(1) COMICS PORTRAYALS. Peter David has changed his tune — “Final Thoughts on the Romani”.
So now that the dust of the convention has settled, I’ve had a good deal of time to assess my behavior regarding the Romani and my conduct during the convention. I’ve read many of the links that were sent my way and really thought about what I witnessed two decades ago back in Bucharest. And I’ve been assessing my actions during the panel that lead to all this.
After all that, I have to conclude that I’m ashamed of myself.
I want you to understand: when the Romani rep tried to shift the focus of the panel from gays and lesbians to the Romani, suddenly I was twenty years younger and the trauma of what I saw and what I was told slammed back through me. What screamed through my mind was, “Why should I give a damn about the Romani considering that the Bucharest Romani are crippling their children?” And I unleashed that anger upon the questioner, for no reason. None. There is no excuse.
But the more I’ve read, the more convinced I’ve become that what I saw was indeed examples, not of children crippled by parents, but children suffering from a genetic disorder. The pictures are simply too identical. I cannot come to any other reasonable conclusion.
(2) ALIENIST. The BBC profiles H. R. Giger, “The man who created the ultimate alien”:
At that time, HR Giger was already a successful painter whose bleak visions in a style that he termed biomechanics were widely distributed: in the form of popular poster editions that appeared in the late 1960s; in the large-format illustrated book Necronomicon, which he designed himself; and on album covers such as Emerson, Lake & Palmer’s 1973 release Brain Salad Surgery. But the project he was now working on would make him both a worldwide cult figure and an Oscar winner. Director Ridley Scott had hired Giger to create the monster in the movie Alien. So the artist went to the Shepperton Film Studios near London to realize his designs for the world of the alien with his own hand.
One painting had immediately convinced Scott to get Giger involved in shaping the alien creature: Necronom IV (1976). It shows in profile the upper body of a being with only remotely humanoid traits. Its skull is extremely elongated, and its face is almost exclusively reduced to bared teeth and huge insect-like eyes. Hoses extend from its neck and its back is dominated by tubular extensions and reptilian tails. In order to turn this painted creature into a monster for a movie, the artist had to submit it to a complex transformation. Giger developed a complete “natural history” of the alien based on the screenplay, which ultimately produced the final monster of the film. The process results in a unique mixture of fascination and disgust. Giger’s monster represents a turning point in science fiction and horror movies, to which Alien brought a deadly lifeform from space that had never been seen before.
(3) VOICES IN HIS HEAD. Andrew Liptak discusses “How writing an audio-first novella changed John Scalzi’s writing process” at The Verge.
The Dispatcher is firmly urban fantasy, which had its own particular challenges for Scalzi. Science fiction comes out of a tradition of realism, where everything is explained. “To sit there and write something and know that I’m not going to assign it a rational basis made me itchy,” he says. “Part of my brain went ‘you should try and explain this!’ It goes against everything I believe.”
Writing an audio-first story also had its challenges. “It makes you pay attention to things like dialogue where you really do want to make sure [it sounds] reasonably like humans speaking,” Scalzi says. One of the changes he made was in how he used dialogue tags such as “he said / she said,” which work in written books but aren’t necessarily useful for a listener. “It sounds like a small thing, but when someone is speaking what you’re writing, those small things add up.”
Scalzi also focused on making sure each character had their own distinctive voice.
(4) IT’S CLOBBERIN’ TIME. The Traveler at Galactic Journey is smack in the middle of the Silver Age of Comics — “[Oct. 7, 1971] That’s Super! (Marvel Comics’ The Fantastic Four)”.
The other day at the local newsstand, a new comic book caught my eye. It was a brand new one from Marvel Comics, the spiritual successors of Atlas Comics, which went under late last decade. Called The Fantastic Four, and brought to us by the creator of Captain America (Jack Kirby), it features the first superheroes I’ve seen in a long time – four, in fact! We are introduced to the quartet in media res on their way to answer a call to assembly: Sue Storm, who can turn invisible at will; her brother, Johnny Storm, who bursts into flame and can fly; Ben Grimm, a hulking, orange rocky beast; and Dr. Reed Richards, who possesses the power of extreme elasticity.
(5) TODAY IN HISTORY
- October 10, 1965 – The Red Baron first appeared in Peanuts comic strip.
(6) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY BOYS
- Born October 10, 1924 — Ed Wood (Plan 9 from Outer Space)
- Born October 10, 1959 — Bradley Whitford (The Cabin in the Woods)
(7) ED WOOD FICTION. Incidentally, O/R Books has published Blood Splatters Quickly, the collected short stories of Edward D. Wood Jr.
Even if you think you don’t know him, you know him. Few in the Hollywood orbit have had greater influence; few have experienced more humiliating failure in their lifetime. Thanks in part to the biopic directed by Tim Burton, starring Johnny Depp and bearing his name, Ed Wood has become an icon of Americana.
Perhaps the purest expression of Wood’s théma—pink angora sweaters, over-the-top violence and the fraught relationships between the sexes—can be found in his unadulterated short stories, many of which (including “Blood Splatters Quickly”) appeared in short-lived “girly” magazines published throughout the 1970s. The 32 stories included here, replete with original typos, lovingly preserved, have been verified by Bob Blackburn, a trusted associate of Kathy Wood, Ed’s widow. In the forty years or more since those initial appearances in adult magazines, none of these stories has been available to the public.
(8) SMOFCON SOUTH. Conrunners of the Antipodes, you are summoned to SmofCon South, to be held in Wellington. New Zealand December 3-4, 2016.
Announcing SmofCon South!
Come one, come all! We will be running SmofCon South in Wellington. New Zealand from December 3rd to 4th, 2016. This is run at this time to try to hook into the resources and people of SmofCon 34, taking place the same weekend in Chicago, USA. A Smofcon is a convention about running conventions. It’s an excellent opportunity to meet other con runners, and to learn from them. SmofCon South will be primarily focused on running Worldcons or other large events. This event will be very valuable for people who have volunteered to help run a New Zealand Worldcon. We want to encourage you to come along and meet other people you may be working with, and gain insights and knowledge about how Worldcons work.
Details
Smofcon South will be held 3-4 December (with a meetup dinner for those who arrive on Friday).
Venue is the same as Aucontraire 3, the CQ Hotel complex, 223 Cuba St, Te Aro, Wellington.
We are skyping in with Smofcon 34, being held in Chicago, for a few sessions. Breaking News: Also a hook up with Japan.
(9) MORE RADCHAAI LOOT. This charm bracelet is perfect for the Ancillary fan in your life. Bring the Fleet Captain, Translator, First Lieutenant, and themes of the series, like tea, magic bullets, spaceships, and music into your daily life with this charm bracelet.
https://twitter.com/knitspinquilt/status/784486063687528449
(10) BETTER USE OF TIME. Steven H Silver writes, “Last night, instead of watching the debate, Elaine and I watched the Gene Wilder/Richard Pryor movie See No Evil, Hear No Evil. A couple of early scenes are set at a newstand run by Wilder’s character. In the background I could make out Frederik Pohl’s The Coming of the Quantum Cats, Greg Bear’s The Forge of God, and Piers Anthony’s Faith of Tarot.”
Also recognizable:
A.A. Attanasio’s Radix, Jack Chalker’s Dance Band on the Titanic, and Cllifford D. Simak’s Highway to Eternity.
(11) HE PEEKED. One of Satchel Paige’s rules to live by was, “Don’t look back. Something may be gaining on you.” Dave Langford didn’t follow Satchel’s advice when he had a strange feeling he was being followed….
For a moment, when I saw the part-obscured back of a coffee-vending van in Reading town centre, I felt F770 was following me around. But it was all a quaint illusion.
[Thanks to Dave Langford, Chip Hitchcock, JJ, Steven H Silver, Jeffrey Smith, and John King Tarpinian for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Bill.]
Discover more from File 770
Subscribe to get the latest posts to your email.
“With all these pixels,” said the lad, still filing enthusiastically, “There must be a scroll in here somewhere!”
The (almost first!) Seven Scroll Pixel
Got Alan Moore’s Jerusalem from the Science Fiction Book Club. 1250 or so pages to go, I believe.
(Third….sigh)
(9) I haven’t even read the books and I covet that bracelet.
Infogalactic Fourth?
“Why should I give a damn about the Romani considering that the Bucharest Romani are crippling their children?”
He was TOLD that Romani in Bucharest were crippling children. By a non-Romani guide. And of course there’s no instances of Europeans saying horrible things about Romani, or executing them en masse or anything.
Jebus Flonking Chris. What a Richard.
(1) COMICS PORTRAYALS.
For context on this, it’s probably best to read his earlier post on this subject first.
Karl Bolko Freiherr von Richthofen, the youngest brother of die Rote Kampffleiger Freiherr Manfred von Richthofen, died in 1971. Does anyone know if he had ever expressed an opinion about “Sparky” Schultz and the dog?
#6: a nitpick: AFAICR the Red Baron never actually \appeared/ in Peanuts; he was always just offstage (off-panel?). There ought to be a word for this (to distinguish from the first appearance of, say, Peppermint Patty (August 22, 1966, says Wikipedia)) but damfino what it is.
Someone somewhere in the last couple comment threads was noting that Dave Weingart’s Worldcon-related Facebook and LJ posts were no longer public; here’s his explanation:
Also visible in the (10) movie still is The Annals of the Heechee by Frederik Pohl, at the upper right corner. There are two books that can be seen to be by Marge Piercy, one of which is probably Woman on the Edge of Time. Right below Highway to Eternity there’s a book by John Dalmas; a little bit of research identifies it as Return to Fanglith.
A better view of the books behind Gene Wilder:
https://youtu.be/PFWkvvMxIXw?t=865
(1) At least in the aftermath of his bad behavior, he decided to examine the facts, has learned better, and regrets his bad behavior.
::ticky::
All of the books:
Top Row, L-R:
Andrew M. Greeley, Patience of a Saint
TV Crosswords magazine
Frederick Pohl, Gateway
Frederick Pohl, The Annals of the Heechee
Marge Piercy, Gone to Soldiers [cover #1]
2nd Row
Scott Turow, Presumed Innocent
Harvey & Marilyn Diamond, Fit for Life II: Living Health
P. D. James, A Taste for Death
A.A. Attanasio, Radix
Andrew M. Greeley, Patience of a Saint
P. D. James, A Taste for Death
3rd Row
Robert A. Heinlein, Time Enough for Love
Marge Piercy, Gone to Soldiers [cover #2]
Jack Chalker, Dance Band on the Titanic,
Clifford D. Simak, Highway to Eternity
Greg Bear, Forge of God
Marge Piercy, Gone to Soldiers [cover #1]
4th Row
Frederik Pohl, The Coming of the Quantum Cats
Piers Anthony, Faith of Tarot
TV Crosswords magazine
John Dalmas, Return to Fanglith
Marge Piercy, Gone to Soldiers [cover #3]
Joseph D McNamara, Fatal Command
5th Row
Gore Vidal, Empire: A Novel
Sidney Sheldon, Windmills of the Gods
TV Crosswords magazine
F. M. Busby, The Breeds of Man
(1) Four days from “unexamined, deeply-ingrained, near-violent prejudice” to “unqualified apology” actually sounds REALLY good.
I mean, not to excuse or make light of the incident, nor the underlying prejudice.
But when prejudice like that bubbles to the surface (which it will certainly do, here and there), this is exactly the kind of processing, introspection, and humility that we hope and ask for.
The fact that it takes a few days to get there… seems forgivable, to me. Could be better, sure, but given strong bias, some time to process and cut through the bias makes sense. (And it’s the internet, so yeah, we got constant updates and verdicts on a four-day process.)
As a very, very side note: an apology right on time for Yom Kippur is kind of nice, too 🙂
For homegrown alien invasions, screwworm is back in the US!
It’s a flesh-eating nasty that is quite dreadful to livestock (particularly sheep) deer and occasionally us, and was mostly eradicated by releasing sterile males–one of the first big uses of that as a control. There was a huge international push, buuuut….that didn’t extend to Cuba. So now screwworm has shown up in Florida again, and there’s a chance it’s from increased trade with Cuba.
I can find it morbidly fascinating from my amateur naturalist stance, but practically speaking, they’ve got to get ahead of this. This is one of those major scourges that nobody’s heard about kinda things, but given how well they’re handling Zika, I’m not all that hopeful.
Reading Recommendation: The Reader by Traci Chee
YA fantasy set in a world where written language is almost completely unknown. Sefia is a mysterious orphan who has been on the run with her aunt since the murder of her father by forces unknown; during her escape, she came across a strange rectangular object full of marked paper which she has been carrying around ever since, realising it is important to her parents but not really understanding why. Spoiler alert: this is a book. Aunt is captured, Sefia uses her epic survival skills to avoid capture and look for her aunt, finds and rescues boy her age from brutal captivity, various intertwining adventures result relating to provenance, properties and value of said book.
So if you’re not a fan of YA (mildly indulgent dystopian angst, secondary world with a premise which doesn’t really make sense if you think about it too hard but shhh go with it, and a writing style which initially goes quite heavy on the:
Here is a realisation in a sentence which has its own paragraph.
This realisation is reinforced by another single sentence paragraph.
style of writing), this probably isn’t the book that will change your mind. But if you’re on board with all of those things, this is a brilliantly readable, inventive example of its genre which really pulled me in and swept me along through a surprisingly complex and layered plot. Rather than getting bogged down in the details of how people conduct trade and politics and maintain an apparently early modern level of technology without written language, Chee mostly focuses her “what ifs” on what living in such a world would do to people’s ideas of identity and legend, and there’s a lot of emphasis on being memorable and living beyond death in story which gels really nicely with some of the other elements in the book. There’s also a range of diverse characters, and particularly a lot of roles for characters with disabilities (and the book cover is not whitewashed!) The weaving of the multiple narratives makes things feel very fast paced at the start, though once some of the strands start coming together it does slow a bit. Be warned, the ending is not really much of a resolution and sequels are obviously on their way.
Content advisory: a lot of physical and psychological torture and kids who are put through stress and trauma – nothing that felt beyond the pale for YA though. Also a wee bit of off screen cannibilism….!
@RedWombat: For homegrown alien invasions, screwworm is back in the US!
This has a particularly SFnal connection, of course, because of Raccoona Sheldon’s “The Screwfly Solution”.
(1) That’s a really good apology. Although a little passive-aggressive at the end.
(6) Bradley Whitford was also in an early X-Files episode, as well as serving at the pleasure of the President we all wish we could vote for.
(10) as ID’d by Bill: I’ve read a surprising number of those.
Bravo for Weingart’s statement. He’s less ept than he ought to be socially, but he’s done right there.
Worldcon aplogizes for grave misshandling of personnel issue
Worldcon 75 clarifies things around its staff issues, including apologising for the mistakes its made in how things have been handled:
htttp://www.worldcon.fi/20161011_statement/
The tl;dr is that the CoC is coming on the 31st of October.
(Also, 13 innings? Is this cricket or baseball?)
(7) Best date I ever went on was to an all day Ed Wood film marathon
I’m glad to see a signed statement on Worldcon75’s website. People will complain about the Facebook thread being removed, but no doubt plenty of people have taken screenshots. I think it will help to not have the continuous commenting keeping the aggro going.
There is going to be a lot of ground to be made up in repairing trust over this.
Yep, removing the facebook post was a very good idea.
Speaking of, have we had The Scrollfly Solution yet?
Oneiros: Speaking of, have we had The Scrollfly Solution yet?
No, no, it’s The Scrollfile Solution.
You just scroll to the left
And they pixel to the right
It’s the File 770 Shuffle.
There it was staring me in the face and I missed it
The BBC on detecting nuclear explosions. Search for “teenager” to see the latest BBC-approved euphemism. Reminds me of the seismograph display in Harvard’s Science Center ~25 years ago:
How about that Lewis classic, “The Scrolltape Letters”?
For the Godzilla fans, the latest movie is having a limited theatrical run with subtitles right now in the US and Canada.
Seeing it tonight. 🙂
Let’s Scroll the Pixels and Dance
Let’s scroll,
Put on your pixels and dance the scrolls
Let’s scroll
Under the pixels, the scrollious pixels
and if you say tick, I’ll tick with you
If you say fifth, we’ll fifth
Because this pixel scroll
Would break this blog in two
If you should post, into this file
And tremble like a pix-el
@Camestros
Bravo! Encore!
All Pixels Turn When the File Scrolls By
(5) I was trying to think of other Peanuts characters who are mentioned but not seen. If we limit it to the strip, the most famous would be the Little Red-Haired Girl. (She shows up in various TV specials and I always thought that was a mistake.) There’s the big cat next door who terrorizes Snoopy. Most (or all) of the adults including Joe Shlabotnik. Others?
We’ve pixeled too far to scroll up who we are
So let’s raise the bar and our cups to the stars
She’s up all night to the scroll
I’m up all night to get scroll
She’s up all night for good scroll
I’m up all night to get pixels
I get a little bit Genghis Scroll
Don’t want you to Pixel on
With anyone else but me…
Jack Lint said:
“Ma’am” the teacher springs to mind.
As does Miss Othmar, another teacher.
Wikipedia has a List of Minor Characters in Peanuts and it’s interesting the ones who were before my time and the ones I barely remember. A full set of Fantagraphics Complete Peanuts would come in handy here.
Anyone remember Morag? The original pencil pal strips were before my time, but I don’t remember her name being revealed in 1994.
And did those scrolls in ancient times walk upon England’s pixels green
Chariots of File?
pretty sad reading here …
maybe a little charity would open some hearts?
@clif: He’s made his career out of spewing hatred and bile. Let him reap the whirlwind.
Mr. Mksyzpxlscrll.
Bruce Baugh
Looks like we had that one a couple of times, and that’s just with the permutation I searched on. It even rode the float once… wait, that’s Comics Curmudgeon jargon. It was on the front page, in a round-up of File770 poetry this year. That only proves you had a good idea.
clif: pretty sad reading here … maybe a little charity would open some hearts?
Yes, it’s sad. I feel sorry for the persons on the periphery who are affected by this, who don’t deserve to suffer, and whom I would be glad to help.
But I can not in good conscience give funds to someone when those funds will (directly or indirectly) subsidize that person’s efforts to cause harm to other people based on their gender or sexual orientation.
Perhaps one of the churches which share his philosophies will be willing to help him out. 😐
Hard times are, in fact, hard, and I wouldn’t wish financial bad times on anyone.
In fact, I do have a small amount of spare money that I dole out through Patreon and GoFundMe mostly to people trying to do the creative thing and still live.
There are a lot of fine people I admire, and whose work I enjoy, and I’ll tighten the belt a bit to throw a little money in their direction to make things go just a little easier for them.
Maybe this gives me a tiny role in the creation of the kind of work I love to see.
[Money, see where mouth is.]
But I don’t see why I would support a writer whose work I don’t enjoy, when he, in fact, seems to make a point of not writing to my tastes.
There are a lot of hungry artists out there, and I can’t help them all, not even all the ones I’d like to.
I certainly don’t have enough spare cash to start sending money to people whose hate-mongering targets people I love.
You know, like my gay kid and her wife.
Why would I want to do anything to free up his time so he can write more, blog more, about things I find actually, you know, painful?
He’s got a rabid fanbase, a like-minded wealthy hobby publisher buddy, and presumably a church community
They are welcome to have his back.