGRAM PROGRAM. The SFWA Instagram Program gives users a peek at members’ daily creative lives, pets, and works. In the past year and a half, SFWA has processed nearly 200 requests and created over 600 graphics that have been shared through its Instagram account. Here’s an example:

(15) A FINE IDEA. This month (only) “A Massachusetts Library System Will Let You Pay Fines With Cat Pictures” according to Mental Floss.

It’s not often that cat photos are accepted as currency. But for the month of March, public libraries in Worcester, Massachusetts, will wipe certain fines from your account if you submit any picture of a cat.

Branches in the Worcester Public Library (WPL) system don’t charge fees for overdue books, but they do charge for lost or damaged ones. The call for cat pictures is a way to keep those bills from preventing patrons from using the library. “We at the Worcester Public Library are always looking for ways to reduce barriers,” Worcester Public Library executive library director Jason Homer told WBUR. “We know that a lot of people, unfortunately, through being displaced in housing, or life getting in the way in the global pandemic, lost a lot of materials.” 

“Felines for Fee Forgiveness” is part of March Meowness, a month of cat-centric programming that includes a screening of the 2019 movie Cats, a cat-eye makeup tutorial, a “de-stressing” hour of playing with shelter cats, DIY crafts, and more events.

Before you show up to a WPL branch with a cat image at the ready, there are a few rules to know. For one, a book needs to have been lost for at least two months in order for its fee to be waived…. 

(16) PROTOPLANETARY SYSTEM. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] Last week’s issue of Science looks at the formation of other planetary systems.

This JWST infrared image shows the Orion Bar, which separates parts of the Orion Nebula containing cool molecular gas (lower left) from those containing hot plasma (upper right). The latter are ionized by ultraviolet radiation from massive stars (located beyond the image). The strong ultraviolet radiation field heats protoplanetary disks around young stars in this region, dispersing the gas needed for planet formation<

Primary research paper’s abstract here.

(17) VIDEO OF THE DAY. GamesRadar+ reports “Star Wars fans rocked by resurfaced beer adverts stitched directly into the original trilogy – including a bizarre replacement for Luke Skywalker’s lightsaber”. One video is embedded below, there are more at the link.

We all remember that iconic Star Wars moment where Obi-Wan Kenobi goes to give Luke Skywalker his father’s old, ice cold beer, right? 

Well, if you watched a specific version of the movie shown in Chile, you might remember things that way. The old ads are going viral once again thanks to the fact that the beer marketing is spliced directly into some of the original trilogy’s most famous moments – unintentionally creating the most hilarious advertising campaign ever. While these videos might seem like fakes, they are very much real: according to The Guardian, the campaign even won an award for its ingenuity…. 

[Thanks to Steven French, Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, N., Jeffrey Smith, JJ, David Goldfarb, 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 Jeff Jones.]

James Hosek Named the 2024 Kevin O’Donnell, Jr. Service to SFWA Award Recipient

Color photo of James Hosek, holding a cat
James Hosek

The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association (SFWA) today announced that James Hosek will be honored with the 2024 Kevin O’Donnell, Jr. Service to SFWA Award at the 59th Annual SFWA Nebula Awards® for his outstanding work on behalf of the organization. It will be a posthumous award, as Hosek passed away in December.

The Service to SFWA Award recognizes a volunteer of SFWA who best exemplifies the ideal of service to their fellow members. In 2012, the award was renamed in honor of author Kevin O’Donnell, who dedicated 20+ years of volunteer service to the organization.

James Hosek, known to those in the community as Jim, first volunteered for SFWA as an assistant to the Nebula Awards Commissioner in 2016, helping to vet works on the Nebula Reading List and other tasks as necessary. In 2017, Hosek was named SFWA’s Nebula Commissioner and served for seven years, stepping down from the role in September 2023 due to ill health. He died on December 3, 2023.

Deputy Executive Director (and former Nebula Award Commissioner) Terra LeMay says about Jim: “It is often the case that SFWA’s programs are driven by volunteers who serve countless hours behind the scenes, and this is certainly true of our Nebula Awards, which depend on the tireless work of the Nebula Awards Commissioner (NAC). Elucidating the positive qualities that made Jim Hosek the perfect NAC—he was hard-working, ethical, level-headed, kind, scrupulously fair, and so much more…—would take far more space than I’ve been granted here. I am honored to have had the opportunity to work with him and glad we were able to notify him of his selection for this award before his passing. He was one of SFWA’s very best.”

James Hosek will join many distinguished recipients of the Kevin O’Donnell, Jr. Service to SFWA Award, including Connie Willis, Victoria Strauss, Julia Rios, Bud Sparhawk, Lee Martindale, Vonda McIntyre, and Jim Fiscus.

[Based on a press release.]

Susan Cooper Named 40th Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master

SFWA has selected Susan Cooper as their 40th Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master, recognizing her “lifetime achievement in science fiction and/or fantasy.” The award is named after author Damon Knight, SFWA’s founder and the organization’s 13th Grand Master.

Susan Cooper is most recognized for her fantasy sequence for young adults, The Dark is Rising, which has just reached its 50th anniversary. Her other books for children include The Boggart and its sequels, several works of historical fiction, and multiple picture books, most recently The Word Pirates and The Shortest Day in 2019.

Reflecting on the work of the newest Grand Master, SFWA President Jeffe Kennedy shared that “Susan Cooper possesses the rare gift of being able to write for young people with a resonance that endures all through their adult lives. I feel as if The Dark Is Rising books have always been a part of my life. I memorized poems and passages from those books, which I can still recite today. When I first began writing fantasy of my own, I slipped in images and names from her stories in homage and celebration. It’s truly a great honor for me to name Susan Cooper as the 2024 Grand Master, a writer so foundational to the fantasy genre, for both readers and readers who became writers.”

A decorated author, Susan’s works have received the Newbery Medal, a Newbery Honor Award, and two Carnegie Honor Awards. She has also been honored with the American Library Association’s Margaret A. Edwards Award, a Christopher Medal, the Humanitas Prize and awards from the Scottish and Welsh Arts Councils. She received the World Fantasy Award for Lifetime Achievement in 2013.

As a writer, her accomplishments extend beyond writing fantasy and fiction. She was a reporter and feature writer for the London Sunday Times, has written biographies, Emmy-nominated screenplays, a Broadway play, and song lyrics for theatrical performance.  

The award will be presented to Susan during the annual SFWA Nebula Conference and the 59th Nebula Awards, June 6–9, 2024. She will join other legends of genre fiction who have been granted this title, including Peter S. Beagle, Connie Willis, Nalo Hopkinson, Ursula K. Le Guin, Ray Bradbury, Anne McCaffrey, Robin McKinley, and Joe Haldeman. For more details on the conference, including registration and the panels on which the new Grand Master will appear, visit events.sfwa.org.

[Based on a press release.]

SFWA Will Hold 2024 Nebula Conference in Pasadena and Online

The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association today announced the 2024 Nebula Conference will be held June 6-9 at the Westin in Pasadena, CA and online. Registration will soon begin at events.sfwa.org.

SFWA says the site was chosen “After an exhaustive, cross-country search that involved dozens of hotel proposals”, anticipating the pushback the announcement has already received from several writers who either hoped the site would move around to another part of the country, or feel Southern California sites are too expensive for them. The in-person component of last year’s hybrid event was held in Anaheim, CA, following three consecutive years of virtual Nebula Conferences (2020-2022).

The date chosen for the Nebula Conference also places it on the weekend following the Horror Writers Association’s StokerCon, another event being held in Southern California — in San Diego, from May 30-June 2.

Pixel Scroll 1/6/24 10 Pixels To Scroll, Number 9 Will SHOCK You

(1) 2024 IS LAST YEAR KRESS AND WILLIAMS RUNNING TAOS TOOLBOX. Taos Toolbox, a two-week master class in writing science fiction and fantasy helmed by authors Nancy Kress and Walter Jon Williams, is open for submissions.

And as part of the announcement Williams told Facebook readers, “This will be the last year that Nancy and I will be doing this. Taos Toolbox may continue under new management (it’s under discussion), but Nancy and I won’t be running things.”

This year’s Taos Toolobox workshop will take place June 2-15, 2024, in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

Special Guest for 2024 is the creator of The Expanse, James S.A. Corey, in reality the writing team of Daniel Abraham and Ty Frank…

Special lecturers this year include Jeffe Kennedy, who currently holds the office of President of the Science Fiction Writers of America. She’s been widely published and has special expertise in indiepub, and owns her own press.

The second special lecturer is Diana Rowland, who at various times been an Air Force pilot, a Las Vegas card dealer, a detective for a sheriff’s office in Louisiana, and a morgue assistant, occupations that contributed to writing her Demon and White Trash Zombie series.

(2) MISSING ROYALTIES. Authors are the hidden victims of the cyber-attack on the British Library, which has prevented them receiving an annual rights payment. The Guardian explains: “Richard Osman among authors missing royalties amid ongoing cyber-attack on British Library”.

…In February 2023, those authors would have been paid thousands of pounds each from Public Lending Right (PLR) payments – money earned by writers, illustrators and translators each time a book is borrowed. But not this year.

Ongoing fallout from a massive cyber-attack means that PLR payments will not be paid as expected while the British Library, which manages the service, fights to restore its crippled systems.

Every time an author’s book is borrowed from a library, they get about 13p, capped at £6,600 a year. To authors like Osman and JK Rowling, whose first Harry Potter book was also on last year’s top read list, this might be a drop in the ocean, but for many authors whose books are library favourites it is a different matter….

The British Library was hit by a cyber-attack at the end of October. At the time, its chief executive, Sir Roly Keating, said that access to even basic communication tools such as email was initially lost. “We took immediate action to isolate and protect our network but significant damage was already done.

“Having breached our systems, the attackers had destroyed their route of entry and much else besides, encrypting or deleting parts of our IT estate.”…

(3) STEVE VERTLIEB MEDICAL UPDATE. File 770 contributor Steve Vertlieb was briefly hospitalized after suffering a mini-stroke on January 4. He told Facebook friends:

Well, there’s good news and bad news early in the new year. The bad news is, that while at needed physical therapy for my balance on Thursday afternoon, I began babbling unintelligibly. I knew what I wanted to say to my trainers but, when it physically left my lips, it became distorted beyond recognition, rather like mumbling incoherently in my sleep.

They called an ambulance and rushed me to nearby Nazareth Hospital where I spent the next twenty-four hours.

I continued complaining, while in the ambulance, that I simply wanted to go home but they drove me, instead, to the Emergency Room.

I began recovering once we reached the waiting hospital. However, to be on the safe side, they kept me overnight in a hospital room. I knew that I must have been returning to “normal,” however, when I began cracking jokes.

It appears that I must have suffered a “T.I.A,” or what’s called a “mini-stroke.” However, following that isolated assault on my sensory nerves, the seemingly isolated attack that apparently came out of nowhere somehow abated and I’ve recovered.

I had a single previous occurrence some eighteen months earlier on what was to have been my last night in Los Angeles. It’s frightening. I can tell you that. The wiring in your brain goes … you should excuse the expression … “haywire.”

I asked the doctors what I can do to keep this from happening again. They said “You’re doing it. You’re taking all the right medications. Just keep an eye out for trouble signs in future.”

What’s the good news, you may well ask?????????? Well, the simple answer is that I’m Home once more!!!!!!!!!! Unlike the esteemed Mr. Bond, I’m “shaken, yet stirred.” “Toto, We’re home …. We’re Home.”

(4) SFWA’S COPYRIGHT OFFICE RESPONSE. Following up SFWA’s October 30th comments to the Copyright Office, they had the opportunity to respond to some of the many other comments received. With over 9,000 responses, SFWA “focused on specific aspects of the conversation around fair use that we felt were not given due attention, as well as to raise concerns that are unique to our community.” Their 10-page response document can be downloaded from Regulations.gov at the link.

One topic SFWA discussed is the scraping of content that is offered free to readers by online sff magazines.

…SFWA acknowledges the problem of generative AI scraping pirated material published as copy-protected ebooks by professional publishers, but SFWA additionally has the unique position of representing many authors who have fought to make their work available for free for human readers. Over the last twenty years, many science fiction and fantasy authors of short fiction have embraced the open Internet, believing that it is good for society and for a flourishing culture that art be available to their fellow human beings regardless of ability to pay. That availability is not without cost; it is quite difficult to bring an online magazine to market, and being freely available has never meant abandoning the moral and legal rights of the authors, nor the obligation to enter into legal contracts to compensate authors for their work and spell out how it may and may not be used. But on balance, many writers and fans believe that freely sharing stories is a good thing that enriches us all.

The current content-scraping regime preys on that good-faith sharing of art as a connection between human minds and the hard work of building a common culture. The decision to publish creative work online to read and share for free is not guaranteed; it is a trade-off of many factors including piracy, audience, and the simple (albeit elusive) ability to make a living. In too many comments to enumerate here, individual authors have made clear that they regard the use of their work for training AI to be another important factor in that mix, and the ultimate effect on the short fiction marketplace and its role in our culture is far from certain. Bluntly, many authors do not want their work taken for this purpose, and that cannot be ignored.

“If my work is just going to get stolen, and if some company’s shareholders are going to get the benefit of my labor and skill without compensating me, I see no reason to continue sharing my work with the public — and a lot of other artists will make the same choice.” (N. K. Jemisin, COLC-2023-0006- 0521)

The developers of AI systems seem to believe that a green light to use scraped copyrighted work will result in a clear field for them to continue freeloading forever; we fear rather that it will result in large swathes of artistic work removed from the commons, locked behind paywalls and passwords to the detriment of all….

(5) AURORA AWARDS. [Item by Danny Sichel.] The Eligibility Lists for this year’s Aurora Awards are open. If you’re aware of any genre work produced by Canadians, submit it. (CSFFA membership required — $10 – to make an addition to the lists.)

(6) WESTERCON 2025 UP FOR ADOPTION. Kevin Standlee announced a “Committee Formed to Select Site of 2025 Westercon” at Westercon.org.

Because no bid filed to host Westercon 77, selection of the site of the 2025 Westercon devolved upon the 2023 Westercon Business Meeting held at Westercon 75 (in conjunction with Loscon 49) in Los Angeles on November 25, 2023. The Westercon 75 Business Meeting voted to award Westercon 77 to a “Caretaker Committee” consisting of Westercon 74 Chair Kevin Standlee and Vice Chair Lisa Hayes with the understanding that they would attempt to select a site and committee to run Westercon 77 and transfer the convention to that committee.

Any site in North America west of 104° west longitude or in Hawaii is eligible to host Westercon 75. There are no other restrictions other than the bid has to be for dates in calendar year 2025. All other restrictions in the Westercon Bylaws are suspended, per section 3.16 of the Westercon Bylaws.

To submit a bid to the 2025 Caretaker Committee to host Westercon 77, contact Kevin Standlee at [email protected], or send a paper application to Lisa Hayes at PO Box 242, Fernley NV 89408. Include information about the proposed site, the proposed dates, and the proposed operating committee. The Caretaker Committee asks that groups interested in hosting Westercon 77 contact them by the end of February 2024.

Should the Caretaker Committee be unable to make a determination for a site for Westercon 77 by Westercon 76 in Salt Lake City (July 4-7, 2024), and assuming that no bid files to host Westercon 77, the Caretaker Committee will ask the Business Meeting of Westercon 76 for additional guidance on how to handle Westercon Site Selection.

(7) MOVING FORWARD – AT OLD MAN SPEED. Tor.com notified those not reading Bluesky that “Netflix’s Adaptation of John Scalzi’s Old Man’s War Is Still In The Works”.

We first found out that Netflix optioned the rights to John Scalzi’s Old Man’s War over six years ago, back in December 2017. It’s not uncommon for things to get optioned but never get made (Old Man’s War, in fact, had been previously optioned by Paramount and Syfy without making it to the production stage), but it sounds like the Netflix movie adaptation is still moving forward.

Scalzi gave an update on the project over on Bluesky yesterday, where he said that work on it is “slowly but surely moving along.”…

(8) COPPOLA’S NEXT APOCALYPSE. Another long-awaited sff project finished filming last year and should actually get released sometime: “Francis Ford Coppola Says ‘Megalopolis’ Is Coming Soon” at Collider.

Francis Ford Coppola is renowned as the mastermind behind some of the greatest pieces of cinema in history but as all legends do, he refuses to rest on his laurels and he’s preparing to release his first film in over a decade with his self-funded star-studded sci-fi drama, Megalopolis. The film has been mired by a number of setbacks, but filming wrapped on the project back in March. And now, we won’t have much longer to wait for it to arrive, as Coppola revealed on the latest episode of The Accutron Show.

The film has an eye-watering array of talent attached, including Adam Driver, Forest Whitaker, Nathalie Emmanuel, Jon Voight, Laurence Fishburne, Aubrey Plaza, Shia LaBeouf, Chloe Fineman, Kathryn Hunter, Dustin Hoffman, DB Sweeney, Talia Shire, Jason Schwartzman, Bailey Ives, Grace Vanderwaal, James Remar, and Giancarlo Esposito.

All that’s known so far about the film so far is that it has a futuristic setting and that it will revolve around the idea of humanity attempting to build some sort of utopian society in the wake of a natural disaster. Other than that, it’s anybody’s guess, and Coppola isn’t up for explaining more quite yet.

(9) WAS THIS THE BEST SF OF 2023? [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] Every January the SF2 Concatenation have an informal survey as to the best SF novels and films of the previous year. It is strictly informal and a bit of fun, enabling team members see what more than one of the others rate. The years have shown that this informal survey has form in that invariably some of the chosen works go on to be short-listed, and sometimes even win, major SF awards later in the year. SF² Concatenation have just advance-posted their selection for 2023 as part of the “Best Science Fiction of the Year Possibly?” post. Scroll down to see how previous years’ choices fared…

(10) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

Born January 6, 1905 Eric Frank Russell. (Died 1978.) So let’s talk about the British writer Eric Frank Russell. His first published piece of fiction was in the first issue of Tales of Wonder called “The Prr-r-eet” (1937). (Please don’t tell me it was about cats.) He also had a letter of comment in Astounding Stories that year. He wrote a lot of such comments down the years. 

Eric Frank Russell

Just two years later, his first novel, Sinister Barrier, would be published as the cover story as the first issue of Unknown. His second novel, Dreadful Sanctuary, would be serialized in AstoundingUnknown’s sister periodical, in 1948.

At Clevention, “Allamagoosa” would win a Short Story Hugo.  The Great Explosion novel garnered  a Prometheus Hall of Fame Award.

Now let’s note some reworkings he did as I like them a lot. Men, Martians and Machines published in 1955 is four related novellas of space adventures at their very best. 

The 1956 Three to Conquer, nominated for a Hugo at NY Con II is a reworking of the earlier Call Him Dead magazine serial that deals with an alien telepath and very well at that. Finally Next of Kin, also known as The Space Willies, shows him being comic, something he does oh so well. It was a novella-length work in Astounding first.

And then there’s the Design for Great-Day novel which was written by Alan Dean Foster. It’s an expansion by him based off a 1953 short story of the same name by Russell. I’m pretty familiar with Foster has done but this isn’t ringing even the faintest of bells. Who’s read it? 

He wrote an extraordinary amount of short stories, around seventy by my guess. 

(My head trauma means numbers and I have at best a tenuous relationship. I once counted the turkeys left over after we distributed them at a food pantry I staffed pre-knee injury. Three times I counted. I got, if I remember correctly now, twelve, fifteen and eighteen birds. I had someone else do it.)

Short Stories Collection is the only one available at the usual suspects. He’s an author who needs a definitive short story collection done for him. 

(11) COMICS SECTION.

  • Free Range shows there are always lines.
  • Edith Pritchett’s cartoon for the Guardian recalls how “I climbed the tube station steps and entered another dimension.” Steven French adds, “Of marginal genre interest but having walked up those steps, this made me laugh!”

(12) PIONEERING WOMAN COMICS ARTIST RETIRES. BoingBoing pays tribute as “Aquaman, Metamorpho, and Brenda Starr cartoonist Ramona Fradon retires”.

Famed cartoonist Ramona Fradon is retiring at the age of 97, according to a January 3 announcement from her comic art dealer Catskill Comics….

An extremely long run, indeed. Her comic book career started in 1950, and her career highlights include a 1959 revamp and long run on Aquaman, the co-creation of DC’s offbeat superhero Metamorpho with writer Bob Haney in 1965, a run on Super Friends in the 1970s, and the comic strip Brenda Starr, Reporter from 1980-1995.

She also was a pioneer, as one of the only women working in comics during the first decades of her career.

Cartoonist and curator of the Cartoon Art Museum in San Francisco Andrew Farago wrote on BlueSky, “Ramona Fradon retires today at the age of 97, just a little shy of Al Jaffee’s retirement age of 99. Not sure if that means that cartooning keeps you young or if it just means that cartooning keeps you broke, but what a body of work she’s produced over the past eight decades!”…

(13) WHAT THEY WILL READ IN 2024. “’I want some light in my life’: eight writers make their new year reading resolutions “ – the Guardian’s collection of quotes includes a declaration from Sheena Patel.

‘I’m turning to sci-fi and dystopia’
Sheena Patel

I have a fascination with sci-fi that is purely theoretical. I often think about reading it but never make any attempt to go near such books because I am afraid of the imagination I will find there. Perhaps I haven’t felt I can really access the genre because sci-fi feels like what Black and Brown people can go through on a daily basis. We’re still in an age of empire, even though we are distracted from this knowledge.

I do love sci-fi films though. I had a true epiphany when I saw Jonathan Glazer’s Under the Skin at the cinema. It was so strange, the alien mixed with the mundane, documentary spliced with fantastical set pieces. Next year I think I will read the Michel Faber book from which the movie was adapted.

In 2024 I also want to tackle Frank Herbert’s Dune books. Earlier this year, I watched the film on my laptop maybe 50 times. At first, I hated it, but then I totally fell in love with it – the visual representation of different worlds opened my mind. Throat singing and nomadic desert tribes could be used as a mood board for the future, but this is already happening now in communities that are regarded as “primitive”. It is the future because it is eternal – such a beautiful thought.

We are fed so much dystopia that reading it in fiction feels hard – but, as the world burns, maybe it is a good idea to hear from artists about where we might be heading. So the other three titles I will try are classics: Octavia E Butler’s KindredStanisław Lem’s Solaris and The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K Le Guin. The present feels so bleak, and our vision of the future so foreshortened, it almost seems like tempting fate – but, without science fiction, how can we dream?

I’m a Fan by Sheena Patel is published in paperback by Granta

(14) HOOFING IT TO MOUNT DOOM. They say “One does not simply walk into Mordor,” but apparently they exaggerated. The Conqueror Virtual Challenges is a thematic program to encourage you to exercise by walking, running, and biking, with solo variations costing from $49.95 to bundles costing $299.95 and up. This link takes you to All 8 LOTR Conqueror Virtual Challenges.

Follow Frodo and Aragorn on an epic journey across Middle-earth with the ULTIMATE THE LORD OF THE RINGS Virtual Challenge Series.

Walk, run or cycle all the way from The Shire to Mount Doom in an epic adventure with one goal – destroying the One Ring. Complete this unforgettable saga by following Aragorn into battle and restoring peace to Middle-earth.

(15) CITY OF HEROES. “11 years after this cult classic superhero MMO was shut down, the original publisher has given its blessing to the community’s custom servers” reports GamesRadar+.

Despite the shutdown of the beloved superhero MMO City of Heroes over a decade ago, fans have been keeping it alive for years with a variety of custom server efforts. Now, one of those projects has just gotten the blessing of the game’s original publisher and license holder, NCSoft.

City of Heroes: Homecoming made the surprising announcement earlier today that “Homecoming has been granted a license to operate a City of Heroes server and further develop the game – subject to conditions and limitations under the contract.” The Homecoming project will remain free and donation-funded, and while there are a few changes to how the project is being managed, it doesn’t look like players will see any meaningful differences in the game itself.

“NCSoft has always had (and will continue to have) the right to demand that Homecoming shuts down,” as the announcement notes. “This agreement provides a framework under which Homecoming can operate the game in a way that complies with NCSoft’s wishes in hopes of minimizing the chances of that happening. We’ve had a really positive and productive relationship with NCSoft for over four years now, so we do not anticipate there being any issues.”…

…The question mark that currently weighs over the license for Homecoming is what this means for other custom server projects, like City of Heroes Rebirth. Today’s announcement notes that “other servers are out of scope” for this license, and the devs say that “our hope is that our license will help us consolidate our userbase with City of Heroes fans from other servers.” There’s already a bit of fear in the community that other private servers might start to disappear following this news, but only time will tell what will happen on that front….

(16) RECORDS BROKEN. Gizmodo tells why “Doctor Who’s New Streaming Home Has Been a Huge Success” – that is, for viewers who can accesss the BBC platform.

To celebrate Doctor Who’s 60th anniversary last year, the BBC made a huge, unprecedented move: for the first time, almost the entirety of Doctor Who, from episodes from 1963 all the way up to the then-airing anniversary specials, would be made available to stream in the UK in one place, on the BBC’s own streaming platform iPlayer. And it turns out doing so has helped the BBC break streaming records over the festive period.

The corporation has announced that Doctor Who—and most specifically Doctor Who episodes from 2005 onwards—were streamed 10.01 million times over the week between Christmas Day and New Year’s Eve, helping the platform break a previous record for streamed content for the week between January 2 and January 8, 2023, with 177 million programs being streamed in total….

It’s hard to say just how that success has panned out internationally, however. The BBC’s new deal with Disney to stream Doctor Who on Disney+ everywhere but the UK and Ireland only covers new episodes from the 60th anniversary onwards—other contemporary and classic Doctor Who access is spread out on various platforms elsewhere, such as Britbox for classic Doctor Who and Max for post-2005 Doctor Who.

(17) MY BLUE HEAVEN(S). [Item by Mike Kennedy.] So you know how astronomers are always using false color images to show this detail or that detail or what something would look like if it was only in the visible spectrum or some such? well, those can leave lasting misimpression.

New images showing color-corrected true-color likenesses of Uranus and Neptune show the latter ice giant—rather than being a dark blue—is only slightly darker than the former.  “True blue: Neptune only slightly deeper colour than Uranus, say Oxford scientists” in the Guardian.

[Thanks to Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Steven French, Kevin Standlee, Kathy Sullivan, Danny Sichel, Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, John King Tarpinian, and Chris Barkley  for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Thomas the Red.]

Pixel Scroll 11/3/23 Scrolled Things Are aFiled At The Pixel K

(1) GAHAN WILSON TV. Episode One of Gahan Wilson’s Tales of Horror TV series debuted on Halloween at GahanWilson.net where it is streaming exclusively.  They will be premiering one or two new episodes each month for the next two years. Episode One is “Phyllis” starring Bourke Floyd and Rachel Alig.

CHATGPT LOVES MY BOOK. [Item by Francis Hamit.]

STARMEN, A blended genre story merging Apache myths, witchcraft, science fiction, fantasy, history, detective, espionage, politics, and romance in a captivating narrative.

Had a conversation with ChatGPT that resulted in that promotional blurb.:  Now I know a bit about AI from covering it during my trade magazine journalism career and my experiments with Artspace.ai.  Any conversation with ChatGPT trains it to serve your needs but the “captivating narrative” bit at the end threw me for a bit.  It seems almost human, doesn’t it, as if it has read the book.

So was that just a lucky accident or could the ChatGPT program have done this? Could it have reached into my computer and read my novel and then compared it to the thousands of other novels and their reviews that have been uploaded to its massive database?  And now makes a value judgement like that?

It could do so in a nanosecond. There is an excerpt on Amazing Stories and other reviews of my other work online and several other books of mine in the Cloud at AWS..  

Will ChatGPT become a literary arbiter because it will always know more than humans do.  (And whose fault is that?  We trained it.)  I suspect that a ChatGPT review may become a default item for book promotion. I’m certainly going to use this just to see if it has any influence.

Two things; ChatGPT is also trained to be very polite so negative reviews are unlikely and a new book is now expected to get dozens of reviews from a variety of  sources; publications, book bloggers, Book Tok influencers, etc. So it will not displace any human reviewer but be just another data point.

(3) MIKE ALLEN Q&A. West Virginia Public Broadcasting interviews writer, editor and publisher Mike Allen about “Sci-fi, Horror And Ghosts In Western Virginia”.

Adams: I’m curious as to what you see when you look at Appalachia. What’s it look like from your perspective in the sci-fi/fantasy/horror world?

Allen: So here’s an interesting thing for me: Roanoke is unique. Some of it, I think, actually goes back to Nelson Bond having been based here, who was extremely active in the 1930s and ‘40s and ‘50s in the magazine scene that existed at that time. Writers like Sharyn McCrumb were making Roanoke, or at least the Roanoke region, their home base. Roanoke has this very robust culture for celebrating its writers, regardless of what they write. Those of us who are based here like myself, like Rod Belcher, who writes under the name R.S. Belcher, or Amanda McGee, who’s an up-and-coming writer whose work is definitely Appalachian and has a bit of witchery involved, we’ve experienced the benefit of that.

There’s no way for me to kind of sweepingly talk about everybody with an Appalachian connection. But there are some I do want to mention. Nathan Ballingrud, who lives in Asheville, is a horror writer who’s had some really high profile things happen lately. His first short story collection, “North American Lake Monsters,” was adapted into the Hulu series, “Monsterland.” The title story in that book, he considers to be an Appalachian story. I mentioned Rod Belcher whose novels have events in West Virginia and the Carolinas. Manly Wade Wellman might be the classic Golden Age writer who’s most associated with the Appalachians. He has a series of stories about John the Balladeer, or Silver John, who is a gentleman who has a guitar strung with silver strings. He wanders through this magical realist version of the Appalachian Mountains and has encounters that are very much based on Appalachian folklore….

(4) CHENGDU WORLDCON ROUNDUP. [Item by Ersatz Culture.] Today’s updates are briefer than planned, as I’ve been working on some other stuff, which might make it into tomorrow’s update.

Photos and video from the Iain M. Banks panel

This Weibo post has some photos from, and a brief write-up of, the Iain M. Banks panel.  (A translated edition of Look to Windward has just been released in China.)

The same person also posted a subtitled video of a 7-minute clip from a Sky documentary, which seems like it was maybe shown during the panel.

YouTube report from the con

I’ve only briefly skimmed this subtitled 19-minute video about the con, so I don’t know how worth watching it is.  The source seems to be a reporter who normally covers Silicon Valley and the tech industry, so there’s a fair bit of stuff about the “businessy” panels as well as things more likely to be of interest to Filers.  There’s a bit of footage from the panel/presentation Nnedi Okorafor was on.

Group photos from the con

It’s not clear to me if the person who posted this image gallery to Xiaohongshu was a volunteer or some other member of the con team, but some of the faces seen in the photos will be recognizable to Filers.

(5) SFWA RESPONDS TO GOVERNMENT CALL FOR COMMENTS ON AI. SFWA has posted the text of a letter the organization sent to the US Copyright Office about artificial intelligence – “SFWA Comments on AI to US Copyright Office” at the SFWA Blog.

On October 30, the SFWA Board and the SFWA Legal Affairs Committee sent the following letter to the US Copyright Office in response to their August 2023 Notice of Inquiry regarding copyright law and policy issues in artificial intelligence, which is part of their AI Initiative….

Quoting from the letter:

… it is with much regret that we cannot yet speak in favor of using AI technology in the business of creating art.

The current crop of artificial intelligence systems owes a great debt to the work of creative human beings. Vast amounts of copyrighted creative work, collected and processed without regard to the moral and legal rights of its creators, have been copied into and used by these systems that appear to produce new creative work. These systems would not exist without the work of creative people, and certainly would not be capable of some of their more startling successes. However, the researchers who have developed them have not paid due attention to this debt. Everyone else involved in the creation of these systems has been compensated for their contributions—the manufacturers of the hardware on which it runs, the utility companies that generate their electrical power, the owners of their data centers and offices, and of course the researchers themselves. Even where free and open source software is used, it is used according to the licenses under which the software is distributed as a reflection of the legal rights of the programmers. Creative workers alone are expected to provide the fruits of their labor for free, without even the courtesy of being asked for permission. Our rights are treated as a mere externality.

Perhaps, then, creative workers uniquely benefit from the existence of these artificial intelligence systems? Unfortunately, to date the opposite has been the case: SFWA has thus far seen mainly harm to the business of writing and publishing science fiction and fantasy as a result of the release of AI systems.

For example, short fiction in our genres has long been recognized as a wellspring of the ideas that drive our work as well as inspiring works in film, games, and television. Writers in our genres rely on a thriving and accessible landscape, which includes online and paper magazines. Part of the success of these publications depends on an open submission process, in which writers may submit their stories without a prior business relationship. This has frequently served as a critical opportunity for new and marginalized authors to have their voices heard.

Over the last year, these venues, particularly the ones that pay higher rates for stories, have been inundated with AI-written stories. The editors uniformly report that these submissions are poorly conceived and written, far from being publishable, but the sheer volume materially interferes with the running of these magazines. Once submission systems are flooded with such content, it takes longer to read and reject a submission than it took someone to have an AI produce it in the first place. Every submitted work must be opened and considered to verify that the writers for whom the system was originally designed are not missed or forgotten….

(6) JOANNA RUSS. LitHub provides readers with “Everything You Need to Know About Groundbreaking Queer Feminist Science Fiction Writer Joanna Russ”.

…Eventually Russ would find a way to channel that disjunction into a remarkable body of literature, including the revolutionary novel The Female Man (1975).

That novel and a selection of other novels and stories by Russ have now been collected and reissued by the Library of America. Not long ago, I sat down with the volume’s editor, Nicole Rudick, to talk about Russ’s life, work, and her reputation as one of the fiercest critics ever to write about science fiction.

JM: Let’s talk about Russ’s development as a writer. She grew up in New York, went to Cornell. She studied with Nabokov, correct?

NR: True, though I think it’s a little overstated. She studied with him in her last year at Cornell and dedicated “Picnic on Paradise” to him and to S.J. Perelman, but I think she came to feel a little silly about that. She named them both as stylistic influences, and she and Nabokov certainly share a metafictional approach, but she talked a lot more throughout her life about George Bernard Shaw.

She grew up loving science, and was a top 10 finalist in the Westinghouse Science Talent Search in 1953. She graduated high school early, and then went to Cornell and switched over to literature. She said that she came out to herself as a lesbian privately when she was a kid and went right back in because she had no models. She didn’t feel that it was real, that it could be done. And that continued at Cornell, where things were pretty traditional in terms of gender roles. And then she went to Yale and studied playwriting but found that she was not very good at it. When she returned to New York, she worked odd jobs, did some theater work, and made some adaptations for radio at WBAI. She was also writing stories and publishing them in little journals and SF magazines.

In the late 60s, she started writing stories about Alyx. She said it was the hardest thing she ever did in her life, to conceive of a tough, independent female protagonist and get it on the page. Feminism was not widespread in the United States at that moment and Russ wasn’t involved in consciousness-raising groups or anything like that, so it was a solitary time to be writing these sorts of things. But they did well. Picnic in Paradise, her novella about Alyx, won a Nebula Award. And then in ‘67, she was back at Cornell, as a teacher, and in ‘69, there was a colloquium on women in the United States organized by the university in the intercession period—Betty Friedan and Kate Millett and a bunch of other panelists talking about sexuality, race, and why women see each other the way that they do. They approached these issues as social problems, not individual problems. Russ was there, and her description of it is so funny—“Marriages broke up; people screamed at each other who had been friends for years…. The skies flew open.” A wave of feminism washed over Cornell, and she sat down and wrote “When it Changed” in the weeks afterwards. Six months later, she saw a novel in the story and wrote The Female Man. But she couldn’t find a publisher. She wanted it published by a trade press and they all rejected it. The excuses were like, “There’s more feminism than science fiction”—that from Viking Press. A lot of women editors were baffled by it and turned it down. It finally got bought by Frederik Pohl [at Bantam Books] in 1975….

(7) CUTTING EDGE. The UK’s Crime Writers Association is expanding their Dagger Awards with two new categories: “Dagger awards adds categories for ‘cosy crime’ and psychological thrillers” in the Guardian.

The growing popularity of two crime fiction subgenres has prompted the creation of two new categories in the annual Crime Writers’ Association awards, including one for “cosy crime” – the subgenre of comforting mysteries that originated with Agatha Christie and is now most associated with Richard Osman.

The Daggers, as the CWA awards are known, recognise authors across 11 categories including historical crime, translated crime and lifetime contribution to crime writing. Next year, the two new awards will be the Twisted Dagger, for psychological thrillers, and the Whodunnit Dagger, for cosy crime….

(8) EATING THE FANTASTIC. Scott Edelman invites listeners to binge BBQ with the legendary Mike Gold in Episode 211 of the Eating the Fantastic podcast.

Mike Gold

I’m extremely pleased I was able to convince the legendary Mike Gold to head out for dinner the night before the con began.

Gold entered the comic industry as DC’s first public relations manager. But as I was astounded to discover, he did some PR earlier than that — as the media coordinator for the defense at the Chicago Conspiracy trial, acting as the intermediary between the press and the likes of Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin, when he was only a teen.

After DC, in 1983, he launched First Comics, where he edited Howard Chaykin’s American Flagg, Mike Baron and Steve Rude’s Nexus, Jim Starlin’s Dreadstar, Mike Grell’s Jon Sable Freelance, and many other classic series. Then after his move back to DC in 1986, he edited such titles as LegendsThe ShadowThe QuestionAction Comics WeeklyGreen Arrow: The Longbow HuntersBlackhawk, and others.

In 2006, he co-founded ComicMix, and in 2011, he received the first Humanitarian Award from the Hero Initiative. And — since he’s five years older than I am — meaning I would have read Fantastic Four #1 at age six, and Mike at eleven, five years counting for a lot back then — I enjoyed digging into our differing perspectives about the early days of comics.

We discussed the way his hiring at DC Comics was all Neal Adams’ fault, how the guerrilla marketing he learned from Abbie Hoffman helped him quadruple direct market sales, the Steve Ditko Creeper cover which sent a not-so-secret message to publisher Carmine Infantino, why editor Murray Boltinoff compared Marvel Comics to the Beatles (and not in a good way), which staffer was “the most disgusting human being I’d ever met in my life,” how First Comics was born, his secret weapon for getting creators to deliver their work on time, our differing contemporaneous exposure to Fantastic Four #1 (and how his related to Merrick Garland), the way an off-hand comment led to a classic John Byrne comic, how the comic book field is like a donut shop, and much more.

(9) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

  • Born November 3, 1929 Neal Barrett, Jr. Heavily nominated for many awards including a number of Hugos but he never won. He was Toastmaster at LoneStarCon 2.  He was prolific writing over two dozen novels and some fifty pieces of short fiction including a novelization of the first Dredd film. As good much of his genre work was, I think his finest, best over the top work was the Wiley Moss series which led off with Pink Vodka Blues. He’s generously available at usual digital suspects. (Died 2014.)
  • Born November 3, 1933 Jeremy Brett. Still my favorite Holmes of all time. He played him in four Granada TV series from 1984 to 1994 in a total of 41 episodes. One source said he was cast as Bond at one point, but turned the part down, feeling that playing 007 would harm his career. Lazenby was cast instead. (Died 1995.)
  • Born November 3, 1942 Martin Cruz Smith, 81. Best remembered for Gorky Park, the Russian political thriller, but he’s also done a number of genre novels in The Indians Won (alternate history), Gypsy in Amber and Canto for a Gypsy (PI with psychic powers) and two wonderful pulpish novels, The Inca Death Squad and Code Name: Werewolf
  • Born November 3, 1952 Eileen Wilks, 71. Her principal genre series is the World of Lupi, a FBI procedural intertwined with shapeshifters, dragons and the multiverse. Highly entertaining, sometimes considered romance novels though I don’t consider them so. The audiobooks are amazing as well!
  • Born November 3, 1953 Kate Capshaw, 70. Best known as Willie Scott in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (which I’ll confess I’ve watched but a few times unlike the first film which I’ve watched way too much), and she was in Dreamscape as well. She retired from acting several decades ago.
  • Born November 3, 1963 Brian Henson, 60.  Can we all agree that The Happytime Murders should never have been done?  Wash it out of your consciousness with Muppet Treasure Island or perhaps The Muppet Christmas Carol. If you want something darker, he was a puppeteer on The Witches, and the chief puppeteer on Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. And he voices Hoggle in Labyrinth.
  • Born November 3, 1977 David Edison, 46. His Waking Engine series, beginning with the rather excellent Waking Engine novel, an urban fantasy set in the afterlife, would’ve been great. His only other novel, Sandymancer, merges fantasy and hard SF. 

(10) IN THE SAME SPIRIT. “We Almost Got a Superhero Movie from The Exorcist Director William Friedkin” says Literary Hub.

In 1975, four years after the release of The French Connection, William Friedkin revealed to a reporter the inspiration for the film’s celebrated car chase scene.

It was the cover of a comic book: a man runs terrified on elevated tracks, just a few steps ahead of a train. He is handsome and athletic. Save for a domino mask, he is dressed like a classic Hollywood detective, in a blue suit and loose tie; he bears no resemblance to Gene Hackman’s slovenly everyman “Popeye” Doyle. The cover was from The Spirit, a comic that ran as a seven-page newspaper insert throughout the 40s and early 50s. The series, created by Will Eisner, was admired for its black humor, innovative compositions, shocking violence, and its setting in a precisely realized urbanscape. “Look at the dramatic use of montage, of light and sound,” Friedkin told the reporter. “See the dynamic framing that Eisner employs, and the deep, vibrant colors.”

Friedkin may not have been telling the truth. The comic he showed the reporter was a reprint that had been published after the release of The French Connection. The stories were three decades old, but the covers were new. Still, it was good publicity for the project he was then planning, a feature-length pilot for an NBC series that would feature the Spirit, aka Denny Colt, a detective who has risen from the dead, lives in a cemetery, and fights crime with his wits, his fists, and a willingness to withstand pain that borders on masochism….

(11) ITALIAN POLITICAL BRANDING USING LOTR. Jamie Mackay asks “How did The Lord of the Rings become a secret weapon in Italy’s culture wars?” in a Guardian opinion piece.

As a longtime fan of JRR Tolkien, I’ve long felt put out by Giorgia Meloni’s bizarre obsession with The Lord of the Rings. Over the years, Italy’s ultra-conservative prime minister has quoted passages in interviews, shared photos of herself reading the novel and even posed with a statue of the wizard Gandalf as part of a campaign. In her autobiography-slash-manifesto, she dedicates several pages to her “favourite book”, which she refers to at one point as being a “sacred” text. When I read the news this week that Italy’s culture ministry is spending €250,000 to organise a Tolkien show at Rome’s National Gallery of Modern and Contemporary Art, and that Meloni will attend the opening, I couldn’t help wondering: why? What is this government trying to achieve by stamping its mark so aggressively on one of the world’s most loved fantasy sagas?

My Italian friends don’t get the fuss. This is everyday politics, they say, a simple branding exercise to soften Meloni’s image. Perhaps. But there’s a deeper, and frankly stranger, side to this story. When The Lord of the Rings first hit Italian shelves in the 1970s, the academic Elémire Zolla wrote a short introduction in which he interpreted the book as an allegory about “pure” ethnic groups defending themselves against contamination from foreign invaders. Fascist sympathisers in the Movimento Sociale Italiano (MSI) quickly jumped on the provocation. Inspired by Zolla’s words, they saw in Tolkien’s world a space where they could explore their ideology in socially acceptable terms, free from the taboos of the past. Meloni, an MSI youth wing member, developed her political consciousness in that environment. As a teenager she even attended a “Hobbit Camp”, a summer retreat organised by the MSI in which participants dressed up in cosplay outfits, sang along to folk ballads and discussed how Tolkienian mythologies could help the post-fascist right find credibility in a new era….

(12) STREAMING TOP 10. JustWatch has released the top 10 streaming movies and TV shows for October 2023.

(13) VIDEO OF THE DAY. “Marvel Studios’ Echo” official trailer dropped today. The series begins streaming January 10 on @DisneyPlus and @Hulu.

[Thanks to Chris Barkley, Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Steven French, Francis Hamit, Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, Ersatz Culture, and John King Tarpinian  for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Andrew (not Werdna).]