24 Pixels En Scrollgalia

Posted on April 7, 2024 by Mike Glyer

(1) HOLMES & WATSON. At Brandon O’Brien’s Afternoon Tea the author takes up the Elementary series: “Lapsang Souchong: Two People Who ‘Love’ Each Other”.

I’ve been thinking about this topic idly in my skull for quite some time, and since there are no real good places to put it—less than an essay, more than a tweet—I figured a good test of my discipline would be drafting it for a newsletter. So here’s me rambling about one of my favourite idle obsessions: the 2010s CBS procedural Elementary, in particular why its portrayal of the relationship between Holmes & Watson is one of my favourites. BIG SPOILERS, of course that goes without saying, but you’re already here, so…

(2) TINGLE Q&A. The Geekiary came back from the con with more proof that love is real! “WonderCon 2024: Interview with the Legendary Chuck Tingle”.

… “You don’t hear this so much anymore, but back in the day, conservatives had this sort of slippery slope dang baloney argument about ‘if we let gay people get married then what’s next? You gotta marry a tree? Are you going to marry a dang dinosaur?’ And I think that I always heard those arguments and I always thought why not? What would be wrong with someone marrying whoever, whatever, how many different people, different combinations. There’s nothing wrong with that. In fact, as long as you’re talking about consenting adults, the world would be a much better place if you took this conservative nightmare to the extreme, it would actually probably be more of a utopia.

“And so the Tingleverse in general, is kind of that conservative nightmare realized in that actually, it would be a really beautiful place full of love, and acceptance. And so, from the very first story, it is an unusual combination of lovers. But you realize if you read the book, ‘Oh, actually, that’s a really wholesome, beautiful, wonderful place that conservatives seem to just be terrified of.’”…

(3) “TRAD PUBLISHING IS LITERALLY FAILING AT DOING ITS JOB”. Lili Saintcrow cuts loose about the current WTF state of traditional publishing — “We Gotta Talk About (Trad) Publishing”. (Saintcrow’s fireworks are inspired by Lorraine Wilson’s analysis, “Is there a book submission arms race”, an article that Saintcrow praises as “perfectly lovely and … a hundred percent accurate”.)

…Publishing has always been an awfully exploitative business. For a long while the level of fuckery in trad pub was low enough for plenty of writers to make a reasonable gamble by submitting by the rules and building a career, but this is no longer the case. Which is not solely or even mostly a function of the pandemic, mind you–the problems were already there well before 2020 rolled around, but conditions since ~2016 have absolutely poured jet fuel on the fire and now we’ve got a multiple-alarm blaze. (You could even trace the problems to Amazon’s strong-arming, or further back to Reagonomics, but that’s a whole ‘nother blog post.)

The Big Five/Four have already offloaded the brute work of marketing onto individual authors, hollowing out their own marketing departments in order to line C-suite pockets. Now the crunch has reached editorial departments, where even salaried folk traditionally protected from a lot of industry bullshit are being ruthlessly overworked, underpaid, and just generally mistreated. (No, this is not a “pity the poor editors” screed, just a fact.) Consequently a lot of folk are leaving, and those who remain–or the shiny new ones coming in, thinking they’re going to score a good job–find it impossible to pick up the slack. The article linked above is absolutely correct that editors at the big houses are now being used as draft-horse project managers, which does not work with novels or nonfiction books. It just…doesn’t….

And there’s a lot more at the link.

(4) IN THE YEAR 2025. The 2025 UK Eastercon – named Reconnect — will be held April 18-21, 2025 in Belfast, co-chaired by James Bacon and Tommy Ferguson, with Deputy Chair Jo Zebedee. Get more information at the Eastercon Belfast website.

(5) GLASGOW 2024 PUBLISHES NEW PROGRESS REPORT. Glasgow 2024 today published Progress Report 4 (their fifth; the first was numbered as Progress Report 0). Anyone can download the PDF file from the Glasgow 2024 website.

The cover for Progress Report 4 (PR4), ‘Badger Finds A Charmawow’ is by Chris Baker (a.k.a. Fangorn), one of the Guests of Honour.

PR4 includes news from all areas including:

An update from Convention Chair Esther MacCallum-Stewart
Our updated membership rates including rates for day tickets
Ways to support the convention through our Community Fund and sponsorship opportunities
An interview with Special Guests Three Black Halflings
More information on our major Events, including newly announced performances by The Irish Video Game Orchestra and The Scottish Falsetto Sock Puppet Theatre
An introduction to the Memorial Garden where they will honour friends and loved ones who have passed on
An update from Guest of Honour Terri Windling, who will be presenting an exhibition of work by Dartmoor Mythic Arts at the convention
Further news and updates from all Divisions as the convention comes ever closer.

PR4 also features a look back at the London Worldcon of 2014, the final entry in their history of British Worldcons.

(6) WILL GLASGOW CAP ATTENDING MEMBERSHIPS? Progress Report #4 includes this information:

… Our current projections are for between 6,500 and 8,000 purchased in-person registrant types (including 1- and 2-day tickets). This upper number, if everyone turns up, is probably above the maximum holding capacity for the site. So, there is a chance we may need to cap in-person attending registrant purchases, if we are not to get overcrowded. So, we are advising folk to join as early as possible to avoid this possibility effecting your enjoyment of the convention….

(7) TEXAS-SIZED COLLECTION. Morgan Dawn recommended Bluesky readers watch a 2022 video about the “Huge Science Fiction and Fantasy Collection”, which explores the sff collection at the Texas A&M Library, and takes viewers back to the early days of the university’s Cepheid Variable club and their annual AggieCon.

(8) A BELFAST BOOK. “Michael Magee: ‘There’s a disbelief at how I’ve ended up’”, so he tells a Guardian interviewer.

Michael Magee, 33, won this year’s Nero debut fiction award for Close to Home, now out in paperback, as well as last year’s Rooney prize for Irish literature (previously awarded to Anne Enright and Claire Keegan). Set in west Belfast, where Magee grew up, the book follows Sean, a working-class graduate who falls foul of the law as he struggles to make a life in the shadow of violence both political and domestic….

What did you read growing up?
In my later teens I had a very good English teacher who gave me Barry Hines’s A Kestrel for a Knave, which was the first instance where I’d read something that reflected my own reality. I didn’t grow up in a bookish house and didn’t start reading in my spare time outside education till I was about 12 or 13. Lord of the Rings was my gateway drug. As a teenager I wrote a ripoff of it, drawing maps that I dabbed with wet teabags and burned at the edges to age them. But I did all this on the shy! You couldn’t be seen reading books in the company I was keeping. As a young man I felt impelled towards toughness, inexpressiveness, which was at odds with who I was, and who I am. It took me a very long time to disentangle myself from that.

You must run into people who knew you back then.
Of course, all the time. There’s a disbelief at how I’ve ended up – I ask myself the same question – and also a kind of piss-taking, which is completely deserved: “Still writing your wee books, Mick, are ye?”…

(9) IF YOU GIVE A MOUSE A BATH. Forbes believes they know “The Real Reason For Disney’s $11 Billion Streaming Losses”.

… For a number of months in 2020, Disney was almost entirely reliant on Disney+ and it came into its own. As people were stuck indoors during lockdown, the popularity of the platform surged and was hailed as Disney’s white knight. It was almost unthinkable that it could actually end up bringing the company to its knees but that is exactly what happened over the following years.

As subscriber numbers soared far beyond Disney’s forecasts, the Mouse got drunk on its own success and ploughed billions of Dollars into exclusive Disney+ content. By the time it was released, there was a vaccine for covid and the pandemic had receded. Consumers were left picking up the tab for blockbuster furlough payments creating a global cost of living crisis that endures to this day. It led to people cutting their streaming subscriptions and left Disney with a loss-making platform….

(10) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

Born April 7, 1934 — Ian Richardson. (Died 2007.) I do these Birthdays by seeing who I recognize and then doing a deep dive to see how interesting a given individual is. It’s not just what they did in our community that interests me but what they’ve done else as well. And Ian Richardson had an interesting career both here and elsewhere.

Where to start? He was at the right age, just about fifty, when he played Holmes in The Sign of Four and The Hound of the Baskervilles, a pair of made for television films. He also starred in BBC’s Murder Rooms: The Dark Beginnings of Sherlock Holmes playing Arthur Conan Doyle’s mentor, Dr. Joseph Bell.

What next? How about him being in Brazil? (I had to watch it three times before I liked it.) He plays Mr. Warren, works in a rabbit-warren style place, a maze of Endless Corridors. A perfect bureaucrat he was.

He’s the Narrator of Dark City which was nominated for the Hugo Award at Aussiecon Three the year The Truman Show won.

In Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead, he’s Polonius. In the play by Shakespeare, Polonius is a verbose, faltering and pathetic old man whose servile devotion to Claudius renders him untrustworthy in the eyes of Hamlet. Here he portrays that character perfectly. Yes, I do love the film.

He’s The Wasp in Alice Through The Looking Glass. You really, really need to see the yellow wig that they gave to represent him being a wasp.

Ian Richardson as the Wasp in a Wig and Kate Beckinsale in Alice Through the Looking Glass (1998).

He’s in From Hell as Sir Charles Warren, an actual historical figure, an Officer in the British Royal Engineers who was one of the first archaeologists.

Finally he’s in that Midsummer’s Night Dream. You know the one that Ian Holm, Helen Mirren, Diana Rigg, David Warner and Judi Dench in it? He plays Oberon here.

Wait, though, as I do feel obligated to note his two extraordinary performances outside the genre. He played Tory politician Francis Urquhart in the House of Cards series — oh so magnificently — and he was British spy Bill Haydon in the Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy series.

(11) COMICS SECTION.

Thatababy has celebrity neighbors.
Wallace the Brave has a secret long distance language.
Carpe Diem features the economy class of the future.
Bizarro knows the timeless appeal of selfies.
Dog Eat Doug has an extravehicular excursion.

(12) YES, YOU. Steve Lieber shared an unforgettable memo from Jim Shooter to the staff.

(13) THEY MADE THE SHIP THAT MADE THE KESSEL RUN. [Item by Steven French.] Atlas Obscura tells us the genre connection of Wales’ “Pembroke Dock Heritage Centre”.

THERE WAS SOMETHING DIFFERENT ABOUT the last ship to leave Pembrokeshire’s massive dock complex.

Following the success of the original Star Wars film in 1977, director George Lucas wanted a full-scale model of Han Solo’s fabled spaceship, the Millennium Falcon, for the filming of the next installment in the series, The Empire Strikes Back.

The job of constructing the 88-foot vessel fell to a team working out of the historic maritime dock complex at Pembroke Dock, Pembrokeshire…

Sadly, the model was sold for scrap.

(14) MAKE YOUR SPEED WORF FACTOR THREE. [Item by Dann.] “From the Starfighter to the Enterprise NCC-1701-D” in FLYING magazine.

From the late 1980s through the 1990s, Klingon Lt. Cmdr. Worf was one of the most visible characters on the popular TV shows Star Trek: The Next Generation and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. Actor and pilot Michael Dorn, who was cast as Worf, made the character his own and ended up appearing in 276 episodes, the most of any other cast member in the Star Trek franchise’s history.

To Dorn, morphing into Worf each day was a lengthy process because of the amount of makeup and prosthetics required to bring the character to life. But when the cameras stopped rolling, it wasn’t the starship Enterprise that drew Dorn’s attention, it was a Cessna 172 Skyhawk. But there was a problem.

You see, Michael Dorn likes airplanes that go fast. Really fast. After moving through a few general aviation airplanes, he began buying and flying a long list of former U.S. military fighter jets. This desire to go fast also explains why he drives a Tesla Model X P100D today. “It has ‘Ludicrous’ mode,” Dorn says. “I live for on-ramps!”…

The list of aircraft Michael has owned includes:

Civilian aircraft

Cessna 172
Cessna 310
Cessna 340A
Citation 501SP
SOCATA Trinidad TB-20
Beechcraft Baron 55

Military (or military-grade) aircraft

HA200 Saeta (Spanish and Egyptian Air Forces)
Lockheed T-33 (USAF, USN, Japanese Air Self-Defense Force, German Air Force)
North American F-86C (USAF, Japan Air Self-Defense Force, Spanish Air Force, Republic of Korea Air Force)
North American Sabreliner 40A (USAF, USN, & USMC operated military configurations)
Lockheed F-104 Starfighter (USAF, German Air Force, Turkish Air Force, Italian Air Force)

(15) TRUE GRIT. “Life Beyond Earth: What Awaits Humanity on the Moon” – Literary Hub makes it sound a lot less fun than Robert A. Heinlein used to.

…Moondust is a huge problem. Apollo astronauts were vexed by the sharp-edged powder, which got under their fingernails and into their noses, lungs, mouths, and eyes. Apollo 12’s Alan Bean said residual dust in the LM cabin “made breathing without the helmet difficult, and enough particles were present… to affect our vision.” The stuff is like “silty sand… [but] sharp and glassy,” according to the Lunar Sourcebook. Coughing and itching are nuisances, but simulated long-term exposure, in one study’s words, revealed “significant cell toxicity in neuronal and lung cell lines in culture, as well as DNA damage.” Mitigating the dust is a significant challenge, but astronauts and their equipment could be protected with invisible electrodes that activate what researcher Carlos Calle calls an “Electrodynamic Dust Shield”—shifting electric fields that keep the dust from sticking to a surface…

(16) NASFiC ECLIPSE. Joseph T. Major reminds us about a previous celestial experience:

In 2017, too late to do anything about it, Mike Glyer had an interesting thought. Why not have NASFiC in Nashville, during the August 21 eclipse? But Ken Moore, the man who could have organized it, had died in 2009.

Nevertheless, there was a possibility. Bob Embler annually held Outsidecon, where fans got in tent and socialized. What was so important about that?

Every year, in Kelly, Kentucky, there is Little Green Men Festival, commemorating the close encounter there in 1955. In 2017, the Festival ran a day over, so the flying saucer people could see the eclipse. And they stayed in tents, too, because hotel bills were $300 a day and a minimum of three days’ stay.

If Mike and Bob had got together, they could have organized a Kelly Outdoor NASFiC bid for the 18th through the 21st. Now that would have been better than the San Juan NASFiC.

(17) VIDEO OF THE DAY. Elle Cordova delivers “Real footage of the #eclipse”.

[Thanks to Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Steven French, Dann, Bruce D. Arthurs, Kathy Sullivan, Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, John King Tarpinian, and Chris Barkley for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Jon Meltzer.]

Barkley — So Glad You (Didn’t) Ask #85

Posted on April 7, 2024 by Mike Glyer

A REPORTER’S NOTEBOOK: A FEW THOUGHTS ON SOME OF THE 2024 HUGO AWARD FINALISTS

By Chris M. Barkley: I, like many of you reading this, were absolutely riveted around 11:00 a.m. (Eastern Detested Time, as far as I’m concerned) on March 29th when the 2024 Glasgow World Science Fiction Convention Committee announced the Finalists for the Hugo Awards.

Having (possibly) won a Hugo Award in the Fan Writing category a mere five months and a week ago, I have a vested interest in the proceedings. As many of you may remember, I did recuse myself from future consideration in the category in my (somewhat surprising) acceptance speech on the stage of the 2023 Hugo Awards Ceremony in Chengdu, China. I’ll say more on this later on.

From the safety of our kitchen nook, my partner Juli and I watched the YouTube video presentation of the Finalists:

Naturally, having been associated with the awards for a full quarter century (WHERE did the time go?), I have a few thoughts about this year’s Finalists:

— The very first thing that jumps out at me is that there are numerous nominees from China. After the debacle over explosive revelations regarding the 2023 Hugo Awards and the numerous calls for accountability and transparency over the past few months, it is heartening to know that despite the fact some of them were legitimately denied their voting rights, fans in China showed that they are still willing, at least for the time being, to being part of this process. I hope you are as excited as I am about this encouraging sign.

Before last year, the Hugo Awards had a reputation for being transparent in their processes and publication of voting results, something other prestigious literary awards (the National Book Awards, the Pulitzer, Booker and Nobel Prizes) notoriously do not divulge.

And, I argue, it is because that tradition was egregiously transgressed and the corruption was thankfully exposed.

Needless to say, I can hardly wait for this year’s Hugo Nominee packet and read entries they chose.

— But, on the other hand, I am disheartened to read that several people, most prominently Bigolas Dickolas Wolfwood (in Best Related Works), Natasha Bardon (Best Editor-Long Form) and Camestros Felapton (Best Fan Writer), Hai Ya (Best Novelette, The Far North), Martha Wells (Best Novel, System Collapse) turned down their nominations. Each had their own reasons; while I don’t know why Wolfwood and Hai Ya declined, Martha Wells has previously stated she would not accept any more nominations for her Murderbot stories or novels. On his blog page, Felapton stated that:

“2023 looms large here and there were definitely people I would rather see on the Hugo ballot for Best Fan Writer this year than myself. One was obviously Paul Weimer but I was certain he’d be top of most people’s ballots anyway but I was hoping some Chinese fans would make it onto the category. That didn’t happen but it is a decent list of finalists and there is nobody there that I would have wanted to replace.

Closely related to this was also the sense that I was likely to have gathered additional votes from things that I had written in 2024, specifically on the 2023 Hugo Award stats. Even if that wasn’t the case it would have felt like it was the case to me. So, I thought I’d feel happier skipping this year and putting my hat into the ring for next year.

I hope that makes sense. Thank you to everybody who voted for me and apologies for not publicly asking people not to vote for me before the deadline. 2023 stuff sort of got in the way of thinking about 2024 stuff.

I must state for the record that I have the utmost respect for Mr. Felapton and his works, and if I had not totally screwed up my timing on getting my ballot in, his name would have occupied one of my slots. It will definitely happen next year.

You can read his full statement here: “Why I Declined a Hugo Spot”.

The biggest news from last Friday was Ms. Bardon’s statement. On Instagram she explained:

“I’d like to thank everyone who nominated me for Best Editor, Long Form for the #HugoAwards2024.

I’m honoured to have made the final list.

Unfortunately, given the censorship in 2023, and as a professional working within a field that often feels closed off by gatekeepers, I feel unable to accept the nomination. Though I applaud the transparency of this year’s organisers, I do not feel there has been enough to safeguard this from happening again, nor right the wrongs of 2023.

Congratulations to all finalists.”

It should be noted that Ms. Bardon is R.F. Kuang’s editor. Ms. Kuang’s bestselling fantasy novel Babel was notoriously excluded from last year’s Hugo Award Finalist list due to the malfeasance of the Chengdu Hugo Award Administrators. I have to believe that may have been a factor in her decision. My respects to her as well.

— Novels, Short Fiction and Series: Despite being retired with a lot of time on my hands, I must confess that being on a fixed income, I have been woefully behind on reading novels and short fiction over the past decade or so. But, I am looking forward to reading some old favorites like Ann Leckie, Martha Wells, Nghi Vo, T. Kingfisher, Naomi Kritzler and John Scalzi, as well as some who are relatively new to me such as C.L. Polk, P. Djèlí Clark, Emily Tesh and all of the Chinese nominees. Similarly, I am hopelessly behind on every single series on the list; I’ll try to get caught up but if I can’t by the voting deadline I may abstain from voting in this category altogether.

— Related Works: I have had a keen interest in history, science and literary criticism since I was in grade school so I am quite pleased with the finalists in this category. In fact, I may splurge and buy hardcover copies of A City on Mars by Kelly Weinersmith and Zach Weinersmith, A Traveler in Time: The Critical Practice of Maureen Kincaid Speller edited by Nina Allan and All These Worlds: Reviews & Essays by Niall Harrison. But I have to admit that the most intriguing entry here is the publication of The Culture: The Drawings, by the late Iain M. Banks, which showcases the drawings and sketches he used as reference points for his acclaimed fictional series. I don’t know if I can afford it but I have one hand on my credit card…

— Best Dramatic Presentation, Long Form: Among this year’s crop of finalists, the biggest surprises was NOT Greta Gerwig’s Academy Award nominated Barbie (which I knew upon viewing was an automatic shoo-in) but the frothy fantasy/heist movie Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves, which delves deeply into the game’s mythos without alienating anyone who knows nothing about the role playing game.

Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse was also a slam dunk for a nomination although I was not inclined to nominate (or vote for) it myself because it ends on a cliffhanger and I usually don’t want to award an uncompleted story (and I’m looking at YOU Dune Parts One and Two).

And while I’m looking forward to watching Nimona and The Wandering Earth II, it’s Poor Things, also a 2024 Best Picture nominee, that interests me most because I see it as a possible dark horse winner in this category.

You may also be on the lookout for a WSFS Business Meeting petition to extend the nomination period for the critically acclaimed (and a 2024 Oscar Winner for Best Special Effects) Godzilla Minus One, which had a limited theatrical run late last year.

One more thing; I would have nominated this year’s Best Picture winner, Oppenheimer, but I am only slightly disappointed it didn’t make the cut this year seeing that the Long Form category could have been filled with three times as many outstanding films and streaming series from 2023.

— Best Dramatic Presentation, Short Form: FINALLY, the nominators are showing some love for Star Trek: Strange New Worlds! And two outstanding episodes got the nod; “Those Old Scientists” is a hilarious crossover with the animated series Below Decks wherein Ensigns Mariner (Tawny Newsome) and Boimler (Jack Quaid) get entangled in a time travel accident that has them interacting in the past with their legendary crushes Captain Pike (Anson Mount), Spock (Ethan Peck) and Uhura (Celia Rose Gooding). The ensuing hijinks made this an instant classic. The other episode, “Subspace Rhapsody” is another fun episode that has the crew of the Enterprise forced to perform in various forms of song AND dance. Fun, fun, fun!

Doctor Who returned last December, with two of the three being David Tennant-Catherine Tate specials, the trapped on a starship “Wild Blue Yonder’ and “The Giggle” which introduced of the energetic new Doctor, Ncuti Gatwa and a terrifying turn by Neil Patrick Harris as the villainous Celestial Toymaker.

The category is rounded out by what I consider are the two frontrunners; the final episode of Season 2 of Loki, “Glorious Purpose”, which may feature the very last appearance of Tom Hiddleston in his iconic title role and episode 3 of The Last of Us miniseries, “Long, Long Time”, in which guest stars Nick Offerman and Murray Bartlett give the most tearful and wrenching performances in the history of television (Offerman won a 2024 Emmy for Guest Actor, Bartlett was nominated as well).

— Best Semiprozine: We could argue all day (and all night as well) about why this outdated and ill-titled category still exists but I think we can agree that all of the nominees are worthy of the Hugo Award. Among them are two previous winners (FIYAH Literary Magazine and Uncanny Magazine) and two perennial nominees (Escape Pod and Strange Horizons) and two newcomers, GigaNotoSaurus and khōréō, of whom I have never heard of before but look forward to sampling.

— Best Fanzine: Let’s all give a BIG welcome to first time Hugo Award nominees Black Nerd Problems (which is proudly based in Columbus, Ohio) and Gerri Sulivan’s Ideas, which was last seen in the year 2000 and saw the light of day again this past year. Being well acquainted with Journey Planet, The Full Lid, Unofficial Hugo Book Club Blog and Nerds of a Feather, Flock Together, I look forward to reading the best they had to offer from last year.

— Best Fan Writer: A VERY necessary aside; when I first started advocating for changes regarding the Hugo Award categories 25 years ago, one of the very first things that some of the more sage members of the Business Meeting crowd drilled into my head was that these awards were not supposed to be popularity contests, but by the merit of the work itself. Officially, as far as they were (and still are) concerned, the award does not go to the creator of the work but to the work itself.

With that in mind, I thanked those who voted to make the works of a person of color for the very first time in the history of the Hugo Awards. I also made an impassioned and open ended plea to not make me the last POC to win and I pledged to recuse myself from the category for just that purpose.

I should also say that after the revelations about the voting scandal were made public last February, a number of people made it known that they were going to nominate me again this year. And while I have very little doubt I could have made the ballot, I made the decision not to rescind the recusal and if I had been nominated I would have turned it down.

For better or worse, my name will be permanently affixed to the 2023 Hugo Awards and I am unwavering in my belief that other and more diverse fan writers should have a chance to be spotlighted.

This year’s finalists, while all being quite worthy of the award (several are folks I consider good friends and peers), that I am slightly disappointed that this group is decidedly less diverse than recent years. However, the nominators, for this year, have spoken.

Paul Weimer, who was unjustly left off of last year’s ballot is rightfully present, along with my fellow 2023 finalists Jason Sanford, Bitter Karella, Örjan Westin and two nominees from previous years, James Davis Nicoll and Alasdair Stuart. I look forward to reading their packet selections and I wish them all good luck.

If you value this category as I do, advocate for other voices and from different cultures and countries for next year and every year afterwards.

—The Astounding Award for Best New Writer: One of the things I look forward to every year is reading the stories from the writers in this category.

The BIG news in the Astounding Award category this year is the appearance of Xiran Jay Zhao on the ballot. They were excluded as a finalist for Best New Writer of 2023, despite receiving enough votes to place fourth on the nomination long list.

Dell Magazines, who sponsors the award, granted Zhao an additional year of eligibility. As someone who has advocated making this category (and the Lodestar Award) actual Hugo Award categories, I am glad they are not in this particular case because there are no provisions in the World Science Fiction Convention Constitution to grant this rather immediate and welcome remedy.

I am ecstatic about Zhao’s presence and can hardly wait to read what stories they, and all of the other Finalists, will select for us to read.

One final note: As of this posting, I have heard that the 2023 Hugo Award Finalists have not received their nomination certificates and souvenir pins. If this is true, I find this omission terribly upsetting. In addition, those who still want their Hugo Award trophies (and I am among them) have not received them yet, nearly six months after the end of the Chengdu Worldcon. And while I realize that some may not want them due to the association with the scandal, I think that the Chengdu Worldcon Committee has an obligation to offer these items to those who wish to have them.

As such, I want to publicly urge the responsible parties involved to fulfill their obligations and reach out and poll all of the 2024 Hugo Award Finalists to see if they want to receive what they rightfully deserve.

For more opinions on the 2024 Hugo Award Finalists, here are links two more links with commentary by the 2022 Hugo Award winning Fan Writer Cora Buhlert (“Some Thoughts on the 2024 Hugo Finalists”) and my colleague and 2024 Finalist, Jason Sanford (“Genre Grapevine for March 2024”).

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

Posted on April 6, 2024 by Mike Glyer

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

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

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

Science fiction is not selling…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

#amquerying humans, in light of the zenith literary drama, let's talk about how to figure out an agency might be sus (nonexistent, a scam, etc.). in no particular order:
— patrick ?????????? supports labor and striking workers (@pcarterwriter) April 5, 2024

2) no authors listed

for an agency to omit some names isn't necessarily bad—people might want privacy—but language like "Gideon collaborates with numerous New York Times bestselling authors" is hiding, potentially to convey legitimacy without providing verifiable names.
— patrick ?????????? supports labor and striking workers (@pcarterwriter) April 5, 2024

(8) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

(9) COMICS SECTION.

Tom Gauld has two for us.

My latest cartoon for @newscientist pic.twitter.com/033AgGd3u7
— Tom Gauld (@tomgauld) April 2, 2024

My latest cartoon for @GuardianBooks. pic.twitter.com/kPywXa2DUY
— Tom Gauld (@tomgauld) April 6, 2024

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

I’ve been writing a lot of sci-fi set in posthuman worlds lately, and thinking about new types of conflict that might open up. Some ideas in comic form (with explanations and examples below): pic.twitter.com/PqUnlSJm67
— Richard Ngo (@RichardMCNgo) April 6, 2024

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

SVOD market shares in Q1 2024: Global streaming giant: Prime Video took the lead in the US streaming market with shares more than the combined size of Disney-owned companies: Hulu and Disney+. Meanwhile, Netflix maintains its stronghold with more than 2x the shares than that of Apple TV+.

Market share development in 2024: Leading streaming growth into 2024 are Apple TV+, Netflix, and Paramount+, each adding +1% to their shares. On the other hand, Hulu, Disney+, and Max struggled to keep up, individually suffering through a -1% decline since January.

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

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

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

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

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

2024 Pulp Factory Awards

Posted on April 6, 2024 by Mike Glyer

The 2024 Pulp Factory Awards were announced during a ceremony held at the Windy City Pulp and Paperback Convention in Lombard, IL on April 5.

BEST PULP NOVEL

Evolution Man Year Two by Charles F. Millhouse (Stormgate Press)

BEST PULP SHORT STORY

“The Exile of Avalon” by Jaime Ramos – Mystery Men (& Women) Vol. 9 (Airship 27)

BEST PULP ANTHOLOGY

Mystery Men (& Women) Vol. 9 (Airship 27)

BEST PULP INTERIOR ILLUSTRATIONS

Rob Davis – Mystery Men (& Women) Vol 9 (Airship 27)

BEST PULP COVER

Jeffrey Hayes – The Terrors (Rising Tide Publications)

Denise Dutton Review: Hu Chocolate Bar – Hazelnut Butter Dark Chocolate

Posted on April 6, 2024 by Mike Glyer

Review by Denise Dutton: I could get used to high-quality chocolate. Don’t get me wrong; I love me some Thousand Dollar Bars and Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups. I’m as red-blooded as the next chocoholic. But there’s something absolutely decadent about a Fair Trade bar made with organic ingredients. Something that’s got less than a handful of ingredients, yet tastes like something Big Candy could only dream of creating. Like the stuff that comes from Hu Kitchen. I’ve bitten into their Almond Butter+Puffed Quinoa bar and it was absolutely wonderful. But I wondered; would dark chocolate and hazelnut spread work well together, or would it be chocolate overload?

I needn’t have worried. Hazelnut is just as yummy as its almond predecessor. Instead of a Nutella-esque flavor, think of actual ~~filberts~~ hazelnuts ground up and mixed with a touch of sugar to form paste. I loved the nutty taste of this filling, and I’ll definitely be coming back for more; this ain’t no praline, it’s full nut y’all, and it’s glorious. I love hazelnuts, and while I also enjoy the chocolaty spread made from them, this is much more my speed. The nuts are front and center, in perfect balance with the rich and cocoa-heavy chocolate that surrounds it. Having too sweet a filling would have sent this bar into unappetizing sugar overload, and I applaud Hu for knowing when to say when.

This bar easily breaks into eight two-big-bite pieces, and I’d add them to a fruit and cheese tray, or charcuterie board. The not-too-sweet balance of dark chocolate and nuts would play well with soft or hard cheeses, or any meat that isn’t overly peppered. Pop some bubbly to go with it – the cocoa butter richness here almost screams for something bubbly as an accompaniment – and enjoy. But I find that a few squares are perfect; you’ll want to savor this bar, not shove it into your pie-hole like an animal. Are we not men? Well, we’re not on the Island of Doctor Moreau, nor are we Devo (at least I’m not, however much I long for one of those hats), so let us savor.

Or just hole up in your rattiest sweats and scarf down a couple of pieces with a plain seltzer while binging documentaries on YouTube. Tomato-potato.

Denise Kitashima Dutton has been a reviewer since 2003, and hopes to get the hang of things any moment now. She believes that bluegrass is not hell in music form, and that beer is better when it’s a nitro pour. Besides GMR, you can find her at Atomic Fangirl, Movie-Blogger.com, or at that end seat at the bar, multi-tasking with her Kindle.

Pixel Scroll 4/5/24 Scrolling To Filezantium

Posted on April 5, 2024 by Mike Glyer

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

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

running downstairs with a jacket wrapped around my bare legs to scream obscenities at the construction crew down the street only to find all my neighbors doing the same thing
— Bo Bolander (@BBolander) April 5, 2024

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

(8) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

(9) COMICS SECTION.

xkcd’s “Moon Armor Index” — is Randall Munroe another Pluto scoffer? Or am I too sensitive?
Moderately Confused has an eye chart specially designed for Filers.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Usopp's actor Jacob Gibson leaks One Piece Live Action Season 2:pic.twitter.com/0yrlTVydFb
— Artur – Library of Ohara (@newworldartur) April 3, 2024

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

Horror Writers Association Lifetime Achievement Awards 2024

Posted on April 5, 2024 by Mike Glyer

The Horror Writers Association (HWA) today announced the recipients of its Lifetime Achievement Awards: Steve Rasnic Tem, Mort Castle, and Cassandra Peterson.

They will be presented on June 1 during the Bram Stoker Awards® ceremony at StokerCon®2024 in San Diego, CA.

The Lifetime Achievement Award, presented periodically to an individual whose work has substantially influenced the horror genre, is the most prestigious of all awards presented by HWA. It does not merely honor the superior achievement embodied in a single work. Instead, it is an acknowledgment of superior achievement in an entire career. While this award is often presented to a writer, it may also be given for influential accomplishments in other creative fields.

LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT AWARD WINNERS

Mort Castle. Photo credit: Michelle Pretorious

MORT CASTLE – A former stage hypnotist, folksinger, and teacher (every level from grade to grad school), Mort Castle has been a publishing writer since 1967, with hundreds of stories, articles, comics, and books published in a dozen languages. Castle has won three Bram Stoker Awards®, two Black Quill awards, the Golden Bot (Wired Magazine), and has been nominated for The Audie, The Shirley Jackson award, the International Horror Guild award and the Pushcart Prize. In 2000, the Chicago Sun-Times News Group cited him as one of Twenty-One “Leaders in the Arts for the 21st Century in Chicago’s Southland.” Poland’s, Newsweek magazine listed his The Strangers (Obcy) in the “Top Ten Horror / Thriller Novels of 2008” and there will a 40^th anniversary edition of the book this year in Spain, Poland, Germany, and the USA. Castle and his wife Jane will celebrate their 53nd wedding anniversary this July. They live in Crete, Illinois.

CASSANDRA PETERSON – From the top of her beehive hairdo to the bottom of her stiletto heels, Elvira, Mistress of the Dark personifies the horror genre in one spooky, sexy, funny package.

As Queen of Halloween, her reign has now spanned 40 years and includes her long-running nationally syndicated television series, Movie Macabre and two feature films: Elvira, Mistress of the Dark and Elvira’s Haunted Hills. She has appeared in National ad campaigns for Pepsi and Coors, recorded five record albums and has written a line of young adult novels, a “Coffin Table” photo retrospective, and most recently, her memoir, Yours Cruelly, Elvira from Hachette Book Group.

The worldwide Elvira brand has generated thousands of products, including three pinball machines, four slot machines, eight Funko POP!’s, four comic book series, a line of NECA action figures, a Chia Pet, a Living Dead doll, a Monster High Skullector doll from Mattel, and the best-selling female costume of all time.

Elvira has appeared on hundreds of television shows including Happy Halloween Scooby Doo, Elvira’s 40^th Anniversary Very Scary, Very Special Special for the Shudder Channel, and the Netflix & Chills Halloween ad campaign.

Played by actress-writer Cassandra Peterson, Elvira, Mistress of the Dark has carved out a niche in popular American culture that is sure to endure for decades to come.

STEVE RASNIC TEM – Steve Rasnic Tem’s writing career spans over 45 years, including more than 500 published short stories, 17 collections, 8 novels, misc. poetry and plays, and a handbook on writing, Yours to Tell: Dialogues on the Art & Practice of Fiction, written with his late wife Melanie Tem. His collaborative novella with Melanie, The Man On The Ceiling, won the World Fantasy, Bram Stoker, and International Horror Guild awards in 2001. He has also won the Bram Stoker, International Horror Guild, and British Fantasy Awards for his solo work, including Blood Kin, winner of 2014’s Bram Stoker for novel. Originally from the Appalachian region of Southwest Virginia, he now lives in Centennial Colorado. www.stevetem.com

ABOUT THE HORROR WRITERS ASSOCIATION. The Horror Writers Association (HWA) is a nonprofit organization of writers and publishing professionals around the world, dedicated to promoting dark literature and the interests of those who write it. Founded in the late 1980s, it now has close to 2000 members around the world and is the oldest and most respected professional organization for creators of horror fiction. More information about the Horror Writers Association is available at Horror.org. For more information about the Bram Stoker Awards® and HWA’s other awards, please visit The Bram Stoker Awards website.

[Based on a press release.]

Warner Holme Review: Erik Granström and Henrik Rosenborg’s Forbidden Lands: the Bloodmarch

Posted on April 5, 2024 by Mike Glyer

Review by Warner Holme: Erik Granström and Henrik Rosenborg’s Forbidden Lands: the Bloodmarch (Free League, 2023) is an interesting volume expanding on a pre-existing setting. Expanding on the previously known setting, this volume details a disturbing region which includes large portions of forest with disturbing red foliage.

Most of the fantasy standards exist in this world. Orcs, elves, dwarves, humans, demons and more. Some of them are fairly in line with the genre expectations for them, particularly the dwarves, while others have strange and detailed cultures and cultural conflicts explained. Fortunately the setting starts, largely, from a point of view that should make it easy for a reader to jump in even to this development in it without worry about feeling truly lost. Potential alliances, conflicts, and hidden agendas are all discussed in a fair amount of detail.

One complication when dealing with an overall high quality translation like the one created here by Niklas Lundmark is a question of comparison to the original. While a great deal of the strange, weird, and wondrous nature of a dark fantasy setting can be seen throughout this book there are moments which suggest a certain amount of tongue in cheek. And obvious one comes with the adventure seed on page 160, wherein “Muder, Madam” focuses on a particular character’s death. This would be a normal idea for a fairly basic type of event, however the individual who died is named Madam Munna. This is stated repeatedly with both words throughout this small section, and leaves one with a strong suspicion that either one of the original writers or the translator was in fact a fan of the Muppets. Knowing which would be quite nice, and neither it nor some of the other jokes keep the overall tone from something that can be taken reasonably seriously. These include wordplay like naming a deity Kolor who is claimed to be responsible for shades other than red, and a group calling themselves “The Inglourious Butchars” on page 42.

The illustrations are in general high quality, done in the style of drawings and maps which might exist in universe of the people, objects, or places one might encounter. This is overall extremely effective, even to an extent providing justification as to why certain illustrations like that on page 69 seem to devolve into the earliest stages of sketching while large portions are incredibly detailed. Neither is exactly bad, however if they were made to compete with very stylistically different illustrations it might be somewhat less impressive.

In such volumes, specifically going back to the early era of gaming, organization was often one of the biggest problems. While this book overall maintains a fair bit of quality in that regard, the index might be a little sparse to some. And although it does include entries for most of the important individual concepts, it will often leave only a notice when they are the subject of a section rather than merely being mentioned.

As a gaming module it will be very much take it or leave it both for fans of the franchise and more general gamers. Still, it represents a high-quality release, with a lot of interesting ideas that can be incorporated into games or simply get the mind pumping for those who enjoy manuals on fictional worlds. With interesting world building, creatures, and character concepts there is a lot to recommend it.

Pixel Scroll 4/4/24 This Is The Scroll That Doesn’t End, It Just Goes On And On, My Fen

Posted on April 4, 2024 by Mike Glyer

(1) MORE TAFF COVERAGE. The Trans-Atlantic Fan Fund results came out yesterday. For Sarah Gulde’s victory statement, the regional voting breakdown, a list of voters and other news, see the official newsletter Taffluorescence! #3.

(2) GODZILLA SHOULDN’T TAKE ON THIS BAMBI. [Item by Mike Kennedy.] Another venison, um, version of a childhood tale lies ruined. Though, to be fair, this one was pretty bloody already.

Also, whatever marketing guru came up with the label “Poohniverse“ probably deserves a bonus. Either that, or to be sucked through a dark magical portal into that dimension theirself and be made a victim. “Bambi Goes on a Rampage in First Teaser for Poohniverse Movie ‘Bambi: The Reckoning’” in The Hollywood Reporter.

Oh dear. The Poohniverse is expanding. Umbrella Entertainment has released the first teaser for the next installment of their B-movie horror franchise centered on horrifying versions of beloved children’s characters.

In the teaser for Bambi: The Reckoning, two hunters are seen practicing shooting in the woods with a dead bird tied to a tree. “You ever shot a deer?” one hunter asks the other. “No. Have you?” the second hunter replies. “Yeah, once,” the first hunter says. The teaser seems to imply that this hunter is the same one who killed Bambi’s mother….

… The film series will also include Peter Pan’s Neverland Nightmare and Pinocchio Unstrung. The “Twisted Childhood Universe” concept comes from ITN Studios and Jagged Edge Productions with Umbrella Entertainment. Other characters expected to join the franchise include Sleeping Beauty, The Mad Hatter, and more characters from Winnie the Pooh.

(3) SCARING FOR DOLLARS. According to the Guardian, “Horror novel sales boomed during year of real-world anxieties”.

Horror fiction is having a moment, according to data showing 2023 was a record-breaking year for book sales in the genre.

Between 2022 and 2023, sales of horror and ghost stories rose by 54% in value to £7.7m – the biggest year for the genre since accurate records began, reported the Bookseller. In the first three months of 2024, sales were 34% higher in value than in the same period last year, according to book sales data company Nielsen BookScan.

Horror writers and publishers suggest that the boom is partly due to the political nature of the genre. “Horror is a genre that tends to ebb and flow with what’s going on in the world at large, holding up a dark funfair mirror to real world horrors,” said Jen Williams, whose novel The Hungry Dark is published next week. “Given we’re in a period of unsettling upheaval – wars, the pandemic, climate change – it’s interesting that horror is moving back into the spotlight and even reaching a larger audience.”….

(4) TOMORROW PRIZE READINGS. The Tomorrow Prize & The Green Feather Award: Celebrity Readings & Honors ceremony will take place on Saturday, May 11 from 4:00-6:00 p.m. at Vroman’s Bookstore in Pasadena. To register for this event, please follow the link.

Celebrity Readings & Honors recognizes outstanding new works of science fiction written by Los Angeles County high school students. This amazing event will feature dramatic readings by celebrity guests (to be announced) from some of todays hottest sci-fi and fantasy shows and movies. Following the readings, students will be honored for their writing, as will the educators, librarians, and authors who make this project possible!

(5) LIBRARIANS TARGETED AGAIN. BookRiot reports that proposed “Louisiana HB 777 Would Criminalize Librarians and Libraries Who Join the American Library Association”.

Louisiana continues these efforts in an ongoing move by politicians in the state to damage public libraries with House Bill 777. HB 777 was introduced March 25 by Representative Kellee Dickerson, who helped fund the Louisiana Freedom Caucus. The bill would criminalize library workers and libraries for joining the American Library Association.

The American Library Association (ALA) is the largest and oldest professional organization for library workers in the nation. It was founded in 1876, and this Twitter thread is a fantastic resource on the history and purpose of the organization.

The HB 777 text reads:

“A. No public official or employee shall appropriate, allocate, reimburse, or otherwise or in any way expend public funds to or with the American Library Association or its successor.
“B. No public employee shall request or receive reimbursement or remuneration in any form for continuing education or for attending a conference if the continuing education or conference was sponsored or conducted, in whole or in part, by the American Library Association or its successor.
“C. Whoever violates this Section shall be fined not more than one thousand dollars or be imprisoned, with or without hard labor, for not more than two years, or both.”

(6) BUYERS FINALLY LOOKING AT B5. Inverse teased a long interview with J. Michael Straczynski in its post “30 Years Later, the Most Resilient Sci-Fi Show Could Return Once Again”, speculating about the future of Babylon 5. The full interview appears next week.

…The interview also touched on Babylon 5, and when asked if and when the live-action reboot would still happen, Straczynski said this:

“It’s just been a matter of time and obstacles. We were going to go with the CW originally, then Warner got it back. Then, we were going to take it out to the market, but then the Discovery purchase happened and that put us on ice for a while. Then, okay, that got all cleared up. And then the strike hits. After that, right as they were literally prepared to send it out the door, the rumor about a merger between Warner and Paramount happened. So, finally, it went out to buyers about two weeks ago. We’re waiting on word from those who have been sent the pilot script. One has said no, but the rest are all still in process. There’s interest from the rest of them. So, we will see where it goes.”

This means a Babylon 5 reboot could end up almost anywhere. Straczynski couldn’t mention who’d passed on the project, but it seems like the CW won’t be where it happens. But considering the long-running fandom of Babylon 5 — and Straczynski’s reputation as a writer of comic books and TV shows like Sense8 — hopes are high that the little space station that could, will return soon….

(7) WHAT IF IT WAS TRUE? Gershon Hepner blogs about Avram Davidson in “Unprofitable Belief in God and Politicians” at Times of Israel.

…Adolph Abram Davidson—who went by Avram from a young age—was born in Yonkers, New York, in 1923, but he didn’t stay there, flitting from New York to Israel to Mexico, Belize, San Francisco, and Washington State, among other places, during his topsy-turvy life.

Despite his penchant for rabbinic allusions and his bushy black beard, Davidson was no rabbi. In fact, he never received a degree of any sort, though he attended New York University for two years and later took a short story writing class at Yeshiva University (where he was classmates with Chaim Potok). Yet he knew the Talmud well enough and quite a bit about seemingly everything else. He was a scrupulously observant Orthodox Jew for much of his adult life, until he became just as zealous a practitioner of Tenrikyo, a Japanese religion that many of his former coreligionists would have considered idolatry. In short, Davidson’s life story was full of the kind of misdirection and obfuscation his stories routinely spring on their readers….

(8) MARYSE CONDÉ (1934-2024). Internationally respected author Maryse Condé, who in 2018 won the New Academy Prize in Literature (a Nobel alternative), died April 2. Her work includes a novel set during the Salem witch trials, I, Tituba: Black Witch of Salem (1986). Literary Hub has a tribute here: “Maryse Condé, international literary giant, has died at 90.”

Maryse Condé, the Guadaloupean novelist, playwright, essayist, and “Grande Dame of World Letters” has died. A Booker Prize and New Academy Prize winning author, Condé was an international sensation, and the author of more than twenty books. She was known for her sly, spirited prose in which she explored food, love, feminism, diaspora, and “the ravages of colonisation.” Take 1986’s I, Tituba, Black Witch of Salem, for which she won the Littéraire de la Femme.

In that imagined life story of the famous Salem scapegoat, Condé re-conceived the Black Witch as a questing but traumatized self-chronicler, and victim of colonial fear. “What is a witch?” her Tituba asks. “I noticed that when he said the word, it was marked with disapproval. Why should that be? Why? Isn’t the ability to communicate with the invisible world, to keep constant links with the dead, to care for others and heal, a superior gift of nature that inspires respect, admiration, and gratitude?”…

(9) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

Born April 4, 1959 – Phil Morris, 65. I hadn’t realized that Phil Morris appeared on Trek in his very first role. He was in “Miri” as an uncredited “Boy in a helmet” which was shot when he wasn’t quite seven years old. It’s an adorable piece of video for him with having obviously fake dirt on his face. Yes, I went back and watched it on Paramount +.

His next genre role was another Trek one, though much later, as Trainee Foster on The Search for Spock. (God it’s been a long time since I’ve seen that film.) He’d have three more visits to this multiverse, twice on Deep Space Nine in two roles, Thopok in “Looking for Par’Mach in All the Wrong Places” and Remata’Klan in “Rocks and Shoals”, and lastly on Voyager as Lieutenant John Kelly on “One Small Step”.

But my favorite role for him was in the two-season Australian produced reboot of Mission: Impossible shot during the writers strike that used scripts that had been deemed not worthy of being used the first time. He is Greg Collier here and quite excellent indeed. I don’t recall if I’ve written the series up but I like it a lot and think they did a great job of what I suspect was a limited budget.

So what else should I note? He had a one-off on Babylon 5 in “Severed Dreams” as Bill Trainor; Seven Days sees him being Air Force Colonel Beekman in “The Final Countdown”; he’s Myles Dyson for several episodes on Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles; and he voiced the immortal Vandal Savage on the stellar Justice League series.

No, I’ve not forgotten that he played Silas Stone on the Doom Patrol. I watched the first two seasons and thought it was interesting enough that I need to see the rest of it someday.

(10) COMICS SECTION.

Get Fuzzy hears Zarathustra spraching.
Arlo and Janis start a discussion of the Moon needing another name: Arlo and Janis 1; Arlo and Janis 2
Nancy covers plot reveals.
Rhymes with Orange translates keyboards for cats.

(11) THAT TIME THERE WEREN’T ANY TAKERS. Scott Edelman knows why he’s not a millionaire. (Sale details here.)

(12) THE “CLAWS-OVER” OF THE CENTURY. An all-new animal-centric Infinity Comic, Infinity Paws, is launching on the Marvel Unlimited app on Friday, April 5. The 10-issue digital comic is written by Jason Loo with art by Nao Fuji.

Infinity Paws features fan-favorite animals from across the Marvel Universe including Jeff the Land Shark, Carol Danvers’ feline companion Chewie, Alligator Loki, and Lucky the Pizza Dog. In the story, Ronan the Accuser lays siege to New York City and the Avengers with the aid of the Space Gem! But can one land shark and a couple of cats defeat him and save the day?

On the series, writer Jason Loo told Collider.com, “I hope everyone is ready for this fun-filled, action-packed, loads of cuteness series that Nao Fuji and I deliver in this epic Marvel crossover. It’s got most of your favorite friends from the Marvel animal kingdom, as well as tons of surprise guests from across the 616… even Howard the Duck pops in! So, get cozy with your reading device every Friday. And if you live with a furry friend, have them cuddle beside you too!”

(Click below for larger images.)

(13) SUPER OR SUPERFLUOUS? [Item by Daniel Dern.] I believe I’ve identified a RW/IRL (Real World/In Real Life) instance of a supernatural being, of a class slightly below Neil Gaiman’s D-initialed family (Dream, Death, etc), possibly from Marvel’s B-listers (e.g. The Beyonder). This one’s responsible for Why We Don’t Get Stuff Done, and their name is…The Behinder! (How to appease them, I have yet to suss.)

(14) ANIMATION GUILD. “DreamWorks Workers Vote to Join the Animation and Editors Guilds” – The Hollywood Reporter has the latest.

DreamWorks Animation production workers are joining their artist and technician colleagues in being represented by the Animation Guild and their editor colleagues in being represented by the Motion Picture Editors Guild.

In an election with the National Labor Relations Board, 94 production workers who work on television and feature films at the brand voted to join the two IATSE Locals, while 41 voted against unionization. Of the 160 workers who are now unionized with IATSE as a result of the vote, about a dozen will join the Motion Picture Editors Guild (Local 700) because they work in postproduction, while other production staffers whose roles align more with artists, technical directors and writers will join the Animation Guild (Local 839). The tally of ballots took place on March 26….

… Organizers were motivated to unionize by their interest in preserving the workplace culture at DreamWorks Animation, according to Animation Guild organizer Allison Smartt. “Production workers know what’s best for their roles and lives and with the recent announcements of significant company policy changes like increased outsourcing and a disallowal of most remote work for production staff, they felt a sense of urgency,” Smartt wrote in an email….

(15) DARK STAR. “Dark Star at 50: How a micro-budget student film changed sci-fi forever” at BBC.com.

…Set in the year 2250, the film charts the exploits of the titular space vessel as it meanders round the galaxy blowing up “unstable” planets. The hirsute five-man crew has been stuck on the ship for 20 years and are bored out of their minds and fed up with each other. They spend their days bickering and fixing the ship, which is constantly failing them in some way, including with the loss of the ship’s supply of toilet roll. There’s not much in the way of plot. The film has an almost defiantly anti-dramatic quality at times, with its focus on the dreariness of the long space voyage. “O’Bannon believed space travel would be a tedious experience, filled with seemingly endless days of maintenance and reflection,” says Griffiths. [John] Carpenter famously referred to it as “Waiting for Godot in space”….

(16) AGED TO PERFECTION. Well Told offers a line of “Literature Rocks Glass” with an antique-typefaced title on one side, and usually a quote from the book on the back. Here are some examples using genre works. (Click for larger images.)

(17) MEDICAL ADVANCE. “Recipient of world’s first pig kidney transplant discharged from Boston hospital” reports CBS News.

The recipient of the world’s first pig kidney transplant is heading home from Massachusetts General Hospital Wednesday, nearly two weeks after the surgery.

The hospital said Rick Slayman, 62, will continue his recovery at home in Weymouth….

…At the time of the transplant on March 21, Slayman was living with end-stage kidney disease, along with Type 2 diabetes and hypertension. He received a human kidney transplant back in 2018 but it started failing five years later.

Mass General said the transplant was the first time a pig kidney was transplanted into a living human patient. The hospital said the kidney was donated by eGenesis in Cambridge and was genetically edited to remove harmful pig genes. Certain human genes were then added to improve its compatibility….

(18) AI RESURRECTION. The Guardian tells how some “Chinese mourners turn to AI to remember and ‘revive’ loved ones”.

As millions of people across China travel to the graves of their ancestors to pay their respects for the annual tomb-sweeping festival – a traditional day to honour and maintain the graves of the dead – a new way of remembering, and reviving, their beloved relatives is being born.

For as little as 20 yuan (£2.20), Chinese netizens can create a moving digital avatar of their loved one, according to some services advertised online. So this year, to mark tomb-sweeping festival on Thursday, innovative mourners are turning to artificial intelligence to commune with the departed.

At the more sophisticated end of the spectrum, the Taiwanese singer Bao Xiaobai used AI to “resurrect” his 22-year-old daughter, who died in 2022. Despite having only an audio recording of her speaking three sentences of English, Bao reportedly spent more than a year experimenting with AI technology before managing to create a video of his daughter singing happy birthday to her mother, which he published in January.

“People around me think I’ve lost my mind,” Bao said in an interview with Chinese media. But, added: “I want to hear her voice again.”

The interest in digital clones of the departed comes as China’s AI industry continues to expand into human-like avatars. According to one estimate, the market size for “digital humans” was worth 12bn yuan in 2022, and is expected to quadruple by 2025. Part of the reason that China’s tech companies are adept at creating digital humans is because the country’s huge army of livestreamers – who generated an estimated 5tn yuan in sales last year – are increasingly turning to AI to create clones of themselves to push products 24/7….

(19) VIDEO OF THE DAY. Princess Weekes looks at Dune and asks “Why Sci-fi Can’t Fix Its White Savior Problem”.

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

Cats Sleep on SFF: Girl Genius Kickstarter

Posted on April 4, 2024 by Mike Glyer

From Phil Foglio we hear —

Studio Foglio is pleased to announce that our latest Kickstarter for Girl Genius Volume 21 has launched: “An Entertainment In Londinium: A Girl Genius Graphic Novel by Studio Foglio” and is already doing quite well.

Girl Genius is a webcomic that can be read here for free and it updates every Monday/Wednesday/Friday. It won 3 Hugos™ for Best Graphic story before stepping aside for other creators. This volume is written by Kaja and Phil Foglio, drawn by Reuben Award winner Phil Foglio, and colored by Cheyenne Wright.

We have also included a picture for the “Cats Sleeping on SFF” Department, though in all honesty, it could be sub-filed under “Cats Lolling About Adjacent to SF”.

Photos of your felines (or whatever you’ve got!) resting on genre works are welcome. Send to mikeglyer (at) cs (dot) com