Pixel Scroll 1/21/18 Right Here In File City, Trouble With A Capital T, That Rhymes With P, And Stands For Pixel

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(1) COMPOSING SPACE OPERA. In this Twitter thread Cat Rambo captured the highlights of the Ann Leckie Space Opera class.

(2) WORLDCON 76 ACADEMIC TRACK ADDS PRIZE. The Heinlein Society’s Board of Directors has authorized a $250 cash prize to be awarded to the “Best Paper Presented at the 2018 World Science Fiction Convention’s Academic Track.”  President Keith Kato says “The final evaluation process is under discussion, but will likely involve a judging panel.”

The concom has extended the deadline for Academic Track papers to March 1 as a result.  This prize is not the William H. Patterson, Jr., Prize which is evaluated annually by the Society for the best Heinlein-related academic paper in a particular calendar year.

In addition, The Heinlein Society will be teaming with the Center for Ray Bradbury Studies and The Arthur C. Clarke Foundation for Academic Track papers, and possibly other con activities.

(3) HOW CAN THEY EVER RESPECT US AGAIN? She blabs a trade secret to The Guardian: “Margaret Atwood: ‘I am not a prophet. Science fiction is really about now’”.

“I’m not a prophet,” she says. “Let’s get rid of that idea right now. Prophecies are really about now. In science fiction it’s always about now. What else could it be about? There is no future. There are many possibilities, but we do not know which one we are going to have.” She is, however, “sorry to have been so right”. But, with her high forehead and electric halo of curls, there is something otherworldly about Atwood. Dressed in one of her trademark jewel-coloured scarfs and a necklace of tiny skulls, she cuts a striking figure outside the cafe in Piccadilly where we are huddled.

(4) OUTSIDE SFWA. Vox Day’s post “SFWA rejects Jon Del Arroz” [at the Internet Archive], in which the expelled member condemns and reviles the organization’s decision to refuse admittance to JDA, publishes what is represented to be the text of SFWA’s notification to JDA.

(5) DILLMAN OBIT. Actor Bradford Dillman died January 16 at the age of 87. Some of his better-known roles included Robert Redford’s best friend in 1973’s The Way We Were, and two appearances in Clint Eastwood Dirty Harry movies.

His genre work included TV shows like The Wild, Wild West; Mission: Impossible; Thriller; Wonder Woman; The Incredible Hulk; and The Man From U.N.C.L.E. In the movie Escape From The Planet Of The Apes he was the kind Dr. Dixon who helps Cornelius and Zira evade capture. He also starred in Bug, and appeared in Swarm, and Pirhana.

(6) COMICS SECTION.

  • John King Tarpinian didn’t look to see if this was really in the Old Testament, he just laughed: Bizarro.
  • Chip Hitchcock has his eye on the same cartoon series. He noted that this Bizarro shows new job opportunities, and another Bizarro tells us that even ~gods apprentice:

(7) DREAM HOME. In a hole in the ground there stayed a tourist — “Calling all ‘Lord of the Rings’ fans! You can spend the night in a real-life hobbit hole”.

Wolfe relied on the construction know-how she’d picked up from her parents — her mother remodeled houses when Wolfe was a child — and brought in a backhoe to clear the land. Wolfe needed to ensure the hobbit hole could hold the foot of dirt she planned to place on the roof, so she used marine-grade, pressure-treated wood.

“Any time you put dirt on top of a house, when that dirt gets wet, it’s basically having a swimming pool on top of your house,” she added. “It’s a lot of weight.”

Up next: an entrance fit for a hobbit. Wolfe wanted a signature round entryway, which she created using an industrial-sized cable spool. She enlisted a local designer to craft the hinges and the opening to the 288-square-foot space. He repurposed a trailer hitch to build the door handle.

When guests enter through the circular portal, they immediately stand in the bedroom. To the right is a fireplace, which helps heat the home in the winter, along with a woodworker’s bench. To the left is the bathroom, complete with a large wooden tub…

 

(8) WHO OWNS WHAT? THIRD BASE! At Plagiarism Today, they take on “The Strange Copyright of Doctor Who”.

Exterminate… Exterminate the copyright!

….It’s a bizarre show, even for science fiction. However, a recent news story highlighted an even stranger part of the series.

Shortly after the airing of the 2017 Christmas Special, which marked the end of Peter Capaldi’s run as The Doctor and introduced Jodie Whittaker, the series first female Doctor, a copyright controversy arose.

According to The Mirror, the estate of Marvyn Haisman, the creator of Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart, took issue with the episode introducing a new character that turned out to be Lethbridge-Stewart’s grandfather. Lethbridge-Stewart is popular character from the series that they hold the rights to.

Though later reports have downplayed the dispute, the story raised an interesting question: Why was one of the series’ most popular characters not controlled by the BBC, which produces the show?

It turns out though that Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart is far from alone in his bizarre copyright status. Many of the show’s iconic characters are controlled, at least in part, by outside entities. The list includes both the robotic dog K9 and even The Daleks themselves.

How did this happen? The answer is both complicated and simple at the same time but it all centers around how the series was written during its early years.

(9) WE INTERRUPT THIS MAELSTROM. Here is the kind of thing people discuss on days when the news cycle isn’t spinning like mad. Or if they need a break on a day when it is.

(10) MOONDUST AND SAND. Andy Weir was the subject of a podcast with Tyler Cowen (“Conversations With Tyler.”) Martin Morse Wooster says, “I’m sure it’s good because Cowen is a good interviewer.”

Martin adds: I learned about this by listening to Cowen’s podcast with New York Times columnist Ross Douthat, which has quite a lot of sf content.  Douthat explained that he wanted to be a fantasy novelist, but settled for being an opinion journalist.  He talks about how Watership Down is his favorite fantasy novel, and about ten minutes of the hour and a half podcast is devoted to a discussion of Dune with an emphasis on the Butlerian Jihad.  The interview revealed that, along with Paul Krugman, there are two New York Times columnists who know a great deal about sf.” — Ross Douthat on Narrative and Religion (Ep. 32).

[Thanks to JJ, Keith Kato, Cat Rambo, Cat Eldridge, John King Tarpinian, Chip Hitchcock, Martin Morse Wooster, Carl Slaughter, Will R., and Andrew Porter for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Steve Davidson.]

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106 thoughts on “Pixel Scroll 1/21/18 Right Here In File City, Trouble With A Capital T, That Rhymes With P, And Stands For Pixel”

  1. Big day tomorrow in arranging for my mother’s continued care — prayer and your good wishes appreciated.

    Meantime, a bantam-sized Scroll. But JJ has volunteered to pick up the slack tomorrow — yay!

  2. 4) The link doesn’t seem to work. But I’m surfing from my phone, so maybe that has something to do with it?

    eta — and best wishes to your mom and your efforts for her!

    eta again — never mind, I think I fixed it. The wayback site asked if I wanted to save that page, I did, and now it works!

  3. Best of luck, Mike, and hoping it goes as smoothly as can be hoped!

    (4) Hm, I see that VD is still prone to public bouts of delusional hysteria. So, no change there.

    I assume he got the letter from JdA. In it, SFWA cites the following reasons for rejecting JdA’s application:

    “Examples of behavior from the past year:

    1. Threatening to film people without their consent at private SFWA functions.
    2. Soliciting people on social media, including Facebook, Gab, and Twitter, in order to “troll” and harass other professional authors, including SFWA members and board officers.
    3. Accusing SFWA of “doxxing” your children, supporting pedophiles, racism, among other attacks.”

    It does not appear to have occurred to either VD or JdA that if he’s that desperate to join SFWA (and his online chest-beating and wailing about the rejection seems to indicate that he is), the first and most proactive step he can take is to stop engaging in such behavior and then apply again in a couple of years. If the letter is real, then SFWA has been specific and provided him with a roadmap for improving his chances of acceptance, after all.

    Pull yourself together, man, and take your fate into your own hands!

    (7) OMG, OMG, OMG! I want to stay there! No, I want to live there! (But my books wouldn’t fit. Probably my pets wouldn’t fit, either…)

  6. It does not appear to have occurred to either VD or JdA that if he’s that desperate to join SFWA

    He’s not desperate to join SFWA. He’s desperate to gin up a controversy where he can claim to be a victim to promote himself.

    Had SFWA let him in, he’d troll and harass people to gin up controversy; since they didn’t let him in he’s fustering about that.

    The controversy, the victim sweater and the self-promotion are the point. Because he wants to follow the successful trail to “Who’s that?” that Theodore Beale has blazed.

  7. “Welcome to 770 land, where the Filers are true, the Scrolls are fast, and the Pixels are very, very square.”

  9. 1) Some excellent advice there. I don’t write, but a lot of it should be useful when I run tabletop RPGs.

  10. @Kurt Busiek: Actually, I think the title VD has and del Arroz aspires to is “Oh, that asshole.”

    Pure speculation on my part, but I’d guess that the inspiration behind this was disappointment over the fact that despite Beale’s dire warnings, the witch-hunt of conservatives in SFWA never materialized: my suspicion is that the ideal victory condition (since of course all endings are victories when you’re playing nine-dimensional chess) was for del Arroz to join and promptly get himself kicked out, whereupon he and VD would make much hay of this apparent evidence of the witch-hunt. So, good on SFWA for dodging that one.

    @Mike: Best wishes to you and your mother.

  12. 7) The thing about staying in this house as a Hobbit hole, though, is that it misses the crucial sense of community that Hobbits have. Hobbit holes and homes don’t exist in isolation because Hobbits don’t. Sure you can bed down there, but you won’t smell Mrs. Morris one hole up cooking the bacon, or the cries of little baby Jake that you can hear all along the lane. It looks nice to stay in, but the verisimilitude, for me, would need something greater.

    Good luck, Mr. Glyer for you and your Mom.

  22. (9) Kirk, and the song would be “If I Were King of the Forest.”

    Though he’s probably aged out by now, Shatner is one of my top choices for an imagined re-casting of THE WIZARD OF OZ. (Failing Shat, we might take a flyer on Arnold.) For the Tin Woodman, Christopher Walken. For the Scarecrow, Bill Irwin. For the Wizard, John Goodman (nobody can do fake sincerity like him). As to Dorothy, by the time I become aware of good child actresses, the ‘child’ part has dropped away.

    Anyway, I’d love to feed Bill his cues. Hey, I played the Scarecrow!

  27. (4) I’ll point out once more that despite various melodramatic reactions in to SFWA’s decision, this incident is not in any way special to SFWA (or to JdA). Many organizations, including other writing organizations, have guidelines or standard procedures which ensure they can reject a qualified applicant if there is reason to believe the applicant would be a detriment to the organization.

  29. 4) Who?

    6) Bizarro is a continuing source of wonderful and weird humor. I’ve been following Dan Piraro’s work since the mid-1990s, and he never fails to deliver.

  30. Well wishes and luck wishes to Mike and his mother and family.

    ___________

    Picard (well, Patrick Stewart) in a heartbeat for karaoke, but not sure what songs are popular for karaoke duets and I’d want to re-hear his vocal range before I picked anything. I might just give him the choice…

  31. Best wishes to you and your mom, Mike.
    (5): The main thing I remember Dillman from is the role of Pickman in the Night Gallery adaptation of Pickman’s Model.

  34. Good luck and best wishes to you, Mike. I’ve had to make two round trips across the Sierra Nevada in the past two weekends dealing with sister in the ICU and a long-term-care facility, my mother’s legal documents, and my late grandfather’s estate, so I have great empathy for you here.

  36. Definitely Picard, and it would be “Don’t Fence Me In” or possibly “Red River Valley.”

    Best wishes, Mike!

  39. Also amused that VD pins the blame on SFWA letting McCaffrey and her fantasy girl cooties in, considering that steampunk (del Arroz’s chosen genre) is well on the fantasy side of the SFF scale. (Which is not a criticism of steampunk — I tend to prefer fantasy in general — but it definitely fails any plausibility test one might apply to SF.)

  40. Laura Resnick on January 22, 2018 at 7:19 am said:
    Including fan organizations – I belong to one where all membership applications are voted on by the Board of Directors. (Expelling members is much more difficult than admitting them.)

  42. All the best, Mike!

    “One side of this pixel will make you scroll taller and one side will make you scroll smaller”

  43. Best of luck with the arrangements, Mike, and may your mother be comfortable and well cared for. (I hope that’s an appropriate wish. I’m getting a vibe that “get well soon” may not be the right thing to say, necessarily.)

  50. Doctor Science on January 22, 2018 at 11:11 am said:
    Oh FFS

    Yeah, the folks at MGC are having a collective fit of stupidity and malice at the moment.

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