Tag Archives: Star Wars

Pixel Scroll 5/6/24 You Saved The Ringworld Old Wu, Louis

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(1) TOMLINSON CRITICIZES PENGUINCON FOR CAVING TO HIS CYBERSTALKERS. In “PenguiCon 2024 Postmortem or How Not to Handle Cyberstalking”, Patrick S. Tomlinson explains how he was disinvited from a convention – one he didn’t originally apply to present at, until he was contacted by the committee about a proposal submitted by a cyberstalker.

…Now we can fast forward to this year, specifically February. I didn’t apply to attend PenguiCon in 2023 because my wife and I were traveling internationally too close to the convention to make it work logistically. So, I was surprised and happy to receive an email from the person who’d invited me in 2022 asking about scheduling for 2024. The surprise quickly turned to confusion when they asked if I’d submitted a panel suggestion “Alien Crabs and Dragonpox: How STDs are depicted in SFF and why we need more sex-positive representation.”

Reader, I had not. I’m all for sex positivity, but no I didn’t want to run a panel on space herpes.

What had actually happened was a member of the stalking cult had impersonated me to abuse the convention’s unsecured panel suggestion form. I politely declined to run their panel but offered to do another presentation of my own choosing. My counteroffer was quickly accepted and a presentation “Why not Venus?” about terraforming our closest planetary neighbor was put on the official schedule. I booked my room and set to work researching, preparing, and practicing the presentation, an intermittent process which took a total of about two weeks.

Again, I need to reiterate the organizers of this convention were not only aware of the cult stalking us, but had previous experience identifying, confronting, and mitigating their criminal harassment to the benefit of all involved. I therefore approached the coming convention confident any stalker attacks would be properly wrangled, which is why what happened next caught me so completely off guard.

Two Mondays ago, just hours after putting the finishing touches on my presentation, the same person who had booked me was tasked by the PenguiCon board to inform me I’d been disinvited from the convention because the cult stalking my family had sufficiently harassed and threatened other attendees through social media and other vectors to the point I learned later a Guest of Honor was forced to withdraw out of concern for their safety….

I wanted to handle this privately, I really did. Both to try and salvage the relationships and to help everyone involved avoid embarrassment. But between the PenguiCon board ceasing all communication with me, and these libelous statements being made public by our stalkers as a result of poor OpSec on the part of at least one board member, I’ve been forced to present the facts and refute the false narrative being presented by both our stalkers AND the PenguiCon board itself, even if accidentally….

…I want to reiterate that all of this was a known issue that PenguiCon had prior experience with and had handled professionally and competently the last time around. Which is why I find the results and fallout from this year, which again I didn’t even sign up to appear at initially, so incomprehensible. I realize this means my chance of appearing at future PenguiCons now hover near absolute zero, and I’m genuinely upset about that. They have a great con with a unique blend of creators and builders from diverse disciplines that encourages conversation and cross pollination. And as someone who’s hand sold thousands of books, their co-op style bookstore for attending authors should be a model for conventions everywhere.

But for everything they do well, the way they handled cyberstalking, especially for a convention focused on sci-fi and tech, needs to be held out as an example of what not to do for other con runners and boards. Our situation is an extreme example, but when you’re working with guests who are quasi-public figures or even celebrities like authors, artists, and actors can be, you need awareness of the potential for cyberstalkers and have policies and procedures in place.

Policies which do not include victim-blaming their targets and rewarding their criminal behavior.

(2) TOMLINSON ON AGENT LESLIE VARNEY. Tomlinson today also wrote a thread on X.com — that starts here – criticizing literary agent Leslie Varney. It begins: “And now I have to deal with Leslie Varney. Again. Leslie is a literary agent representing other authors like me. Over the last 11 months, she has also made the conscious choice to closely align herself with the criminal cult stalking and SWATTing my family.”

(3) PULITZER PRIZES. The 2024 Pulitzer Prize winners were announced today. The complete list is at the link.

The lone winner of genre interest is film critic Justin Chang of the Los Angeles Times, for his writings about sff movies. The Pulitzer Prize website cites the reviews listed below. Unfortunately, you will probably find them paywalled.

(4) ON THE TRACK OF MIDWEST FURFEST GAS ATTACK. Fur and Loathing has dropped the first of six episodes in a “Furry True Crime podcast of six episodes, releasing weekly”. Connect at the link.

Dogpatch Press reminds fans what is being investigated in its post “Midwest Furfest 2014 chemical attack – new findings by Fur And Loathing podcast”.

Think you’ve heard everything about the 2014 chemical attack on Midwest Furfest? Wait until you hear this.

The intentional release of chlorine gas sent 19 people to the hospital. It was one of the largest chemical weapons terrorist attacks in American history.

Who did it? And… why?

The targets deserve to know, because they were lucky to survive. The weapon’s deadly potential was only avoided by fast response. The level of crime fell just behind the 2001 anthrax attacks, but strangely, nobody was ever charged for it. The story faded into underreporting, disrespect towards the community, murky rumors, and hopes that it won’t happen again. There’s pride in resilience — but 10 years later, justice wasn’t served. It’s the biggest cold case in furry fandom.

The case revived when investigation by Dogpatch Press drew journalist Nicky Woolf and Project Brazen to seek FBI records, identify suspects, and fly across America to interview sources. Nicky is a journalist who reports on internet culture, with stories in The Guardian, and his original podcast series Finding Q and The Sound: Mystery of the Havana Syndrome. Nicky and Brazen’s series Fur And Loathing delivers never-before reported findings to empower the community….

(5) AMAZON’S UNION-BUSTING. Cory Doctorow tells how “Amazon illegally interferes with an historic UK warehouse election” at Pluralistic.

…When it benefits Amazon, they are obsessive – “relentless” (Bezos’s original for the company) – about user friendliness. They value ease of use so highly that they even patented “one click checkout” – the incredibly obvious idea that a company that stores your shipping address and credit card could let you buy something with a single click: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1-Click#Patent

But when it benefits Amazon to place obstacles in our way, they are even more relentless in inventing new forms of fuckery, spiteful little landmines they strew in our path. Just look at how Amazon deals with unionization efforts in its warehouses.

Amazon’s relentless union-busting spans a wide diversity of tactics. On the one hand, they cook up media narratives to smear organizers, invoking racist dog-whistles to discredit workers who want a better deal: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/apr/02/amazon-chris-smalls-smart-articulate-leaked-memo

On the other hand, they collude with federal agencies to make workers afraid that their secret ballots will be visible to their bosses, exposing them to retaliation: https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/amazon-violated-labor-law-alabama-union-election-labor-official-finds-rcna1582

They hold Cultural Revolution-style forced indoctrination meetings where they illegally threaten workers with punishment for voting in favor of their union: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/31/business/economy/amazon-union-staten-island-nlrb.html

And they fire Amazon tech workers who express solidarity with warehouse workers: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/amazon-fires-tech-employees-workers-criticism-warehouse-climate-policies/

But all this is high-touch, labor-intensive fuckery. Amazon, as we know, loves automation, and so it automates much of its union-busting: for example, it created an employee chat app that refused to deliver any message containing words like “fairness” or “grievance…

(6) CHRIS HEMSWORTH TAKES A LIE DETECTOR TEST. Vanity Fair wired up actor Chris Hemsworth and asked him some uncomfortable questions.

Vanity Fair’s May cover star Chris Hemsworth takes our infamous lie detector test. Between him and Matt Damon, who usually pays the bill? Does he think he’s fashionable enough to be a co-chair for the 2024 Met Gala? Is it true that his little brother Liam also auditioned for “Thor”?

(7) THEY’RE THE TOPS. MoovitApp ended up with a list of 30 titles as they went about “Ranking The Most Popular and Beloved Books Of All Time”. Works by Hemingway, Tolkien, Harper Lee, and Nabokov are here – would you like to guess in what order?

It’s hard to say exactly what makes a book great; they are after all, pieces of art that are just as subjective as anything else. However, there are some books that seem to endure for longer and resonate with more readers. Whether or not you’re a fan of literature, these are the stories that some might consider required reading. So, did you read all the best ones, and did your favorite make the list? Read on and see!…

(8) ROGER BOZZETTO (1937-2024). French academic and literary critic Roger Bozzetto died March 20. His passing was reported on Facebook.

The specialist in science fiction and fantastic literature was one of the most important and relevant European SF&F critics and theoreticians.

He was Professor Emeritus of general and comparative literature at the University of Provence, France.

He was also a member of CERLI (Centre d’Études et de Recherches sur les Littératures de l’Imaginaire/Center for Studies and Research on the Literatures of the Imagination, founded in 1979, the pool of great SF&F specialists of the last three decades in the French university landscape).

(9) JEANNIE EPPER (1941-2024). Stuntwoman Jeannie Epper, who worked on myriad films, many genre or genre-adjacent, died May 5 at the age of 83. The Hollywood Reporter paid tribute:

Jeannie Epper, the peerless, fearless stunt performer who doubled for Lynda Carter on Wonder Woman and swung on a vine across a 350-foot gorge and propelled down an epic mudslide as Kathleen Turner in Romancing the Stone, has died. She was 83.

Epper died Sunday night of natural causes at her home in Simi Valley, her family told The Hollywood Reporter.

Just one member of a dynasty of stunt performers that Steven Spielberg dubbed the “Flying Wallendas of Film” — starting with her father, John Epper, there have been four generations of Eppers in show business since the 1930s — she worked on 150-plus films and TV shows during an astounding 70-year career.

In 2007, Epper received the first lifetime achievement honor given to a woman at the World Taurus Awards and ranks among the greatest stuntwomen of all time.

Known for her agility, horse-riding skills and competitiveness, the 5-foot-9 Epper also stepped in for Linda Evans on the ABC shows The Big Valley in the 1960s and Dynasty in the 1980s. When Evans’ Krystle was engaged in one of those knock-down, drag-out catfights with Joan Collins’ Alexis, chances are it was Epper you saw mixing it up.

Epper also put herself in harm’s way for Kate Jackson on Charlie’s Angels, for Lindsay Wagner on The Bionic Woman, for Angie Dickinson on Police Woman, for Jessica Walter in Play Misty for Me (1971), for Jill Clayburgh in Silver Streak (1976) and for Nancy Allen in RoboCop (1987).

… Epper worked for Spielberg (as director or producer) on eight films, among them Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977), 1941 (1979), Poltergeist (1982), Catch Me If You Can (2002) and Minority Report (2002)….

(10) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Paul Weimer.]

Born May 6, 1969 – Annalee Newitz, 55. By Paul Weimer: Newitz’s work for me has been far less about their science fiction and much more about their non fiction writing. Sure, Autonomous is a solid novel with a lot of things to say about autonomy, slavery, and a heck of a lot about economics and the free market, and gender dynamics. But it is Newitz’s  journalism at i09, Gawker, Gizmodo and elsewhere, writing about society and technology that really drew my attention to their work. That would also include the podcast Our Opinions are Correct, which Newitz co-hosts with Charlie Jane Anders. While I don’t always agree with them and their opinions, I have always found Newitz’ point of view (as well as Charlie Jane’s) to be interesting, strongly reasoned and worthy of engaging in and thinking about. 

Annalee Newitz in 2023. Photo by Scott Edelman.

Newitz’s book Four Lost Cities, to date, is my favorite of their works. Strongly grounded in their journalism chops, the book looks at four cities that have fallen into decay and ruin:  Çatal höyük, one of the very first and earliest of cities, Pompeii, perhaps the most famous and well known of the four cities, Cahokia, the Mound city whose mounds still remain on the other side of the Mississippi from St. Louis, and finally, Angkor Wat.  The last, particularly, was a revelation for me, as I didn’t quite realize the hydraulic engineering that went into and kept Angkor Wat running. Given Newitz’s interest in science and engineering, Newitz is particularly interested in how and when circumstances caused that engineering to slip. And consequently, just how the city’s inhabitants had to face a slow motion collapse and apocalypse. The fall of cities due to internal and external factors definitely loom over the other three cities in the volume as well, but Angkor Wat, as their capstone, definitely is where the themes of the book, and perhaps of a lot of Newitz’s concerns in general, really come to the fore and in full flower and their full powers.

(11) COMICS SECTION.

  • Eek! shows the beginnings of an eternal problem.
  • Tom Gauld teases about AI:
  • And here’s Teddy Harvia’s contribution!

(12) UNICORN. Michaele Jordan has allowed File 770 to share her latest micro story published by 50 Give or Take.

(13) VINTAGE X. The final trailer for Marvel Animation’s X-Men ’97 dropped a week ago. The series is on Disney+.

(14) STAR WARS THAT NEVER WAS. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] Moid Moidelhoff at Media Death Cult goes all alternate future with a Star Wars film that could have been… “The Star Wars Sequel That Was Never Made”.

We dive into the Star Wars sequel that could have been, Splinter Of The Mind’s Eye.The novel written by Alan Dean Foster.

(15) LEGO STAR WARS. And here’s some more Star Wars that should never be – but which Gizmodo tells us is going to get its own four-part Disney+ animation: “Darth Jar Jar Strikes in Lego’s Crazy New Star Wars Series”. (Can anything including Jar Jar really be called “intellectual property”?)

The Star Wars Universe gets turned upside down in Lego Star Wars: Rebuild the Galaxy, a fun what-if style series. When ordinary nerf-herder Sig Greebling (Gaten Matarazzo) unearths a powerful artifact from a hidden Jedi temple, the galaxy as we know completely changes.

In the four-part special debuting on Disney+ September 13, the good guys are bad, bad guys are good, and it all falls on Sig’s shoulders to become the hero the galaxy needs to put everything back together…. 

[Thanks to Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, John King Tarpinian, Michaele Jordan, Chris Barkley, Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Steven French, Teddy Harvia, and Kathy Sullivan for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Daniel Dern. (Daniel was inspired by this Allan Sherman parody.]

Pixel Scroll 5/5/24 Unscroll That Pixel And Do Us All A Favor, That File’s Lost Its Taste, And Try Another Flavor

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(1) TROUBLED DENVER EVENT WON’T REPEAT IN 2025.  Anne Marble did a roundup about the complaints against Readers Take Denver in Pixel Scroll 4/22/24 item #5.

On May 3 USA Today did its own story about those complaints —“Rebecca Yarros disavows Denver expo amid horror stories, cancelation” – with the additional news that RTD 2025 has now been cancelled.

…All of the negative attention Readers Take Denver has received in the days, weeks following the event has prompted the cancellation of next year’s convention, which was previously scheduled for February 2025….

(2) TURNING THINGS TO GOLD. The original artwork for the cover of Harry Potter and The Philosopher’s Stone will be auctioned June 26 by Sotheby’s reports CNN. It’s expected to set a record.

…When the illustration was first up for auction at Sotheby’s in London in 2001, it sold for around four times its estimated sale price, for a record £85,750 (about $106,000), according to a Sotheby’s press release Thursday.

…The record for an item related to the book series is currently held by an unsigned first edition of “Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone,” which sold for $421,000 at Heritage Auctions in Dallas, Texas, in 2021, according to Sotheby’s.

(3) SPOILER WARNING. There’s one in this item. Maybe two. “How Harry Potter Author J.K. Rowling Told Alan Rickman About Snape” in Deadline.

JK Rowling has shared the conversation she had with actor Alan Rickman, when she revealed to him the true complications of his character in the Harry Potter movies.

Rowling has recorded an interview for her website, answering fans’ questions about her writing process, with a preview transcribed in today’s Times of London. She revealed:

“He rang me up and said, ‘Look, I’m spinning plates here. I really need to understand what Snape’s up to? Am I a pure baddie?’ He was the only person I told: ‘You were in love with Harry’s mother.’

Continues at the link.

(4) THE OTHER SIDE OF THE MEMORY HOLE IS IN SCOTLAND. “Scottish artist receives hundreds of copies of Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four in the post” – the Guardian tells why.

Copies of George Orwell’s dystopian masterpiece Nineteen Eighty-Four have been arriving at an artist’s studio in Edinburgh for months. Every shape and size, posted from Ukraine, Hong Kong, Peru, Germany, Cape Cod and Sarajevo.

Some are in mint condition, others are dog-eared, tea-stained, heavily annotated or turned into graffitied art works. One is a water-stained first edition; one is a secret love letter from a married woman to her first love; another, a graphic novel version, came from Orwell’s son Richard Blair.

Each has been donated to a unique installation in the community hall of Jura, the Hebridean island where Orwell, in dire poverty and desperately ill, wrote Nineteen Eighty-Four during the late 1940s, to mark its publication 75 years ago.

Hans K Clausen, a sculptor based in Edinburgh, is collecting 1,984 copies of the book to exhibit on Jura for three days in early June. It will be an interactive, “living” sculpture where visitors are invited to open and read every volume.

Many have arrived, often with overseas postmarks and customs stamps, addressed to “Winston Smith, care of Hans K Clausen”….

(5) JEOPARDY! [Item by David Goldfarb.] I got around to watching the first episode of the new Jeopardy! Masters tournament. Each episode has two games. I didn’t notice any SFF content in the first game, but there was in the second. Here are details:

In the first round:

Spell it!, $1000: How about this dwarves race of “Ring Cycle” fame whose name begins & ends with the same letter

Yogesh Raut got it: “What is N-I-B-E-L-U-N-G-E-N?”.

Meet the Smiths, $400: Matt Smith’s TV roles include the Doctor on “Doctor Who” & this member of the royal family on seasons 1 & 2 of “The Crown”

Yogesh again: “Who is Prince Philip?”

In the second round:

Authors’ Fictional Places, $2000. A Daily Double on which Yogesh bet 9400 points: The town of Eastwick, Rhode Island

Yogesh said, “Who is John Updike?” (The novel here being The Witches of Eastwick.)

Authors’ Fiction Places, $1600: A world of dragons & dragonriders, Pern

Amy Schneider rang in, then hesitated, but got to “Who is McCaffrey?”

Authors’ Fictional Places, $1200. They displayed a picture of a bespectacled, bald man holding a cloth, sitting next to a model of a fantasy setting that Filers would recognize. The clue: Resting on the backs of four elephants atop a giant turtle, Discworld.

Yogesh knew it: “Who is Pratchett?”

Author’s Fictional Places, $400: Castle Rock, Maine.

Yogesh again: “Who is King?”

(Fictional Places $800 was William Faulkner’s Yoknapatawpha County, in case you were wondering.)

(6) 2024 CHINA SCIENCE FICTION INDUSTRY REPORT. South China Morning Post covers this year’s report on China’s sf business: “China wants sci-fi industry, led by megahit 3 Body Problem, to help tech make the jump to lightspeed”.

China’s US$15 billion sci-fi industry, which has gained global attention after the success of the Netflix show 3 Body Problem, offers a potential boost to the economy while aligning with Beijing’s aspirations to become a tech powerhouse, analysts said, underscoring the need for stronger government backing to fortify the sector.

The industry achieved 113.29 billion yuan (US$15.6 billion) in total revenue last year, representing a 29 per cent year on year increase according to the 2024 China Science Fiction Industry Report, released last week during the eighth China Science Fiction Convention in Beijing.

Science fiction could also help companies conceptualise and produce new ideas, such as the establishment of a human settlement on Mars or brain-computer interfaces, according to Wu Yan, who co-authored the report….

(7) COPPOLA’S SF? EPIC. Whether it’s sff has been debated in the media – now you can decide with your own eyes. “’Megalopolis’ Teaser: Adam Driver Leads Francis Ford Coppola’s Epic” – Variety gives us a look.

Adam Driver is on the edge in the first official teaser for Francis Ford Coppola’s “Megalopolis.”

“Megalopolis,” which will premiere in competition at the Cannes Film Festival, has been a project years in the making for the director, who first began work on the screenplay in the 1980s. The legendary filmmaker behind “The Godfather” and “Apocalypse Now” has invested $120 million of his own money into the film…. 

…According to the official synopsis, “‘Megalopolis’ is a Roman Epic fable set in an imagined Modern America. The City of New Rome must change, causing conflict between Cesar Catilina (Adam Driver), a genius artist who seeks to leap into a utopian, idealistic future, and his opposition, Mayor Franklyn Cicero (Giancarlo Esposito), who remains committed to a regressive status quo, perpetuating greed, special interests, and partisan warfare. Torn between them is socialite Julia Cicero (Nathalie Emmanuel), the mayor’s daughter, whose love for Cesar has divided her loyalties, forcing her to discover what she truly believes humanity deserves.”…

(8) BERNARD HILL (1944-2024). Bernard Hill, who played Theoden in Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings films, died May 5 reports Deadline. His best known film role was as the captain of the Titanic in James Cameron’s film. He played a number of secondary roles in about 20 genre/related productions, including A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1999), The Scorpion King (2002) and Gothika (2003).

(9) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Paul Weimer.]

Catherynne M. Valente in 2017.

Born May 5, 1979 – Catherynne Valente, 45. By Paul Weimer: My strong impression of Cat Valente’s work came from the beginning of my reviewing life. Way back in the halcyon days of 2009, when I was first putting reviews out there, and getting review copies, I was offered a review copy of an author I had never heard before, named Cat Valente.  The novel was Palimpsest and well, the novel knocked me on my arse. Reader, I was not quite prepared for a novel that involved sex as a gateway to another realm of existence. It’s a sensuous, sensual and rich novel in immersive detail, and that immersion is something I would notice in future Cat Valente’s books.  I’ve not tried Palimpsest again, but I eagerly have read a number of her novellas and short stories. I particularly like “Six Gun Snow White” among these.

But, really, Space Opera is the one book I think of when I think of Cat Valente’s work.  Although I’ve never actually watched Eurovision, I know enough about it to understand the “Eurovision with Aliens in Space” high concept of Space Opera and I found the novel, like much of Valente’s work to be a sensory delight, queer, unapologetic, and with strongly defined and delineated characters. I think it is probably the one Valente book that if you are going to try Valente, that’s the one to try.  I know there have been discussions and thoughts about a sequel to the book ever since it came out, but part of the joy of Space Opera for me  is, like a lot of Valente’s other work, is that it is self-contained and complete within it’s pages. Sure, Valente has written other sequels and follow ups to other work, but this is a function I think of her exuberant and vivid writing, rather than any incompleteness in a work that needs sequels to resolve.

(10) COMICS SECTION.

  • Fur Babies  has a variety of cartoonists’ styles of sound effects in honor of the day.  Can you identify them before you get to the explanation in the comments?
  • Carpe Diem cites a space traffic violation.
  • Bizarro asks what if Lord Greystoke had been raised by another species?
  • Frank and Ernest identify their dinosaur attacker.
  • Mannequin on the Moon depicts the royal Shakespearean eye exam.

(11) COLLECTIBLE GHOSTBUSTERS GEAR. Take this to the beach and scare the guys with the metal detectors. “Ghostbusters Plasma Series HasLab Two in the Box! Ghost Trap and P.K.E” at Hasbro Pulse.

P.K.E. METER

It’s no secret Egon Spengler was a very hands-on, DIY kinda scientist, often cobbling together his hardware from common, everyday items, and the P.K.E. Meter is no different. Egon used an old electric shoe polisher for the bulk of this handheld piece of tech, which trades in footwear for phantasms, determining specter location and quantification. The P.K.E. Meter acts like a divining rod when near a spectral being, with a pair of motorized arms extending outward from the sides, embedded lights flashing in sync with detectable spectral frequencies. 

Fans will be happy to know that not only have the HasLab Lab Lab Techs included classic P.K.E. Meter features, such as Ghost Detection Mode, but they’ve also included a very special upgrade. Yes, that’s right, the HasLab P.K.E. Meter 1:1-scale premium adult collectible features Egon Spengler’s personal upgrade from his time as the Dirt Farmer, in Summerville: Taser Mode! Taser Mode, if you’re unfamiliar, turns the P.K.E. Meter into a taser that forces an apparition to reveal itself… or explode in a burst of marshmallow goo, as we know from Podcast’s dealings with the mischievous Mini-Pufts in the Ecto-1.

GHOST TRAP

Needing something to contain and transport paranormal entities to a more permanent housing facility (namely the Ecto-Containment Unit), Ray Stantz and Egon Spengler designed the Ghost Trap. Consisting of a main chassis and a removable cartridge, the Ghost Trap has limited battery life and was never meant to accommodate ecto-plasmic beings for any extended period.

 This 1:1-scale premium adult collectible features everything fans love about this vital piece of ghost-bustin’ gear, including the removable cartridge, high-powered LEDs, premium metal finishes, functioning diecast metal wheels for smooth deployment, and more! This thing is so gorgeous that ghosts will be throwing themselves at you just for a chance to get trapped within this highly detailed, premium collectible!

(12) TODAY’S THING TO WORRY ABOUT. “How Long Will Your Blu-Ray Collection Last?” asks Gizmodo.

Physical media is very popular these days. Nostalgia, fandom, and streaming burnout have caused certain segments of American society to switch off their Amazon Prime accounts and fire up their Blu-ray players. One of the many advertised benefits of physical media is that it offers a more permanent, definitive form of media ownership than a streaming service. But just how permanent are your Blu-rays? And is physical media really built to last?…

… Unfortunately, there isn’t a lot of open-source information about the longevity of commercially mass-produced Blu-rays, technically known as read-only discs, or BD-ROMs. The Blu-ray Disc Association, which developed and owns the technology behind the discs, ignored multiple emails I sent them, and the people that I did speak to on the subject couldn’t give me a very specific answer….

(13) DYKSTRAFLEX. “’Star Wars’ Motion Control Camera System Goes to Academy Museum” – Variety explains its history.

A half-century ago when George Lucas decided to make “Star Wars,” a core visual effects team was handed a sizable challenge: Figure out a believable way to transport audiences to a galaxy far, far away. Essential to that goal was the development of a new type of motion control camera system: built in a Van Nuys warehouse where the production filmed space-set scenes such as the climatic trench run.

Now fans in Southern California can see the historic Dykstraflex camera system, newly restored and in working order, on display at the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures starting Saturday in recognition of May the 4th, aka Star Wars day. The system weighs 1,500 lbs. and will be demonstrated by VFX vets with a 14-foot track and studio scale replicas of the Millennium Falcon, which is five-feet long, and a 20-inch X-Wing fighter.

(14) THE BOYS. Prime Video dropped “The Boys – Season 4 Official Trailer” this week. The series arrives at Prime on June 13.

In Season Four, the world is on the brink. Victoria Neuman is closer than ever to the Oval Office and under the muscly thumb of Homelander, who is consolidating his power. Butcher, with only months to live, has lost Becca’s son and his job as The Boys’ leader. The rest of the team are fed up with his lies. With the stakes higher than ever, they have to find a way to work together and save the world before it’s too late.

(15) VIDEO OF THE DAY. Ryan George takes us to “The Divergent Series: Insurgent Pitch Meeting”.

[Thanks to Kathy Sullivan, Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, Paul Weimer, David Goldfarb, Martin Easterbrook, John King Tarpinian, Chris Barkley, Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Steven French, and Teddy Harvia for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Jack Lint.]

Pixel Scroll 5/4/24 Pixels On The Storm

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(1) KUANG Q&A. In the Guardian: “Rebecca F Kuang: ‘I like to write to my friends in the style of Joan Didion’”.

And cancel culture? Does it exist?
I find a lot of this so disingenuous. The shape of an internet takedown would go something like this: somebody would err, and often there would be pretty genuine complaints about their conduct. But there’s also a really big spectrum of what counts [as bad behaviour]. It could be something quite egregious and harmful, and it could also be something as silly as misrecognising a breakfast cereal. We conflate all of these scales of harm. Anyway, someone would air this complaint, and then there would be a back and forth with that complaint, and then, very quickly, it would spread to the corners of the internet, and those with no stake in it at all would spread disinformation. Nobody would ever seem interested in the truth, or in reparations, or in genuinely understanding what happened. It’s so self-serving and frivolous…

What are you working on now?
My next book is set in the 80s. It’s a fantasy novel, but it’s very different from The Poppy War trilogy. It’s Neil Gaiman meets… Lewis Carroll. There’ll be a big emphasis on nonsense and riddles and mysteries. It’s an entirely new genre. I like to feel like I’m moving forward. I get bored very easily.

(2) CRIMINALIZED WRITING. “Record Number of Writers Jailed Worldwide in 2023” says PEN America annual report.

PEN America today released its annual Freedom to Write Index, recording the highest number of jailed writers around the globe since the Index launched five years ago. There were 339 writers from 33 countries jailed in 2023, an increase of 62 writers compared to 2022 and 101 more than in 2019….

The top ten jailers of writers in 2023 are China (including autonomous regions) with 107, Iran 49, Saudi Arabia and Vietnam each with 19, Israel (including the Occupied Palestinian Territory) with 17, Belarus and Russia each with 16, Türkiye 14, Myanmar 12, and Eritrea seven. 

PEN America spends the entire year researching news and verifying accounts of writers jailed for their speech–and held for a minimum of 48 hours –anywhere in the world (see more on our methodology here). In addition to the Freedom to Write Index, PEN America maintains and updates a Writers at Risk Database throughout the year, providing insights into the wide array of threats that writers face. There are currently 923 active cases of writers at risk in 88 countries in the database….

(3) FEARLESS OCTAGENARIAN. “’I can say things other people are afraid to’: Margaret Atwood on censorship, literary feuds and Trump” in the Guardian.

…Questions of freedom of expression are “front and centre” right now, she believes, with both left and right turning to censorship. “‘You have to take this book out of the school because it hurts my child’s feelings,’ says one hand, and the other hand says ‘Well this other book hurts my child’s feelings, so you have to take it out.’ And that goes on until there aren’t any books left. If you go too far down the road in either direction, you shut down political speech.” While she doesn’t think this is likely to happen in Britain any time soon – “the British are quite mouthy, you may have noticed” – it is happening in parts of America.

When Atwood speaks the world listens, with good reason: the financial crash, the rise of the extreme right and the infringement of women’s freedoms in recent years have all been anticipated in her work. “I just pay attention,” she likes to say. Her status as an international treasure and seer means she is frequently sought out for her opinions on the hottest issues of the day, as well as panel discussions and events.

“I’m a kind of walking opinion poll,” she says. “I can tell by the questions that people ask me what’s on their minds. What is the thing they’re obsessing about at the moment.” The backwards turn of women’s rights, with the ruling just this month that the 1864 total ban on abortion be enforced in Arizona, for example, is high on the list. But as always she is careful to stress that there is no one answer to questions about the future for women. “I have to ask which women? How old? What country? There are many different variations of women.”

She attributes her outspokenness to the fact that she doesn’t have a job: “You can say things that other people might be afraid to because they will lose their job or get cancelled.”… 

(4) WATER WAITERS. Animation Magazine signal boosts a “Dreamy Chinese Animated Feature ‘Deep Sea’ Now Streaming on Peacock”.

Having made a striking visual impression upon audiences at prestige film festivals in Berlin, Tribeca, Annecy and Tokyo, the innovative CG-animated feature Deep Sea has made its exclusive streaming debut on Peacock. Written and directed by Tian Xiaopeng (Monkey King: Hero Is Back), the film is produced by China’s October Media and Enlight Pictures, and had a limited U.S. theatrical release through Viva Pictures in November.

Synopsis: A young girl named Shenxiu is unexpectedly swept into the sea during a family cruise and stumbles upon a mysterious restaurant under the waves. There, she meets the scheming head chef Nanhe, and his ragtag crew of adorable otters and sarcastic walruses. They join forces to save the restaurant and reunite Shenxiu with her long-lost mother in a kaleidoscopic, dreamlike world of swirling color and dazzling views….

(5) A TRAILER PARK FAR, FAR AWAY. Animation World Network is tuned in when “Disney+ Drops New ‘Star Wars: The Acolyte’ Trailer”.

To celebrate Star Wars Days, Disney+ has just dropped a second trailer and batch of images for Star Wars: The Acolyte, which debuts with the first two episodes on June 4.

The newest Star Wars offering, the mystery-thriller takes viewers into a galaxy of shadowy secrets and emerging dark-side powers in the final days of the High Republic era. A former Padawan reunites with her Jedi Master to investigate a shocking crime spree, but as more clues emerge, they travel down a dark path where the forces they confront are more sinister than they ever anticipated.

(6) SANFORD (SANDY) ZANE MESCHKOW (1941-2024). By Nigel Rowe: Sandy (Sanford) Meschkow passed away on January 28, 2024 in Bryn Mawr, Montgomery, Pennsylvania. He was 83.

He grew up in the Catskill Mountains area of New York State, and was a longtime SF fan and onetime roommate and best friend of artist Mike Hinge. As President of the Philadelphia Science Fiction Society early in the 1970s Sandy commissioned Kelly Freas to do a portrait of Keith Laumer for a PSFS program book. An engineer and editor/writer by trade who worked at NASA for a time in the Sixties. James Blish has Sandy to thank for helping him move out of his apartment when he was moving to England.

Back in early 2022, he wrote saying, “My wife died in January of 2019 and I moved into this large retirement facility that July. I just turned 81and while I have some cardiac and dfiabetic problems I’m not using a walker yet! I wrote an SF novel I can’t seem to sell, but I’ll e-mail it to you for comments if you want to see it. I keep in close contact with an old girlfriend who also knew Mike and we keep each other from getting depressed.  We are in anti-COVID-19 lockdown here. Only one resident and seven staffers have caught the new variant lately.”

He never did send the story along, but we wrote a few more times, sharing memories about Mike and what Sandy was up to. Sandy was Mike’s executor and had packed up all his personal items for me to transport back to New Zealand along with his ashes. A task I carried out the year after he passed. A memorial for Mike was dutifully held in NZ with Mike’s brother Noel and several old time New Zealand 50’s fans present.

Sandy’s fannish memories about his early days in fandom are available in his blog from 2009: Fanograph.

Sadly, we never did meet up in person, but I’ll miss those occasional chatty emails.

(7) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

Born May 4, 1976 — Gail Carriger, 48. Steampunk and mannerpunk , it’s time to talk about both, specifically that as written by our birthday author, Gail Carriger.  

Where to start? Her first novel, Soulless, set in an alternate version of Victorian era Britain where werewolves and vampires are members of proper society. Alexia Tarabotti is a wonderful created character that anyone would love to have an adventure with, as well as sit down with to high tea in the afternoon. 

It begins the Parasol Protectorate series centered around her, which as of now goes on to have Changeless, Blameless, oh guess, Heartless and Timeless in it, plus one short story, “Meat Cute”. Why the latter broke the naming convention I know not. 

Gail Carriger. Photo by Vanessa Applegate.

Wait, wait, don’t tell me! — she’s done more mannerpunk. Indeed she has. There is Custard Protocol series (Prudence Imprudence, Competence and Reticence), also set in Parasol Protectorate universe. When Prudence “Rue” Alessandra Maccon Akeldama , a young woman with metahuman abilities, is left an unexpected dirigible in a will , she does what any sensible (ha!) alternative Victorian Era female would do — she names it the Spotted Custard and floats off to India. Need I say adventures of a most unusual kind follow? I really love this series and not just for the name of the series. It’s just fun. Really fun.

The Finishing School series is set in Parasol Protectorate universe. Again she has a delightful manner in naming her tales, Etiquette & Espionage, Curtsies & Conspiracies, Waistcoats & Weaponry and Manners & Mutiny. Go ahead, I think you can figure what this series is about without me telling you. It’s delightful of course.

So I’m not that familiar with her other writing. It appears the two Delightfully Deadly novellas might have a tinge of romance in them though at least one also has dead husbands, four to be precise, lobsters and of course high society. Lobsters? 

The Claw & Courtship novellas are standalone stories set in the Parasol Protectorate universe. So far there’s just “How to Marry a Werewolf (In 10 Easy Steps)”, though she says there’ll be more.

Finally, I’ll note she did a SF series, the Tinkered Stars Universe series — how can this possibly be? — which she describes on her website as “a sexy alien police procedural on a space station”. Oh, that sounds so good. It consists of Divinity 36, Demigod 22, Dome 6, Crudat and The 5th Gender. 

Did she do short stories? Just four, of which I really want to read one — “The Curious Case of the Werewolf that Wasn’t, The Mummy that Was and the Cat in the Jar”.

(8) COMICS SECTION.

(9) OUTRÉ TECH. Gizmodo has a slideshow of “7 Extremely Weird Inventions From the Grandfather of Science Fiction” – ideas conceived by Hugo Gernsback.

…In 1913, he started The Electrical Experimenter, which would become known as Science and Invention in the 1920s. And in 1919 he founded Radio News, with Television News launched in 1928, just a couple of years after the first experimental tests of TV. That doesn’t even include the sci-fi titles he started like Amazing Stories.

All of these serious-minded tech magazines had at least one article in every issue by Gernsback, and they often included ideas for futuristic inventions. They’re simply some of the most interesting old ideas for the future from a century ago….

(10) YE KEN NOW. Apparently it booked up last year, however, you can still take a virtual tour of “Barbie’s Malibu DreamHouse, Ken’s Way in Malibu, California, United States” on Airbnb. (Was this a real property? Hard to tell.)

Welcome to my Kendom! While Barbie is away, she has handed over the keys to her Malibu DreamHouse this summer and my room could be yours for the night. I’ve added a few touches to bring some much-needed Kenergy to the newly renovated and iconic Malibu DreamHouse. Placed perfectly above the beach with panoramic views, this life-size toy pink mansion is a dream come true!

Booking opens at 10 a.m. PT on Monday, July 17 for two, one-night stays for up to two guests on July 21 and July 22, 2023.

What you’ll do
Situated along the stunning, photogenic coastline, the Malibu DreamHouse is a sunny surfer’s sanctuary surrounded by beach, beach and more beach – just the way I like it.

I’ve decked out the place with a little more…well, me! I’m more than just beach! My cowboy stuff is great. And horses! Guitars, games and more. And of course, rollerblades, because I literally go nowhere without them. Now, guests can live it up Ken-style for a neon night in Barbie Land – six-pack not included.

– During your stay, you will have the opportunity to live in technicolor by:
– Taking a spin through my awesome wardrobe to find your best beach fit. Look out Barbie, I’ve got quite the closet too!
– Channeling your inner cowboy and learning a line dance or two on my outdoor disco dance floor or performing a sunset serenade on my guitar
– Challenging your fellow guests to a “beach off” with plenty of sunbathing and chillaxing by the infinity pool
– Taking home a piece of my Kendom with your very own set of yellow-and-pink Impala skates and surfboard

(11) THE SHIP OF ISHTAR. Grammaticus Books looks at an early 20th century classic.

An in-depth review of A. Merritt’s high fantasy novel, ‘The Ship of Ishtar’. Originally published in serialize form in 1924. And an influence for future fantasy authors such as Michael Moorcock.

(12) RECOGNIZE THIS ROCK? “After Star Trek Symbol Was Spotted By NASA’s Mars Rover, We’re Getting Serious ‘Strange New Worlds’ Vibes”. See the video at the link.

Fans are experiencing a bit of a lull due to the fact that upcoming Star Trek shows are still months off. However, fortunately, NASA’s Mars rover is keeping fans entertained in a surprising way. The Curiosity happened to photograph a rock that strongly resembles an iconic symbol from the franchise and, with that, we’re now getting serious Strange New Worlds Season 2 vibes after seeing it. NASA has made cool shoutouts to The Orville and other sci-fi shows, and one gets the feeling that there are also some Trekkies working at the space-centric organization. The official account for Curiosity confirmed that there were team members delighted when an X user scanning publicly available raw images from the rover noticed a rock that looked like the Delta sigil commonly seen on a comm badge.

(13) WHAT HAPPENS IF YOU JUMP INTO A BLACK HOLE? [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] This week physicist Matt O’Dowd over at PBS Space Time asks what happens if we jump into a singularity…

Meet Alice and Bob, famous explorers of the abstract landscape of theoretical physics. Heroes of the gerdankenexperiment—the thought experiment—whose life mission is to find contradictions in the deepest layers of our theories. Today our intrepid pair are jumping into a black hole. Again. Why? Well, to determine the fundamental structure of spacetime and its connection to quantum entanglement of course.

[Thanks to Teddy Harvia, Kathy Sullivan, Mike Kennedy, Nigel Rowe, JJ, Andrew Porter, John King Tarpinian, Chris Barkley, Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, and Steven French for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Jeff Smith.]

Pixel Scroll 5/3/24 Shhhh, I’m Hunting Pixels

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(1) MICHELE LUNDGREN RUNNING FOR MICHIGAN LEGISLATURE. Detroit resident Michele Lundgren, wife of Carl Lundgren, co-founder of the Association of Science Fiction and Fantasy Artists (ASFA) and creator of hundreds of sff book covers, was charged last July as a Michigan fake Trump elector. The case has been slowly progressing, with the preliminary exam for Lundgren and other defendants expected to resume May 28. But in the meantime, Lundgren has declared her candidacy for the state legislature: “Michigan ‘fake elector’ takes on top Democrat in bid for state House” reports Bridge Michigan.

Michele Lundgren knows she’s a long shot candidate for the Michigan House of Representatives. 

She’s a Republican living in the Democratic stronghold of Detroit, and a political newcomer with little name recognition. She’s also challenging one of the most powerful Democrats in the state — and fighting felony charges for allegedly trying to help overturn Donald Trump’s 2020 election loss.

But the 74-year-old Cass Corridor resident says she’s serious about taking on House Speaker Joe Tate, D-Detroit, telling Bridge Michigan she feels strongly about representing the party she believes in.

“I’m a novice, and I don’t have any real background in political science or politics,” she said. “But when somebody steps up and says, ‘We’ve got no one else,’ I make an effort to try to learn as much as I can and represent our party and our district as best as possible.”

Lundgren is unopposed in the Republican primary in Michigan’s 9th state House District, meaning she’s a lock for the general election. That’ll likely be against Tate, a U.S. Marine Corps veteran and former professional football player who helped deliver Democratic majority control in Lansing….

… “That someone who is…one of the fake electors that have been charged with felonies is running against our leader, our speaker of the state House — the idea of it is almost hard to fathom,” Michigan Democratic Party Chair Lavora Barnes told Bridge. “It’s a little shocking to me.”…

…A preliminary exam for Lundgren and other defendants is expected to resume May 28. If the judge sends the case to trial, it’s unlikely it will be resolved by the Nov. 5 general election. 

Lundgren and other co-defendants maintain that they did nothing wrong. Calling the ongoing case a “nightmare,” Lundgren said she believed she was putting her name to a sign-in sheet for a meeting and was unaware it would be passed off as an elector document….

This will be Lundgren’s second campaign for the 9th district seat. She was defeated in 2022 by a Democrat who received 91% of the vote.

(2) WHO’S WHO. Just in case there isn’t enough controversy in the Guardian, they commissioned Martin Belam to give us “The greatest Doctor Who – ranked!” Fortunately, he was 100% right about who deserves to head up this list. (I will now beat a quick retreat to my bomb shelter…)

1. David Tennant
Tenth and Fourteenth Doctors, 2005-10, 2022-3

His second bite of the cherry just about elevates David Tennant above Tom Baker. Tennant agreed to step into the role after Eccleston’s abrupt departure, not knowing how successful the 2005 revival would be, then discovered he’d inherited a monster. His time in the role is littered with stories that put the character most through the emotional wringer (Midnight/Human Nature/The Waters of Mars) and some of the most comedy gif-able moments, which made him the perfect Doctor for the social media age. By 2009, Tennant’s Doctor Who was the BBC One Christmas ident and the show had ubiquitous cultural capital again.

Whether by accident or design, his brief return with Catherine Tate in 2023 delivered three enjoyable specials and worked as a convenient way to soft reboot the show for the Disney+ era. Over to you, Ncuti …
Best story: Blink. Iconic performance: Midnight

(3) PLENTY MORE WHERE THEY CAME FROM. That ranked list of Doctor Who’s might need to leave room: “48 Years Later, The Oldest Sci-Fi Show Could Finally Explain Its Weirdest Mystery” says Inverse.

…In 2020, then-showrunner Chris Chibnall decided the answer was — both. The Time Lords established a rule of 12 regenerations, but the Doctor had lived countless lives before having their memory wiped of said lives. Retroactively, the faces glimpsed in “The Brain of Morbius” accounted for some of those past lives, and, most prominently, Jo Martin’s dangerous Fugitive Doctor was among those lost Doctors, too. But who were those other secret Doctor Whos? It seems possible that the new version of the show might finally give us an answer.

According to a new quote from current Who showrunner, Russell T Davies, the story of “The Timeless Children,” established during the Jodie Whittaker era, will continue in Season 2 of the newly relaunched series. “That storyline’s a gift handed to me by Chris Chibnall, and it’s an honour to take it on from him,” Davies told Doctor Who Magazine. “There’s so much story in it! We’re dealing with it in what we’re shooting now for Season 2.”

It’s not super shocking that Davies is picking up the threads from the Chibnall era in the Ncuti Gatwa era. The three David Tennant/Catherine Tate specials already made it clear that the Doctor’s origin story of having been adopted is still very much on his mind, especially in the episode “Wild Blue Yonder.” But if Season 2 of the new era is doubling down on the Timeless Child, and the Doctor’s time working for the clandestine group called the Division, then it seems possible we’ll learn at least a little bit about the identity of some of those other Doctors….

(4) ORIGINS OF H.G. WELLS. The University of Calgary’s Nickle Galleries is exhibiting “H.G. Wells: A Scientific Romance” through July 19.

H.G. Wells: A Scientific Romance explores the inspired beginnings of Herbert George Wells (1866 – 1946), an early and major figure in what was to become science fiction. Trained in the sciences, Wells intended to be a teacher. Instead, poor health led him to pursue freelance journalism and write science-infused adventure stories known as “scientific romances.”

This exhibition traces Wells’ extraordinary early output, in the 1890s, of influential short stories and commercially successful novels that established him as a prescient and prolific writer, thinker, and cultural presence. Take a time machine back to fin de siècle London to see the future as Wells imagined it.

For those who can’t visit in person, there is a virtual tour available at Thinglink.

Also, some of the highlights are displayed in this series of videos.

(5) GOOGLE DOC GONE. WIRED can describe “What Happens When a Romance Writer Gets Locked Out of Google Docs”, however, no one has been able to find out why it happened to this writer. Chuck Tingle doesn’t know either, however, he is a source for this article.

… When she saw the word inappropriate in the notification, Renee worried her work had been dinged for its spice. “I thought I was the problem,” she says. “I thought I had somehow messed it up.”

But she hadn’t. At least, she hadn’t messed it up in any way she could hope to avoid in the future. Google never specified which of her 222,000 words was inappropriate. There were no highlighted sections, no indicators of what had rendered her documents unshareable. Had one of her readers flagged the content without discussing it with her first? Was it a malicious attack on the files? Had someone at Google decided her content was too spicy?…

While it’s still unclear what exactly happened to Renee’s docs, or if it’s just a fluke, the effects of mishaps like this are complex. Even though it’s now commonplace, there can still be unease around letting major corporations store personal writing. For authors who write about sex, say, or queer people trying to find a voice, hearing that your content could be flagged as “inappropriate” can have a chilling effect. The problem, says bestselling pseudonymous author Chuck Tingle, is that companies like Google now function like utilities. “It’s the same as water and electric,” he says.

Tingle would know: His “Tinglers,” erotica pieces he releases as Kindle Singles, led to his contract at Macmillan for the queer horror novels Camp Damascusand Bury Your Gays. Those early singles were written without the benefit of editors, often within a matter of hours. They’re sloppy. “They’re punk rock,” he says, but they also helped him build a community around the “underdog genres” of erotica, horror, and comedy that his work falls into. If Amazon decided to stop selling his Tinglers, it would be a big blow, even though he now has a book deal…

(6) NO POC ON THEAKSTON 2024 LONGLIST. “’It really isn’t good enough’: crime novel of the year award criticised for entirely white longlist” in the Guardian.

The Theakston Old Peculier crime novel of the year has faced criticism after its 2024 longlist did not feature a single book by an author of colour.

The UK and Ireland’s most prestigious prize for crime fiction is awarded to the best crime novel published each year in paperback. The winner is voted for jointly by the awards’ academy and the public, and is presented each year at the Theakston Old Peculier crime writing festival in Harrogate. The longlist is selected by the academy from all the titles submitted by publishers. This year’s longlist comprised 18 books, none of which is by an author of colour.

“It’s very pale …,” thriller writer Sarah Pinborough commented on Facebook after the list was announced last Thursday, sparking a debate among a number of authors.

“A big question is, how does the festival go from having a Black Woman as its Programme Chair in 2011 – me! – to where it is now?” commented crime writer Dreda Say Mitchell. “Who’s on the committee? How did they get chosen? What is the duration of time for someone to be on the committee? This should all be underpinned in clear and transparent policies and documentation … Because currently it really isn’t good enough.”…

(7) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

Born May 3, 1985 — Becky Chambers, 39. Raise your hand if you like the female-centered fiction of Becky Chambers. I certainly do. Quite a bit in fact.  I say female-centered because apparently she garners more than a few complaints that there’s no strong male characters here. You know of the type Heinlein only wrote of. Like Hazel Stone. Sorry I couldn’t help myself. 

Becky Chambers, photo by Julie Branson

Shall we start with the Wayfarers series? The books in the series are The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet, A Closed and Common Orbit, Record of a Spaceborn Few and The Galaxy, and the Ground Within. Each is most excellent and quite unique in its own manner. 

The first book was first self-published through a Kickstarter campaign before being picked up by Hodder & Stoughton. Harper and with the otherwise alien crew of Wayfarer are fascinating. It reminds me a bit of Rambo’s Disco Space Opera novels in its depiction of aliens.

A Closed and Common Orbit would be nominated for a Hugo at Worldcon 75. Sidra, a Lovelace AI installed in a body kit and Pepper, a tech expert originally from an Enhancement Colony who’s her companion are the main characters here. Oh, this is was quite a tale indeed. 

Like the preceding novel, Record of a Spaceborn Few was nominated for a Hugo, this time at Dublin 2019.  I’ll not spoil it here, but suffice it to say that it deals with something that gets ignored in mass exodus from Earth story lines. Of course the series itself garnered a Hugo this year. 

The final of the four novels is The Galaxy, and the Ground Within. Here we have the Five-Hop One-Stop, call it a bar if you will on a planet that serves on a rest, refuelling and supply depot for ships transiting through wormholes, where a group of strangers must cooperate to survive when something catastrophic happens. That these characters are wonderfully portrayed is what matters here. This is my second favorite novel in the fourth series after the first. 

Her final work I’ll note here, setting aside for the moment her short fiction, is her To Be Taught, if Fortunate story which follows four astronauts as they travel beyond the Solar System on a research mission to explore potential life in other systems. Enough plot details. Fascinating story tightly told which won at CoNZealand. 

She has written about a baker’s dozen pieces of short fiction thus far. One in The Vela shared universe serial that is space opera I think. There is, and I’ve not read it, “A Good Heretic”, a short story set here which to be found in the Infinite Stars: Dark Frontiers anthology. 

I think Apple should pick up the Monk & Robot series as both A Psalm for the Wild-Built and A Prayer for the Crown-Shy would adapt well to the video with the proper budget that Apple could give them. Well and that they’d give Chambers a full say in adapting them. Robots, monks, tea. Cool. 

(8) COMICS SECTION.

(9) EATING THE FANTASTIC. Scott Edelman invites listeners to devour a Georgian dinner with Dan Parent in Episode 224 of the Eating the Fantastic podcast.

Dan Parent

My guest this episode is Dan Parent, an artist and writer who’s worked for Archie Comics for 35 years. I was excited to talk with him for many reasons, a big one being how little I know about the inner working of that company, which I’ve only touched on briefly for you back during my lunch with Howard Bender in Episode 204.

Parent started at Archie immediately after graduating from the famed Joe Kubert School, another topic I was happy to explore. In 2010, he introduced the first openly gay character in Archie Comics when he created Kevin Keller in Veronica #202, which he wrote and drew. That character eventually got his own title with the publication of Kevin Keller #1 in 2012.

Parent’s been involved with several crossover titles which expanded the Archie universe, such as Archie vs. Sharknado in 2015, and the six-part crossover Archie Meets Batman ’66 in 2018. Parent’s creator-owned work includes Die Kitty Die, which he collaborated on with artist/writer Fernando Ruiz in 2016, and which I found to be a delightful spoof of the comics business and many of the characters I loved as a kid. In May 2013, Parent was presented with the GLAAD Media Award for Outstanding Comic Book….

(10) SF FROM A TO Z. [Item by Dann.] New/aspiring author Mike Burke posted something he wrote a while back.  It was a writing prompt/challenge.  He had to write a 26-word long story where the first letter of each word corresponded with each successive word of the alphabet: “A twenty-six word story challenge”. Read it at the link.

(11) EVERYONE’S A CRITIC. “An FAQ About Your New Birth Control: The Music of Rush” at McSweeney’s Internet Tendency.

…Imagine taking the most annoying parts of science fiction and Libertarianism, isolating them, and then somehow blending them up into a cursed musical slurry. Then, infuse that slurry with a distinctive incel vibe, and presto! You’ve got one of the most powerful contraception options on the market.…

(12) NOT SUCH A LONG TIME AGO. “How Engineers Created a Flying ‘Star Wars’ X-Wing” in Smithsonian Magazine.

Seeing a Star Wars X-wing starfighter won’t require a trip to a galaxy far, far away.

This year, just in time for May 4—Star Wars Day—the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum has unveiled a drone outfitted with X-wing body shells that resembles the popular spacecraft from the films. The display resides at the museum’s Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center in Chantilly, Virginia.

The large drone, a Boeing CV2 Cargo Air Vehicle (CAV), represents a milestone for remotely piloted aircraft in the United States, says Roger Connor, who curates the museum’s vertical flight collection. Weighing more than 1,000 pounds, the drone was the first remotely piloted electrical vertical takeoff and landing aircraft of its size approved by the Federal Aviation Administration for public demonstration, Connor says.

In December 2019, two drones fitted with add-ons to look like X-wings, including the one displayed at the museum, flew above a crowd of spectators for the opening of the Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge attraction at Walt Disney World in Orlando, Florida. The aircraft, which has a wingspan of 20 feet 2 inches and is more than 24 feet long and 7 feet tall with the X-wing costume on, will be on loan indefinitely from Disney and Boeing….

[Thanks to Steven French, Teddy Harvia, Kathy Sullivan, Dennis Howard, Gary Farber, Bill, Dann, Daniel Dern, Lise Andreasen, Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, John King Tarpinian, Chris Barkley, Cat Eldridge, and SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Cat Eldridge.]

Pixel Scroll 5/2/24 Gather Ye Pixels While Ye May, Scrolled Time Is Still A-Filing

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(1) HOLY CATS! “Greta Gerwig’s Narnia Confirmed: Production Status & Everything We Know” at ScreenRant.

Acclaimed director Greta Gerwig has been tapped to helm a new reboot of The Chronicles of Narnia, and the upcoming film series is already beginning to take shape. Based on the beloved series of young adult novels by English writer C.S. Lewis, The Chronicles of Narnia is set within the fantastical realm of fantasy and magic and tells an epic tale of war and peace within the kingdom. The novels first began publishing in the 1950s, but it wasn’t until 2005’s The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe that Lewis’ vision arrived on the big screen for the first time….

… Even though little news has come regarding casting or a potential release date, Netflix’s Chronicles of Narnia is officially confirmed. Gerwig was attached in mid-2023, but the Netflix and Narnia timeline stretches back to 2018 when the streamer acquired the rights (via Rolling Stone). In the intervening years, Netflix made little mention of their Narnia aspirations until they landed Barbie director Greta Gerwig. The streamer’s long-term goals are also not known, as Gerwig has only signed on to direct the first two movies, which leaves five potential films on the table, assuming Netflix tackles all seven novels….

(2) BBC RADIO 4’S “UNCANNY”. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] We over here in Brit Cit do wonder about goings-on the other side of the Black Atlantic in the land of the Mega-Cities and the Cursed Earth. So it has been good that BBC Radio 4 has stepped up with a new series… The truth is out there, or some such…

From ghostly phantoms to UFOs, Danny Robins investigates real-life stories of paranormal encounters. So, are you Team Believer or Team Sceptic?

You can download the first programme here.

(3) BEST OF BRITISH. Ian Whates today posted the table of contents for Donna Scott’s The Best of British Science Fiction 2023.

  • Introduction – Donna Scott
  • Detonation Boulevard – Alastair Reynolds
  • Vermin Control – Tim Lees
  • Personal Satisfaction – Adrian Tchaikovsky
  • The Scent of Green – Ana Sun
  • Gauguin’s Questions – Stephen Baxter
  • So Close to Home – Andrew Hook
  • Boojum – Angus McIntyre
  • The Station Master – Lavie Tidhar
  • Art App – Chris Beckett
  • The Blou Trein Suborbirail – L.P. Melling
  • Blue Shift Passing By – David Cleden
  • And if Venice is Sinking – Fiona Moore
  • Muse Automatique – Jaine Fenn
  • Little Sprout – E.B. Siu
  • A Change of Direction – Rhiannon Grist
  • Thus With a Kiss I Die – Robert Bagnall
  • Tough Love – Teika Marija Smits
  • The Brazen Head of Westinghouse – Tim Major
  • Skipping – Ian Watson
  • Pearl – Felix Rose Kawitzky

(4) DISNEY CARTOON ART ON THE BLOCK. Heritage Auctions will run “The Heartbeat of a Cartoon II – The Art of Vintage Disney Animations Drawings” on May 11-12. Preview the lots at the link above. Here’s one example:

Mickey’s Fire Brigade Mickey Mouse, Long-Billed Donald Duck, Goofy, and Clarabelle Cow Animation Drawing (Walt Disney, 1935). Mickey and his fire brigade rush to save an oblivious Clarabelle Cow from a burning building in this 12 field 2-peghole animation drawing from the Ben Sharpsteen-directed short Mickey’s Fire Brigade. The animation premiered on 8/3/1935 and was the first short to feature this iconic trio in color. The three can be found later in the short at around the 6:31 mark as Mickey and Donald use Goofy as a battering ram to charge into Clarabelle’s bathroom. Things don’t go well for them, but they are able to finish their mission and rescue the distressed cow from the surrounding inferno. 

(5) BINDING AND LOOSING. May Haddad shows writers the ropes (literally) in “Tie Up the Loose Ends: A Writer’s Guide to Sailor’s Knots” at the SFWA Blog.

Knot tying (“nodology” in Latin, “kompology” in Greek) is a time-honored skill honed in seafaring for millennia. Its history intertwines with maritime exploration, naval warfare, and the development of trade routes all over the world. Even as synthetic ropes replaced natural fibers, knots used by sailors centuries ago remain in wide use today. Considering the popularity of “faring” in speculative fiction, whether by sea, sky, or space, featuring knot-tying in your writing is a must for authenticity.  Not only are you required to know your knots and how to tie them, but you also need to understand the lingo….

(6) PLAYING IN THE FUTURE. The Center for Science and Imagination has posted a new episode of “CSI Skill Tree: Mass Effect: Andromeda with Souvik Mukherjee and Bodhisattva Chattopadhyay”. The series “examines how video games envision possible futures and build thought-provoking worlds.”

In this episode, we discuss themes and dynamics of colonialism in video games, focusing on Mass Effect: Andromeda, a space opera roleplaying game from 2017.

Our guests are Bodhisattva Chattopadhyay, principal investigator and lead for CoFUTURES, an international research group on global futures at the University of Oslo, and coeditor of the book Indian Genre Fiction: Pasts and Future Histories, and Souvik Mukherjee, assistant professor in Cultural Studies at the Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta, and author of Videogames and Postcolonialism: Empire Plays Back and Videogames in the Indian Subcontinent: Development, Culture(s) and Representations.

Here’s a YouTube playlist with all 15 Skill Tree episodes thus far.

(7) RICK LAI (1955-2024). [Item by Anne Marble.] On April 30, the Lovecraft Ezine reported that pulp historian Rick Lai passed away. He won the 2022 Munsey Award for his “erudite and insightful scholarship” in pulp fiction. “Our dear friend Rick Lai passed away in his sleep last night.”

The family obituary is here:

…Retired software engineer and well-recognized published author, noted for his insightful scholarship, brilliant storytelling, and encyclopedic knowledge in pulp and adventure fiction. While he enjoyed film, reading, and writing, his greatest love was his family. He cherished any time spent with friends and family and was a compassionate and doting father and grandfather….

Rick Lai was interviewed for the PulpFest website in 2021: “The Shadow of Rick Lai”.

…Rick Lai:  I became interested in Doc Savage due to the Bantam paperbacks with their stunning artwork by James Bama. I bought my first Doc Savage novel — The Thousand-Headed Man — in October 1967. I was twelve years old. By the time I was fifteen, I was reading paperback editions of the works of such pulp authors as Burroughs, Howard, Lovecraft, Mundy, E. E. “Doc” Smith, and Clark Ashton Smith. I didn’t get interested in The  Shadow until I read Philip Joê Farmer’s The Adventure of the Peerless Peer in 1977. The pulp crimefighter meets Sherlock Holmes in that book…

(8) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

Born May 2, 1925 — John Neville. (Died 2022.) Anybody here who hasn’t seen John Neville in Terry Gilliam’s The Adventures of Baron Munchausen where he played the title role? Well the ConFiction nominees certainly saw it as it was indeed nominated for a Hugo that year. That was the year that Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade won the Hugo.

John Neville as Baron Munchausen

And what a character he played. The film starts off with the Turkish army laying siege to a European city where a theater production about the extraordinary heroics of famed German aristocrat Baron Münchhausen is underway. A man steps forward to object that the performance is a lie, not what really happened, and that he is the real Baron. So the Baron as portrayed as Neville begins to tell a series of tales, each equally improbable. Really improbable. 

He was a marvelous storyteller telling his tale with a deft hand. But then I expected no less as he’d already been in A Study in Terror back in the Sixties where he made a most excellent Sherlock Holmes. For my viewpoint, this role as The Baron was definitely the best by far of his career.

Later genre roles were including the recurring role in the X-Files as The Well- Manicured Man. He was there for a total of eight episodes but I must confess that I’ve not seen all of the series, and yes it’s on my to be watched in its entirety list, so I’ve not seen this role. Or at least I don’t remember him. 

He had an appearance in the Trek universe on Next Generation as Isaac Newton in “Descent”.  Likewise if you saw The Fifth Element, and I’ve seen it at least four times, he’s General Staedert there. 

That’s I wanted to note although there’s a lot more that he did, so feel free to tell me what I should have noted. I know you want to. 

(9) COMICS SECTION.

(10) CEASED BUT NOT DECEASED. “Creators Getting Cease And Desists Over Conan And Red Sonja” reports Bleeding Cool.

Earlier this year comic creator of Bad Machinery and Giant Days, John Allison, posted to his website about a new webcomic strip. “A new story starts next week, in three parts – CONAN: THE BLOOD EGG. Welcome to my new Hyborian Age, an epoch that lasts 21 weeks, or 22 if I have to have a week off between chapters at some point. While this move into the thrilling, tempestuous, and most importantly, public domain world of Conan may seem jarring, perhaps there is something about this cover image that will hint at a certain familiarity to the cast.”

The cast of Bad Machinery there. But a little while afterwards, it was not to be. The strips were removed and Allison posted, “Following a cease and desist notice filed on behalf of Conan Properties International (CPI) LLC I have taken down my Conan & The Blood Egg comic. While to the best of my understanding, Conan The Barbarian is in the public domain in the UK (where I live and work), I do not have the time or the energy to contest this. I made this story for my own and your amusement and it has – I think understandably – ceased to be amusing. I apologise for the break in updates, and that you won’t get to see the remaining half of the story. I was ten pages (of 66) off finishing drawing it. In retrospect, my mistake was starting to draw it in the first place.”

Conan is in the public domain in the UK. However, posting it online means that it is also considered to be published wherever it is read, including the USA, where it is not public domain until 2028….

(11) USE THE FROSTING, LUKE. [Item by Scott Edelman.] Astro Donuts & Fried Chicken is will be selling Star Wars-themed donuts on May 4th.

(12) GOT PETAFLOPS? “Here’s your chance to own a decommissioned US government supercomputer” – Ars Technica tells you how.

On Tuesday, the US General Services Administration began an auction for the decommissioned Cheyenne supercomputer, located in Cheyenne, Wyoming. The 5.34-petaflop supercomputer ranked as the 20th most powerful in the world at the time of its installation in 2016. Bidding started at $2,500, but it’s price is currently $27,643 with the reserve not yet met.

The supercomputer, which officially operated between January 12, 2017, and December 31, 2023, at the NCAR-Wyoming Supercomputing Center, was a powerful (and once considered energy-efficient) system that significantly advanced atmospheric and Earth system sciences research….

(13) SHADE ON ORION. [Item by Mike Kennedy.] An Inspector General’s report at NASA has cast doubt on the readiness of the Orion capsule to support crewed missions. “NASA moon capsule suffered extensive damage during 2022 test flight” in the Washington Post.

The heat shield of the Orion spacecraft intended one day to carry astronauts to the moon under NASA’s Artemis program suffered unexpected damage in more than 100 places as the spacecraft returned to Earth during an uncrewed test flight in 2022, according to a watchdog report released late Wednesday.

While the capsule withstood the fiery tumult of reentry, when temperatures reached 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit as it plunged through the atmosphere at nearly 25,000 mph, the damage the heat shield suffered was far greater than NASA engineers had expected and more severe than NASA had revealed previously. Photos of the heat shield in the report showed gouges that look like small potholes.

“Should the same issue occur on future Artemis missions, it could lead to the loss of the vehicle or crew,” the report, by NASA’s inspector general, concluded.

Earlier this year, NASA announced that the next flight in its Artemis moon program, which would send a crew of four around the moon in the Artemis II mission, would be delayed to no earlier than September 2025, largely because officials wanted to study the heat shield issue further and understand why it eroded as it did.

The IG report provides the most detailed description of the issue to date. It also highlighted other problems with the spacecraft that could create significant challenges for the space agency as it seeks to return humans to the lunar surface for the first time in more than 50 years.

Portions of the heat shield “wore away differently than NASA engineers predicted, cracking and breaking off the spacecraft in fragments that created a trail of debris rather than melting away as designed,” according to the report. That, in turn, “could have caused enough structural damage to cause one of Orion’s parachutes to fail.”…

(14) WALLY MCWALLFACE. [Item by Mike Kennedy.] If you were an astronaut on the Moon, would you want to run around something called the “wall of death“ in order to keep fit for your return to Earth? I’m betting even seasoned professionals would prefer it have a different name. And I bet we all know what it would be called if NASA left it open to a public vote. “Astronauts could run round ‘Wall of Death’ to keep fit on moon, say scientists” in the Guardian.

As humans prepare to return to the moon after an absence of more than half a century, researchers have hit on a radical approach to keeping astronauts fit as they potter around the ball of rock.

To prevent lunar explorers from becoming weak and feeble in the low gravity environment, scientists suggest astronauts go for a run. But, this being space, it’s not just any kind of run – researchers have advised astronauts run several times a day around a “lunar Wall of Death”.

Using a rented Wall of Death – a giant wooden cylinder used by motorcycle stunt performers in their gravity-defying fairground act – a 36m-high telescopic crane, and some bungee cords, researchers showed it was possible for a human to run fast enough in lunar gravity not only to remain on the wall, but to generate sufficient lateral force to combat bone and muscle wasting….

(15) SCREENTIME. JustWatch ranks the most-viewed streaming movies and TV in April 2024.

[Thanks to SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Steven French, Teddy Harvia, Anne Marble, Daniel Dern, Joey Eschrich, Kathy Sullivan, Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, John King Tarpinian, Chris Barkley, and Cat Eldridge for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Jayn.]

Pixel Scroll 5/1/24 Pak Up Your Pixels In An Old Scrith Bag And Smile, Smile, Smile

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(1) A SHAMELESS PLUG FOR “THE AI SONG,” A PARODY BY MY FRIEND (AND COLLEAGUE) PAUL SCHINDLER. [Item by Daniel Dern.] My friend, colleague, and former-boss — briefly (at Byte.com) — Paul Schindler, knowing that I’m a frequent File770 contributor/suggester (from my periodically alerting him to Terry Pratchett and other Scrolls/Items here) asked me to submit as a potential item his recent song parody:

“Inspired by a spate of recent news stories about Artificial Intelligence (including one about a fake Supreme Court decision), I have written (with Clark Smith), “The AI Song” (“P.S. A Column On Things: The AI Song”), including a YouTubing.”

I’m happy to do so, but thought Paul also deserves a (brief-for-me) introduction, particularly since it looks like this will be his first appearance in an Item in a Scroll (as, for the benefit of those coming here via Paul, and other newcomers), File770 posts, and enumerated entries, are irrespectively called):

Paul is (among other things) a (now-former) tech journalist. In terms of AI, Paul notes/recalls, “During the early 1970s, when Daniel and I were fellow undergrads—including working on the student newspapers–at MIT, I interviewed Marvin Minsky several times about AI. This was back when it took very large machines to implement very small models. I remember asking Minsky how many millions of rules it would take to make an AI as smart as a five-year-old.”

While editor of Byte.com, Paul worked with/“managed” the late Jerry Pournelle, notably regarding Jerry’s Chaos Manor column – and post-Byte.com, stayed friends with Jerry. (See Paul’s P.S. A Column On Things post, “My Pal Jerry”). (Note: Byte.com was where Paul was my boss — see my March 2001 “Dern Bids Farewell To Byte.com”).

Additionally, Byte.com-wise, Jerry was the regular, primary guest on the Byte.com Week In Review/Audio Review: The Worldʼs First Podcast, with Paul as the host. (I was involved in a few episodes.) Among other things, Jerry would tell some tales from his variegated past. (It looks like there’s a few episodes on the Internet Archive, per links in Paul’s post.)

More generally, Paul is an sf reader/watcher (among other stuff).  In “My Pal Jerry,” he says, “I read all the science fiction in my childhood branch library and subscribed to the Science Fiction Book Of The Month Club (my premium was The Foundation Trilogy.” Another data point: He cites Joe Haldeman’s The Hemingway Hoax in a footnote to one of his PSaCoTs: “An Open Memo To My Muse”.

(2) GOOD LUCK! When Nick Stathopoulos delivered this year’s Archibald Prize entry to the Art Gallery of New South Wales, they posted a snapshot on Facebook. The 10-time Ditmar Award winner won the prize in 2017.

Nick Stathopoulos holding his portrait of David Stratton.

(3) SMALL WONDERS #11. Issue 11 of Small Wonders, the magazine for science fiction and fantasy flash fiction and poetry, is now available on virtual newsstands here. Co-editors Cislyn Smith and Stephen Granade bring a mix of flash fiction and poetry from authors and poets who are familiar to SFF readers as well as those publishing their first-ever piece with them.

The Issue 11 Table of Contents and release dates on the Small Wonders website:

  • Cover Art:”Meywa Sowen” by M. A. Del Rosario
  • “Celestial Bodies” (fiction) by Mar Vincent (6 May)
  • “Music of the Seraphim” (poem) by Angel Leal (8 May)
  • “What You Sow” (fiction) by Holly Schofield (10 May)
  • “Eloīse” (fiction) by Albert Chu (13 May)
  • “Kannaki Contemplates” (poem) by Tehnuka (15 May)
  • “Up From Out of Clay” (fiction) by Eris Young (17 May)
  • “Unbending My Bones” (fiction) by Sierra Branham (20 May)
  • “Swan’s Song” (poem) by Colleen Anderson (22 May)
  • “The Stars That Fall” (fiction) by Samantha Murray (24 May)

Subscriptions are available at the magazine’s store the magazine’s store, Patreon, and Weightless Books.

(4) SOFT SF. If only reading social media was always this much fun: Premee Mohamed at Bluesky.

(5) AMAZING STORIES WANTS WHAT IT’S OWED. Steve Davidson is trying to get NBC to pay attention – and pay the money they’ve owed Amazing Stories since 2020. He’s asking anyone who’s willing to signal boost the statement he posted on Facebook.

This is VERY important and I would appreciate reader’s doing two things (if they agree and are comfortable doing so):

First – share this as far and wide as you can. You are granted permission to copy the original text, in its entirety and without alteration, in order to share it elsewhere.

Second – if you are a professional in the field and support this effort, I would like to hear from you personally via PM.

OK – here goes:

Last week I was informed by NBC representatives that I would have a communication from them regarding my missing payments on Tuesday (April 30) of this week.

That email was in response to a query I sent to them regarding this non-payment issue.

In the email, I stated that in the past, the only way(s) in which it seemed that I was able to get any action out of them was to go public with the issue.

Twice previously I had to engage in such actions in order to get breaches of the contract cured through renegotiation.

Major Hollywood personalities and production entities were embarrassed, upset and angered at the time by my accurate and truthful statements.

Tuesday has come and gone with nary a whisper.

I (and by extension, Amazing Stories) have been owed contractually negotiated fees since October of 2020.

Read that date carefully. Later this year, non-payment will have gone on for FOUR years.

While the funds owing are not great by Hollywood standards, they are great by Amazing Stories’ standards and affect its ability to pay authors and artists and others appropriate amounts. The absence of those funds has also negatively affected Amazing’s ability to promote and market its offerings as well.

I informed NBC representatives that if I did not hear back from them (with progress) when they had promised to do so, I would be launching a crowd funding campaign to see if we could raise the missing dollars elsewhere.

I also informed them that, out of necessity, that crowd funding effort would have to explain the entire history of my dealings with NBC (since 2015).

Not included in my email to NBC representatives was my additional intention to encourage NBC to voluntarily give up the rights I licensed to them.

When the contract was in breach (and NBC notified of termination – a notice that they also did not respond to until after I had gone public) I contacted several production studios with the idea of licensing them to do a show under that name.

Several responded in the affirmative, even to the point of discussing a production partnership, in which Amazing Stories would have production credit and direct creative input into the show (after I pitched them the idea that I would be seeking Science Fiction authors with script writing experience to create episodes, as well as to script existing classics of the genre), but that they could not move forward until the “legal encumbrances” had been settled.

The point being that, if free, the name could be used to (attempt) to produce a television show that would have great respect for the genre, would involve contemporary authors with proven story telling and script writing chops, would have ties to the magazine version and, obviously, the greater public footprint that a television show would bring.

(Some may be familiar with the radio shows Dimension X and X Minus 1, where episodes were based on short stories drawn from the magazines of the era. This is what we believe we could do with television.)

I will be forwarding a copy of this FB post to my contacts at NBC (again, who promised response by yesterday which was not forthcoming) and will begin putting together the crowd funding effort that I hope my friends and fellow fans here and elsewhere will support, either by contributing or helping to spread the word.

That effort will be seeking funds to support the legal action of terminating the licensing agreement.

Initial filings in pursuit of that goal are expected to cost approximately 15 to 20k. Some or all of those funds may be recoverable, depending upon a legal ruling.

AGAIN. It is important for this statement to gain wide distribution if it going to have the desired effect. The crowd funding campaign will include additional details and suggestions as to how folks can help advance this effort, but starting here on FB will give it a boost.

Thank you.

“I can’t be ignored. I won’t be ghosted. I can no longer be bargained with. I feel no remorse or fear. And I absolutely will not stop, ever, until this matter is settled to my satisfaction!”

(6) TENTACULUM #4 IS A FREE DOWNLOAD. The special Weird West issue of The Tentaculum is now available for all to download for free.

Featuring short fiction from Cedrick May, Arthur H. Manners, Sasha Brown, and Avra Margariti. This issue also includes nonfiction from Cedrick May and returning contributor Bobby Derie.

Edited by Cameron Howard and designed by Braulio Tellez. Cover and story illustrations by Tristan Tolhurst.

(7) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

Born May 1, 1946 — Joanna Lumley, 78. Quick, tell me who appeared as a member of The Avengers, the real Avengers who have class, not the comic ones, was in a Bond film, and was Doctor Who as well. Now that would be the woman with the full name of Dame Joanna Lamond Lumley. 

Her first genre role was a very minor one as it was essentially in the background as an English girl as she would be credited in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service.

 I certainly don’t remember her there but I confess I’ve only seen it once I think. 

Joanna Lumley in 2015.

(She’ll have a very minor role in the horror film Tam-Lin shock will get repackaged as The Ballad of Tam-Lin, The Devil’s Widow and The Devil’s Woman as well. I doubt it bears but the faintest resemblance to the actual ballad. 

Her first significant genre role was on The New Avengers as Purdey, a former Royal Ballet member who said her high kicks were from her training there (a dubious claim). (And yes, Patrick Macnee was back as Steed.) Along with Mike Gambit as played by Gareth Hunt who had appeared in the Doctor Who’s “Planet of the Spiders”, that was the team on the New Avengers. 

It lasted but two seasons and twenty-six episodes. Yes, I loved it. The chemistry between the three of them was excellent, perhaps better than it had been Steed and some of his solo partners. 

Her second genre role was in Sapphire & Steel. She played Sapphire and David McCallum was Steel. It was considered a supernatural series. I’ve not seen it though I should watch it on YouTube as it legally up there courtesy of Shout Factory which is the company that now has the distribution license for it, so you see the first episode here.

She’s appeared in two Pink Panther films, Trail of the Pink Panther as Marie Jouvet and Curse of the Pink Panther       as Countess Chandra. I’m amazed how many of those films there have been! 

She voiced Aunt Spiker in James and the Giant Peach. Likewise, she’s Madame Everglot in Tim Burton’s Corpse Bride.

Finally, she played Doctor Who in The Curse of Fatal Death, a Doctor Who special made for the 1999 Red Nose Day charity telethon. It was Stephen Moffat’s first Who script. She was simply The Female Doctor.  I’d like to link to the copies on YouTube but I’m absolutely sure they’re all bootlegs so please don’t offer up links to them.

(8) COMICS SECTION.

(9) HE-MAN HAS APPOINTMENT WITH THE BIG SCREEN. “’Masters of the Universe’ Finally Hitting Theaters Summer 2026” reveals Deadline. We predict Cora Buhlert will buy a ticket to see it!

The power of Greyskull is happening on June 5, 2026 when Amazon MGM Studios’ and Mattel Films’ finally bring their live-action reboot of Masters of the Universe to theaters.

As Deadline first told you, Bumblebee filmmaker Travis Knight is directing off Chris Butler’s screenplay (the initial draft written by David Callaham, and Aaron and Adam Nee). Mattel Films’ Robbie Brenner, and Escape Artists’ Todd Black, Jason Blumenthal, and Steve Tisch are producing.

The movie follows ten-year-old Prince Adam who crashed to Earth in a spaceship and was separated from his magical Power Sword—the only link to his home on Eternia. After tracking it down almost two decades later, Prince Adam is whisked back across space to defend his home planet against the evil forces of Skeletor. But to defeat such a powerful villain, Prince Adam will first need to uncover the mysteries of his past and become He-Man: the most powerful man in the Universe….

(10) CALL HER AGENT. Inverse is listening as “5 Years Later, Billie Lourd Pitches the Star Wars Spinoff We Need Right Now”.

…Lourd first appeared as Resistance Lieutenant Kaydel Ko Connix in The Force Awakens, and has only become more involved in the franchise since. Following Fisher’s passing in 2017, Lourd has become the “keeper” of Princess Leia, standing in for a younger version of the character in a Rise of Skywalker flashback. Returning to that galaxy far away has been a “difficult” experience for Lourd, but nowadays, the actress is keen to reprise her role as Connix.

“I would do anything to come back to any Star Wars franchise. I am absolutely available,” Lourd tells Inverse. “Getting to play Connix was such a gift, and to get to do it again would just be insane.”…

(11) THREE-BODY SCIENCE. [Item by Steven French.] “The science of 3 Body Problem: what’s fact and what’s fiction?” “Nature spoke to the sci-fi program’s adviser and two other researchers about the portrayal of PhD scientists and their technologies.”

…An alien civilization spying on humans using quantum entanglement. A planet chaotically orbiting three stars. Nanofibres capable of slicing through Earth’s hardest substance, diamond. Despite being chock-full of hardcore science, 3 Body Problem, a television series released on 21 March by the streaming service Netflix, has been a hit with audiences. So far, it has spent five weeks straight in Netflix’s list of the top-three programs viewed globally.

The story follows five young scientists who studied together at the University of Oxford, UK, as they grapple with mysterious deaths, particle-physics gone awry and aliens called the San-Ti who have their sights set on Earth. But how much of the science in the sci-fi epic, based on the award-winning book trilogy Remembrance of Earth’s Past by the Chinese writer Cixin Liu, reflects reality, and how much is wishful thinking? To find out, Nature spoke to three real-world scientists.…

(12) NOT ONLY IN WASHINGTON. “Is Alien Abduction Insurance a Thing in Washington State?” asks KPQ.

…Before we get into Washington’s take on the subject, it’s worth mentioning that this peculiar form of insurance coverage is associated with the Saint Lawrence Agency in Altamonte Springs, Florida.

Founded in 1987, this agency is famous for being the pioneering provider of alien abduction insurance policies. Over the years, the agency has made headlines and garnered both support and skepticism for its alien abduction policy.

The Saint Lawrence Agency reports to have sold thousands of these policies worldwide.

The policy costs $19.99 and pays out 10 million dollars if you get abducted. It’s important to note that, you’ll need an alien signature to verify your claims….

Newsweek read the fine print.

…The alien abduction scheme says it provides $10 million compensation in the event the policyholder is beamed up. It covers medical issues (all outpatient psychiatric care), sarcasm coverage (immediate family members only) and double indemnity coverage to the sum of $20 million in the event aliens insist on conjugal visits or the extraterrestrial encounter results in offspring.

St. Lawrence told WFLA last month his business has sold upwards of 6,000 policies since 1987. He says there have been two claims since the company formation—and only one big payout. The catch is in the fine print: cash is paid in installments of $1 per year for 10 million years….

(13) CALLS X-FILES SCENE “CRINGEY”. File 770 readers may be interested in this thumbnail self-retrospective of Gillian Anderson’s career produced by Vanity Fair. Of particular interest, of course, will be the first segment discussing The X-Files. But one of her other roles covered (as the psychiatrist in Hannibal) is at least genre adjacent. “Gillian Anderson Rewatches The X-Files, Sex Education, Scoop & More”.

(14) SHELL GAMES. Here is a cute stop motion video featuring a crossover of Masters of the Universe and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

[Thanks to Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Steven French, Cora Buhlert, Stephen Granade, Teddy Harvia, Kathy Sullivan, 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 Andrew (not Werdna).]

Pixel Scroll 4/12/24 One Pixel, One Scroll, One File

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(1) ONCE ON HIS SHELVES. San Diego State University is home to the Edward Gorey Personal Library, which they acquired in 2009.

The Edward Gorey Personal Library is a special collection at San Diego State University library that comprises 26,000 books collected by Edward St. John Gorey (1924-2000). Over 9,000 catalogued volumes, or 35% of the collection are searchable. If you find a book you would like to examine from this collection, please contact Special Collections and University Archives at [email protected], or at 619-594-6791 or visit their service desk in Love Library 150. Books may only be viewed in the Special Collections area.

An American artist, Edward St. John Gorey’s publications include over one hundred books. His most well-known works include The Gashlycrumb Tinies, The Doubtful Guest and The Wuggly Ump. Many of his illustrations appear in publications like The New Yorker and The New York Times. Gorey illustrations and book designs enhance editions of works by Charles Dickens, Edward Lear, Samuel Beckett, John Updike, Virginia Woolf, H.G. Wells, Florence Heide and Peter Neumeyer.

And if you’d like to know “What Books Did Edward Gorey Collect?” then click the link. Lots of familiar names there. One jumped out at me – isn’t Franklin W. Dixon the author of the Hardy Boys series?

I also learned his biography has this clever title: Edward Gorey: Born to Be Posthumous.

(2) IT WASN’T UNDER HIS KILT. “Reported armed man at Scottish train station was ‘Star Wars’ Stormtrooper” with a plastic blaster. UPI has the story.

Police in Scotland said a reported armed man who led to a train returning to a station turned out to be a Star Wars cosplayer on his way to a comic book convention.

The man, known as the Grampian Stormtrooper on social media, was dressed in his Imperial Stormtrooper costume “with a Scottish twist” — a kilt — when he boarded a ScotRail train to Dundee at the Aberdeen train station.

The train returned to the station shortly after departing and the man was approached by a guard who escorted him to waiting police officers.

The cosplayer wrote on Facebook that he was “met by two firearms officers, three Police Scotland, two British Transport police, and had to chat to them all in an office.”

The man learned that he had been reported for carrying a “firearm” on the train, and he explained to police that his “blaster” was a plastic prop….

(3) WORLDSHAPERS KICKSTARTER. Edward Willett’s Shadowpaw Press is for the fifth year in a row running a Kickstarter campaign to fund an anthology featuring sff writers who have been guests on his Aurora Award-winning podcast, The Worldshapers. The Kickstarter is here: Shapers of Worlds Volume V by Edward Willett.

Shapers of Worlds Volume V will feature stories by Brad C. Anderson, Edo van Belkom, J.G. Gardner, Olesya Salnikova Gilmore, Chadwick Ginther, Evan Graham, M.C.A. Hogarth, M.J.  Kuhn, L. Jagi Lamplighter, Kevin Moore, Robin Stevens Payes, James S. Peet, Omari Richards, Lawrence M. Schoen, Alex Shvartsman, Alan Smale, Richard Sparks, P.L. Stuart, Brad R. Torgersen, Hayden Trenholm, Brian Trent, Eli K.P. William, Edward Willett, and Natalie Wright.

The cover art is by Tithi Luadthong.

Backers’ rewards offered by the authors include numerous e-books, signed paperback and hardcover books, Tuckerizations (a backer’s name used as a character name), artwork, one-on-one writing/publishing consultations and mentorships, audiobooks, opportunities for online chats with authors, short-story critiques, and more.

The campaign goal is $12,000 CDN. Almost all of those funds will go to pay the authors, with the rest going to reward fulfillment, primarily the editing, layout, and printing of the book, which will be published in January 2025 in both ebook and trade paperback formats

(4) PREEMPTIVE OPINION. “Can Joker: Folie à Deux avoid becoming like any other comic book movie?” the Guardian’s Ben Child is skeptical.

…The jury remains out on whether [director] Phillips can repeat the trick with Joker: Folie à Deux. After all, there is likely a very good reason that nobody ever made a sequel to Taxi Driver or The King of Comedy, in the format of a musical. But even if the new film fails miserably, it is likely to give us more intriguing ideas to take the comic book movie genre forward than any number of the new episodes currently being put together by new DC boss James Gunn, brilliant (in a common-or-garden superhero flick kind of way) as these may well end up being….

(5) RONDO NOMINEE FOR BEST ARTICLE OF THE YEAR. The deadline for the public to vote in the Rondo Awards is April 16 at midnight. Email votes (with your name & e-mail address) to David Colton, c/o [email protected].

Steve Vertlieb appeals to Filers to support his nominated article “Subversion of Innocence: Reflections on ‘The Black Cat’ (Universal Pictures, 1934” which was published here.

(6) TURBOLIFT TO HIT BOTTOM ON LOWER DECKS. It is the end, my friend, says The Hollywood Reporter: “‘Star Trek: Lower Decks’ to End With Season 5”. (However, Strange New Worlds will get another season.)

Paramount+ has made two big decisions about its Star Trek universe.

Strange New Worlds has been renewed for a fourth season, while Lower Decks will end with its previously announced upcoming fifth season, expected to air sometime this year.

Lower Decks creator Mike McMahan and executive producer Alex Kurtzman posted a statement on the Star Trek website about the decision to conclude the animated series: “While five seasons of any series these days seems like a miracle, it’s no exaggeration to say that every second we’ve spent making this show has been a dream come true. Our incredible cast, crew and artists have given you everything they have because they love the characters they play, they love the world we’ve built, and more than anything we all love love love Star Trek. We’re excited for the world to see our hilarious fifth season which we’re working on right now, and the good news is that all previous episodes will remain on Paramount+ so there is still so much to look forward to as we celebrate the Cerritos crew with a big send-off. … We remain hopeful that even beyond season five, Mariner, Boimler, Tendi, Rutherford and the whole Cerritos crew will live on with new adventures.”

(7) LINDA HAMILTON Q&A. “Linda Hamilton Nixes ‘Terminator’ Return, Talks AI and Almost Retiring” she tells The Hollywood Reporter.

Your career has spanned so many incredible projects, even just looking at television, from Beauty and the Beast in the ’80s to Resident Alien now and Stranger Things coming up. It must feel like a radically different landscape now.

It does, and it’s been kind of a pleasure to ride that long wave. I have seen things, and certainly can remark upon the changes in all areas of film and television, but mostly TV, I think. I’m not sure the studio system really has much longer. Things are changing faster now than they ever changed in the history of Hollywood, in terms of product and streaming and just so many new jobs that are created because of what we get to shoot. People who are contact lens specialists and people who are nail specialists when you do a show like Claws, and intimacy coordinators, and the sensitivity training, the HR, and then there’s the actual filmmaking and the special effects and the Volume for all the special effects, which is now on Stranger Things. I’m like, “What the hell? Where am I?” It’s like, okay, we’ll do a scene and then [you hear], “ball and chart,” and it’s some special effects magic that they come in and do at the end of every shot. So yes, it’s changing.

(8) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

Born April 12, 1973 — J. Scott Campbell, 51. J. Scott Campbell is a comic books artist best known for his work on Wildstorm Comics. Scott actually got hired by Wildstorm by submitting a package that included a four-page WildC.A.T.S  story. Before that however his first work was on Homage Studios Swimsuit Special at age twenty. It’d get a PG-13 rating today. If that. 

J. Scott Campbell at the 2023 Comic-Con. Photo by Gage Skidmore.

So did you know that Marvel did a Swimsuit issue as well? It was an annual magazine-style publication from 1991 to 1995. One issue said “Take Wakanda Wild Side” on the cover. Really it did. 

His subsequent work for Wildstorm included  some illustrations in WildC.A.T.S Sourcebook and Stormwatch #0. I love the idea of #0 issues. Why so? 

Now do you remember Gen13? He created the series along with Jim Lee and Brandon Choi as the series came out of Team 7, a series that Lee and Choi created. The series involved a group of spandexed clothed metahuman teens. I like that series but it wasn’t nearly as fun as Danger Girl, his next series.

That series followed the adventures of a group of female secret agents, made the most of Campbell’s talents which involved very well-endowed women,  in the firm of three sexy female well weaponized secret agents — Abbey Chase, Sydney Savage and Sonya Savage and over the top action sequences.  

Twenty years ago I read Danger Girl: The Ultimate Collection, which is a bit of an overstatement as it’s only two hundred and fifty-six pages long, but it’s still a lot of a fun. Yes, it’s still available.

Danger Girl has been continuously published since it was first came out twenty-six years ago, so there’s a lot of it now. I’ve read quite a bit of it over the years and it’s been pretty consistent in its quality. However only the first seven-issue series is illustrated by Campbell. 

Campbell illustrated the covers to the Freddy vs. Jason vs. Ash six-issue limited series.

Eighteen years ago, Marvel Comics announced that he had signed an exclusive contract to work on a Spider-Man series with writer Jeph Loeb. Yes he did just covers, not interior work. 

(9) COMICS SECTION.

(10) FLOW MY TEARS, THE ENGINEER SAID. “Blink to Generate Power For These Smart Contact Lenses” at IEEE Spectrum.

The potential use cases for smart contacts are compelling and varied. Pop a lens on your eye and monitor health metrics like glucose levels; receive targeted drug delivery for ocular diseases; experience augmented reality and read news updates with displays of information literally in your face.

But the eye is quite a challenge for electronics design: With one of the highest nerve densities of any human tissue, the cornea is 300 to 600 times as sensitive as our skin. Researchers have developed small, flexible chips, but power sources have proved more difficult, as big batteries and wires clearly won’t do here. Existing applications offer less-than-ideal solutions like overnight induction charging and other designs that rely on some type of external battery.

Now, a team from the University of Utah says they’ve developed a better solution: an all-in-one hybrid energy-generation unit specifically designed for eye-based tech.

In a paper published in the journal Small on 13 March, the researchers describe how they built the device, combining a flexible silicon solar cell with a new device that converts tears to energy. The system can reliably supply enough electricity to operate smart contacts and other ocular devices….

(11) PUT YOUR METAL TO THE BIPEDAL. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] Now, I’m not a huge sport fan but if I had to pick one then it’d be Rollerball. The original, not the new-fangled 21st century one. Great audience chant….

Reported in this week’s Science, robotic football…  

Generating robust motor skills in bipedal robots in the real world is challenging because of the inability of current control methods to generalize to specific tasks. Haarnoja et al. developed a deep reinforcement learning–based framework for full-body control of humanoid robots, enabling a game of one-versus-one soccer. The robots exhibited emergent behaviors in the form of dynamic motor skills such as the ability to recover from falls and tactics such as defending the ball against an opponent. The robot movements were faster when using their framework than a scripted baseline controller and may have potential for more complex multirobot interactions.

Primary research is here.

(12) IT’S ABOUT TIME. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] “Climate change has slowed Earth’s rotation — and could affect how we keep time” – “The effect of melting polar ice could delay the need for a ‘leap second’ by three years” says Nature.

An analysis published in Nature has predicted that melting ice caps are slowing Earth’s rotation to such an extent that the next leap second — the mechanism used since 1972 to reconcile official time from atomic clocks with that based on Earth’s unstable speed of rotation — will be delayed by three years.

“Enough ice has melted to move sea level enough that we can actually see the rate of the Earth’s rotation has been affected,” says Duncan Agnew, a geophysicist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, California, and author of the study.

Primary research sadly behind a paywall here.

Also, two researchers discuss the issue here.

(13) VIDEO OF THE DAY. Zach and Kelly Weinersmith talk about — and demonstrate — why living on Mars is a bad idea. “The Mars crisis, explained by 2 experts” at Hard Reset.

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

Pixel Scroll 4/8/24 Everyone I Know Is A Hoopy Scroll, Who Know Where Their Pixel Is

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(1) ANGRY ROBOT BRINGS ON ECLIPSE OF STORYWISE. [Item by Anne Marble.] Angry Robot Books announced a one-week open submissions period that begins April 22, and several posts down in their thread they also said they would be using a submissions portal named Storywise to help them sort through their submissions. In their image, they explain a little more and point out that it’s not generative AI.

Angry Robot provided more information about Storywise here: “Storywise and Open Submissions FAQ’s “ [Internet Archive copy]. It included information on how authors can opt out of Storywise being used in their submission.

For obvious reasons, people are worried. People are pointing out that the Storywise platform can have biases. (And because it’s software, you can’t see those biases.) While it’s great that it’s not generative AI, does that mean writers can still trust it? For example, how do authors known what Storywise will do with their submissions? Others think its fine because it’s not generative AI — it’s just AI being used as a tool. Some have pointed out that slush readers are often unpaid, so that this is not taking away jobs. (But does that apply to slush readers working for book publishers?!)

Here is a quote-tweet by Vajra Chandrasekera with lots of information about Storywise. (Thread starts on X.com here.)

Angry Robot subsequently removed the posts to social media about their open submissions, and walked back the announcement with respect to Storywise, saying they will resume using their inbox system.

Editor’s note: Adrian Moher has a good roundup about the controversy at Astrolabe Digest: 040824. (Moher provided the link in his social media.)

(2) ON THE WAY TO THE CENTERLINE. Rich Lynch snapped this photo of the view from Interstate 87, in the middle of Adirondack Park while on his way to witness today’s eclipse. (Click for larger image to read sign).

No pictures of the event itself, though. “I don’t have any eclipse photos on my iPhone.” But Rich says, “It very much did exceed my expectations, even with the sun having to burn its way through a thin cloud layer.”

(3) STOKERCON 2024 ADDS GOH. Rob Savage was announced today as StokerCon 2024’s fifth Guest of Honor.

Rob Savage initially gained attention at the age of 19 when he wrote, directed, produced, and edited the low-budget romantic drama film Strings (2012), he later became more widely known for his work in horror films and has since co-written and directed lockdown horror hit Host (2020), co-written and directed Dashcam (2021), and directed Stephen King adaptation The Boogeyman (2023).

The con also signal-boosted HWA’s Librarian’s Day.

This year’s Librarian’s Day on Friday, May 31, 2024, once again offers fantastic programming featuring the conference’s guest authors on timely topics and more. Librarian’s Day ticket holders ($60) will have access to the Dealers Room and other areas of the full conference throughout the day.  

(4) DETROIT FURRY CON VICTIMIZED AGAIN. “Motor City Furry Con evacuated for second straight year” reports Audacy.

For a second straight year Motor City Furry Con attendees were forced to be evacuated from their hotel due to a threat.

The nature of the threat was not clear, but officials with the convention confirmed Sunday the Ann Arbor Marriott Ypsilanti at Eagle Crest in Ypsilanti was evacuated around 9 a.m.

The “all clear” was given around 12:30 p.m. and the final day of convention activities resumed.

Sunday’s evacuation comes a year after attendees were evacuated from the same hotel due to an emailed bomb threat. Ultimately, there were no injuries or any explosives found last March.

The Motor City Furry Con is a convention for people who “appreciate the anthropomorphic lifestyle,” according to a report from The Detroit Free Press.

The Detroit Free Press article also noted, “Event attendee Scoops took to social media to celebrate the second year of being an evacuee.”

(5) SLOWLY WE TURNED, STEP BY STEP. “Caeciliusinhorto” has written an impressive perspective piece synthesizing all the news items that comprise “The 2023 Hugo Awards fuckup” for Reddit’s r/HobbyDrama.

… After much discussion, the general consensus seemed to coalesce around a combination of two or three explanations: firstly, active censorship by the Hugo administrators, possibly due to pressure from the Chinese government (national or local); secondly, incompetence; and perhaps thirdly, weird nominator behaviour (possibly including organised voting blocs). For a while things stalled there: the data was obviously wrong, the most plausible explanation seemed to be some combination of cock-up and conspiracy, and there was no prospect of anyone finding out anything more.

And then we found out more….

(6) SURE. MAYBE. DUNNO. ABSOLUTELY NOT. Nautilus asked six sff writers “Does Science Fiction Shape the Future?”.

Behind most every tech billionaire is a sci-fi novel they read as a teenager. For Bill Gates it was Stranger in a Strange Land, the 1960s epic detailing the culture clashes that arise when a Martian visits Earth. Google’s Sergey Brin has said it was Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash, the cyberpunk classic about hackers and computer viruses set in an Orwellian Los Angeles. Jeff Bezos cites Iain M. Banks’ Culture series, which unreel in an utopian society of humanoids and artificial intelligences, often orchestrated by “Minds,” a powerful AI. Elon Musk named three of SpaceX’s landing drones after starships from Banks’ books, a tribute to the role they played in turning his eyes to the stars.

Part of this makes sense. Science fiction widens the frontiers of our aspirations. It introduces us to new technologies that could shape the world, and new ideas and political systems that could organize it. It’s difficult to be an architect of the future without a pioneer’s vision of what that future might look like. For many, science fiction blasts that vision open.

Yet these tech titans seem to skip over the allegories at the heart of their favorite sci-fi books. Musk has tweeted, “If you must know, I am a utopian anarchist of the kind best described by Iain Banks.” Yet in Banks’ post-scarcity utopia, billionaires and their colossal influence are banished to the most backward corners of the galaxy.

Recently, I interviewed six of today’s foremost science-fiction authors. I asked them to weigh in on how much impact they think science fiction has had, or can have, on society and the future….

The interview subjects are N.K. Jemisin, Andy Weir, Lois McMaster Bujold, David Brin, Cory Doctorow and Charles Stross. Here’s a quote from Stross:

Charles Stross: Yes, the entire current AI bubble is exactly that. The whole idea of AI has been turned into the centerpiece of a secular apocalyptic religion in which we can create superhumanly intelligent slaves that will solve all our knottily human intellectual problems, then work out how to liberate our pure soul-stuff from these clumsy rotting meatbags and upload us into a virtual heaven. And right now, some of the biggest tech companies out there are run by zealots who believe this stuff, even though we have no clear understanding of the mechanisms underlying consciousness. It’s an unsupported mass of speculation, but it’s threatening to derail efforts to reduce our carbon footprint and mitigate the climate crisis by encouraging vast energy expenditure.

(7) MONSTER BOX OFFICE. Godzilla x Kong rang the registers loudly last weekend reports Variety.

“Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire” dominated the domestic box office again, looming large over newcomers “Monkey Man” and “The First Omen.”

Warner Bros. and Legendary Entertainment’s monster tentpole added $31.7 million from 3,948 theaters in its second weekend of release. Ticket sales dropped a standard (for a tentpole of its size and scale) 60% from its mighty $80 million debut and stand at $132 million domestically and $361 million globally.

First-time director Dev Patel’s action thriller “Monkey Man” nabbed second place with $10.1 million from 3,029 venues, while Disney and 20th Century’s supernatural prequel “The First Omen” trailed at the No. 4 spot with a muted $8.4 million from 3,375 locations….

(8) PEAK TELEVISION. “Twin Peaks’ Agent Cooper: How TV’s strangest detective was born” – BBC went right to the source.

… Writer Mark Frost told the BBC’s Late Show that part of the inspiration behind the character was the show’s co-creator and director David Lynch. 

“I tried to base that character on David to some extent,” said Frost. “A lot of his quirkiness and attention to detail, which are things that David has in great abundance, sort of came to the surface with that character. I guess his interest in people’s obsessions, and characters who are obsessed with something, are pretty common with other things he’s done.” …

(9) SMALL BUSINESS. And what is David Lynch working on today? “David Lynch Still Wants To Make Animated Movie ‘Snootworld’: Interview” at Deadline. Netflix said no – maybe someone else will say yes.

…“I don’t know when I started thinking about Snoots but I’d do these drawings of Snoots and then a story started to emerge,” Lynch told us in a rare interview. “I got together with Caroline and we worked on a script. Just recently I thought someone might be interested in getting behind this so I presented it to Netflix in the last few months but they rejected it.”

Lynch was philosophical about the reasons for that decision: “Snootworld is kind of an old fashioned story and animation today is more about surface jokes. Old fashioned fairytales are considered groaners: apparently people don’t want to see them. It’s a different world now and it’s easier to say no than to say yes.”

Thompson described the storyline to us as “wackadoo”: “It takes my breath away how wacky it is. The Snoots are these tiny creatures who have a ritual transition at aged eight at which time they get tinier and they’re sent away for a year so they are protected. The world goes into chaos when the Snoot hero of the story disappears into the carpet and his family can’t find him and he enters a crazy, magnificent world”….

(10) WHO WAS THAT MASKED MAN? “Star Trek Discovery’s Doug Jones Reveals How He Said Goodbye to Saru (And It Involves Whitney Houston)” – Comicbook.com listens in.

Star Trek: Discovery‘s long-awaited fifth season finally debuted this week on Paramount+, and it marks the beginning of the end for the series. ComicBook.com recently had the chance to chat with some of the show’s cast, and they opened up about saying goodbye to their characters in the final season. Doug Jones (Saru) revealed how he said farewell to the character he began playing in 2017, and it involves an iconic song…

“Oh yeah,” Jones said when asked if he was able to keep any part of Saru after the show finished filming. “I wasn’t gonna let that go. Yeah. My final time taking Saru off, I did not cut him up and throw him across the room at all,” he added, referencing the famous story of René Auberjonois throwing his Odo mask at the showrunner at the end of Deep Space Nine. “I held him on my hand and we were playing a Whitney Houston song and I sang ‘I Will Always Love You’ to him and somebody was recording it. So I hope that’s out there somewhere.”…

(11) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

Born April 8, 1974 — Nnedi Okorafor, 50. Tonight we have Nnedi Okorafor, a truly phenomenal writer. 

She’s Nigerian, and has coined two words to describe her literary focus, Africanfuturism, and Africanjujuism. The latter word identifies the Afrocentric subgenre of fantasy fiction that draws on African spiritualities and cosmologies. Cool. 

Let’s start with some of her work as comic book writer.  The LaGuardia series that she wrote for was published by Berger Books. The collection won a Graphic Story Hugo Award at ConZealand, and her Black Panther: Long Live the King was nominated at Dublin 2019. She did other work in the Panther universe as well — Shuri in which Black Panther is missing and she has to find him (great story), Wakanda Forever and Shuri: Wakanda Forever

I started there as I love her writing in this medium. Now let me pick my favorite novellas and novels by her. 

The Binti trilogy is an extraordinary feat of writing and my favorite reading experience by her. The “Binti” novella which leads it off won a Hugo at MidAmeriCon II. Then came the “Binti: Home” novella which was nominatedfor a Hugo at Worldcon 76 and the final “Binti: The Night Masquerade” novella to date which was nominatedfor a Hugo at Dublin 2019. 

Lagoon is a deep dive in Nigerian mythology including Legba in the forefront here, in what is a SF novel as aliens and humans come together to form a new postcapitalist Nigeria. Neat concept well executed, characters are fascinating and the story is done well. 

(12) COMICS SECTION.

(13) IT COULDN’T HURT. “Fallout Moves To California For Season 2 With Big Tax Credit Award” – Deadline pencils in the numbers.

Just days before its debut, Fallout looks to be assured a second season thanks to a $25 million tax credit from California.

Officially, Amazon has not said yet that the Prime Video series is coming back, but, with some hints from executive producers Lisa Joy and Jonathan Nolan recently, it is pretty clear the money is doing the talking here. Receiving one of the largest allocations ever from the program for a relocating series, the LA-set post-apocalyptic drama is among a dozen shows awarded $152 million in incentives.

Primetime prequel NCIS: Origins, the Noah Wyle starring The Pitt, plus the Ryan Murphy executive produced Dr. Odyssey starring Joshua Jackson, and Grotesquerie starring Emmy winner Niecy Nash also were awarded credits through the California Film Commission run $330 million annual program – as you can see below….

… Of course, being awarded the tax credits, even big bucks like what Fallout has reaped, is no guarantee a project will go forward. The allocations are conditional on certain timelines being met, and a number of films and shows, like Season 2 of Amazon’s spy saga Citadel, have dropped out of the program after getting a green light….

(14) FILM CENSORSHIP. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] Though not SF in itself, this half-hour radio programme, Screenshot, will be of interest to anyone over here in Brit Cit who are fans of fantastic films.  It explains how Britain ranks its films for age suitability. Those in the rebel colonies are not ignored as there is a section comparing Britain’s system with that in the US. It seems we get a better deal over here. Meanwhile, along the way Kim Newman (co-master of ceremonies at the 2005 Hugo ceremony) gets a name check.

As the British Board of Film Classification publishes its new guidelines, Ellen E Jones and Mark Kermode delve into the long, chequered history of film censorship and classification in the UK.

Mark speaks to BBFC President (and original Strictly Come Dancing winner) Natasha Kaplinsky about her role, and about her reaction to the new guidelines. And he discusses the Board’s controversial history, and some of its most notorious decisions, with ex-BBFC Head of Compliance Craig Lapper.

Ellen talks to director Prano Bailey-Bond about her debut film Censor, which was inspired by the ‘video nasty’ moral panic of the 1980s. And pop culture critic Kayleigh Donaldson talks her through some of the differences between the BBFC and its US equivalent, the MPA Ratings Board.

Half hour prog here: BBC Radio 4 – Screenshot, “Censorship”.

(15) THE ELEPHANT NOT IN THE ROOM. “US company hoping to bring back the dodo and the mammoth – but here’s why it won’t be like Jurassic Park” explains Sky News.

… “We’ve got all the technology we need,” says Ben Lamm, chief executive of the firm, based in Dallas, Texas.

“It is just a focus of time and funding. But we are 100% confident [we can bring back] the Tasmanian tiger, the dodo, and the mammoth.”

The science behind the project is simple: Work out the genes that make an extinct animal what it is, and then replicate those genes using the DNA of a close existing relative….

… So after around 4,000 years of extinction, when could we see the return of the mighty mammoth – a creature that fell victim to human hunting and the changing conditions brought about by the end of the last Ice Age.

“We are well into the editing phase,” says Mr Lamm.

“We don’t have mammoths yet, but we still feel very good about 2028.”…

(16) STAND BY FOR MANIACAL LAUGHTER. “Animaniacs in Concert” will be presented at Pepperdine in Malibu on April 19. Buy tickets at the link. Learn more about the show itself at their website: “Animaniacs – IN CONCERT”.

Join the leading voice cast of Animaniacs—the iconic animated Warner Bros. series created and produced by Steven Spielberg—for a “zany, animany and totally insaney” evening as they perform the world-famous songs backed by projections from the beloved cartoon TV series. The live show celebrates the creative inspiration behind the songs with lots of audience interaction and never-before-told behind-the-scenes insider stories shared by the show’s original Emmy-Winning composer Randy Rogel and iconic voice actors like Rob Paulsen (Yakko) and Maurice LaMarche (The Brain) to some of the most unforgettable characters in the history of animation. Special guest Nancy Cartwright joins for this performance. Nancy, of course, is Bart Simpson, a lead character in a “globally known property,”  as well as Mindy in Animaniacs, from “Mindy and Buttons.”  

(17) VIDEO OF THE DAY. Warp Zone’s video “If the Star Wars ‘Cantina Song’ Had Lyrics” was first posted six years ago – but it is news to me! (Maybe you, too?)

[Thanks to SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Steven French, Mike Kennedy, Mark Roth-Whitworth, Lise Andreasen, Daniel Dern, Andrew Porter, John King Tarpinian, Chris Barkley, Cat Eldridge for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Igvar.]

Pixel Scroll 4/6/24 On (Eclipse) Monday, Smart Electronic Sheep Won’t Look Up

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(1) MOOGS, WOULD YOU BUY IT FOR A QUARTER? “Nobody Wants to Buy The Future: Why Science Fiction Literature is Vanishing” — according to Simon MacNeil at Typebar Magazine.

A recent Washington Post article indicated that only 12% of the reading public were interested in reading science fiction.  A perusal of bestseller lists for science fiction shows an even more alarming truth: the science fiction books that do sell are a shrinkingly small number of reprints, classics and novels that had been adapted into movies. 

The December 2023 bestseller list on Publisher’s Weekly contained only two novels published originally in 2023: Pestilence by Laura Thalassa (an odd addition to the Science Fiction list as it is marketed as fantasy / romance) and Starter Villain by John Scalzi. The bestselling SF novel in that time period, Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir, sold almost 17,000 copies. This puts it far below the bottom of the top 10 overall fiction bestseller list where Sarah J. Maas’ romantasy novel A Court of Mist and Fury sits at 19,097 copies sold. 

Science fiction is not selling…

… But there’s something else at play here that has reduced the public’s general taste for science fiction. 

We got to one of the futures Science Fiction proposed, and it sucked.

An oft-cited Tweet from The Onion’s Alex Blechman summarizes it perfectly: 

“Sci-Fi Author: In my book I invented the Torment Nexus as a cautionary tale.
“Tech Company: At long last, we created the Torment Nexus from the classic sci-fi novel Don’t Create The Torment Nexus.”

We are living in the world John Brunner predicted in Stand on Zanzibar and The Sheep Look Up—one of corporate dominance, political instability and environmental collapse. We are, all of us, in the Torment Nexus. So why would we want to read what future horrors Silicon Valley merchants of human misery are trying to produce next….

(2) DID HE EVER RETURN? NO, HE NEVER RETURNED. “’Quantum Leap’ Canceled at NBC After Season 2” notes The Hollywood Reporter.

The network has canceled the reboot of the 1989 series after a two-season run, sources tell The Hollywood Reporter.

The series starring Raymond Lee wrapped its sophomore season in February and ranked as one of the broadcast network’s lowest-rated scripted originals.

Quantum Leap, which was produced in-house at Universal Television, earned a speedy season two renewal as NBC kept production going in a bid to have scripted originals during the writers and actors strikes….

(3) MIRRORSHADES. “NASA says you shouldn’t use your phone to photograph the solar eclipse” warns XDA.

Everyone knows you shouldn’t stare at the sun during an eclipse. However, as it turns out, your phone’s “eyes” aren’t a suitable substitute. NASA has posted that, if you intend to look at the eclipse, pointing your phone at it in hopes to capture it on camera will likely fry its internal circuits, but don’t fret; there is a solution if you want to snap a photo to remember the occasion by…

…If you want to take a snap of the eclipse, there’s still a solution. NASA recommends using the same trick that protects your own eyeballs from the solar rays; with a pair of eclipse glasses. And the same rules apply for your phone as they do for your eyes; use the glasses to protect the device when it’s looking at the sun, and don’t keep pointing at it for too long. If you abide by the rules, you’ll be able to remember the eclipse with a nice photo instead of a hefty phone repair bill.

(4) THREEQUEL. You heard it here last. Entertainment Weekly reports “Denis Villeneuve’s third ‘Dune’ movie is officially happening”.

Sometimes, dreams do come true. That’s as true for Paul Atreides as it is for Denis Villeneuve, who now gets to make his third Dune movie. Legendary confirmed on Thursday that they are currently developing a third movie in the sci-fi franchise based on Frank Herbert’s original novels and are also in talks with Villeneuve to adapt Annie Jacobsen’s nonfiction book Nuclear War: A Scenario after that.

Villeneuve first told EW in 2021 that his goal all along was to make three Dune movies. Dune: Part Two completed the adaptation of Frank Herbert’s original 1965 sci-fi novel, but Herbert wrote five sequels before his death in 1986 (his son Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson have since added to the franchise with many additional books). The first of Herbert’s sequels, 1969’s Dune Messiah, is what Villeneuve wants to adapt for his third movie in this series.

“I always envisioned three movies,” Villeneuve told EW then. “It’s not that I want to do a franchise, but this is Dune, and Dune is a huge story. In order to honor it, I think you would need at least three movies. That would be the dream. To follow Paul Atreides and his full arc would be nice.”…

(5) FAMILIARIZE YOURSELF WITH GLASGOW. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] SF2 Concatenation has advance posted ahead of its next seasonal edition an article on Glasgow: “Glasgow as a venue for the Worldcon”.

Welcome to Glasgow the largest city in Scotland, a place often referred to as “the second city of the Empire”, meaning the second city of the British Empire because of its shipbuilding prowess on the banks of the River Clyde, and its industrial base.   But other cities in the United Kingdom also lay claim to the title, so better not say “I’ve just been to the Worldcon in the second city of the Empire” if heading down south.

(6) GLANCING TOWARD THE FUTURE. If you want to be in, respond to the Glasgow 2024 Academic Programme Call For Papers by April 30.

Glasgow 2024’s Academic Programme will bring together a diverse set of scholars from the humanities, social sciences, and adjacent disciplines to launch an exploration of SF/F/H’s concern for our futures. Through a combination of panels of three (3) 15-minute presentations each and hour-long roundtable discussions with scholars, we’ll discuss themes of futurity as they manifest in genre fiction and media past and present, as well as speculate on the genre’s own potential futures and capacity for shaping the future, encompassing film, literature, comics, games, new media, and art and/or the fan communities that celebrate them.

(7) DETECTING FAKE LITERARY AGENCIES. Patrick Carter enhances your scam detection skills in a thread that starts here. Here are some examples:

(8) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

Born April 6, 1937 — Billy Dee Williams, 87. Rather obviously, Billy Dee Williams’ best-known role is as — and no I did know this was his full name — Landonis Balthazar “Lando” Calrissian III. He was introduced in The Empire Strikes Back as a longtime friend of Han Solo and the administrator of the floating Cloud City on the gas planet Bespin. 

Billy Dee Williams

(So have I mentioned, I’ve only watched the original trilogy, and this is my favorite film of that trilogy? If anyone cares to convince me I’ve missed something by not watching the later films, go ahead.) 

He is Lando in the original trilogy, as well in as the sequel, The Rise of Skywalker, thirty-six years later. The Star Wars thinks this might be the longest interval between first playing a character and later playing the same character, being a thirty-six year gap.

He returned to the role within the continuity in the animated Star Wars Rebels series, voicing the role in “Idiot’s Array” and “The Siege of Lothal” episodes. 

Now this is where it gets silly, really silly. The most times he’s been involved with the character is in the Lego ‘verse. Between 2024 with The Lego Movie to Billy Dee Williams returned to the role in the Star Wars: Summer Vacation in 2022, he has voiced Lando in eight Lego films, mostly made as television specials.

Going from hero to villain, he was Harvey Dent in Batman, and yes in The Lego Batman Movie. Really they made it. I’d like to say I remember him here but than they would admitting this film made an impression on me which it decidedly didn’t. None of the Batman Films did in the Eightes.

He’s in Mission Impossible as Hank Benton, an enforcer for a monster, in “The Miracle” episode; he’s Ferguson in  Epoch: Evolution, the sequel to Epoch, a what looks like quite silly, and I’m using this term deliberately, sci-film, and finally he voiced himself on Scooby-Doo and Guess Who?,  the thirteenth television series in the Scooby-Doo franchise. 

(9) COMICS SECTION.

  • Tom Gauld has two for us.

(10) TAXONOMY SEASON. Richard Ngo has put together a grid about types of conflict in a certain species of sff story. It’s followed by several posts with commentary. Thread starts here. (Ngo credits Grant Snider’s 2014 Incidental Comics “Conflict in Literature” as the inspiration.)

(11) JEOPARDY! [Item by David Goldfarb.] The April 5 episode of Jeopardy! was the first game of the tournament finals. In the Jeopardy round:

Alliterative Lit, $200:
Chapters in this book include “The Departure of Boromir” & “Shelob’s Lair”
Andrew He buzzed in but dried up. Victoria Groce responded with, “What is The Two Towers?”

The Double Jeopardy round had a category “Horror Music”. The contestants started at the bottom and worked their way up:

$2000
“Putting Out the Fire with Gasoline” is from the theme song to this beastly film starring Nastassja Kinski
Victoria tried, “What is Species?” but this was wrong. Amy Schneider tried “La Femme Nikita” but seemed to know that wasn’t right. Andrew didn’t try it. The answer was Cat People.

$1600
In a song by the goth rock band Bauhaus, this horror movie legend is “dead, undead, undead, undead”
Victoria got this: “Who is Bela Lugosi?”

$1200
A man sees a ghostly version of himself in Schubert’s Lied (song) with this German title
Amy seemed uncertain with “What is Doppelgänger?” but it was correct.

$800
“What ever happened to my Transylvania Twist?” is a lyric from this novelty horror song
Amy was more sure of this one: “What’s the Monster Mash?”

$400
Ray Parker Jr. wrote & performed the theme song to “Ghostbusters” that went to no. 1 on the charts & asked this musical question
Amy said, “What is ‘Who they gonna call?’” but this was not accepted. Andrew He got the right phrasing: “What is ‘Who you gonna call?’”

(12) CALL ME. “How ‘Bambi’ & Horatio Hornblower Helped Launch William Shatner & Captain Kirk: The Film That Lit My Fuse” – the headline of Deadline’s mini-review of You Can Call Me Bill is really the best part. You can skip the rest.

(13) WHEN MAY THE FOURTH IS WITH YOU. We reported Disney+’s upcoming Star Wars: Tales of the Empire series yesterday. Here’s the trailer. Arrives May 4.

(14) DIRECT FROM 1997. Hear the author’s musical selections on BBC Radio 4’s “Desert Island Discs, Iain Banks.

This week’s castaway is an author. In his book The Wasp Factory, the teenage protagonist tortures insects, experiments with bombs and kills a brother and a cousin. But, says Iain Banks, that was “just a phase he was going through”. He tells Sue Lawley how, as a writer, he has not developed the filters that most adults do and so views the world with childlike eyes, describing what he sees. And this world, he feels, is very often a violent and terrifying one.

[Taken from the original programme material for this archive edition of Desert Island Discs]

Favourite track: Mohammed’s Radio by Warren Zevon
Book: The Complete Monty Python Television Scripts by Monty Python
Luxury: Front Seat Of A Porsche

(15) FIRST QUARTER. JustWatch has released their latest data report on market shares in the US for the first quarter of 2024. The report is based on the JustWatch users in the US selecting their streaming services, clicking out to streaming offers and marking titles as seen. 

  • SVOD market shares in Q1 2024: Global streaming giant: Prime Video took the lead in the US streaming market with shares more than the combined size of Disney-owned companies: Hulu and Disney+. Meanwhile, Netflix maintains its stronghold with more than 2x the shares than that of Apple TV+.
  • Market share development in 2024: Leading streaming growth into 2024 are Apple TV+, Netflix, and Paramount+, each adding +1% to their shares. On the other hand, Hulu, Disney+, and Max struggled to keep up, individually suffering through a -1% decline since January.

(16) CHIP OFF THE VERY OLD BLOCK. Live Science is there when “NASA engineers discover why Voyager 1 is sending a stream of gibberish from outside our solar system”.

…In March, NASA engineers sent a command prompt, or “poke,” to the craft to get a readout from its flight data subsystem (FDS) — which packages Voyager 1’s science and engineering data before beaming it back to Earth. 

After decoding the spacecraft’s response, the engineers have found the source of the problem: The FDS’s memory has been corrupted.

“The team suspects that a single chip responsible for storing part of the affected portion of the FDS memory isn’t working,” NASA said in a blog post Wednesday (March 13). “Engineers can’t determine with certainty what caused the issue. Two possibilities are that the chip could have been hit by an energetic particle from space or that it simply may have worn out after 46 years.”…

[Thanks to Chris Barkley, Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Lise Andreasen, David Goldfarb, Steven French, Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, and John King Tarpinian for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Daniel Dern.]

Pixel Scroll 4/5/24 Scrolling To Filezantium

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(1) YES, THE EARTH MOVED FOR HIM, TOO. Andrew Porter felt the “Room shaking, things vibrating” at his place in Brooklyn this morning, effects of a magnitude 4.7 earthquake that struck Central New Jersey around 10:23 a.m. Eastern. “I’m still shaking with adrenaline rush,” he wrote shortly after (a line repeated in the Brooklyn Eagle’s coverage.)

Many in the area’s sff community posted to social media about the experience. Bo Bolander’s tweet is a good example.

(2) TOTAL E-CHIPS. Get ready for our next cosmic disturbance. “Sun Chips eclipse flavors: You will have less than 5 minutes to score limited-edition chips” – details at AL.com.

Sun Chips is releasing a limited-edition flavor of chips in honor of the April 8 eclipse.

The chip brand is releasing Pineapple Habanero and Black Bean Spicy Gouda, a blend of ingredients with a nod to ” sunny skies and bright days ahead while nodding to the moon with a cheesy touch.”

The new flavor will be available on SunChipsSolarEclipse.com and fans can get their hands on the chips beginning at 1:33 p.m. CST on April 8 as supplies last….

(3) EATING THE FANTASTIC. Scott Edelman invites listeners to join writer Sunny Moraine for dinner on Episode 222 of the Eating the Fantastic podcast.

What brought us together again this year for our second full-length conversation was the release of their novella Your Shadow Half Remains, a chilling tale which I hope members of the Horror Writers Association will keep in mind next year when it’s once again time to nominate for the Bram Stoker Awards. I loved the book and wanted to get together and discuss what made it tick, so we met for dinner at Commonwealth Indian restaurant, the venue for two of my earlier culinary chats — Paul Kirchner in Episode 109 and Sheree Renee Thomas in Episode 196.

Sunny Moraine

We discussed how the short story version of Your Shadow Half Remains exploded into a novel (and whether either of them would have existed at all without COVID-19), why pantsing is good but can sometimes become a nightmare, the way stories come to them cinematically,  several questions to which I didn’t want to know the answers but only whether they knew the answers, the unsettling demands of Skinamarink, why we both love ambiguity but most of the world doesn’t, how to interpret and when to implement the feedback of beta readers, the writerly gifts given to us by our subconsciouses,  why their short story days seem to be behind them, the two reasons they hate the process of titling their tales, and much more.

(4) NO SWIPING, SWIPER. The Verge heard it from the top: “The Disney Plus password-sharing crackdown starts in June”. Password sharers will be contacted by the Disney+ streaming service to increase signups and revenue.

Disney Plus already has rules in place to prevent subscribers from sharing their passwords — but now we have an idea when it will start making users pay to share them. In an interview on CNBC, Disney CEO Bob Iger says the company plans on “launching our first real foray into password sharing” in June.

… During an earnings call in February, Disney’s chief financial officer, Hugh Johnston, confirmed that subscribers “suspected of improper sharing” will see a prompt to sign up for their own subscription this summer. Subscribers will also be able to add members outside their household for an “additional fee,” but Disney still hasn’t provided any details on how much this will cost.

(5) GENERALS, ADMIRALS, AND VADERS – OH, MY! Perhaps not coincidentally, “Star Wars Announces Surprise New Disney+ Show Releasing Next Month” reports The Direct.

…In a surprise announcement, Lucasfilm confirmed a new Star Wars series will premiere on Disney+ on Saturday, May 4 with Tales of the Empire.

The all-new Disney+ series comes in the style of last year’s Tales of the Jediwith six animated shorts – half of which focussed on the rise of Ahsoka Tano while the other three explored the downfall of Count Dooku.

The announcement came with an official poster featuring Barriss Offee, Morgan Elsbeth, the Grand Inquisitor, General Grievous, Darth Vader, Grand Admiral Thrawn, and more icons of the Empire who will appear in the six shorts….

…Episode runtimes for Tales of the Jedi ranged from 13 to 19 minutes including credits, and the same will likely prove true in the dark side-centric second season…

(6) HERE’S ROCK IN YOUR EYE. CBR.com remembers the amusing time “When Superman’s Editor Called Out The Twilight Zone for Ripping Off Bizarro” at CBR.com.

… However, by 1961, it is likely that Mort Weisinger, the famed editor of the Superman family of titles (and the guy who made letter columns a big thing in the late 1950s/early 1960s, well ahead of Stan Lee and Marvel Comics), was perhaps a BIT too confident in the fact that people were copying Superman, as when a fan tried to claim that Rod Serling’s famed science fiction TV series, The Twilight Zone, was copying Bizarro World from the Superman comic books, Weisinger actually agreed!…

…In November 1960, The Twilight Zone aired the sixth episode of its second season, titled “Eye of the Beholder” (interestingly, a guy who made a popular documentary for schoolkids by that name complained, and when the episode was rebroadcast, it was retitled “The Private World of Darkness”). It is about a young woman who requires plastic surgery, because her face is apparently hideous…

The article reminds readers in detail what the Bizarro World was about, then finishes by telling how the very next issue of Superman comics followed with a send-up of Rod Serling.

(7) ONE BIG MISSTEP FOR MANKIND. If you’re feeling too happy today Vox’s Sigal Samuel can help fix that. Just read “3 Body Problem: The Netflix show’s wildest question isn’t about aliens”.

Stars that wink at you. Protons with 11 dimensions. Computers made of rows of human soldiers. Aliens that give virtual reality a whole new meaning.

All of these visual pyrotechnics are very cool. But none of them are at the core of what makes 3 Body Problem, the new Netflix hit based on Cixin Liu’s sci-fi novel of the same name, so compelling. The real beating heart of the show is a philosophical question: Would you swear a loyalty oath to humanity — or cheer on its extinction?

There’s more division over this question than you might think. The show, which is about a face-off between humans and aliens, captures two opposing intellectual trends that have been swirling around in the zeitgeist in recent years.

One goes like this: “Humans may be the only intelligent life in the universe — we are incredibly precious. We must protect our species from existential threats at all costs!”

The other goes like this: “Humans are destroying the planet — causing climate change, making species go extinct. The world will be better off if we go extinct!”

(8) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

Born April 5, 1917 — Robert Bloch. (Died 1994.) Robert Bloch wrote some thirty novels, hundreds of short stories, countless television scripts including ones for the Alfred Hitchcock Hour, I Spy, Thriller, The Girl from U.N.C.L.E., and, of course Star Trek. I’ll discuss his Alfred Hitchcock Hour and Star Trek work in a moment. 

Robert Bloch

What is the perfect piece by him? Oh that’s easy, it’s “The Hellbound Train” first published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction (September 1958) and winner or a Hugo at Detention. It’s definitely the short story I’ve read the most, and I’ve even listened to the audio version made in the Sixties. 

What next? I’m very fond of Night of the Ripper which incorporates not unsurprisingly actual historical personages such as Arthur Conan Doyle into the investigation of Inspector Abberline. I consider it the best fictional look at this real-life mystery. 

Of, if I liked that, I’d would naturally find “Yours Truly, Jack the Ripper” also fascinating. It was first published eighty-one years ago in The Mystery Companion anthology which was edited by A. L. Furman. It was made into an episode of the Boris Karloff-introduced Thriller. It’s in the public domain, so you can watch it here.

Next is The Jekyll Legacy. This was co-written with Andre Norton and meant to be a sequel to The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Young niece, mysterious estate, the matter of her uncle, Dr. Jekyll, possibly still being around. Not really horror, and quite entertaining. 

As I’m not a horror fan, I’m going to skip such an offering as Psycho as a novel but I’ll discuss in media but where I do think he excelled in the writing of short stories. But unfortunately none of his short story collections including the excellent three volume Complete Stories of Robert Bloch made it into the usual suspects yet and their price on the secondary market is frankly obscene. 

Now for his media involvement. Let’s see what’s interesting. 

Psycho is his major genre or genre adjacent work depending on how you want to consider it. Based off his novel, it’s damn scary — I’ve seen it once, which was quite enough. Hitchcock did a great job of filming the Joseph William Stefano script.

His next genre adjacent work was scripting ten episodes of Alfred Hitchcock Presents. They were mysteries verging on thrillers at times with occasionally a bit of horror thrown in. Blochian goulash.  One of those episodes was “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice” which is you can view here as it’s in the public domain.

During this time he also wrote the screenplay for The Cabinet of Caligari which is only very loosely related to the 1920 German silent film. Some sources say that he was not at all happy working on this project. 

He write an episode each for I Spy, “There was A Little Girl” and The Girl from U.N.C.L.E., “The Foundations of Youth Affair”. 

You all know that he penned three scripts for the Trek series, “What Are Little Girls Made Of?”, “Wolf in the Fold”, yet another Jack the Ripper story, and “Catspaw”. I think all three episodes are fine but the latter two are more interesting as stories.

He did two episodes of UK Hammer Films’ Journey to the Unknown series. The episodes were “The Indian Spirit Guide” and “Girl of My Dreams”. 

I’m skipping his Sixties scripting because, after looking up the films and reading reviews of them, I realized how minor and inconsequential they were as films. Torture Garden? The House That Dripped Blood?  Really? 

He wrote an episode of Night Gallery, “Logoda’s Head”; he scripted three episodes each of Tales from the Darkside and Monsters; The Cat Creature that he scripted gives us a mysterious black cat that may or not be be evil; he wrote an episode for The Hunger. So did you know there was a Return of Captain Nemo miniseries? Well Bloch penned one episode,” “Atlantis Dead Ahead” in collaboration with Larry Alexander.

(9) COMICS SECTION.

(10) THE MEDIA PRESERVES THE MESSAGE. Learn about “The Secret Language of a Tube of Paint” at Colleen Doran’s Funny Business.

Many people are confused and intimidated by paints. Alcohol markers are so much easier to use and require no special knowledge to get going. They are convenient for comps and quick original art made for when you don’t have to worry about the longevity of your originals.

I’ve seen many marker works fade badly over time, including mine. Almost every piece I ever owned by my mentor Frank Kelly Freas, some of them dating back to the 1950’s,  was destroyed by time. I am grateful that I stopped trying to do major works with graphic arts tools years ago. Even without exposure to light, they fade or crack. 

Interestingly, cheap markers I had when I was a kid have lasted longer than the expensive designer markers I used as an adult! Price has nothing to do with longevity!

FYI, I have not used alcohol based markers in about ten years. I have seen fading on works that have never been exposed to light for more than the few days it took to work on the books I was doing while using them…

… Different brands of oil paint colors can be swapped out and used with other brands any time you like, and unlike markers, once you learn to mix colors, you never need more than a dozen or so tubes….

… One brand will have a wonderful yellow you want to use, while another will have a fabulous red. Brand loyalty in paint is for suckers. Pick and choose the best performing tools and use what you like. Oil paints will all work together. …

(11) DON’T BE FOOLED. Victoria Strauss warns against “The Scam of ‘Book Licensing’” at Writer Beware.

…Today’s blog post focuses on the similarly deceptive scam of “book licensing”. Like “returns insurance”, this fictional item is based on something real (the licensing of rights that’s necessary for publication) that scammers have distorted into an imaginary requirement they can monetize (a book license you supposedly must obtain in order for your book to be published or re-published).

To be clear, there is no such thing as a “book license”–at least, not in the sense that scammers use the term, meaning an item like a driver’s license or a fishing license that you have to take steps to acquire and must have in order to do the thing associated with the license. As the copyright owner of your work (which you are, by law, from the moment you write down the words), you have the power to grant licenses for publication, but you do not have to obtain any kind of license or permission in order to do so. By re-framing licensing as something authors have to get, rather than something they are empowered to give, scammers turn the reality of licensing on its head….

(12) YOUR BLOCH BIRTHDAY PRESENT. Jim Nemeth of The Robert Bloch Official Website is celebrating what would have been Robert Bloch’s 107st birthday by presenting one of his all-time favorite stories, “Man with a Hobby”.

(13) NEXT BLUE ORIGIN CREW. Space.com takes roll call as “Crew for Blue Origin’s 7th human spaceflight includes US’ 1st black astronaut candidate”.

…Today (April 4), Jeff Bezos‘ company announced the six crewmembers for the NS-25 space tourism mission, which will lift off from Blue Origin‘s West Texas site in the relatively near future. (The target date has not yet been revealed.)Among the six are former U.S. Air Force Capt. Ed Dwight, who was selected as the nation’s first Black astronaut candidate back in 1961, according to Blue Origin.

“In 1961, Ed was chosen by President John F. Kennedy to enter training at the Aerospace Research Pilot School (ARPS), an elite U.S. Air Force flight training program known as a pathway for entering the NASA Astronaut Corps,” Blue Origin wrote in an update today. “In 1963, after successfully completing the ARPS program, Ed was recommended by the U.S. Air Force for the NASA Astronaut Corps but ultimately was not among those selected.”

Robert Lawrence was the first Black astronaut selected for a space program — the U.S. Air Force’s Manned Orbiting Laboratory, or MOL, a planned spy outpost in Earth orbit that was never built. Lawrence was picked in June 1967, but he died six months later in a supersonic jet crash. The first Black American astronaut to reach space was Guion Bluford, who flew on the STS-8 mission of the space shuttle Challenger in 1983.

Dwight, who was born in 1933, became an entrepreneur and then a sculptor focusing on iconic figures in Black history. Over the past five decades, he has created more than 130 public works, which are featured in museums and other spaces across the U.S. and Canada, according to Blue Origin. His seat on the mission is sponsored by the nonprofit Space For Humanity.

(14) ONE-STOP FOR ONE PIECE NEWS. CBR.com covers the announcement: “Netflix’s One Piece Star Pulls Back the Curtain on Season 2”.

… A recent post on X, formerly known as Twitter, shows Jacob Gibson, who plays Usopp in the live-action remake of One Piece, doing a Q&A all about the show and its future. Gibson goes to the writers’ room in Cape Town, South Africa, where the outdoor scenes of the series have been shot –along with some necessary additional sets built at Cape Town Studios, such as the iconic ship of the Straw Hat Pirates, The Going Merry and Sanji’s boat-restaurant, the Baratie….

[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, Chris Barkley, Scott Edelman, Cat Eldridge, Kathy Sullivan, Rich Lynch, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Steven French, Mike Kennedy, and Andrew Porter for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Soon Lee.]