Pixel Scroll 03/05/20 So Goodbye Yellowed Book Scroll, Where The Cats Of Society Riff

(1) COMING TO ANOTHER PLANET NEAR YOU. Science News posted the winning name in NASA’s contest to name the new Mars rover.

Meet Perseverance, NASA’s next ambassador to the Red Planet.

The Mars rover’s new name was announced March 5, after a six-month “Name the Rover” competition that drew more than 28,000 entries from students in kindergarten through high school. Students were asked to make their name suggestions in essays.

The winning entry came from 7th grader Alex Mather, who became interested in becoming a NASA engineer after he attended the space agency’s Space Camp at age 11. 

(2) WORLDCON STATEMENT ON CORONAVIRUS. CoNZealand’s chairs Norman Cates and Kelly Buehlermade this public statement:

Although New Zealand has not been affected by Covid-19 to the extent of the rest of the world, our government and the NZ Ministry of Health have extensive civil defence plans. We are monitoring the situation and will be prepared for what the future brings.

As usual, we strongly advise all members purchase their own comprehensive travel insurance for any foreign travel, including cancellation insurance. If you have already purchased insurance for your journey to New Zealand, we recommend that you check the full terms with your insurance provider.

We are in touch with the Ministry of Health as well as with our venue planning managers. We want everyone to have a safe and healthy convention, and we will be following best practices.

(3) OTHER EVENTS MAKING DECISIONS DRIVEN BY CORONAVIRUS. A Seattle convention due to start on March 12 has announced a refund option: “As coronavirus concerns loom, Emerald City Comic Con exhibitors wrestle with the question: to con or not to con” – the Seattle Times has the story:

Emerald City Comic Con organizers Reedpop announced a refund option on Wednesday for fans who choose not to attend this year’s four-day pop-culture celebration, still scheduled for March 12-15 at the Washington State Convention Center, due to coronavirus concerns. The decision was made public shortly before city and county officials announced they were advising community groups against holding gatherings that would draw more than 10 people.

Organizers acknowledged that not everybody would agree with the decision, but “we feel we owe it to the customer to grant you the personal choice whether or not to attend,” they said in a statement.

However, Publishers Lunch says Book Expo in New York plans to carry on: “Book Expo Knows You’re Already Worried About Their Show (and Maybe Mad At Reed), So Issues Update, While Staying On Track”.

Book Expo officials are moving to get in front of community concerns about COVID-19, following the London Book Fair’s reluctant cancellation of their show. (Both shows are part of Reed Exhibitions.) Event director Jenny Martin writes in a statement, “The effect of the COVID-19 virus on the publishing business and our people is significant and difficult to navigate. Many industry events outside of the United States, have had to make difficult decisions about proceeding with their events. We understand the impact that has on the publishing industry and we want to be proactive and transparent about BookExpo.”

For now: “BookExpo & BookCon will proceed as planned May 27-31. We do not anticipate any changes or delays to our event. Our mission is to serve our customers as best we can, and we plan to provide a place for you to conduct business in these difficult times…. We will continue to be take necessary precautions to facilitate an environment for the entire community to unite, make meaningful new connections, and discover new titles.”

(4) FANHISTORY. The Washington Post’s Michael Dirda praises a thoroughly illustrated tribute to sf fandom: “‘The Visual History of Science Fiction Fandom’ beautifully demonstrates the evolution of a genre”. In his article, Dirda explains a great deal about early fandom and explains Bob Madle’s importance and how Madle will turn 100 this June.

In “The Visual History of Science Fiction Fandom — Volume One: The 1930s,” David and Daniel Ritter — a ­father-and-son team — show us, through words and pictures, how a passion for science fiction evolved into a way of life for young people who couldn’t get enough of that crazy Buck Rogers stuff. The result is a sumptuous scrapbook of photographs, magazine covers, artwork and hundreds of articles, letters and typescripts, everything beautifully held together by the Ritters’ concise but enthralling text. The physical book is expensive but, given the amount of material in it and the high quality of the printing, one doubts that First Fandom Experience is doing more than breaking even. Happily, there is a less costly digital version available for e-readers.

(5) FAN NAME USAGE. Fanlore, a project by the Organization of Transformative Works, has announced “Upcoming Changes to Fanlore’s Pre-1995 Fan Name Use Policy”.

On 10 March, Fanlore will be making some changes to its policy on Pre-1995 Fan Name Use in order to bring it in line with our broader Identity Protection policy. Here’s why…

In the days prior to the Internet, some fans who wrote in zines (or contributed to other fanworks) used their real names as opposed to a fan name. The expectation at that time was that fanworks would remain within the fairly closed community of fandom. With respect to this different environment and in order to protect the identity of fans, Fanlore created a policy stating that fanwork authors credited in zines and other fannish publications prior to 1995 should be identified with a first name and last initial (e.g. Mary R. as opposed to Mary Richards).

However, as time went by, it became apparent that a great deal of zine content containing fans’ full names and/or preferred names had already been online for many years, and on many established websites. Additionally, many fans writing prior to 1995 used “real” sounding pseudonyms that did not need to be abbreviated. The policy of abbreviating fans’ last names has also caused a great deal of confusion over fan authors who share a first name and last initial. Different early print communities (such as science fiction zines) would often use a first initial and last full name to attribute authors, adding to the confusion.

Because of this, the Fanlore Committee has decided to bring the Pre-1995 Fan Name Use policy in line with the wider Fanlore policy on Identity Protection. Author names on fanworks made prior to 1995 will be recorded on Fanlore as they appeared at the time, but if the fan in question wishes to protect their identity, the Fanlore Committee will replace their name with a first name and last initial (e.g. Mary R.), with initials only (e.g. M.R.), or with a pseudonym of the fan’s choice (e.g. Unnamed Fan X). We are happy to work with fans to find an arrangement that they are comfortable with and that sufficiently protects their identity.

(6) YOU DO SAY. Natalie Zutter points out “Twelve SFF Stories Told From Second-Person Perspective” at Tor.com.

Writing in second person—forgoing I or she/he/they of other perspectives in favor of that intensely-close, under-your-skin you—can, ironically, be rather alienating. Often it feels too intimate for the reader, or it distracts them from the story unfolding with questions of who is actually telling it. But when a writer commits to telling a story to you, about you, through you, the result can often be masterful—an extra layer of magic surrounding a sci-fi/fantasy/speculative tale and embedding the reader in the protagonist’s journey more intensely than even the most self-reflective first or closest-third could achieve….

(7) MCLAUGHLIN OBIT. Comics artist Frank McLaughlin (1935-2020) died March 4. His earliest work was for Charlton, and he became the company’s art director in the Sixties. worked throughout the Charlton line, including on the superhero titles Blue Beetle, Captain Atom, and Son of Vulcan, the adventure comic The Fightin’ 5, the supernatural/science-fiction anthologies Strange Suspense Stories and Mysteries of Unexplored Worlds, and the espionage comic Sarge Steel,

In the Seventies he settled into a career as an inker, working for both Marvel (on Captain Marvel, Captain America and The Defenders before becoming primarily a DC inker. He became the regular series inker for Justice League of America, some Batman stories in Detective Comics, and Green Lantern.

In the 1980s McLaughlin was regular inker on penciler Carmine Infantino’s The Flash, Gene Colan’s Wonder Woman, and Dan Jurgens’ Green Arrow, among other assignments.

His books include How to Draw Those Bodacious Bad Babes of Comics (2000) and How to Draw Monsters for Comics (2001), both with Mike Gold.

(8) WISE OBIT. Writer David Wise (1955-2020) died March 3. A graduate of the Clarion Writers Workshop (one of his stories was published in the third Clarion anthology from NAL), he was well-known in the animation field, writing episodes for television series like Star Trek: The Animated Series, the 1984 Transformers cartoon and the 1987 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon, among dozens of other shows. He’s survived by his wife Audry Taylor.

(9) TODAY IN HISTORY.

  • March 5, 1943 The Ape Man premiered. It originally known as The Gorilla Strikes. It was directed by William Beaudine and starred Bela Lugosi and Louise Currie. It was promoted as a sequel to Return of the Ape Man but it wasn’t. Critics at the time generally liked it, but that not true of the audience at Rotten Tomatoes which gives it a 12% rating. See it here.
  • March 5, 1980 — The Beyond Westworld series debuted on CBS. It starred Jim McMullan, James Wainwright and Connie Sellecca. It was based on the film but ignored the sequel. It lasted a mere eight episodes. We cannot show you an episode as that’s behind a paywall. 

(10) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

  • Born March 5, 1853 Howard Pyle. Author of The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood of Great Renown in Nottinghamshire commonly known as The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood which is in print one hundred and twenty-five years later. He also did a four-volume work on King Arthur. (Died 1911.)
  • Born March 5, 1920 Virginia Christine. Likely best remembered as Wilma Lentz in Invasion of the Body Snatchers, but she’s been in a number of other genre films including The Mummy’s Curse, Billy the Kid Versus Dracula, Women in the Night, plus appearances on The Adventures of Superman, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Science Fiction Theatre and The Twilight Zone. She was The Boss on The Time Guardian (Died 1996.)
  • Born March 5, 1936 Dean Stockwell, 84. You’ll no doubt best remember him as Al the hologram on Quantum Leap. He had one-offs on Mission Impossible, The Night Gallery, A Twist in The Tale, Orson Welles’ Great Mysteries and The Twilght Zone.
  • Born March 5, 1942 Mike Resnick. Damn, losing him hurts. It’s worth noting that he’s has been nominated for 37 Hugo Awards which is a record for writers and won five times. Somewhat ironically nothing I’ve really enjoyed by him has won those Hugos. The novels making my list are his John Justin Mallory detective novels, The Red Tape War (with Jack L. Chalker & George Alec Effinger), and, yes it’s not genre, Cat on a Cold Tin Roof. (Died 2020.)
  • Born March 5, 1952 Margaret Astrid Lindholm Ogden, 68. She’s better known by her pen names of Robin Hobb and Megan Lindholm.  I’m reasonably sure the first thing I read and enjoyed by her was Wizard of the Pigeons, but The Gypsy with Steven Brust was equally enjoyable and had the added bonus of a Boiled in Lead soundtrack.  What’s she done recently that I should think of reading? 
  • Born March 5, 1955 Penn Jillette, 65. Performed on Babylon 5 in the episode scripted by Neil Gaiman titled “Day of The Dead” as part of Penn & Teller who portrayed comedians Rebo and Zooty. It’s one of my favorite episodes of the series. Also, he had a recurring role on Sabrina the Teenage Witch as Drell, the head of the Witches’ Council. He’s been in Fantasia 2000Toy StoryFuturama: Into the Wild Green YonderSharknado 3: Oh Hell No!Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of SupermanVR.5Space Ghost Coast to Coast and most recently Black Mirror. 
  • Born March 5, 1971 David J. Williams, 49. British author that I confess I hadn’t heard of but now I’m intrigued by in Jack Campbell called his debut novel, The Mirrored Heavens, “a 21st century Neuromancer”.  He’s written the Autumn Rain trilogy of which this novel is the first book, and Transformers: Retribution in that franchise.
  • Born March 5, 1974 Matt Lucas, 46. He played Nardole, a cyborg, who was a companion to the Twelfth Doctor.  He is the only regular companion introduced under Steven Moffat to have never died on screen. He provided the voice of Sparx on Astro Boy, and was Tweedledee and Tweedledum in Alice through the Looking Glass.
  • Born March 5, 1986 Sarah J. Maas, 34. Author of the Throne of Glass series wherein Cinderella is a stone cold assassin. If you’re so inclined, there’s A Court of Thorns and Roses Coloring Book. Really. Truly. 

(11) COMICS SECTION.

  • Half Full shows us a vampire’s favorite fruit. Of course it is.

(12) FREE DOWNLOAD. Tor.com invites readers to “Download the Nevertheless, She Persisted Short Fiction Bundle For Free, Starting This International Women’s Day”. It will be available on March 8 from various outlets which are linked here. (I was able to preorder the free download at Amazon today.)

Nevertheless She Persisted: Flash Fiction Project features Charlie Jane Anders, Brooke Bolander, Amal El-Mohtar, Maria Dahvana Headley, Kameron Hurley, Seanan McGuire, Nisi Shawl, Catherynne M. Valente, Carrie Vaughn, Jo Walton, and Alyssa Wong.

March 8th is International Women’s Day, which the United Nations describes as “when women are recognized for their achievements without regard to divisions, whether national, ethnic, linguistic, cultural, economic or political.” More than celebratory, International Women’s Day is aspirational, striving toward a more gender-inclusive world. Speculative fiction has had an impact in fostering this egalitarian dream through creative expression and critique. After all, science fiction in particular was born with Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, written in the “Year without a Summer” while tumultuous storms raged over Lake Geneva. This dream was the utopia penned by Muslim feminist Rokeya Sakhawat Hussain in her 1905 story “Sultana’s Dream”, and the same year Charlotte Perkins Gilman published Herland in Forerunner magazine. In the decades since, women have provided some of the most crucial and insightful voices in our community.

(13) QUICK, HENRY, THE FLIT. This is unintentionally hilarious. JDA complaining about people doing to him what he did to everybody else: “The ComicsGate Harassment Business Model” [Archive link].

  1. They Launch An Attack On A Creator – Mike MIller did this to me last week making a hate youtube stream ranting about me for an hour like a nutjob and riling up his dwindling audience against me.
  2. They Launch A New Book – Within 24 hours of the clickbait attack on youtube of me, Miller launched his new kickstarter.
  3. Repeat as necessary. 

What do they say – “Great fleas have little fleas upon their backs to bite ’em, And little fleas have lesser fleas, and so ad infinitum.”

(14) JDA’S WORLDCON SUIT. Meanwhile, there are signs that Jon Del Arroz’ defamation suit against Worldcon 76 might get a trial date later this year. The case was reassigned to another judge on February 14, and on February 18 the new judge issued a Minute Order indicating a trial setting conference will happen on July 14. The court website explains this is where The judge sets a trial date for sometime in the next 90 days. Bring your calendar so you can tell the judge when you are available. After you get trial date, get ready to go to trial on that date.”

(15) TONIGHT’S JEOPARDY! Andrew Porter watched Jeopardy! contestants swing and miss on this one –

Final Jeopardy: British Novels

Answer: A laboratory known as the house of pain is on Noble’s Isle, the title setting of this novel.

Wrong questions: “What is Frankenstein?”

“What is ?” (nothing)

“What is Shudder Island?”

Correct question, which none of the contestants got: “What is The Island of Doctor Moreau?”

(16) HEALTH SPY? BBC considers the implications of coronavirus warnings: “Coronavirus privacy: Are South Korea’s alerts too revealing?”

As South Korea battles a snowballing number of Covid-19 cases, the government is letting people know if they were in the vicinity of a patient. But the volume of information has led to some awkward moments and now there is as much fear of social stigma as of illness, as Hyung Eun Kim of BBC News Korean reports.

As I sit at home, my phone beeps alarmingly with emergency alerts.

“A 43-year-old man, resident of Nowon district, tested positive for coronavirus,” it says.

“He was at his work in Mapo district attending a sexual harassment class. He contracted the virus from the instructor of the class.”

A series of alerts then chronicle where the men had been, including a bar in the area until 11:03 at night.

These alerts arrive all day, every day, telling you where an infected person has been – and when. You can also look up the information on the Ministry of Health and Welfare website.

No names or addresses are given, but some people are still managing to connect the dots and identify people. The public has even decided two of the infected were having an affair.

And, even if patients are not outright identified, they’re facing judgement – or ridicule – online.

When you search online for a virus patient’s case number, related queries include “personal details”, “face”, “photo”, “family” – or even “adultery”.

Some online users are commenting that “I had no idea so many people go to love motels” – the by-the-hour hotels popular with couples.

They are also joking that people cheating on their spouses are known to be keeping a low profile these days.

(17) THE SPILLOVER CONTINUES. “Ted conference to go virtual or be postponed”

The annual Ted (Technology, Entertainment and Design) conference will not go ahead as planned, amid growing concerns about coronavirus.

Instead, attendees are being asked to vote on whether to postpone the Vancouver-based event until July or hold a virtual one.

A decision will be made next week.

Ted curator Chris Anderson said: “We are not cancelling. We have two compelling options for how to outwit this virus”.

In an email to attendees, he said: “As you know, the Covid-19 virus is spreading around the world, causing many challenges.

“We’ve heard from many of you asking whether we intend to press ahead with Ted 2020 – and the consensus of expert advice is that it would indeed be unwise to press ahead with the event in its current form in April.”

(18) ARGUS IN THE SKY. BBC reports a “UK firm plans ultra-high definition space videos”.

A UK company says it’s building a constellation of satellites to gather ultra-high definition (UHD) video of Earth’s surface.

London-based Sen hopes to have the first microwave oven-sized spacecraft in orbit by the middle of next year.

The idea is to provide real-time, or at least very timely, video of events unfolding on the planet, such as natural disasters.

Sen already has some UHD cameras in orbit, hosted on a Russian satellite.

These are primarily for inspection purposes, but they’re also steerable to look down and so give a sense of what the company’s future “EarthTV” concept might look like.

“Each of the satellites will have four cameras to put imagery into context, because that’s sort of the way the human brain works,” explained Charles Black, founder and CEO of Sen.

“So there’ll be wide-angle imagery, from about 250m a pixel to give that country-wide view, all the way down to our highest-resolution imager which is a small telescope that will be able to do 1.5m per pixel,” he told BBC News.

…”We actually compress the high-definition video onboard satellite, which means we can stream it back to the ground and don’t need a huge amount of bandwidth.

“We’re actually using the same algorithm as Netflix to do the compression. Because we do all that in space, we can get back really high-definition videos just using flight-proven X-band transmitter.”

(19) MOORE, PLEASE! Cora Buhlert assesses a Retro-Hugo-eligible story in “Retro Review: ‘No Woman Born’ by C.L. Moore”. BEWARE SPOILERS.

“No Woman Born” is a novelette by C.L. Moore, which was first published in the December 1944 issue of Astounding Science Fiction and is therefore eligible for the 1945 Retro Hugos. The magazine version may be found online here.

(20) NEW TODAY. An interesting, nuanced review of FX on Hulu’s DEVS, created by Alex Garland (Ex Machina, Annihilation) which premieres today on Hulu. The Ringer’s Alison Herman says “‘Devs’ Is a TV Show—but It Feels Like Something Completely Different”. BEWARE SPOILERS.

There’s not much I can tell you about Devs. I can’t disclose, for instance, the precise nature of the show’s namesake, the top-secret research division of a Silicon Valley tech company named Amaya. I can’t reveal what Amaya’s gnomic founder, Forest (Nick Offerman), plans to do with Devs once its quantum computing system is perfected, nor the theoretical breakthroughs that lead to its perfection later in the limited series’ eight-episode season. I also can’t say why Devs was commissioned and paid for by FX but is available exclusively on Hulu in the latest wrinkle of the ongoing Disney-Fox merger, though that has more to do with reasons of personal comprehension than spoiler-dictated secrecy.

(21) VIDEO OF THE DAY. “Exploring the Surreal With Peter Capaldi” on YouTube is an introduction to surrealism, written by Jessica Lack, as part of the Tate Museum’s “Unlock Art” series.  And hey, it’s Peter Capaldi!

[Thanks to Meredith, John King Tarpinian, Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, Cat Eldridge, Chip Hitchcock, Martin Morse Wooster, Cat Eldridge, N., Daniel Dern, and Michael Toman for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Elton Jack Lint.]

55 thoughts on “Pixel Scroll 03/05/20 So Goodbye Yellowed Book Scroll, Where The Cats Of Society Riff

  1. (6) I can’t be the only one who really dislikes the second person POV can I?

  2. @Iphinome: It can be really annoying/gimmicky or just fall flat, but when a writer makes it work it can be really powerful in a unique way. Gene Wolfe’s The Island of Doctor Death and Other Stories, for example.

  3. 10) I haven’t read the Pyle Robin Hood yet, but I did like his King Arthur.

    I recently watched Hackers for the first time ever, and Penn Jillette had a small role there.

    I first really became aware of Matt Lucas from his performance as Chancellor Dongalor in Kröd Mändoon and the Flaming Sword of Fire.

  4. It’s rare that I don’t want to throw second person POV work across the room, but, for instance, Jemisin uses it effectively in the Broken Earth trilogy.

  5. Mike, you’re missing a number for the Hulu’s Devs item between (19) and (20). Maybe (19b)?

  6. (6) How could Sturgeon’s story “Bulkhead” have been omitted from a list of second-person SF tales? Not new enough? In any case, second-person narration (when I’ve encountered it) makes stories told in present tense a lot more tolerable.

    (8) I hadn’t heard of David Wise before, and I’m sorry that he died, but if he was indeed born in 1955, then he was a Clarion participant and sold a script to the Star Trek animated series while still a teenager. (ISFDB has his birth year as 1955 also, but I don’t know what their source was.)

  7. Mix Mat: Thanks for catching that. I just redid the numbers of the last two items — it’s early and I don’t think anybody has referenced them in comments yet. (Except us!)

  8. Gotacook says hadn’t heard of David Wise before, and I’m sorry that he died, but if he was indeed born in 1955, then he was a Clarion participant and sold a script to the Star Trek animated series while still a teenager. (ISFDB has his birth year as 1955 also, but I don’t know what their source was.)

    He was indeed born in 1955. He wasn’t that young at nineteen when he wrote that the Trek script.

  9. I know Mary R. for Mary Richards is just an example, but I prefer to think it was Mary Richards as in the character played by Mary Tyler Moore. What kind of fan fic would she have written, d’you think?

  10. (6) “And It Comes Out Here” by Lester Del Rey appeared in Galaxy in 1951 and uses 2nd person future.

  11. Yeah, I generally dislike the second person, but I’ve seen a few authors use it well. Jemisin, of course, was already mentioned. And Charles Stross did it so subtly in Halting State that I didn’t even realize while I was reading it. When someone online mentioned it, I actually had to go back and double-check before I could believe it.

  12. (1) Tempting fate. It’ll probably be the one that blows a fuse on sol 2.

  13. Ann Leckie uses second person very well in The Raven Tower – I think partly because of the way the narrator – the “I” who is adressing the “you” – gradually reveals itself and the relationship between the two.

    All things considered, I think second person POV is more often an effective tool than an annoying one – although that may be because it’s relatively rarely used.

  14. @Xtifr Halting State and Rule 34 were both slogs that I never went back and reread, every ‘You’ took me out of the story and into staring at words on a page.

    @Johan P I don’t think I even managed to get 20 pages into The Raven Tower before bouncing hard.

    Maybe there’s like something wrong with me.

  15. Bob Leman’s short story ‘Instructions’ is another written in the second person. The title pretty much tells you how and why it works.

    @Iphinome
    What if the story began “You enjoy reading works written in the second person”, though?

  16. @James Moar

    Close the book and walk away because I’m genre-savvy enough to know that this is the prolog and to keep reading is to be the corpse that turns up in chapter one. Wonder if I was having a dissociative episode. Possibly tell the town elders I’d been bewitched and not the good kind with Elizabeth Mongomery and Paul Lynde.

  17. If On A Winters Night A Traveller has alternate chapters in second person, and is fantastic. Pynchon, I seem to remember, sometimes uses it to great effect too. I was sufficiently influenced that I tried the technique for myself on a short. Most of the feedback I got was from people who didn’t like second-person points of view. But in case you’re in the other camp and curious…

    https://docs.google.com/document/d/12C1SPhjUQIzhSQvthA5S9JrVoTJYrVk7hZebvU0ydPk/edit?usp=sharing

  18. Second person present tense is quite common in interactive fiction – an art form which unfortunately tends to fall between “computer game” and “fiction” and often gets rejected by both camps for belonging to the other.

  19. I love second person. There’s some amazing stuff written in second person.

    (11) COMICS SECTION. Half Full shows us a vampire’s favorite fruit. Of course it is.

    Nah.

    Necktarines.

  20. @13: ah, an demonstration of my question of whether the first comma is necessary: should it be “Quick Henry, the flit”?

    @gottacook: I’m not sure how much is relatively-youthful unfamiliarity with the depth of the field and how much is playing to a perceived audience, but I’ve definitely noticed that many of the Tor category-samplers are light on older work. This may be partly my own perception, as I’m more likely to have read a story from the limited number available when I was young than from the torrent of stories today, but I’m pretty sure there’s some tilt. OTOH, there are usually plenty of readers who point out the older stories.

  21. Second person narratives are old hat these days. I think we need more stuff in first person plural, imperative mood, and future perfect tense. Let us have begun!

  22. I would read “Quick Henry, the flit”, as a noun phrase describing Quick Henry, while “Quick, Henry, the Flit” is a request to Henry to be quick and bring/use the Flit. Flit was a domestic insecticide, and the phrase is from a 20th century advertisement.

  23. Choose Your Own Adventure – not only custom-designed for second person, it’s right there in the title!

    In The Stand, the use of second person by one of the characters in his in-book writing is a sign that he’s a villain. I guess King must not like it much himself.

  24. Chip H.: No one at the Tor page has yet mentioned “Bulkhead” in the comments. Yes, the story is older than I am (slightly) but it had once been considered somewhat of a classic, so I recall. I do think Tor has been skewing youthful, not that this is a bad thing – in fact one of their recent hires is a friend and contemporary of my 23-year-old daughter.

    Cat: I didn’t mean to doubt the birth year of David Wise (the same year that “Bulkhead” appeared); I’m just surprised. I guess he had the connections from his Clarion experience.

  25. (6) 2nd person POVs — Sturgeon-wise, yes, Bulkhead, but also “The Man Who Lost The Sea” (I just rechecked to confirm).

  26. gottacook says Cat: I didn’t mean to doubt the birth year of David Wise (the same year that “Bulkhead” appeared); I’m just surprised. I guess he had the connections from his Clarion experience.

    Heaven forbid that we admit that he was just a good writer at that age and didn’t need connections to get the script accepted. Seriously surely we don’t know any other genre writers who got published at that age solely on the strength of their writing…

  27. @Joe H. I too just watched Hackers and saw Penn. As a movie, it’s become an interesting relic. I’m sure it was never a realistic portrayal of Hackers, but I love when they prove their knowledge by identifying key books and manuals.

    I think Penn should get at least some credit for Desert Bus simulator and the rest of the unpublished Smoke and Mirrors video games. Brilliant concept and the Desert Bus for Hope marathon sessions have raised over $6 million for charity.

    5) My first exposure to Dean Stockwell, that I remember, was a description of The Boy with Green Hair. It was described in a book of horror movies of all things. Didn’t make the connection to Quantum Leap until years later.

    It’s also Fred Williamson’s birthday. He was the original Dr. Oliver Jones in MASH and was in the Star Trek episode “The Cloud Minders”. He appeared in a lot of exploitation movies including 1990: The Bronx Warrior, The New Barbarians, Warriors of the Year 2072, and Children of the Corn V: Fields of Terror. (Plus Three the Hard Way which I consider one of the best of the Blaxploitation films.) He was in From Dusk Till Dawn, but most importantly he was in an episode of Supertrain.

    Scroll Speed Pixel Scroll!

    (Note: You can’t spell MASH with the asterisks because it attempts to format the letters.)

  28. Dean Stockwell’s birthday entry should say, “He was The Boss in The Time Guardian” (not “She was …”).

  29. Joshua K. Zsays Joshua K. on March 6, 2020 at 9:03 am said:
    Dean Stockwell’s birthday entry should say, “He was The Boss in The Time Guardian” (not “She was …”).

    Ahhh so that’s what happened! I thought it was a fragment from the previous entry that was dislocated. OGH, please corrected.

  30. Cat, I never meant to suggest that Wise’s script wasn’t worthy – merely that in addition, unlike other talented writers in 1973-74 trying to sell something to Filmation, he must have had the connections to bring it to the attention of people who decided which scripts to produce. Or a heck of an agent who could succeed in selling his script on the strength of an appearance in Clarion III (I once owned the first two paperbacks but not that one).

    Incidentally, regarding MASH: the TV series has the asterisks; the movie doesn’t.

  31. @Helen S.:

    I know Mary R. for Mary Richards is just an example, but I prefer to think it was Mary Richards as in the character played by Mary Tyler Moore. What kind of fan fic would she have written, d’you think?

    She would have written fan fic with spunk (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=etyO7T6WGwU)

    “Who can take a nothing Scroll, and suddenly make it all seem worthFile?”

  32. I find second person extremely off-putting. I’m not sure I’ve ever read any examples that clicked, but plenty of examples that just bounced off, hard.

  33. Mary Richards did try to be a creative writer in “Mary the Writer.” The episode is notable for Lou Grant reading the first paragraph* of “Red Wind” by Raymond Chandler to her. You can see the episode here. Skip to the 9th minute mark for the Chandler.

    They leave off the final sentence about getting a full glass of beer in cocktail lounge.

    “On nights like that every pixel scroll ends in a file.”

  34. 5) Just wanted to give a shout-out to Mike Resnick’s novel Santiago, which is my favorite out of his oeuvre. I’m not familiar with his short stories, but none of the other Resnicks that I have read really packed the punch of Santiago.

  35. ICFA will take place (I can’t copy the link!), although they’re issuing credits and refunds for cancellations.

  36. Kevin Standlee notes that Also among Penn Gillette’s genre credits I would include Penn & Teller’s Invisible Thread.

    I forgot about that series. It certainly is genre and is well worth seeing.

  37. @Iphinome: I don’t mind second person in flash fiction, but it rarely works for me in longer-form stories. The only counterexample I can think of is Jemisin’s Broken Earth trilogy.

    Meredith Moment: C.L. Polk’s Witchmark is on sale for $2.99.

  38. Speaking of variations on standard POV, I’m currently listening to The Deep by Rivers Solomon — which uses first person plural extensively, across multiple narrators. These various narrators are “Historians” of their people, and in that role they harbor the collective memories of their entire society — thus each Historian referring to themselves as a plural entity.

  39. @Rob Thornton: I’ve read a fair amount of Resnick’s short fiction, with mixed reactions, but yeah, Santiago is far and away my favorite work of his.

  40. I guess if I ever manage to sell the novella I have out on submission, I’ll find out whether people think I did second person well. (Though it’s only one of several POVs in the work, and the “you” isn’t the reader, but one character addressing another.)

    Currently posting from behind the FOGCon registration desk — having a great time, wish you all were here. (Well, some of you are, in fact.)

  41. @Steve Wright: or somebody could bring back first-person multiple, as seen in Sturgeon’s “Crate” — not (IIUC) like The Deep (per @Contrarius), where it sounds like the narrator is clear, but simply having every event narrated by a non-participant.

    @David Shallcross: well, yes, that was my point — although “flit” is a pretty mild term for AWGSDGHA.

  42. @Jack Lint: if you put backslashes in front of the asterisks you want to be asterisks, you get M*A*S*H.

  43. @Chip —

    not (IIUC) like The Deep (per @Contrarius), where it sounds like the narrator is clear, but simply having every event narrated by a non-participant.

    No, it’s like the royal “we” — each narrator is referring to themself as a plural — one body, multiple memories.

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