Tag Archives: Steve Wozniak

Pixel Scroll 3/31/23 The Second Fifths Who Walk Away From Omelas

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(1) TIME TO APPLY THE BRAKES. “Elon Musk and Apple cofounder Steve Wozniak among over 1,100 who sign open letter calling for 6-month ban on creating powerful A.I.” reports Yahoo!

Elon Musk and Apple cofounder Steve Wozniak are among the prominent technologists and artificial intelligence researchers who have signed an open letter calling for a six-month moratorium on the development of advanced A.I. systems.

In addition to the Tesla CEO and Apple co-founder, the more than 1,100 signatories of the letter include Emad Mostaque, the founder and CEO of Stability AI, the company that helped create the popular Stable Diffusion text-to-image generation model, and Connor Leahy, the CEO of Conjecture, another A.I. lab. Evan Sharp, a cofounder of Pinterest, and Chris Larson, a cofounder of cryptocurrency company Ripple, have also signed. Deep learning pioneer and Turing Award–winning computer scientist Yoshua Bengio signed too.

The letter urges technology companies to immediately cease training any A.I. systems that would be “more powerful than GPT-4,” which is the latest large language processing A.I. developed by San Francisco company OpenAI….

The “Open Letter” at Future of Life Institute reads, in part:

…Contemporary AI systems are now becoming human-competitive at general tasks,[3] and we must ask ourselves: Should we let machines flood our information channels with propaganda and untruth? Should we automate away all the jobs, including the fulfilling ones? Should we develop nonhuman minds that might eventually outnumber, outsmart, obsolete and replace us? Should we risk loss of control of our civilization? Such decisions must not be delegated to unelected tech leaders. Powerful AI systems should be developed only once we are confident that their effects will be positive and their risks will be manageable. This confidence must be well justified and increase with the magnitude of a system’s potential effects. OpenAI’s recent statement regarding artificial general intelligence, states that “At some point, it may be important to get independent review before starting to train future systems, and for the most advanced efforts to agree to limit the rate of growth of compute used for creating new models.” We agree. That point is now.

Therefore, we call on all AI labs to immediately pause for at least 6 months the training of AI systems more powerful than GPT-4. This pause should be public and verifiable, and include all key actors. If such a pause cannot be enacted quickly, governments should step in and institute a moratorium….

(2) WHEN AI IS THE CENTER OF THE STORY. At CrimeReads, Evie Green spotlights “8 Novels Featuring Artificial Intelligence” – not to mention a ninth, the one she’s written herself.

The sentient AI is appearing in more and more stories, as writers follow, and then leapfrog beyond, the science. These books have all engaged with it in different ways:

Here’s one of her selections:

Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro

The first-person narrative by Klara, a solar-powered Artificial Friend (AF), details her journey from shop floor to being chosen by teenager Josie as her companion, and then to a new life in the countryside in near-future America. Ishiguro goes deeply into the AI’s worldview, giving us an AI’s perspective on religion (Klara is powered by, and so reveres, the sun), on love, and on humanity seen through non-human eyes. He leads the reader to fill in the blanks ourselves, to start to understand the things Klara doesn’t — particularly the question of what Klara’s role really is in Josie’s family. The ending of this novel has stayed with me for a long time.

(3) LAVALLE Q&A. In the New York Times, “Victor LaValle Likes to Stare Directly at His Deepest Fears”.

What makes for a good horror novel?

For me, the best horror speaks to a deep fear the author hopes to address, one that feels profoundly personal, and you as the reader are welcome to watch the author/the characters wrestle with it. People sometimes ask why I want to read horror at all, let alone write it. Horror is a fearless genre. So much writing glances off the hardest and worst experiences, but horror confronts the worst that happens. Sometimes the worst can be defeated, but just as often it can’t. Nevertheless, it can be addressed, acknowledged, rather than tidily resolved. A good horror novel doesn’t lie to you.

(4) ĀLEA IACTA ES. “‘Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves’ Review: They’re on a Roll” – a review at the New York Times.

…After a decade in development, the project that made it to the screen is a noisy, pixelated smash-and-zap that does manage to capture the spirit of play. The story starts with a silver-tongued bard named Edgin Darvis (Chris Pine), a divorced barbarian named Holga Kilgore (Michelle Rodriguez) and a simple challenge. Edgin and Holga must escape a fortified tower — a donjon in Old French, before the English redefined dungeon as someplace underground — to reunite with Edgin’s daughter, Kira (Chloe Coleman). When they learn that Kira is under the thrall of a con man (Hugh Grant) who is himself under the thrall of a wizard (Daisy Head), our heroes’ gang expands to include an anti-establishment druid (Sophia Lillis) and a defeatist sorcerer (Justice Smith). Like the game, the team’s initial mission rapidly spirals into detours; the goal is less interesting than the brainstorming sessions that get them to the finish.

Having sat in on my share of D&D campaigns, my personal idea of purgatory is five people debating whether to open a door. Luckily, the film moves faster. Castles, volcanoes and yurts — oh my — whiz past at a clip that would make a dice-roller drool. Plans are quickly made and just as quickly fail. “This is what we do!” Edgin yelps. “We pivot!”…

(5) ANOTHER NEGATIVE TREND. The Guardian tells why “Bat Out of Hell musical stopped due to disruptive audience member”.

A performance of the musical Bat Out of Hell in London’s West End was halted for several minutes on Thursday evening due to a disruptive audience member who eventually left the venue before the show continued.

One theatregoer told the Guardian that “it got a bit heated” and that swearing in the audience could be heard over the music. An argument occurred in the stalls after several people had been singing along with the actors. The show came to a stop, the houselights were brought up and the cast left the stage as security staff dealt with the incident and other audience members chanted “out, out, out”.

The disruption at the Peacock theatre comes amid growing concerns about antisocial audience behaviour. A new survey from the Broadcasting, Entertainment, Communications and Theatre union (Bectu) shows that almost 90% of theatre staff have experienced or witnessed problematic audience behaviour, with more than 70% stating that it had worsened since the Covid pandemic.

A statement from Bat Out of Hell: The Musical said that an audience member had been “talking loudly throughout the performance and [was] being quite disruptive”. When the noise began to affect those around him, he was asked to stop talking several times. “They asked the man to leave but he refused to move for several minutes. Eventually he agreed to leave and the show was able to continue.”…

(6) BOOK REVIEWERS SOUGHT. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] We at SF2 Concatenation have just lost two of our wonderful book reviewers – Karen and Roseanna – and so we are now seeking SF and fantasy reviewers to replace them. Our book review panel members come and go as life circumstances change: some even go to return years later; some have even gone and returned a few times.

Given the mix of our current book review panel members, sword and sorcery fantasy aficionados would be particularly welcome. (But don’t let this put anyone off.)

The loss of Karen and Roseanna is a double blow in that SF2 Concatenation’s book review panel is now, for the first time in literally decades, 100% male.

Sadly, prospective book review panel members need to be UK based, as our budget does not extend to mailing books overseas.

Further details are here: “Science Fiction & Fantasy book reviewers wanted”.

Regarding potential overseas contributors, though we cannot take on book reviewers, we would welcome those outside the UK reviewing major and national level SF conventions. We can send you guidance if you are interested.

We regularly review conventions and a list of past reviews is here: http://www.concatenation.org/conindex.html

We can be reached at οffice AT cοncatenation DOT οrg

(7) BAKEWELL INTERVIEW. The New York Times learned “Why Sarah Bakewell Tends to Avoid Thrillers and Mysteries”.

Which genres do you especially enjoy reading? And which do you avoid?

I avoid nothing, though I am wary of tightly plotted thrillers and whodunits because — never mind guessing the solution — I often can’t understand that solution even when it’s explained at the end.

On the other hand, I am a fan of science fiction, even when the science involved is beyond me. I like the hard stuff: I recently reread Robert L. Forward’s “Dragon’s Egg,” which does an amazing job of imagining what life on the surface of a neutron star might be like. (Short answer: very flat, and extremely fast-moving.) But I also like such fantastical authors as Cordwainer Smith (in real life a C.I.A. psychological warfare expert), whose stories are built around such delightful nonsense as spaceship pilots who steer ships manned by cats through telepathic contact. Somehow, he makes you believe it.

I love travel books, especially those by opinionated, charismatic writers like Rebecca West or Dervla Murphy. I love ancient literary gossip, music books, eccentric memoirs by ghastly people — bring it all on!

(8) MEMORY LANE.

1947 – [Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

Tonight’s Beginning though it doesn’t mention his name here is the first words spoken by another iconic private detective, Mike Hammer. 

Mickey Spillane’s I, the Jury was published seventy-six years ago by E. P. Dutton in hardcover and Signet Books in paperback. The novel was quite successful. By the time it was adapted into a film in 1953, it had sold three and a half million copies. 

Mike Hammer has as franchise has had five feature films, seven television films a pilot with a Brian Keith, a series with Darrin McGavin and three series with Stacy Keach, my favorite of the three. 

I’ve read some of the novels including this one. The Suck Fairy has touched them particularly as regards the handing of women in them. Consider that if plan on reading them. [Editor’s note: Warning for description of murdered person.]

With further commentary, here’s our hard-boiled Beginning.

I shook the rain from my hat and walked into the room. Nobody said a word. They stepped back politely and I could feel their eyes on me. Pat Chambers was standing by the door to the bedroom trying to steady Myrna. The girl’s body was racking with dry sobs. I walked over and put my arms around her.

“Take it easy, kid,” I told her. “Come on over here and lie down.” I led her to a studio couch that was against the far wall and sat her down. She was in pretty bad shape. One of the uniformed cops put a pillow down for her and she stretched out. 

Pat motioned me over to him and pointed to the bedroom. “In there, Mike,” he said. In there. The words hit me hard. In there was my best friend lying on the floor dead. The body. Now I could call it that. Yesterday it was Jack Williams, the guy that shared the same mud bed with me through two years of warfare in the stinking slime of the jungle. Jack, the guy who said he’d give his right arm for a friend and did when he stopped a bastard of a Jap from slitting me in two. He caught the bayonet in the biceps and they amputated his arm. 

Pat didn’t say a word. He let me uncover the body and feel the cold face. For the first time in my life I felt like crying. “Where did he get it, Pat?” “

“In the stomach. Better not look at it. The killer carved the nose off a forty-five and gave it to him low.” 

I threw back the sheet anyway and a curse caught in my throat. Jack was in shorts, his one hand still clutching his belly in agony. The bullet went in clean, but where it came out left a hole big enough to cram a fist into. 

Very gently I pulled the sheet back and stood up. It wasn’t a complicated setup. A trail of blood led from the table beside the bed to where Jack’s artificial arm lay. Under him the throw rug was ruffled and twisted. He had tried to drag himself along with his one arm, but never reached what he was after.

(9) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

  • Born March 31, 1926 —John Fowles. British author best remembered for The French Lieutenant’s Woman but who did several works of genre fiction, The Magus which I read a long time ago and A Maggot which I’ve not read. (Died 2005.)
  • Born March 31, 1932 — John Jakes. Author of a number of genre series including Brak the Barbarian. It appears that the novels are fix-ups from works published in such venues as Fantastic. Dark Gate and Dragonard are his other two series. As Robert Hart Davis, he wrote a number of The Man From UNCLE novellas that were published in The Man from U.N.C.L.E. Magazine. The magazine apparently only existed from 1966 to 1968. (Died 2023.)
  • Born March 31, 1936 — Marge Piercy, 87. Author of He, She and It which garnered won the Arthur C. Clarke Award for Best Science Fiction novel. Of course she also wrote Woman on the Edge of Time doomed to be called “classic of utopian speculative sf”. 
  • Born March 31, 1957 – David Bratman, 66. A Tolkien and Inklings scholar, and a longtime member of the Mythopoeic Society which he has served as a Steward and as editor of its news publication Mythprint. He is a past Hugo Awards administrator. (OGH)
  • Born March 31, 1960 — Ian McDonald, 63. I see looking him up for this Birthday note that one of my favorite novels by him, Desolation Road, was the first one. Ares Express was just as splendid. Now the Chaga saga was, errr, weird. Everness was fun but ultimately shallow. Strongly recommend both Dervish House and River of Gods. Luna series at first blush didn’t impress me, so other opinions sought. 
  • Born March 31, 1962 — Michael Benson, 61. Author of Space Odyssey: Stanley Kubrick, Arthur C. Clarke, and the Making of a Masterpiece. His earlier book Beyond: Visions of the Interplanetary Probes featured an intro by Clarke. Benson is an artist and journalist who also mounts shows of astronomical art and who advocates for such things as keeping the Hubble telescope operating. His site is here.

(10) COMICS SECTION.

(11) FURY RETURNS. “’Secret Invasion’ Revealed: Inside Samuel L. Jackson’s Eye-Opening New Marvel Series” at Vanity Fair.

Who are you, really? That question is at the core of the new Marvel series Secret Invasion, which follows Samuel L. Jackson’s spymaster, Nick Fury, as he uncovers a conspiracy to quietly install double agents into positions of power around the world. In a traditional espionage story, these might be operatives from hostile rival nations, but in the Marvel Cinematic Universe the infiltration has an otherworldly origin: shape-shifting green-skinned extraterrestrials known as Skrulls, who can perfectly simulate any human being at will. Figuring out who is who becomes especially daunting. 

“We don’t know who’s a friend, who’s the enemy,” Jackson tells Vanity Fair for this exclusive deep dive into the upcoming series. “There’s a political aspect that kind of fits into where we are right now: Who’s okay? Who’s not? What happens when people get afraid and don’t understand other people? You can’t tell who’s innocent and who’s guilty in this particular instance.”

…Nick Fury has been overdue for his own story. His introduction came in the very first Marvel Cinematic Universe movie, when Jackson turned up in a post-credits sequence to tell Iron Man, “You’ve become part of a bigger universe. You just don’t know it yet.”

Over the next 15 years of movies, only scarce details about Fury’s past have emerged. We know he joined the Army straight out of high school, that he became a vital government operative who rose to the highest level of S.H.I.E.L.D. before its collapse, and that he began the Avengers Initiative because he recognized that threats to the world were growing so big that the planet needed to upgrade its superhero protection policy.

But Secret Invasion finds him worn out. “Even Nick Fury can be shaken, you know?” Jackson says. One reason his character has been off in space, ignoring calls for help, is he doesn’t believe he can fix things anymore. “He’s up there trying to process what the fuck happened, you know? And what his place in the world is,” Jackson says. “The death of Iron Man, the death of Black Widow—with that stuff going on, he just kind of checked out.”

Fury used to see more clearly—even if he did lose an eye in Captain Marvel when he was scratched by an alien creature posing as a house cat. That’s a plot point in Secret Invasion too….

(12) TOP SERCON. Cora Buhlert’s latest non-fiction spotlight is actually a “double spotlight” for two books, Brian W. Aldiss and Robert Holdstock’s Mythago Wood: A Critical Companion by Paul Kincaid.

Tell us about your book.

Through one of those quirks of publishing, I had two books out in 2022. This was in part because the first was, I think, a little later than originally intended, and the second was short and written to a very tight deadline. The first, Brian W. Aldiss, is part of the Modern Masters of Science Fiction series from Illinois University Press; the second, Robert Holdstock’s Mythago Wood: A Critical Companion is part of the New Canon series from Palgrave. Both, therefore, conform, at least partly, to the demands of their particular series.

Brian W. Aldiss is, as you might expect, a critical study of the science fiction of Brian Aldiss, mixed in with a little biography for context. It is, for instance, significant that the only novel he wrote in which the central character is in a lifelong, happy, monogamous marriage was Greybeard, which was written after the breakup of his first marriage and the beginning of his relationship with the woman who would become his second wife. It is also, noticeably, a novel about a world without children, and his own children from his first marriage had been taken away from him and he believed he would never see them again. As you might guess, I firmly believe that a thorough understanding of creative work must, as bedrock, include an understanding of the circumstances in which that work was created….

(13) IT’S ALIVE! Cyberpunk continues to thrive in South Asia, for example, in the work of Indian science fiction writer Lavanya Lakshminarayan: “Cyberpunk Is Alive, Evolving and More Relevant Than Ever” at Gizmodo.

… The genre has often been proclaimed dead because it’s allegedly said nothing new for decades. All new work purportedly sticks to the template laid down in Neuromancer: a lone hacker takes down an oppressive and mega-evil corporation. I don’t subscribe to this theory; in fact, I challenge it.

However, cyberpunk doesn’t get a free pass from criticism. Where existing criticism has been most valid, in my opinion, is when it looks at representation. Across the breadth of the genre, cyberpunk has tended towards being Orientalist, both exoticizing and appropriating Asian cultures while expressing xenophobic paranoias about a non-Western technological superpower. It’s largely white, male, heteronormative and relegates women and queer persons to the margins. BIPOC identities have either been fetishized or find no representation at all, and futures imagined by own voices from outside all of un-America and the Western Anglophone world are scant.

This is changing—not as fast as I’d like, and not as extensively as I’d hope for—but it’s a start, and it’s a sign of things to come. It’s also where I believe cyberpunk, and in particular, the cyberpunk novel, is most alive….

(14) TODAY’S THING TO WORRY ABOUT. Outfits that get a lot of their clicks from search engines fear they’ll be superseded by chatbots: “Publishers Worry A.I. Chatbots Will Cut Readership” in the New York Times. Well, let’s think of it as evolution in action, because we can’t naively assume those chatbots won’t be shoving their own ads at us.

The publishing industry has spent the past two decades struggling to adjust to the internet, as print circulation has plummeted and tech companies have gobbled up rivers of advertising revenue.

Now come the chatbots.

New artificial intelligence tools from Google and Microsoft give answers to search queries in full paragraphs rather than a list of links. Many publishers worry that far fewer people will click through to news sites as a result, shrinking traffic — and, by extension, revenue.

The new A.I. search tools remain in limited release, so publishers such as Condé Nast and Vice have not yet seen an effect on their business. But in an effort to prevent the industry from being upended without their input, many are pulling together task forces to weigh options, making the topic a priority at industry conferences and, through a trade organization, planning a push to be paid for the use of their content by chatbots.

“You could essentially call this the Wikipedia-ization of a lot of information,” said Bryan Goldberg, the chief executive of BDG, which publishes lifestyle and culture websites like Bustle, Nylon and Romper. “You’re bringing together Wikipedia-style answers to an infinite number of questions, and that’s just going to nuke many corners of the open web.”…

(15) NEW ROBODOGS, NEW TRICKS.  [Item by Mike Kennedy.] These are different models made by different manufacturers (and neither is the well-known Boston Dynamics Spot). But in both cases, these are some new “tricks” for robot dogs.

“Watch this robotic dog use one of its ‘paws’ to open doors” at Popular Science. Balance on three legs in order to kick a ball, etc.; also, climb walls:

Roboticists from Carnegie Mellon University and UC Berkeley have demonstrated the ability to program a quadrupedal robot—in this case, a Unitree Go1 one utilizing an Intel RealSense camera—to use its front limbs not only to walk, but also to help climb walls and interact with simple objects, as needed. The progress, detailed in a paper to be presented next month at the International Conference of Robotics and Automation (ICRA 2023), potentially marks a major step forward for what quadrupedal robots can handle….

“A new propulsion system allows this robotic dog to ‘swim’” at Popular Science.

Legs folded underneath its body, a dog-shaped robot motors through a shallow stream, front-facing sensors pointing forwards above the water’s surface. Upon reaching the shore, the legs unfolded, and the robot bounds forward, its gait the now-familiar weirdness of a robot imitating a canine. Announced on social media June 13, this new amphibious adaptation is the Vision 60 Quadruped Uncrewed Ground Vehicle, or Q-UGV, from Ghost Robotics. The underwater propulsion system, made by Onyx Industries, is called the Nautical Autonomous Unmanned Tail (NAUT)….

https://twitter.com/Ghost_Robotics/status/1536378529415315458

[Thanks to Mike Kennedy, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, John King Tarpinian, Lise Andreasen, Cora Buhlert, Chris Barkley, Andrew Porter, Michael Toman, and Cat Eldridge for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Daniel Dern with an assist from OGH.]

Pixel Scroll 9/26/18 Ent Misbehavin’

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(1) ROWLING STEPS IN IT AGAIN. Yahoo! Entertainment reports that “Cries of racism erupt over the casting of Nagini in latest ‘Fantastic Beasts’ installment”.

The final trailer for Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald contained a jaw-dropping character reveal that has some Harry Potter fans fuming. As it turns out, one of the prequel franchise’s “new” characters, played by Claudia Kim, is actually a familiar villain from the original series: Voldemort’s evil snake companion Nagini. Author and screenwriter J.K. Rowling tweeted that she’d been sitting on this secret “for around 20 years.” But social media skeptics say that Nagini’s shocking past as a Korean woman seems highly implausible and possibly racist.

Here is the trailer:

Rowling’s tweet in response to a critic —

Fans have pointed out many troubling implications. Here is one of the less-sexualized examples —

(2) SPINRAD ASKED FOR HIS VIEWS ABOUT ISLAM. Rachid Ouadah of motionXmedia interviewed the author of Osama the Gun — “Norman Spinrad: ‘There is a difference between the religion of islam by itself and middle-eastern politics’”.  (Spinrad sent the link.)

Considering that the whole world is in crisis – we would not have had Trump if the world was in a good shape – would it be correct to say that terrorism is an expression of the crisis in the islamic world ? I didn’t say “arabic” because they are such a small part of muslims compared to Indonesians.

Indonesia is very complicated situation so I won’t go into that. (…) Islam and democracy are deeply against each other ideologically. Democracy says that legitimacy of a government arises from the consent of the people as expressed in a vote. Traditional islam says legitimacy of a government arises from the Quran, that human beings have no right to change these rules because it’s the word of Allah. And you can have a country that’s a democracy with a majority of muslims but you can’t have an islamic republic. Iran is not a real republic. It’s a phoney republic. The ultimate word is the word of Khamenei. And not of the president, not of anybody who that’s been elected. It’s not that it is a dictatorship. The ideology of what’s a legitimate government is completely different between an islamic government and a democratic government. So their take on what’s a democracy is it’s evil because it says that the decisions of humans can overrule the word of Allah. On the other side, democracy says [islam] is evil because it doesn’t allow people to decide. There is no middle ground between a theocratic muslim state and an electoral democracy. And that’s the core of the whole thing.

(3) TWO TO GEAR UP. SYFY Wire has artwork from the latest genre crossover: “IDW’s Star Trek vs Transformers #1: Beam up and roll out with artist Philip Murphy”.

Geek galaxies collide in a cosmic crossover for the ages in IDW’s new Star Trek vs. Transformers series, and SYFY WIRE has an exclusive chat with artist Philip Murphy and a first peek inside the pages of this perfect pairing of beloved sci-fi properties.

(4) EIGHT GREAT TOMATOES…ARE NOT ENOUGH. Hector Gonzalez’ saga of cooking for MexicanX Initiative participants at Worldcon 76 continues: “My Road to Worldcon 76. Part 5: Best Laid Plans…”

…The plan was set to bring the items to the main kitchen, get the mushrooms carnitas started, then work on the salsas. The pork will cook overnight and things will be ready in the morning. All seemed perfect. However, Mexican Pollyanna counted her chickens too soon. When we got to Doc Doyle’s home I discovered the besides missing some of the pork I needed for the carnitas, they had shopped dramatically wrong on different things I required, namely tomatoes, tomatillos, and onions. I asked for 8 lbs of tomatoes and only bought EIGHT TOMATOES. This meant another trip to the store, which bothered me. The least time I had at the kitchen, the longer this would take. It was already 2:30PM….

(5) IMAGINATIVE MERGER THEORIES. With Disney and Fox joining up, there’s money to be made! Yahoo! Entertainment heard one fan’s idea for how to do it — “This Marvel Fan Theory Explains How X-Men and the Fantastic Four Will Be Introduced Through ‘Avengers 4′”.

As we know, Avengers 4 will likely require some tricky inter-dimensional manipulation and time travel to undo Thanos’ big snap that killed half the universe. As we also know, back in the real world, Disney and 21st Century Fox are completing a merger, which gives the Marvel Cinematic Universe access to properties that were formerly owned by a separate company, such as X-Men and Fantastic 4. And, as Disney CEO Bob Iger said earlier this year, the company plans to “expand iconic movie franchises like Avatar, Marvel’s X-Men, the Fantastic Four, Deadpool, Planet of the Apes, Kingsman, and many others.”

So, the gears are all in motion for this great meeting of the Marvel characters to happen as soon as Avengers 4. One interesting fan theory on Reddit explains how the reversal of Thanos’ snap could cause the introduction of both The Fantastic 4 and Mutants. If the snap can bring Captain Marvel back to Earth to help, certainly it could bring the Fantastic 4 back as well.

(6) VADER NEEDS YOU. SlashGear fills fans in on a new video game — “Star Wars: Vader Immortal trailer and release info revealed”.

This game will have the user – you – dropped out of hyperspace near the planet Mustafar. That’s the largely volcanic planet where Anakin Skywalker fought Obi-Wan Kenobi, and Vader was effectively born. There, Vader’s palace can be found. This is the palace we first saw in film form in the movie Star Wars: Rogue One.

 

(7) TRIVIAL TRIVIA.

The carpet in the house of Sid, the villain of the first “Toy Story” film, is the same pattern as the hotel carpet in “The Shining.” The character of Sid was also partially based on a former employee at Pixar studios. — Source: The Daily Dot

(8) TODAY IN HISTORY

  • September 26, 2001 — Star Trek: Enterprise premiered on this day.

(9) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled  by  Cat Eldridge and JJ.]

  • Born September 26, 1946 – Togo Igawa, 72, Actor and Producer. A Japanese actor who became a member of the Royal Shakespeare Company, his genre credits include a small role in The Last Jedi and playing the voice of Hiro the Wise Engine in many Thomas the Tank Engine TV episodes and movies.
  • Born September 26, 1948 – Olivia Newton-John, 70, Actor, Singer, Composer, and Producer from Australia who starred in the fantasy musical Xanadu as a muse sent to help struggling artists achieve their dreams.
  • Born September 26, 1956 – Linda Hamilton, 62, Actor, best known for playing Sarah Connor in the first two Terminator movies, and her lead role in the TV series Beauty and the Beast. She’ll be reprising her role in a Terminator reboot movie expected out next year.
  • Born September 26, 1957 – Tanya Huff, 61, Writer. Canadian author of several fantasy series, all superb, including the Valor Confederation, Enchantment Emporium and Keeper Chronicles. Her Blood Books series, which pairs a Detective removed from the Force for failing eyesight with a vampire, was adapted as a series by CBC Television. She lives in rural Ontario with her partner, six cats, and an “unintentional chihuahua”.
  • Born September 26, 1963 – Lysette Anthony, 55, Actor and Producer from England, known for genre roles in the movie Dracula: Dead and Loving It, the remake of the Dark Shadows TV series, and the classic epic sci-fantasy movie Krull (LALALALA ICantHearYou SHUTUPSHUTUPSHUTUP).
  • Born September 26, 1968 – Jim Caviezel, 50, Actor and Producer. Genre roles include the movie Frequency, the TV miniseries remake of The Prisoner, and 5 seasons in a lead role on Person of Interest.

I’m just going to leave this bit of craptastic birthday nostalgia here for your enjoyment:

(10) COMICS SECTION.

  • Superheroes helping each other out at The Argyle Sweater.
  • This is just the way I felt about the surveys we had to fill out at work — Bizarro.

(11) OH THE HUMANITY. Metro has coverage of the latest cultural crisis: “Library really needs people to stop sticking googly eyes on book covers”.

Library staff are pleading with people to stop attaching ‘googly eyes’ to book covers because the result will ‘haunt nightmares for all eternity’. Visitors to Alexandria-Monroe Public Library in Indiana, US, have apparently damaged a number of books by sticking the eyes to their covers. Bosses shared a picture of the library’s copy of The Turn of the Shrew to its Facebook page this week, on which a pair of ‘grotesque and haunting’ eyes were placed.

 

(12) PHONE HOME. JPL posted the Mars orbiter’s new photo of rover Opportunity. TechCrunch explicates: “Mars orbiter spots silent, dust-covered Opportunity rover as dust storm clears”.

The last we heard from the rover was on June 10, at which point the storm was getting so intense that Opportunity couldn’t charge its batteries any more and lowered itself into a hibernation state, warmed only by its plutonium-powered heaters — if they’re even working.

Once a day, Opportunity’s deeply embedded safety circuit checks if there’s any power in its battery or coming in via solar.

“Now that the sun is shining through the dust, it will start to charge its batteries,” explained Jim Watzin, director of the Mars Exploration Program at NASA. And so some time in the coming weeks it will have sufficient power to wake up and place a call back to Earth. But we don’t know when that call will come.”

That’s the hope, anyway. There is of course the possibility that the dust has obscured the solar cells too thickly, or some power fault during the storm led to the safety circuit not working… there’s no shortage of what-if scenarios.

(13) POPPING UP EVERYWHERE. BBC asks: “Are themed bars and pubs the future?” Half of the opening video covers a Potterverse bar in London, where Internet-of-Things wands manipulate toys and hooch; it’s doing well enough that a second one is opening. Chip Hitchcock also admires “The Bletchley”, which “Sounds to me like a great cutoff – ‘You’re not sober enough to have another if you can’t solve this puzzle.’”

…Many themed cocktail bars and pubs were originally pop-ups, such as The Cauldron and ABQ London.

Over the past decade, pop-ups have been increasingly used by new businesses to test out ideas, says Lucy Shaw, editor of alcohol trade magazine Drinks Business.

Pop-ups are hospitality events put on for a limited amount of time. They are held in temporary locations such as a tent or an existing venue.

“It makes business sense to have a pop-up, before you plough hundreds of thousands of pounds into a business,” Ms Shaw tells the BBC. “You want a litmus test, [you want] to test the water.”

Small businesses make up over 99% of all businesses in the hospitality industry, which made up 9.3% (£161bn) of the UK economy in 2016, according to the ONS….

(14) TECH IN SERVICE. “It’s Rice Vs. Seaweed Vs. Solar ATMs For A $1 Million Prize”:

…After the presentations, it was time for the judges to confer and decide. The prestigious group included former President Bill Clinton (the Hult Prize was previously associated with the Clinton Global Initiative); Earth Day Network president Kathleen Rogers; former U.N. assistant secretary general Elizabeth Thompson and a variety of business entrepreneurs, corporate executives and leaders of nonprofit organizations.

Finally, Clinton stepped to the podium to announce the winner. As he emphasized the urgency of responding to climate change, the implication was clear: These Hult Prize innovators better get to work. And the winner was …

…SunRice, from University College, London, whose plan promises to increase rice production in Southeast Asia and raise the incomes of rice farmers. They would accomplish this through the use of energy efficient rice-drying and storage technology….

(15) 1976 TECH. “Original working Apple-I computer fetches $375,000 at auction” – article includes substantial history interview with Wozniak — video, much transcribed.

“Our experts tell us that there might be 15 in the world that work properly. You can power this thing up and behave like it’s 1976. It’s pretty fantastic.”

The Apple-I holds a place in technology history as the first computer to not require any assembly, other than to plug in a monitor and keyboard.

(16) BUMMER. It might violate a regulation! Or it might not…. NPR has the story — “Maine Asks Restaurant To Stop Giving Lobsters Cannabis Before Boiling Them”, the follow-up to a recent Pixel.

According to seafoodsource.com, Maine officials have asked — but “not commanded,” notes Gill on the restaurant’s website — the eatery to stop testing medical marijuana on the lobsters. While Gill is licensed to grow marijuana for medical use, state regulators cite a lack of legislation in this area and want to investigate whether administering cannabis to lobsters violates state regulations.

David Heidrich, spokesperson for the Maine Medical Marijuana Program, told the Portland Press Herald that “medical marijuana may only be grown for and provided to persons with a marijuana recommendation from a qualified medical provider. Lobsters are not people.”

(17) CAT ENVY. This fellow has recalibrated his life’s ambition —

(18) A WORD FOR OUR SPONSOR. John Hertz sent what I’d call a “state of the File” poem —

Seven Seventy Dotcom Glyer,
Migly or just Mike to thee,
Took great care of his Filers
Though no more Hugos he’d see.
Seven Seventy Dotcom Glyer
Said to his Filers, said he,
“If any of youse get some SF news,
I hope you’ll report it to me.”

(19) DEALING THE JOKER. The Hollywood Reporter has a short clip of Joaquin Phoenix both as “himself” and in full makeup (“See Joaquin Phoenix in His Joker Make-Up”). The clip morphs from the former to the latter… but don’t expect full-on SFX work. The movie, reportedly an origin film, is scheduled for an October 2019 release.

Here’s the first look of Joaquin Phoenix in makeup for his upcoming film about The Joker.

In a short screen test shared by director Todd Phillips, Phoenix is staring blankly into the camera before cracking a slight smile. The camera then flashes to Phoenix wearing clown makeup, but not the traditional Joker white face and green hair.

Aaaand cue Judy Collins…

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

Pixel Scroll 4/22/17 Get Out Of There At Once! The Pixels Are Coming From Inside The Scroll!

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(1) CON REPORT. Outer Places went to Steve Wozniak’s comic con — “The SVCC Tech Showcase Was Filled With Robots and Supercars”.

Second only to the Woz himself, the night’s biggest show-stealer was SoftBank Robotics‘ Pepper the Robot. The machine is designed to be able to accurately perceive emotions, and is currently being marketed as a personal assistant in Japan. Tonight, Pepper mostly just rolled up to people and requested they take a selfie with them – that may sound like a waste of Pepper’s talents, but any robot who can perceive emotions would eventually realize that humans enjoy doing really silly things. So before the robots take over, we’ll take selfies with them.

(2) CAPTAIN KIRK. Of course, that may be underestimating William Shatner who was at SVCC yesterday, too — “William Shatner delights fans at Silicon Valley Comic Con” . Watch the KGO news video at the link.

From “Star Wars” to “Star Trek” and everything in between, the second annual Silicon Valley Comic Con did not disappoint on its opening night. In addition to costumes and cosplay fans were treated to an evening with Captain Kirk himself, William Shatner.

(3) SOMEBODY’S WRONG ON THE INTERNET! The Fargo/Hugo Award identification continues to outrun the correction – as per usual in social media. But I’m impressed how many people know what a Hugo is. By comparison, it’ll be a cold day in Fargo Hell before the masses think they recognize a Dragon Award being used as a murder weapon on TV – take that, Puppies!

https://twitter.com/DreadSinister/status/855570948996481024

https://twitter.com/dutchindian/status/855638309791518720

Series of tweets here:

https://twitter.com/marc_laidlaw/status/855665862786686976

(4) SCIENCE’S SIBLING RIVALRY. Star Trek, Arrival, linguistics, and “soft” science versus “hard” science: “Uhura Was a Comms Officer: Why Linguistics Matter”.

In Arrival, Louise Banks melds xenolinguistics, language documentation and underlying pattern recognition—even within the film, however, her specialty is derided as “not real” science by her male (theoretical physicist) counterpart Ian Donnelly. After quoting from a book on linguistics Banks wrote, Ian says flatly that she’s wrong:

“Well, the cornerstone of civilization isn’t language. It’s science.”

This is a succinct rendition of how language study tends to be viewed by those outside of it: that the scientific study of language isn’t science. This also, of course, ties into other things (such as sexism and whatnot, plus trying to use dialogue as characterization in media) but detailing such factors is beyond the scope of this article; suffice it to say, Arrival tries to detail the work of documenting and recognizing patterns of a completely unfamiliar system.

(5) WELCOME TO MARS, NOW DROP DEAD. Daily Mail, which enjoys such a reputation around here, warns “Visitors to Mars Will Die in Under 68 Days”..

…One of the most important conclusions of the research is that neither crops nor oxygen generated for the inhabitants will be sufficient to support life for long. A fatal fire is also a major risk.

The Daily Mail summarized the very long MIT paper:

Mars One is an ambitious plan by a Dutch entrepreneur to send people to Mars next decade and start building a colony there. The proposal has received fierce criticism for its lack of realistic goals, and now one study has dealt the team a crushing blow – by saying the colonists will begin dying in 68 days. Low air pressure, habitats at risk of explosion and a lack of spare parts are among the potentially fatal dangers that apparently await anyone who makes the inaugural trip.

(6) LEND A RESEARCHER A HAND. Zack Weinberg asks for your help. I ran this past a friend whose computer and network knowledge I respect and he agreed it looked bona fide – but as always, exercise your own wisdom about participating. This demo is part of a research study conducted by Zachary Weinberg, Nicolas Christin, and Vyas Sekar of Carnegie Mellon University. And as he says at the end, “’I particularly want Asia, sub-Saharan Africa, and South America.”

I’m doing a research project related to online censorship, which you can help with, by visiting https://research.owlfolio.org/active-geo/ in any reasonably recent version of Firefox, Chrome, or IE. (You must have JavaScript enabled. It doesn’t work in Safari, which unfortunately means you cannot use an iDevice.) Press the Start button on the map, wait for it to finish, and then click the “Tell me more” button (which appears when it’s done) and read the text and follow the instructions. It is especially helpful if you do this on a computer physically located somewhere other than Europe and North America.

The experiment is testing “active geolocation”, which is when you try to figure out where a computer physically is by measuring how long it takes a packet of information to go round-trip between one computer and other computers in known locations. This has been studied carefully within Europe and the continental USA, but much less so elsewhere.

This is relevant to Internet censorship because, in order to measure Internet censorship, you need access to a computer within the sub-network run by a censorious country or organization. Commercial VPN services are one way to do this. Unfortunately, the countries that are most aggressive about censoring the Internet are also countries where it is difficult and expensive to host servers. I suspect that several commercial VPN providers’ claims of widespread server hosting are false: they are placing servers in countries where it is easy to do business, and then adding false entries to commonly-used geolocation databases. If whatsmyip and the like tell their users that the VPN server is in the right country, that’s good enough to make a sale…

I have run these measurements myself on many VPN servers, but I don’t know how accurate they are, and the accuracy varies depending on the true location. By visiting this page, running all the way through a measurement, and then telling me honestly where your computer really is, you provide me with data that I can use to calibrate the VPN measurements. Again, data from places other than Europe and North America is especially helpful: I particularly want Asia, sub-Saharan Africa, and South America.

(7) CHARLES VESS. Coming this fall, an art book by the master — “Charles Vess Has An Original Art Edition of The Book of Ballads”.

From Neil Gaiman’s retelling of “The False Knight on the Road”, to Jeff Smith’s “The Galtee Farmer”, and Jane Yolen’s “King Henry” – Charles Vess’ The Book of Ballads brought new visions of the classic folktales from the brightest New York Times bestsellers, award winners, and masters of science fiction and fantasy together with stunning art from Charles Vess. With this new The Boo of Ballads Art Edition, get ready to experience the stories anew!

Hits comic stores September 13, 2017 and bookstores on November 10, 2017.

(8) SQUEE DOWN UNDER Ryan K. Lindsay is an excited Aurealis Award winner.

https://twitter.com/ryanklindsay/status/855421140403015680

(9) TODAY’S DAYS

Two choices for April 22 —

EARTH DAY

Earth Day Network

The first Earth Day on April 22, 1970, activated 20 million Americans from all walks of life and is widely credited with launching the modern environmental movement. The passage of the landmark Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, Endangered Species Act and many other groundbreaking environmental laws soon followed. Twenty years later, Earth Day went global, mobilizing 200 million people in 141 countries and lifting environmental issues onto the world stage.

MARCH FOR SCIENCE

March for Science

The March for Science is the first step of a global movement to defend the vital role science plays in our health, safety, economies, and governments.

(10) MARCHER FOR SCIENCE. Given what a lot of you think about the Daily Mail, why wouldn’t most their coverage of the March for Science in London revolve around Doctor Who’s Peter Capaldi? Except that you think it’s a good thing, don’t you. Fess up!

Doctor Who star Peter Capaldi joined physicists, astronomers and biologists at the March for Science as protesters paraded past London’s most celebrated research institutions.

Leading figures used the occasion to warn Britain’s impending divorce from the continent could compromise their work by stifling collaboration with overseas colleagues.

Organisers claimed 12,000 people joined the London event, as hundreds of similar protests took place around the globe, from Australia to the US.

Somebody needs to say it: What’s Doctor Who but a show that glorifies fake science and boasts a stunning lack of internal consistency? Yes, I love it, too, but let’s not get confused about what happens every episode….

(11) TODAY IN HISTORY

  • April 22, 1953 – Sci-fi horror movie Invaders From Mars was released on this date.
  • April 22, 1978 — The Blues Brothers make their world premiere on Saturday Night Live.

(12) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY BOY

  • April 22, 1894:  Legendary film heavy Rondo Hatton is born in Hagerstown, MD. (Which makes me wonder, did he ever meet Harry Warner, Jr.?)

(13) SEE THE AUTHORS. Here are Ellen Datlow’s photos from the April 19’s Fantastic Readings at KGB with Laura Anne Gilman and Seth Dickinson.

(14) HEAR THE AUTHORS. At the next Fantastic Fiction at KGB on May 17, hosts Ellen Datlow and Matthew Kressel present E.C. Myers and Sam J. Miller.

E.C. Myers was assembled in the U.S. from Korean and German parts and raised by a single mother and a public library in Yonkers, New York. He has published four novels, and short stories in various magazines and anthologies, including Space & Time Magazine, Hidden Youth: Speculative Stories of Marginalized Children, and Kaleidoscope: Diverse YA Science Fiction and Fantasy. His first novel, Fair Coin, won the 2012 Andre Norton Award for Young Adult SF and Fantasy, and YALSA selected The Silence of Six as one of its “Top Ten Quick Picks for Reluctant Young Adult Readers” in 2016. His next book will be DoubleThink, a collection of stories related to The Silence of Six from and he continues to write for ReMade, a science fiction series from Serial Box Publishing.

And

Sam J. Miller’s short stories have appeared in publications such as Asimov’s, Clarkesworld, and Lightspeed, along with multiple “year’s best” anthologies. His debut novel The Art of Starving, forthcoming from HarperTeen, was called “Funny, haunting, beautiful, relentless and powerful… a classic in the making” by Book Riot. His second novel, The Breaks, will be published by Ecco Press in 2018. He graduated from the Clarion UCSD Science Fiction & Fantasy Workshop in 2012. A finalist for multiple Nebula Awards along with the World Fantasy and Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Awards, he won the 2013 Shirley Jackson Award for his short story “57 Reasons for the Slate Quarry Suicides.”

May 17th, 7 p.m. at KGB Bar, 85 East 4th Street (just off 2nd Ave, upstairs.)

(15) GO AROUND AGAIN. The … individual … pushing circular runways backs up his ideas: “Circular runways: Engineer defends his proposal”

Last month we published a video arguing the case for circular runways at airports, as part of a series called World Hacks. It took off and went viral.

The video has had more than 36 million views on Facebook and generated heated debate on social media – including within the aviation community. Many people are sceptical about the concept.

So we decided to hand-pick some of the top concerns and put them straight to the man proposing the idea: Dutch engineer Henk Hesselink.

This is what he had to say….

Chip Hitchcock remarks, “I like how he casually dismisses increased landing speeds (ignoring their effects on tires) and doesn’t even discuss how difficult it would be to build several miles of surface with a uniform concavity or to refit several thousand airplanes with an autopilot sophisticated enough to handle such a landing — or how much harder aborting safely would be if the autopilot failed.”

(16) GET YOUR TISSUES READY. Nerdist has photos — “Little Jyn Erso Cosplayer Delivers Death Star Plans to Leia at STAR WARS Celebration”.

Harley and her dad made the data cards as a fun activity for the convention. Harley loves interacting with other people, and they thought this was a fitting tribute to their love of Star Wars and Fisher. As Harley ran into Leia cosplayers of all variety of ensemble, she handed over the Death Star plans. I don’t know how many Leia cosplayers were moved to tears by this act, but I’d wager it wasn’t a small number.

(17) KAMIKASSINI. Cassini sets up for final plunge: “Cassini probe heads towards Saturn ‘grand finale'”.

In the years that it has been studying the Saturnian system, the probe has flown by the haze-shrouded world on 126 occasions – each time getting a kick that bends it towards a new region of interest.

And on Saturday, Cassini pulled on the gravitational “elastic band” one last time, to shift from an orbit that grazes the outer edge of Saturn’s main ring system to a flight path that skims the inner edge and puts it less than 3,000km above the planet’s cloud tops.

The probe will make the first of these gap runs next Wednesday, repeating the dive every six and a half days through to its death plunge, scheduled to occur at about 10:45 GMT on 15 September.

The probe is scheduled for deliberate destruction to avoid any risk of it hitting and contaminating a Saturnian moon.

(18) APOLLO 13. Now there’s a documentary about “The unsung heroes who prevented the Apollo 13 disaster”.

Two days into what should have been a mission to the Moon, disaster struck Apollo 13. A new film explores the drama – and astronaut Jim Lovell recounts the incredible efforts to bring the crew back….

These tanks, in the spacecraft service module, were Liebergot’s responsibility. They held oxygen and hydrogen, which was converted to electricity and water in three fuel cells – powering the capsule and providing the astronauts with drinking water. The routine instruction to turn on stirring fans was to make sure the liquid in the fuel vessels was properly mixed, to ensure the gauges gave accurate readings.

Swigert flicks the switches for the fans. Two minutes later, there is a bang and the master alarm sounds.

On the ground, Liebergot is beginning the last hour of his eight-hour shift and is the first to see something has gone wrong. “The data went crazy, there was a lot of commotion in the room,” he says. “We didn’t know what we were seeing.”

That eight-hour shift would eventually end three days later.

“Houston, we’ve had a problem here,” Lovell tells mission control. “It looks to me, looking out the hatch, that we are venting something. We are venting something out into space.”

Chip Hitchcock opines, “To go with a documentary about the rescue, which I can see starting another round of does-this-qualify-for-the-DP-Hugo — provided it gets enough attention. (Released 5 weeks ago, but I don’t recall it showing in Boston at all; did anyone else see it before it went to Amazon video?)

(19) BACK IN THE STEM. “Why Russia is so good at encouraging women into tech” — Chip Hitchcock introduces this with a lemony comment: “Makes an interesting contrast to the recent proposal to decriminalize wifebeating; I wonder whether their rightward political shift will affect this.”

According to Unesco, 29% of people in scientific research worldwide are women, compared with 41% in Russia. In the UK, about 4% of inventors are women, whereas the figure is 15% in Russia.

Russian girls view Stem far more positively, with their interest starting earlier and lasting longer, says Julian Lambertin, managing director at KRC Research, the firm that oversaw the Microsoft interviews.

(20) PUB SIGN. Catching up on the news from 2011 — “Sizewell: Unique pub sign scoops top award” in the East Anglian Daily Times.

His unique creation features three variations on the vulcan theme – the Roman god, the delta-winged jet aircraft and the TV character Mr Spock.

Mr Fisk, who has been at the pub since 1997, decided to create a new sign after the old one was hit by a lorry around 18 months ago.

(21) HOLD EVERYTHING. In “Love in Public” on Vimeo, Noah Malone explains what happens to relationships when talking club sandwiches give gratuitous advice.

[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, JJ, Chip Hitchcock, Zack Weinberg, Martin Morse Wooster, Cat Eldridge, and Carl Slaughter for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Kip W.]

Pixel Scroll 4/21/17 Pass The Pixel On The Left Hand Side

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(1) MYSTERY SOLVED. Yesterday’s Scroll reported the episode of Fargo where someone picked up a rocket-shaped trophy as a weapon, which several people identified (incorrectly) as a Hugo. Today Movie Pilot ran a story about the episode’s Easter eggs and repeated the Hugo Award identification – illustrated with photos for comparison — in item #5.

When the sheriff drives back to her step-dad’s house to get the statue he’d made for her son, Nathan, she discovers the door ajar and the place a mess. Before heading up the stairs to investigate, she grabs something that looks very much like a Hugo Award, in case she needs to defend herself.

A Hugo trophy is awarded to the best sci-fi and fantasy writer of the year, meaning Ennis Stussy might have at one point won the award. Could he have been a witness to the alien encounter all the way back in 1979, inspiring him to write sci-fi?

The Fargo award is not a physical Hugo (whatever may be intended). Movie Pilot’s comparative Hugo photo is, and I was vain enough to hope it was one of mine (several have been photographed for archival purposes). After searching I found they used Michael Benveniste’s photo of a 1987 Hugo, and I definitely did not win in Brighton (although I won the year before and after), and the 1990 Worldcon bid I chaired was also annihilated in the voting…..

Whose Hugo is it? The plaque in the photo is hard to make out, but the phrase “edited by” is there, which narrows it the Hugo for Best Semiprozine or Best Fanzine, and there being an initial in the middle of the person’s name, it must be the 1987 Hugo given to Locus, edited by Charles N. Brown.

(2) NOTICING A TREND. JJ says at some point “Hugo award” entered the popular lexicon as “that’s some far-fetched confabulation you’ve got going on there.”

https://twitter.com/Lollardfish/status/855121441339191296

https://twitter.com/bartlet4amer/status/855147626743902208

https://twitter.com/Rik_De_Wolf/status/842512075259887617

https://twitter.com/SaraJBenincasa/status/854533514204598272

https://twitter.com/JillDomschot/status/854074079900442625

https://twitter.com/OKdoodle/status/853444684311605248

https://twitter.com/trentster/status/851599802315833344

https://twitter.com/idrathernotstay/status/849918499141017600

(3) ROAD WARRIOR. John Scalzi did a LA Times Q&A in which he shared “10 things you don’t know about authors on book tour”

  1. You have to be “on”

When people show up to your event, they expect to be entertained — yes, even at an author event, when technically all you’re doing is reading from your book and maybe answering some questions. As the author, you have to be up and appear happy and be glad people showed up, and you have to do that from the moment you enter the event space to the moment you get in a car to go back to the hotel, which can be several hours. It’s tiring even for extroverts and, well, most authors aren’t extroverts. Being “on” for several hours a day, several days in a row, is one of the hardest things you’ll ask an introverted author used to working alone to do. And speaking of work …

(4) IF I HAD A HAMMER. An advance ruling from @AskTSA.

https://twitter.com/Itaku/status/855200918261948416

https://twitter.com/Itaku/status/855310431778332672

(5) A VISIT FROM THE TARDIS. The Register claims “Doctor Who-inspired proxy transmogrifies politically sensitive web to avoid gov censorship” – a headline almost as badly in need of deciphering as HIX NIX STIX PIX.

Computer boffins in Canada are working on anti-censorship software called Slitheen that disguises disallowed web content as government-sanctioned pablum. They intend for it to be used in countries where network connections get scrutinized for forbidden thought.

Slitheen – named after Doctor Who aliens capable of mimicking humans to avoid detection – could thus make reading the Universal Declaration of Human Rights look like a lengthy refresher course in North Korean juche ideology or a politically acceptable celebration of cats.

In a presentation last October, Cecylia Bocovich, a University of Waterloo PhD student developing the technology in conjunction with computer science professor Ian Goldberg, said that governments in countries such as China, Iran, and Pakistan have used a variety of techniques to censor internet access, including filtering by IP address, filtering by hostname, protocol-specific throttling, URL keyword filtering, active probing, and application layer deep packet inspection.

(6) NAFF WINNER. Fe Waters has been voted the 2017 National Australian Fan Fund (NAFF) delegate and will attend Natcon at Continuum in Melbourne in June.

Waters got into fandom in 1990, started attending Swancon in 1995, and after being inspired by the kids’ programming at AussieCon IV took on organizing the Family Programme for Swancon 2011–2013. For her Family Programme work she was awarded the Mumfan (Marge Hughes) Award in 2013. In 2016 she was the Fan Guest of Honour at Swancon.

The National Australian Fan Fund (NAFF) was founded in 2001 to assist fans to travel across Australia to attend the Australian National Convention (Natcon).

(7) NEIL GAIMAN, BOX CHECKER. Superversive SF’s Anthony M, who liked Neil Gaiman’s 17th-century vision of the Marvel universe — Marvel: 1602 (published in 2012) – nevertheless was displeased by its revelation of a gay character: “Marvel: 1602” and the Wet Fish Slap.

….Or even, if you are really, really incapable of not virtue signaling, if it’s truly so very important to you that people know you’re Totally Not Homophobic, why on earth would you have this character tell Cyclops he’s gay?

It was stupid, it was pointless, and it was insulting that Gaiman decided to make his story worse in order to tell the world that he was Totally Cool With Being Gay. It was a way of telling the reader that he cared less about them than about making himself look good to the right people….

(7-1/2) SEVEN DEADLY WORDS. Paul Weimer watched Mazes and Monsters for his Skiffy and Fanty podcast. You can listen to what he thought about it here, but wear your asbestos earbuds because Paul warned, “That episode is most definitely not safe for work, because I ranted rather hard, and with language not suitable for children….”

(8) AROUND THE SUBWAY IN 25 HOURS. “50 Years Ago, a Computer Pioneer Got a New York Subway Race Rolling” is a fascinating article about a Vernian proposition, and may even involve a couple of fans from M.I.T. in supporting roles, if those named (Mitchell, Anderson) are the same people.

A six-man party (Mr. Samson, George Mitchell, Andy Jennings, Jeff Dwork, Dave Anderson and Dick Gruen) began at 6:30 a.m. from the Pacific Street station in Brooklyn. But when they finally pulled into the platform at Pelham Bay Park after a little more than 25 hours and 57 minutes, reporters confronted them with an unexpected question: How come they hadn’t done as well as Geoffrey Arnold had?

They had never heard of Mr. Arnold, but apparently in 1963 he completed his version of the circuit faster (variously reported as 24 or 25 hours and 56 minutes). Worse, he was from Harvard.

“I decided to take it on a little more seriously,” Mr. Samson recalled.

With his competitive juices fired up, he got serious. He collaborated with Mr. Arnold on official rules and prepared for a full-fledged computer-driven record-breaking attempt with 15 volunteers on April 19, 1967.

(9) TODAY IN HISTORY

  • April 21, 1989 — Mary Lambert’s Stephen King adaptation Pet Cemetery opens

(10) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY CITY

  • April 21, 753 BC – Rome is founded.

(11) SAD ANNIVERSARY. An interview by his local paper — “Pine Mountain author Michael Bishop to release book of short stories” – notes it’s been 10 years since his son was killed is a mass shooting at Virginia Tech.

Q: What led you to write “Other Arms Reach Out to Me: Georgia Stories” as a collection?

A: First, this book gathers almost (but not quite) all my mainstream stories set in Georgia or featuring characters from Georgia in foreign settings (see “Andalusia Triptych, 1962” and “Baby Love”) in a single volume. So, in that regard, it represents the culmination of a career-long project that I did not fully realize that I had embarked upon, but that I did always have in the back of my mind as an important project.

You will notice that “Other Arms” opens with a hommage to and an affectionate parody of the short fiction of Georgia’s own Flannery O’Connor (called “The Road Leads Back”) and that it concludes with a controversially satirical take on gun politics in Georgia set in an alternate time line (“Rattlesnakes and Men”).

I might add that this last story grows out of our lifelong desire to see the United States adopt sensible nationwide gun legislation that mandates background checks in every setting. We also are advocates for the banning of sales to private citizens of military-style weapons, high-capacity magazines, and certain excessive kinds of body-maiming ammunition without extremely good reasons for them to own such armament, which is totally unnecessary for protecting one’s home and hunting.

(12) MERGE WITH TV. The Into The Unknown exhibit at The Barbican in London runs June 3 to September 1. Visitors will be able to “Step Into A Black Mirror Episode”.

Walking into a Black Mirror.

Is that something you can see yourself doing?

Because if so, we have some good news for you: as part of their new show exploring the history of sci-fi, Into The Unknown, The Barbican are going to turn their huge Silk Screen entrance hall into an immersive take on the oh-so-gloriously bleak episode 15 Million Merits.

Quite how they’re doing this is still under wraps, but we do know that moments from the episode will be re-edited, mashed-up, and displayed on huge six-foot video installations surrounding you. We’re assuming that there will also be exercise bikes….

(13) ALWAYS NEWS TO SOMEONE. How did I miss this Klingon parody of Psy’s “Gangnam Style” at the height of the craze in 2012?

(14) WOZ SPEAKS. Steve Wozniak’s convention starts today. CNET made it the occasion for an interview — “Woz on Comic Con, iPhones and the Galaxy S8”.

Wozniak, commonly known as “Woz,” sat down with CNET a week before the second annual Silicon Valley Comic Con to talk about the geek conference he helped start in San Jose, California; what superhero he’d like to be; what features he’d like to see in the next iPhone; and why he’s excited to get his Galaxy S8.

Even though California already has a Comic Con — the massive event in San Diego — Wozniak said there’s plenty of room for more. “We’re going to have a big announcement at the end of this one,” he said. “We’re different and better, and we don’t want to be linked in with just being another.”

Last year marked the first time Silicon Valley hosted its own Comic Con, and this year it expands into areas like virtual reality and a science fair. The show kicks off Friday and ends Sunday.

“We’ll have the popular culture side of Comic Con, but we’ll mix in a lot of the science and technology that’s local here in Silicon Valley,” he said. “It seems like [tech and geek culture are] made for each other in a lot of ways.”

(15) THE TRUTH WILL BE OUT THERE AGAIN. Another season of X-Files is on the way says ScienceFiction.com.

You can’t keep a good TV series down – well, unless you’re Fox with ‘Firefly,’ I guess.  But hey, maybe Fox feels some remorse over this too-soon axing, so they are making up for it by giving 1990s hit sci-fi/conspiracy show ‘The X-Files‘ another go!

Originally, ‘The X-Files’ ran from 1993-2002 on TV, with two theatrical films in the mix as well.  Off the air but never truly forgotten, the show reached a sort of “cult status,” enough so that Fox made the call to bring the show back for a limited 6-episode revival in early 2016.  Based on the success of that experiment, Fox has rewarded series creator Chris Carter with a 10-episode order for this new season to debut either this Fall or early 2018 on the network.

(16) CELL DIVISION. A news item on Vox, “The new Oprah movie about Henrietta Lacks reopens a big scientific debate”, reminds Cat Eldridge of an sf novel: “There’s a scene in Mona Lisa Overdrive where Gibson hints strongly that one of the characters is a runaway cancer that’s contained within a number of shipping containers…”

This practice went on for decades without much controversy — until the bestselling book The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot came along in 2010. The story sparked a debate among the public, researchers, and bioethicists about whether this practice is ethical — and whether the benefits to science truly outweigh the potential harms to individuals whose donations may come back to haunt them.

On Saturday, a new HBO movie starring Oprah based on the book will surely reignite that debate. The movie strongly suggests the practice of using anonymous tissues in research can be nefarious and deeply disturbing for families — while at the same time great for science. And so the research community is bracing for a backlash once again….

(17) WORKING. “Analogue Loaders” by Rafael Vangelis explains what would happen if real-life objects had to “load” the way computers do when we boot them up.

[Thanks to JJ, Martin Morse Wooster, Cat Eldridge, Hampus Eckerman, Mark-kitteh, Andrew Porter, and John King Tarpinian for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Clack.]

Pixel Scroll 3/20/16 Pixels And Old Lace

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(1) KIRK AND WOZ. “Silicon Valley Comic Con: William Shatner holds court on inaugural con’s first night” in the San Jose Mercury News.

Shatner was the big attraction for the first night of the pop culture and technology festival at the San Jose McEnery Convention Center. He held court for an hour before hundreds of fans who packed into the convention center’s grand ballroom. And right in the front row was the Comic Con’s No. 1 fan, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak.

Shatner misidentified Woz as the inventor of the iPhone (but for Kirk, we can forgive anything right?), but gave the genius behind Apple proper credit for starting up Silicon Valley Comic Con. “I’m going to embarrass Mr. Wozniak a little, but I want him to ask the first question,” Shatner said from the stage.

Woz obliged, walking up to one of the standing microphones like any fan would. Clearly on the spot, Woz initially asked Shatner to recite some poetry (he didn’t) and that led to a fascinating back-and-forth about the nature of science vs. science fiction.

Woz said when he was a kid he dreamed of being a starship captain like the one Shatner played on “Star Trek,” but his engineering background made him too grounded in reality. Shatner would have none of it. “You have two feet on the ground but your head is in the sky. You’re a pole, an electrical conduit,” Shatner said. “What do you think of that?”

“Humor is the ultimate creativity,” Wozniak said, “and you’ve got it.”

…But he wasn’t the only star in downtown San Jose on Friday. At a ribbon-cutting ceremony right before the doors opened, San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo and Vice Mayor Rose Herrera were flanked by Woz, “Back to the Future” star Christopher Lloyd and comic book legend Stan Lee. Nichelle Nichols, who co-starred with Shatner as Lt. Uhura on “Star Trek,” arrived later for an autograph and photo session with fans.

Other stars expected during the convention — which continues through Sunday — include Michael J. Fox, Lea Thompson, Nathan Fillion, Peter Mayhew, Jeremy Renner and “Deadpool” director Tim Miller.

(2) TIP US A TUNE. And the other day Mark Parisi’s cartoon Off the Mark zapped Shatner’s singing.

(3) NOTHING TO DISAGREE WITH. Crystal Huff said —

(4) WINTER IS HERE. Sarah A. Hoyt shares the view from inside the Sad Puppies 4 control room in “The Gang’ll Know I Died Standing Pat” at According to Hoyt. Then she moves on to explain, as if to a child, how something Brad Torgersen himself labeled a “slate” was not (in addition, mislabels Torgersen’s edition “IV” rather than 3).

Over the last few days, since Kate published the list of Sad Puppies recommends, we’ve been inundated both in email and in social media by people requesting, clamoring and whining to be removed from the list.  The eructations from these special snow flakes vary in levels of self-delusion and insanity and at least one was very polite.

The prize MUST go to Damien Walter of Grauniad fame for tweeting that he hopes Kate Paulk has deep pockets, to withstand all the lawsuits resultant from putting people on the list without asking their permission.

…. Speaking of which, all of you, even the polite ones, who send me purple prose about how badly Brad Torgersen ran Sad Puppies IV and how he created an evil slate also make me doubt your mental capacity.  Seriously, guys?  A slate?  If you’d bothered to look at the numbers and had a minimum of arithmetic ability (did you also sleep through it in first grade, while dreaming of little Damien’s slights and grievances?  — Seriously, he really should pull his socks up) you’d have realized the only real slate was “no award.”  Sad puppies nominations and votes were not only not lockstep but all over the place. Because, you know, they were reading what was suggested and making up their own minds, instead of — like the other side — taking marching orders from their betters who told them to not even read and just vote no-award.

(5) PERSISTENCE OF REVISION. Nicki at The Liberty Zone asserts this is  “Why the Puppies are Sad”.

You want to know why the Sad Puppies campaign still exists? Do you want to know why fans continue to nominate authors they consider to be worthy of a Hugo Award even though the elitist Puppy Kickers made damn sure everyone knew that no award would be given to any worthy author or editor if they were nominated by the “wrong” people?

Here’s one reason.

“Speak Easy” by Catherynne M. Valente was submitted for a Sad Puppies 4 nomination in September 2015. Several fans thought it was worthy of the award. Comments included:

“… I liked it a lot and will be nominating it for a Hugo.”

“…There is so much to discover in this little book and it absolutely blew me away”

I would think that any author would be grateful that readers not only bought her work, but read it and enjoyed it enough to recommend it for a prestigious award. I would think the author would be gracious and thank the readers for the honor. One would think that being included in a list of recommendations that this year includes such great and diverse writers as Lois McMaster Bujold, Ann Leckie, Stephen King, Eric Flint, and John Scalzi would be met with gratitude and some dignity.

But apparently, if you’re the wrong kind of thinker, the wrong kind of reader, who has the wrong kind of social justice and political views, Ms. Valente doesn’t want your business. She doesn’t want your praise or recommendation. She doesn’t want your recognition.

For the record, I was not asked and I do not consent to be on the Sad Puppies List. I am furious.

— Catherynne Valente (@catvalente) March 18, 2016

(6) REMOVAL APPROVAL. Lee at Lee’s Blog has a similar reaction, in“Sad Puppies 4 recommendations”.

“These kind [sic] of tactics” — yes, it’s just dreadful, isn’t it, that they would allow fans of Alastair Reynolds to publicly recommend his works to fans who might never have heard of him otherwise. Imagine! Just allowing his fans to make recommendations without permission! What’s the world coming to!

“staining your name” — yeah, in the good old days, allowing his fans to recommend his works to the world of fandom — even including wrongfen (gasp!) — would be an offence justifying a duel to the death. *Puke*.

Despite reading fantasy and science fiction my whole life, I really hadn’t been reading new works for probably twenty years. There’s a huge backlog of old “classic” science fiction and fantasy for me to enjoy, and there’s always nonfiction (history and science).

But the Sad Puppies controversy and the orchestrated international campaign of defamation introduced me to a whole world of new authors! The Sad Puppies 4 campaign introduced me to Stand Still Stay Silent, which I love. I mean to check out other works on the recommended list, not because of the Hugo Awards (I have never nominated or voted and never will), but because these works are recommended by other fen.

However, Catherynne Valente and Alastair Reynolds demand to be removed from the list because their fans failed to obtain permission before recommending their works to fandom in general. The Sad Puppies are holding firm: their fans thought their works were worth considering and it’s not up to them to contradict their fans.

But I am not holding firm. They don’t want their fans recommending their work to wrongfen: hey, I’m happy to remove them from my Recommendations to Check Out list and put them on my Not One Thin Dime list.

(7) 180 DEGREES. Chris Gerrib’s conclusion about “Sad Puppies 4” is —

In short, so far this is everything Sad Puppies 3 was not, namely open and transparent.

(8) A HAPPY FELLA. Declan Finn may have disqualified himself as a “sad” puppy with his post “Awesome #SadPuppies News”. Just kidding.

So, I am apparently the most awesome Puppy ever, having three award recommendations in the Hugos, Sad Puppies Bite Back being the #1 Best Related work.

I am UNSTOPPABLE, BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH….

Aaaannnnnddddd that was me, gloating. I’m done now.

First of all, I am on the recommendation list in three categories. I will happily accept the recommendations, because I’ll take all the help I can get.

(9) NAMES TO BE CALLED. Kamas Kirian “Over inflated much?” at westfargomusings.

So,  a certain author is having kittens over the fact her work ended up on the Sad Puppies IV list. How much of a delusional narcissist are you that you don’t want the wrong people liking what you’ve written? I mean really, if you don’t want people to recommend your writing I suppose they can take you up on that offer and review your work in the context that only the right people dare read it. God forbid it end up on a list that you think is a ‘slate’. For a writer, you don’t seem to know definitions very well. Here, let me help you out on that….

(10) SCOTTO OBIT. Cartoonist Augie Scotto (1927-2016) died March 15 reports the Timely-Atlas Comics blog.

As mentioned above, Augie Scotto’s work appeared in Will Eisner’s PS magazine, the exact tenures unknown to me. The note above that Scotto was Wally Wood’s partner is somewhat apocryphal. In the Bhob Stewart edited Against The Grain (TwoMorrows, 2003), Stewart writes about the Wally Wood studio and AugieScotto

“The studio was often like a Grand Central of artists. They came and went. One night Augie Scotto arrived. Scotto had worked on 1949-53 Western and crime comics before settling in as an artist on Eisner’s PS magazine for many years. We were working our way through a pile of Topps’ Travel Posters, and Scotto was there to assist for a few hours. I was in the back room, and Woody appeared at the door with a big grin. “Bhob, come watch this.” Scotto sat down at a board while Woody, Don and I looked on. He clicked the snaps on his briefcase, pulled out a brush and dipped it in the ink. Silence. Then in a single deft stroke, Scotto moved his hand across the paper. He lifted the brush, leaving a 14″ long, perfectly straight line on the paper. It played like a magic trick, but it was for real. Woody then went back to work, still grinning.” 

Scotto’s comic book career appeared as two brief spurts. He broke in in 1949 at Eastern Color’s New Heroic Comics, Hillman and Cross Publications, on crime and western stories. He also was at Lev Gleason in 1950, Atlas in early 1951 and Charlton in 1953. This early work is completely serviceable and at home in the earthy, gritty crime comics of the era. He then vanishes from the industry and re-emerges in 1968 at Tower Comics penciling Dynamo and then as an inker at DC Comics in the late 1970’s, inking several titles including a post-Jack Kirby story of The New Gods in Adventure Comics in 1978.

(11) TODAY IN HISTORY

  • March 20, 1972 — Tarkovsky’s influential Solaris opens in the Soviet Union.

(12) SLINGING MUD FROM ANOTHER WORLD. Two politicians traded insults couched in sci-fi terms reports Boston.com.

Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren doesn’t understand why a congressman would call her Darth Vader—she’s always seen herself as more of a Princess Leia.

After Congressman Blaine Luetkemeyer, a Missouri republican, called Warren “the Darth Vader of the financial services world” and said they should “find a way to neuter her” during a panel hosted at the American Bankers Association conference, the senator responded with a statement on her campaign site Thursday.

“My first thought was: Really?” Warren wrote. “I’ve always seen myself more as a Princess Leia-type (a senator and Resistance general who, unlike the guys, is never even remotely tempted by the dark side). Clearly the Force is not strong with Congressman Luetkemeyer (maybe he’s a Trekkie).”

(13) HAPPY HALF BIRTHDAY. Gregory N. Hullender issued a report on “Rocket Stack Rank at Six Months”. (That’s been long enough for me to change my mind – File 770 is a worse name for a site…)

Original Goals

Our original goal was to read and review all the short fiction in the six major publications in 2015. We accomplished that and also included all the original fiction from ten anthologies.

We hoped that would amount to 50% coverage of the stories in the Locus Recommended Reading List, but it actually came to about 65%.

We set out to offer advice on where to buy copies of back issues of the big three print magazines. We ended up with detailed instructions for several different ways to get electronic copies of back issues, and we even discovered several (legal) ways to borrow back issues without having to buy them.

(14) PEE-WEE INTERVIEW. “Paul Reubens on Pee-wee Herman’s Comeback” at Vogue.

The last time you did this it wasn’t the Internet age. I know in the past you’ve skirted publicity and you’ve valued your privacy, and now we’re in this era when things happen so quickly, in such a big way. How does it feel?

Part of that feels bogus to me, to be honest with you. Gigantic superstars still get married and no one knows about it. I was at a hotel recently, where people were complaining, “Oh, my God, there’s paparazzi every second out here in front!” Then I went, “Can I go out the back door?” And they were like, “Sure.” It’s not impossible. None of it is. I get that there are certain people that get such a high profile that they can’t do anything. I just think almost everything’s possible, really.

Including getting another Pee-wee movie made after 30 years.

Yeah, that’s true!

(15) BUT NOT IF YOU HAVE ANY FRIENDS WHO ARE ENTS. A home styled for a wizard. The Chive has a big photo gallery of the exquisite and artistic woodwork. Asking price? $8.2 million.  Hm, come to think of it, a lot of trees got chopped down to make that….

(16) BLACK PANTHER. “An Exclusive Look at ‘Black Panther #1’ by Ta-Nehisi Coates” at The Atlantic.

Despite the difference in style and practice of storytelling, my approach to comic books ultimately differs little from my approach to journalism. In both forms, I am trying to answer a question. In my work for The Atlantic I have, for some time, been asking a particular question: Can a society part with, and triumph over, the very plunder that made it possible? In Black Panther there is a simpler question: Can a good man be a king, and would an advanced society tolerate a monarch? Research is crucial in both cases. The Black Panther I offer pulls from the archives of Marvel and the character’s own long history. But it also pulls from the very real history of society—from the pre-colonial era of Africa, the peasant rebellions that wracked Europe toward the end of the Middle Ages, the American Civil War, the Arab Spring, and the rise of isis.

And this, too, is the fulfillment of the 9-year-old in me. Reading The Amazing Spider-Man comic books as a kid, I didn’t just take in the hero’s latest amazing feat; I wrestled seriously with his celebrated tagline—“With great power comes great responsibility.” Chris Claremont’s The Uncanny X?Men wasn’t just about an ultracool band of rebels. That series sought to grapple with the role of minorities in society—both the inner power and the outward persecution that come with that status. And so it is (I hope) with Black Panther. The questions are what motivate the action. The questions, ultimately, are more necessary than the answers.

 

[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, David K.M. Klaus, Will R., and Andrew Porter for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Chris S.]

Pixel Scroll 3/17/16 The Weirdscroll of Puppygeddon

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(1) SCIENCE FICTION WRITERS WHO WERE NEVER DRUNK ON ST. PATRICK’S DAY. Here are a few of the genre’s known teetotalers – doubtless there are others…

Asimov was a teetotaler in later life, mainly because in all of his experiences with drinking alcoholic beverages, just one or two drinks were sufficient to get him drunk. On the day he passed the oral examination for his Ph.D., he drank five Manhattans in celebration, and his friends had to carry him back to school and try to sober him up. His wife told him that he spent that entire night in bed giggling every once in a while and saying “Doctor Asimov”.

(2) OB IRISH. For a more substantial tribute to St. Patrick’s Day, we recommend James H. Burns’ tribute to Disney’s Darby O’Gill movie — “And A Moonbeam To Charm You”.

(3) FANHISTORY OF GREATER IRELAND. David Langford (coincidentally) chose St. Patrick’s Day to trumpet the forthcoming update of Rob Hansen’s history of UK fandom.

Wearing my Ansible Editions hat, I’ve been copyediting the final sections of Rob Hansen’s expanded (though not, as he says, extended), corrected and source-noted THEN: A HISTORY OF UK FANDOM 1930-1980. The final word count is around 211,000, about 20% more than the original. Our planned trade paperback is up to 410 pages, which will grow a bit more when the awaited 1970s fan mugshots go in (dread chore). To be published … Summer 2016?

(4) RECOMMENDED GREEN READING. At the B&N Sci-Fi and Fantasy Blog, “5 Fantasy Novels That Go Full Emerald Isle” not only gives you Ireland but the magic number 5!

Ireland isn’t just a country, it’s a repository of myth and legend that has been mined by genre writers for decades. Even today, Ireland seems to be bursting with magical energies that other countries couldn’t hope to match—I mean, who would imagine an epic fantasy set in the wilds of New Jersey? Naturally, that means that not only have some of the best works of fantasy ever written taken inspiration from Irish history, but several are explicitly in Ireland. In honor of St. Patrick’s Day, here are a five fantasy novels exploring the Emerald Isle.

The Book of Kells, by R.A. MacAvoy As with all of MacAvoy’s novels, The Book of Kells is difficult to pin down. Time travel, ancient Ireland, Viking invasions, and a saint or goddess meddling in mortal affairs? You’ll find all of it here, as an accidental confluence of ancient music and the tracing of an ages-old pattern by a modern-day artist transports first a screaming young woman from the past into the artist’s bedroom, then the woman, the artist, and a companion back in time a thousand years, into a medieval Ireland grounded in historical fact—which doesn’t lessen the fantastical nature of the ensuing adventures. It might lack wizards and dragons, but that doesn’t make it any less fun, and part of that is down to exploring a raw, roiling Ireland of old, populated by characters who act intelligently, considering (one even nips back to the modern day in order to convert all his cash into material that would be valuable in the tenth century)…

(5) MOVIE MAKING TECHNOLOGY. Lucid Dreams of Time is a short from Disney’s Zurich research division (and yes, Disney has an alliance with the Gnomes of Zurich) which is a time travel story but also a way of showcasing new Disney technologies.

The film portrays a moment of transition, from life to afterlife, with the story being told from three different perspectives – a mother, her son, and the messenger who can alter time. Simona and her son Gabriel travel through three realms – a present moment, supernatural world and a lucid dream – to discover purpose after a series of events change their lives forever. Through an afterlife mirror, Simona views the last few minutes of life with her son. Later, as Gabriel falls asleep, Simona receives a small gift from the Messenger – to talk to her son for exactly one minute. As the sands of time quickly run out, she appears to Gabriel in his dream to deliver a message that he will never forget.

(6) YESTERDAY’S BIRTHDAY BOY.

(7) SILICON VALLEY COMIC CON. Steve Wozniak has brought a Comi Con to Silicon Valley reports smofnews. The Los Angeles Times previews his plans in “Silicon Valley Comic Con comes with an extra dose of tech”.

Kicking off Friday at the San Jose Convention Center, the inaugural Silicon Valley Comic Con will bring the internationally recognized comic, science fiction, fantasy and video gaming convention to the Bay Area.

Although the event will be smaller than the flagship San Diego Comic-Con, which last year drew nearly 170,000 attendees (the three-day Silicon Valley event is expected to draw 30,000 per day, with many attendees attending multiple days), Steve Wozniak, the event’s host and pioneer of the personal computer, said it would be for the same audience.

“It’s for people who are local who haven’t been able to get to the San Diego one,” said Wozniak, who co-founded Apple with Steve Jobs. “It’ll be a full Comic Con in terms of the sorts and booths, presentations and celebrities that we have.”

The key difference? There will be more technology — the kind that “carries over into pop culture,” Wozniak said — and a greater focus on science fiction.

The convention will have a dedicated virtual reality zone where attendees will be able to play with the latest VR gadgets, and there will also be science-driven panels, such as one about whether artificial intelligence or “super babies” will be the greatest threat to humankind.

But Wozniak made clear that Silicon Valley Comic Con is “not just a tech conference.”

The event will also feature a “Back to the Future” cast reunion, a presentation by actor William Shatner, appearances by “Mythbusters” co-host Adam Savage and science fiction authors and artists.

“I wanted to be a part of Silicon Valley Comic Con because for me this show highlights what the Valley has meant to science, technology and innovation and encapsulates what ‘Back to the Future’ is about,” said Christopher Lloyd, one of the film’s stars.

(8) ERIN ON HUGOS. If you want to know what Alexandra Erin’s thinking about Hugo nominating season, check out Blue Author Is About To Write.

I haven’t been talking about the Sad and Rabid Puppies much this year because the Hugo Awards are going to happen every year and I don’t want that to be my life, but I understand they’re still at it, still spinning the same narratives, still spreading the same propaganda, still appealing to the biases and suspicions of the biased and the suspicious. I don’t know how much impact they’ll have.

For nominations, there are three possibilities: they’ll have another walk in the park, their machinations will be shut out entirely, or they’ll have some impact but not be able to seize as total control as they did last year. I think if everybody who was mobilized to get involved and vote on conscience and merits rather than politics stays involved, their ability to unduly influence the process will be nullified, but that depends on a big if.

My name has come up in a few circles as a possible nominee. By that I mean, I know that some people have nominated me, but that’s not the same as making it onto the ballot, even without any puppies piddling in the box. In truth, it is an honor just to be nominated, even if I don’t make the short list. It is an honor to have my name being mentioned in conjunction with some of the giants of the field…..

(9) THE EARLY RETURNS. Here are some reactions to the Sad Puppies 4 list, which was posted today.

The G at Nerds of a Feather

Given last year’s caustic battle over the Hugo Awards, as well as the generally caustic nature of U.S. politics in 2016, you might be forgiven for assuming that the 2016 Hugo Awards would be yet another battleground in the never-ending (and endlessly tiresome) culture wars. Only it isn’t looking that way, in part because the Sad Puppies have followed up last year’s politically partisan and highly divisive slate with a longlist of recommendations that…isn’t partisan or divisive at all.

Rachael Acks

https://twitter.com/katsudonburi/status/710556932344385537

Eric Franklin

https://twitter.com/gamethyme/status/710595443219046400

Brian Niemeier

https://twitter.com/BrianNiemeier/status/710579138919174144

Cirsova

It may have been a mistake to post a recommended reading list with probably over a million words of content two weeks before nominations close.  Unless it was a clever trick to say “aha!  Sad Puppies was about the discussion, not the final list!” in which case, well played.  That means that those who came over from places like File770 to leave comments and votes are now Sad Puppies.

Without the synergy between Sads & Rabids this year, I think we’ll see less of a direct impact this time around, but I think that it gives a pretty good look at how the Hugo noms would’ve shaken out with or without the Puppies. Plus, it may give the statisticians out there a better look at just how much pull Vox has.  There was a lot of talk last year that there were actually only a handful of Sad Puppies and the 500 or so Vile Faceless Minions were the deciding factor.

And where the list was posted, Mad Genius Club commenters have been submitting a large number of copyedits and arithmetic corrections.

[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, Martin Morse Wooster, and James H. Burns for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day IanP.]

Ask Woz How Late the Late Late Show Is

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Nixie Watch

All news blogs are reminding you to reset your clocks to Daylight Saving Time tonight. Regard this as File 770’s vaguely-related contribution along that line.

Steve Wozniak wore his Nixie Watch the other night when he appeared on The Late Late Show. Woz, who says “I would have loved to have invented that,” has gained a lot of publicity for the timepiece.

The Cathode Corner Nixie Watch is a two-digit wristwatch using Nixie tubes, a forty-year-old display technology. The wearer views the time by holding the watch at the standard viewing angle. The hours, then the minutes, appear in 14 mm tall, glowing orange digits.

Woz and host Drew Carey discuss the watch beginning about 25:48 —