Pixel Scroll 11/29/18 It Is By Tickboxes Alone I Set My Scroll In Pixels.

(1) NO ESCAPE. Lila Shapiro interview N.K. Jemisin for Vulture: “For Reigning Fantasy Queen N.K. Jemisin, There’s No Escape From Reality”. The cut line adds: “I’m writing about dragons as a black woman, and it’s fucking political.”

Jemisin was a dreamy kid, but she was practical, too. She didn’t think it was possible for a black woman to have a career as a fantasy writer. So when it came time for her to choose a profession, she followed the example of her mother, a psychologist who administered IQ tests. Jemisin studied psychology at Tulane and the University of Maryland and got a job as a career counselor specializing in what she describes as “at risk” populations — marginalized groups, first-generation students, older people having midlife crises. When she turned 30, she had her own crisis. Swimming in student debt, she decided to try to make a little side money from her lifelong hobby. “I thought, well I have this talent, I haven’t monetized it,” Jemisin recalls. “I don’t know if I can because I don’t think that the publishing marketplace is really interested in what I write, but if I can at least develop it to get a few hundred dollars a month, that will make a difference.”

Her first short story was published two years later, in 2004. The next year, an agent picked the manuscript of Jemisin’s first novel out of the slush pile. The agent, Lucienne Diver, was struck by the setting, a fantastical realm inspired by ancient Egypt, and by the characters, who were nearly all black. “I’ve been reading fantasy all my life, and so much sounds the same,” Diver tells me. “Nora’s book was not like anything else I’d ever read.”

(2) BRITISH ANIMATION. BBC’s snips from a program to be available later — “From propaganda to Plasticine: Six secrets of British animation”. First snip — Aardman Studios’ first output, “Morpho”, has been a UK TV hit for 4 decades but isn’t profitable.

Morph didn’t make any money

Morph, the funny figure made of brown clay who lived in a microscope box, was the original star of Aardman Animations, who went on to create Wallace and Gromit, Shaun the Sheep and Timmy Time. “Made from a simple bit of clay, he’s practically a mascot for animation,” says the documentary.

Created by David Sproxton and Peter Lord, Morph has been on the go for four decades: from children’s TV with Tony Hart in the 70s to CBBC’s SMart in the 90s and his current YouTube channel full of claymation antics.

However, despite being synonymous with British animation, he isn’t profitable. Peter Lord says: He wasn’t a financial success really at all, which surprises everyone I think because he’s been a popular success, a cultural success but not economic.” Co-creator David Sproxton adds: “We’ve never made any money out of Morph and we still don’t, we just love doing him.”

(3) BLURB KARMA. Jeff VanderMeer has not forgotten!

And this just goes on gets funnier…

(4) ANOTHER NEW STROKE FOR ADULT SWIM. The Hollywood Reporter reveals “‘Blade Runner’ Anime Series Coming to Adult Swim”.

The Blade Runner universe is expanding again with an anime series that will air on Adult Swim in the U.S.

The cable channel has partnered with Alcon Television Group and anime streaming outlet Crunchyroll to produce Blade Runner — Black Lotus, a 13-episode series inspired by 2017’s Blade Runner 2049, the sequel to Ridley Scott’s 1982 classic.

(5) 2019 NZ NATCON. GeyserCon 2019 is New Zealand’s 40th National Science Fiction and Fantasy Convention, to be held in Rotorua from May 31-June 3, 2019. They have posted their preliminary program schedule.

(6) UNUSUAL READING EXPERIENCE. John A Arkansawyer sends the link to The Cliff Nest with the recommendation, “I haven’t had a chance to give it the full read, but it’s an interesting idea and readable so far.”

The Cliff Nest is a book published as a serial of posts. The top main page will always show the latest published issue in the serial.

In order to start reading from the beginning, go to the story mode, which will sort the posts from the very first onward so you can read it like a book.

The book will include multiple cybersecurity and/or technical challenges which will invite the readers to look around the internet. Some are part of the story, while others will ask the readers to propose a solution with a character name that will tell the solution in the story.

The best proposed solution and character name (with minor adjustments to align with the story) will become part of the story.

(7) DAREDEVIL CHOPPED. Ars Technica invites fans to the funeral: “The bloodbath continues: Netflix cancels Daredevil after three seasons”.

Clearly Netflix is cleaning house, since this follows surprise cancellations in October of Iron Fist and Luke Cage. That just leaves Jessica Jones and The Punisher on Netflex’s roster of Defenders. Both have new seasons in the pipeline that are currently slated to air on Netflix as planned, according to Deadline’s sources. But they will, in all likelihood, be on the chopping block eventually as well.

All this further fuels speculation that Disney/Marvel may resurrect all the cancelled series when it launches its new streaming service. Indeed, the Netflix statement hints as much.

(8) MORE ABOUT SPONGEBOB. The Washington Post’s Michael Cavna reminds readers “‘SpongeBob’ creator Stephen Hillenburg raised our spirits — and ocean awareness”.

It took a fair amount of imagination for Hillenburg even to envision a career in animation. Born in Oklahoma to a teacher and a draftsman, he headed to Northern California’s Humboldt State University to study marine resources, before becoming a marine biology teacher at what is now the Ocean Institute in California. Yet his interest in drawing still beckoned like a call to the sea.

“Honestly, I hadn’t looked into the logistics and income. I just knew that’s what I wanted to do,” Hillenburg told me. “I thought, at least, I could get a job cleaning up somebody’s drawings. .?.?. Then there was ‘The Simpsons’ and ‘Ren & Stimpy’ — everyone was excited about the rebirth of the form” in the ’90s.

(9) KATZ OBIT. Gloria Katz (1942-2018): American screenwriter and producer, died November 25, aged 78. Genre credits include Messiah of Evil (1973; she and husband William Huyck were the uncredited directors), Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984), Howard the Duck (1986).

(10) TODAY IN HISTORY

  • November 29, 1959The Atomic Submarine premiered at your local drive-in
  • November 29, 1972 — Pong, a coin-operated video game, debuted.

(11) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge and JJ.]

  • November 29, 1898 – C.S. Lewis, Writer from Ireland. There are, no doubt, folks here here who are far more literate on him than me. I’ve read The Screwtape Letters for a college course decades ago, and throughly enjoyed The Chronicles of Narnia also many years back, but that’s it for my personal acquaintance with him. I know individuals who have loved The Space Trilogy (Out of the Silent Planet, Perelandra, and That Hideous Strength) and I’ve known ones who loathed it. Of the Inklings, I suspect I need not say anything, as all of you are fully aware of that group which has frankly become legend and in turn is fast becoming myth. There have been novels about them ranging from almost true to them to quite fantastical. Currently, there is a movie called The Inklings in production, though available details about it are scant. (Died 1963.)
  • November 29, 1918 – Madeleine L’Engle, Writer whose genre work included the splendid YA sequence starting off with A Wrinkle in Time, which won the Newbery Medal and a host of other awards, and has been made into a 2003 television film and this year’s film directed by Ava DuVernay. She produced numerous loosely-linked sequels, including A Wind in the Door, A Swiftly Tilting Planet, Many Waters, and An Acceptable Time. In addition to her fiction, she wrote poetry and nonfiction, much of which related to her universalist form of Christian faith. She was honored with a World Fantasy Award for Life Achievement in 1997. In 2013, Crater L’Engle on Mercury was named for her. (Died 2007.)
  • November 29, 1925 – Leigh Couch, Science Teacher and Member of First Fandom. Active in fandom, along with her husband and children, during the 1960s and 70s, she was a member of the Ozark Science Fiction Association and one of the editors of its fanzine Sirruish. She was on the committee for the bid to host Worldcon in Hawaii in 1981. She was honored for her contributions as Fan Guest of Honor at the first Archon, the long-running regional convention which grew out of that early St. Louis-area fandom. (Died 1998.)
  • November 29, 1942 – Maggie Thompson, 76, Librarian, Editor, and Fan who, with her husband Don, edited from the 1960s to the 90s the fanzines Harbinger, Comic Art, Rainy Days, and Newfangles, and wrote a column for The Buyer’s Guide for Comic Fandom. When this became the professional publication Comic Buyer’s Guide in 1983, because of their extensive knowledge of comics, she and her husband were hired as editors; after he died in 1994, she continued as editor until it ceased publication in 2013. Under their editorial auspices, it won two Eisner Awards and the Jack Kirby Award. Together they were honored with the Inkpot Award, and twice with the Comic Fan Art Award for Favorite Fan Writers.
  • November 29, 1950 – Kevin O’Donnell Jr., Writer who produced a number of genre novels and more than 70 short fiction works. He was chair of the Nebula Award Committee for nearly a decade, and business manager for the SFWA Bulletin for several years; he also chaired for 7 years SFWA’s Grievance Committee, which advocates for authors who experience difficulties in dealing with editors, publishers, agents, and other entities. He received the Service to SFWA Award in 2005, and after his death, the award was renamed in his honor. (Died 2012.)
  • November 29, 1964 – Don Cheadle, 54, Oscar-nominated Actor and Producer with a surprisingly-deep genre resume, especially for playing James “Rhodey” Rhodes War Machine in Iron Man 2 and 3, Captain America: Civil War, and the Avengers films Age of Ultron, Infinity War, and the as-yet-untitled #4. Other genre roles include Mission to Mars, The Meteor Man, and Volcano, and the televised-live black-and-white Cold War drama Fail Safe.
  • November 29, 1971 – Naoko Mori, 47, Actor from Japan who lives in the UK. Her first genre appearance was in Hackers, with the then-unknown Angelina Jolie and Jonny Lee Miller. Her performance as the character of Doctor Sato in the “Aliens of London” episode” of Doctor Who so impressed Russell T Davies that he brought her back as a regular character on the first two seasons of Torchwood. Other TV series appearances include episodes of Humans, Bugs, the British-American comedy-drama genre miniseries You, Me and the Apocalypse, and an SF series pilot called Three Inches, and the films Life and Maneater. She has also done voice characters for animated series and videogames, including Big Hero 6, Genji, Final Fantasy, and Dragon Quest.
  • November 29, 1976 – Anna Faris, 42, Actor, Writer, Producer, and Podcaster. Ahhh, I love franchise horror. She’s had a regular gig as Cindy Campbell in the first four Scary Movie films, and appeared in the horror films Lovers Lane and May. She had main roles in the odd superhero movie My Super Ex-Girlfriend, the ode to fanboy geekdom Mama’s Boy, and the SF comedy Frequently Asked Questions About Time Travel – and does a recurring character voice in the Alvin and the Chipmunks franchise count as genre? Her campy credentials no doubt were the inspiration for Air New Zealand to cast her in this quirky aircraft safety video.
  • November 29, 1977 – Chadwick Boseman, 41, Actor, Writer, and Producer who is principally known for playing Black Panther in in the Marvel Cinematic Universe movies Captain America: Civil War and Black Panther (for both of which he received Saturn nominations), Avengers: Infinity War, and the upcoming untitled Avengers 4. He had a main role on Persons Unknown, a one-season series which was sort of an ensemble version of The Prisoner. He played the bird god Thoth in the Gods of Egypt film, and had a guest role in an episode of Fringe.
  • November 29, 1980 – Janina Gavankar, 38, Actor and Singer with an impressive span of genre roles, including main roles as shapeshifter Luna Garza on True Blood and supernatural creature Leigh Turner on The Gates, recurring roles on The Vampire Dairies, Arrow, and Sleepy Hollow, and guest parts in episodes of Stargate Atlantis and Dollhouse. She voiced canon Star Wars character Iden Versio in the audiobook for Star Wars Battlefront II: Inferno Squad and its companion videogame, and provided additional character voices for Star Wars: The Last Jedi. She received a Behind The Voice Award nomination for her role in the videogame Far Cry 4, and appeared in an ad campaign for Microsoft as Ms. Dewey, the avatar of a Microsoft search engine who commented on the user’s searches.
  • November 29, 1982 – Gemma Chan, 36, Actor of Stage and Screen from  England whose first genre appearances were the horror movie When Evil Calls and her portrayal of Mia Bennett on Doctor Who’s “The Waters of Mars”. She has had a lead role on the series Humans for the last three years, was a regular on Bedlam, and had a guest part in an episode of Sherlock. Genre film roles include Madam Ya Zhou in Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, and Quintessa in Transformers: The Last Knight; she’ll be Doctor Minerva in the forthcoming Captain Marvel film. Voice roles include the Watership Down miniseries as Dewdrop and the Revolting Rhymes movie as Snow White.

(12) COMICS SECTION.

  • From Publishers Weekly, a new installment of Tales from the Slush Pile. As always, hilarious but true. This week: what you hear at Thanksgiving from your relatives.

(13) PURE POISON. SYFY Wire tells us that—wearing her producer hat—”Margot Robbie “trying” to explore Harley Quinn’s relationship with Poison Ivy in the DCEU”.

There’s no question that Margot Robbie, who launched her successful production company LuckyChap Entertainment in 2014, is a force to be reckoned with in the movie business… and that could be very good news for the DC Extended Universe.

For example, when asked by PrideSource if she was being mindful of Quinn’s sexuality in her upcoming Birds of Prey film, the actress/producer revealed that she’s been “trying” to bring the relationship between her character Harley Quinn and Poison Ivy to the big screen.

“If you read the comics you know that Poison Ivy and Harley have an intimate relationship. In some comics they convey it as a friendship; in other comics you can see that they’re actually sexually involved as a couple. I’ve been trying to – I would love to have Poison Ivy thrown into the universe,” Robbie told the site. “Because the Harley and Poison Ivy relationship is one of my favorite aspects of the comics, so I’m looking to explore that on screen.”

(14) GETTING WARMER. It’s almost not news anymore — “Climate change: Last four years are ‘world’s hottest'”.

The year 2018 is on course to be the fourth warmest on record, according to the World Meteorological Organization.

It says that the global average temperature for the first 10 months of the year was nearly 1C above the levels between 1850-1900.

The State of the Climate report says that the 20 warmest years on record have been in the past 22 years, with the 2015-2018 making up the top four.

(15) DO IT FOR SCIENCE. From The Onion:

(16) TO THE MOON, ALICE B. TOKLAS. Firefly may head to the Moon. No, not that Firefly. NASA has signed up nine companies that will be allowed to bid on delivery of small payloads to the Moon. (Ars Technica: “NASA takes a tangible step back toward the Moon with commercial program”)

NASA announced Thursday that it has partnered with nine companies to enable the delivery of small scientific payloads to the lunar surface. No money was exchanged up front, but the space agency said these companies would now be eligible to “bid” for contracts to deliver select experiments to the Moon.

[…] The nine companies that earned the right to bid on what are called Commercial Lunar Payload Services contracts are:

  • Astrobotic Technology Inc.: Pittsburgh
  • Deep Space Systems: Littleton, Colorado
  • Draper: Cambridge, Massachusetts
  • Firefly Aerospace Inc.: Cedar Park, Texas
  • Intuitive Machines LLC: Houston
  • Lockheed Martin Space: Littleton, Colorado
  • Masten Space Systems Inc.: Mojave, California
  • Moon Express: Cape Canaveral, Florida
  • Orbit Beyond: Edison, New Jersey

[…] NASA said payload delivery could begin as early as 2019. These contracts do not have a time or quantity limit, and they have a combined maximum contract value of $2.6 billion during the next 10 years. The agency said it would look at a number of factors when comparing the bids, such as “technical feasibility, price, and schedule.”

(17) STREEP IN POPPINS. Marc Sneitiker, in “Here’s what Meryl Streep and Emily Blunt said about reuniting (again!) for Mary Poppins Returns” on Entertainment Weekly, said that Streep and Blunt are working together for the first time since Into the Woods four years ago and both actors really respect each other’s work.

Emily Blunt and Meryl Streep have now made three big-budget studio films together: 2006’s The Devil Wears Prada, playing a toiling assistant and her monstrous boss; 2014’s Into the Woods, as a peasant baker and the witch who cursed her womb; and now 2018’s Mary Poppins Returns, playing the enigmatic nanny and her gravity-challenged cousin Topsy, who’s perhaps the only person ever to disagree with Mary Poppins.

“It is a bit hilarious that we always play people who are contentious with one another,” Blunt laughs, looking back on her relationship with Streep that’s now into its second decade. “From Prada to the Witch and the Baker’s Wife and now to cousins who drive each other insane, I did finally ask her, ‘When are we gonna play lovers or something?!’” Blunt laughs again. “She said, ‘Dream on.’”

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

55 thoughts on “Pixel Scroll 11/29/18 It Is By Tickboxes Alone I Set My Scroll In Pixels.

  1. Apropos of absolutely nothing: the current release of the Linux kernel is version 4.19. A small group of kernel devs have been lobbying Linus to make the next release version 5.0, but an equally determined group have been insisting that there must be a 4.20 version. While Linus does not have a reputation as a stoner, it looks like he’ll probably end up going along with the stoners, mainly because the other side really don’t have any compelling arguments.

  2. #3 – I think it might be M. John Harrison. I hope I wrong, because I love both of their work, but I think I remember Jeff talking about it years ago on his old blog.

    My favorite of theirs: The Course of the Heart by Harrison, and Shriek: An Afterword by Vandermeer.

  3. Mike, if it’s bad form for me to post that please delete it. I’m more of a lurker than a poster and I don’t want to break any etiquette rules.

  4. mainly because the other side really don’t have any compelling arguments

    Not even “It’ll run really slow and try to eat all your resources”?

  5. James Moar on November 30, 2018 at 1:14 am said:

    Not even “It’ll run really slow and try to eat all your resources”?

    Heh, I’m tempted to raise that argument, but I’m afraid people might think I’m high. 😀

  6. James Moar says Heh, I’m tempted to raise that argument, but I’m afraid people might think I’m high. ?

    I’m not high, indeed my morning readings (I take them three times a day after meds) were 104 / 64 / 68 which is splendid. Once it’s light outside, I’ll be off for coffee and something tasty, both of the Filers who applied to be Green Man reviewers deeply impressed our editing staff and are now being added to our staff. Congrats!

  7. 2) I’ve seen a few Morph shorts. He’s a bland character. Looks bland. The shorts were unexciting, aimed at only the youngest kind of viewer. A step up from the Teletubbies. Adults wouldn’t want to watch it with their kids. If you serve bland, you get back poor results. But only in England would it be allowed to go on for so long.

    It kind of makes me recall that the show YOUNG JUSTICE LEAGUE was canceled because the toy sales were not good enough.

  8. Robert Whitaker notes It kind of makes me recall that the show YOUNG JUSTICE LEAGUE was canceled because the toy sales were not good enough.

    I’ve never been able to find a reliable source for that so I’m assuming it was an an urban legend of sorts. The third season is coming on the the DC Universe streaming service in early January and the trailer is awesome. I’ve actually been enjoying this service a lot now that I’ve figure out its quirks. And the Titans series is, after an uneven start, quite good.

  9. Cat: I found the information from a slide show on Looper., as “weird reasons why a show got canceled”.

    To read BATTLEFIELD EARTH, I would need to be paid.

    I did read some of it standing in a bookstore and the style repelled me.

  10. Books read:
    The Monster Baru Comorant by Seth Dickinson. This book did not go where I expected it to based on the previous book. I’m impressed. Baru is really forced to confront the impact of her actions and reconsider what she is doing is a range of ways. The world building also takes an unexpected turn, introducing some new elements I’m not so thrilled about – but I’ll wait for the full explanation in the next book so really decide what I think about it.
    Just started 1984: I’ve heard so much about this book, I had convinced myself I had read it as a teen. But as I’m reading I realize I have not read it before. Its strange.

  11. (13) I recognize a film executive trying desperately to string the fans along without actually promising any overt queer content. It’s almost become a literary genre at this point.

  12. I made the tactical error of taking ONLY Battlefield Earth with me on a family vacation, when the book first came out. So, perforce, I read the whole thing. (I had no access to a bookstore or library, and the interwebs had not yet been invented.) To echo Robert Whitaker Sirignano above, you’d have to pay me to read it again. And it would have to be a whole lot more than 99 cents…

  13. I (foolish youth) actually read Battlefield Earth a couple of times when I was back in high school; but even then I could see that it was … flawed. And I don’t remember if I even made it through the whole first book in that 10-volume Invasion Earth thing.

    (My own tactical reading vacation error one year in high school was bringing only Larry Niven’s Known Space books with me on a two week trip; not because I didn’t enjoy them, but because I plowed through them in about a week and then had to start rereading them immediately for lack of alternative.)

  14. (7) How about they continue Marvel’s Agent Carter? Since they canceled it, I haven’t really watched any Marvel shows.

    (9) Katz and Huyck wrote George Lucas’s best movie, AMERICAN GRAFFITI. A careful examination reveals no truly SFnal elements. There’s a Wolfman in it, but he is neither a lycanthrope nor Marv. (On the other hand, isn’t George Lucas sfnal in and of himself?)

  15. Not only have I read Battlefield Earth, I read 4 or 5 of the ridiculous ten book series he “wrote” as well. What can I say, I was young, foolish, and they were stacked up in the discount book store. I don’t recommend the experience.

  16. In fairness, Battlefield Earth was not that bad. It was 40s style pulp with no pretensions to being anything better (I have not seen the movie).

    I understand that there is a lot of justifiable negativity around Hubbard, and however many Mission Earth volumes I read it was that exact number too many, but BE itself was not worse than your average AE Van Vogt novel, several of which I avoid rereading because I liked them once [Subliminal Nexialist message: SO DID YOU].

  17. Joe H. on November 30, 2018 at 6:56 am said:
    Good news, everybody! Battlefield Earth can be yours for the low, low price of $0.99!

    Hey … it is Mitt Romney’s favourite book.

    When the movie came out, I was earning my living as a movie reviewer, and read the book just to prepare for the review. IIRC, it’s one of only four movies I ever gave a one-star review to (along with Garfield: The Movie and Son Of The Mask).

  18. Niall: to imply BATTLEFIELD EARTH was like most 1940’s pulps is insulting to those stories. Most of them tried to be entertaining. Most of them were far more entertaining than BATTLEFEILDD EARTH. If J.G.Ballard was writing a condensed novel version of BATTLEFIELD EARTH, it would be a half dozen or so paragraphs.

    Even Hubbard’s TYPEWRITER IN THE SKY was better written.

  19. @1: That’s quite an essay. Much of it I’ve seen in pieces elsewhere; one new thing was her focus on getting the placement of human-made features in a park just as they are in this reality — I wonder whether readers would really expect everything to be exactly the same in the alternate reality that has dragons in it.

    @3: Is there a link that will get just this conversation? By the time I clicked on Vandermeer’s name there was a stack of unrelated tweets.

    @11: My favorite sequel to A Wrinkle in Time was The Arm of the Starfish (Meg and Calvin a generation later), but I haven’t dared reread it in some time; I’m not sure how I’d react to Meg dumping a possible career to raise a family. The book is also the wolf between her fantasy and mundane series, as its lead shows up a few months later in one of the Austen books, which I otherwise recall happening around the same time as Wrinkle; one of these days I’ll reread enough of the mundane (“Chronos”) books to know whether I’m misrecollecting.

    @Xtifr: So which side is the stoners in the Linux-kernel argument, and why?

    @Joe H: Good, I was out of TP. Oh, wait, you probably mean an electronic edition….

    @Cassy B: if you remember that far back, do you remember the blowup-augmented billboard on the way to Chicon IV? It got a lot of comment at the time, but it may have been far enough out to be visible mostly to people coming in from O’Hare.

    Connecting to a subthread in a previous scroll: Ricky Jay Remembered, From The Wings: A Personal Assistant’s Thoughts On The Late Stage Magician.

  20. Kip Williams on November 30, 2018 at 9:14 am said:
    Olav Rokne:
    I’m counting on my fingers…

    The other one is a movie that I hated, but everyone else loved. And I’m just not willing to argue about it anymore.

  21. @Chip Hitchcock: “So which side is the stoners in the Linux-kernel argument, and why?”

    It’s the ones who want to move to 5, because you’d have to be stoned and Finnish to want two kernel 5s.

  22. 3) Memories are long indeed.

    5) Geysercon got awarded the 2019 NZ Natcon back in 2017 at LExicon whilst I was there. My good friend Kaaron Warren is GOH for Geysercon. I’m so delighted for her and wish I could myself attend.

  23. The only living scroll in New Crobuzon

    I hope Disney ressurects these shows, after its seems they push for their cancellation (the tight shedule this year was probably also a result of pressure between Netflix and sDisney)! Its not the same if there is no chance if occasional teamups… (wasnt the original plan to make an defenders series anyway?)

  24. Peer on November 30, 2018 at 10:49 am said:
    The only living scroll in New Crobuzon

    I hope Disney ressurects these shows, after its seems they push for their cancellation (the tight shedule this year was probably also a result of pressure between Netflix and sDisney)! Its not the same if there is no chance if occasional teamups… (wasnt the original plan to make an defenders series anyway?)

    It may be more difficult than one might imagine to resurrect these shows, at least in any recognizable version. Netflix probably has some control over this specific representation of the characters, due to the complexities and arcane aspects of intellectual property law.

  25. Chip, I was at Chicon IV; it was my first Worldcon. I couldn’t afford a room; one night I slept in the movie room (I saw the first five minutes of “Attack of the Killer Tomatoes” and woke up the next morning); another night a kind fan took my bedraggled teenaged self in; as I recall I slept in the bathtub….

    I worked many hours in the green room to defray my costs, where I had an unfortunate (and very intimidating) interaction with Jerry Pournelle. But Larry Niven was a perfect gentleman and helped me carry dozens of donuts across the convention…

    I don’t recall anything about a billboard, but I’m a Chicago-area native and didn’t come in by way of O’Hare airport.

  26. @Chip —

    @3: Is there a link that will get just this conversation? By the time I clicked on Vandermeer’s name there was a stack of unrelated tweets.

    Don’t click on the name — click on the hyperlink reading “November 27,2018”. That’ll take you straight to the first tweet in the thread.

    And hey, I read Battlefield Earth and survived. Sure, it was bad, but it was an entertaining bad! Of course, I was much younger then…..

  27. When you saw the story about the giant cow in Australia, how many thought of Cordwainwr Smith?

  28. I didn’t read Battlefield Earth, but I read and enjoyed Dave Langford’s review.

    His Critical Mass column in White Dwarf was a good way of finding things worth reading, too. Ahh, fond memories.

  29. (9) If you haven’t seen ‘Messiah of Evil’, I highly recommend it; it’s got a dreamlike atmosphere of pure, cosmic horror that is really hard to achieve. There are several sequences that are absolutely haunting, and it tantalizes you with hints of explanations that never quite materialize. It’s both sadly forgotten and depressingly easy to obtain due to its public domain status, and well worth a watch.

  30. Ray Radlein on November 30, 2018 at 3:26 am said:

    I thought Linus was stepping away from Kernel work for a while as part of his “learn not to be that guy” training.

    He did. He took off for more than a month and he got professional help. (And he unilaterally added a CoC for kernel developers just before doing all this.) People have commented that there already seem to be noticeable signs of improvement, so it apparently did help.

    (I recommend avoiding the comment section of the linked article, as it’s full of the usual edgelords who are sure that polite communication will be the downfall of civilization.)

  31. Amazon UK sales:

    Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K Dick
    Altered Carbon by Richard Morgan
    The Green Mile by Stephen King
    The Hanging Tree (book 6 of the Rivers of London series) by Ben Aaronovitch

    (No summaries this time, as I was in a bit of a rush — by which I mean that I’d been hanging onto them long enough that I had to remove some because they weren’t on sale anymore and I thought waiting for the magical day when I feel up to editing down four paragraphs into two sentences per book wasn’t going to happen soon enough — but I think these are all sufficiently well-known that they don’t need them.)

  32. L’Engle was an Episcopalian and denied (in a 1979 interview with Christianity Today) being a universalist. The word has been used both to praise and damn her. largely the latter. I think it’s misleading here, as it suggests a denomination rather than a possible element of personal theology.

  33. … I jumped the gun!

    Also on sale: Foundryside by Robert Jackson Bennett, author of the wonderful Divine Cities trilogy, and a Hugo-eligible novel for next year.

  34. My favorite sequel to A Wrinkle in Time was The Arm of the Starfish (Meg and Calvin a generation later), but I haven’t dared reread it in some time; I’m not sure how I’d react to Meg dumping a possible career to raise a family. The book is also the wolf between her fantasy and mundane series, as its lead shows up a few months later in one of the Austen books, which I otherwise recall happening around the same time as Wrinkle; one of these days I’ll reread enough of the mundane (“Chronos”) books to know whether I’m misrecollecting.

    THE ARM OF THE STARFISH featured Poly O’Keefe and Adam Eddington, and Adam does indeed appear thereafter in A RING OF ENDLESS LIGHT, with Vicky Austin.

    The Chronos books are well worth reading, and there are multiple connections between them and the Kairos books — Canon Tallis is in both (and in one of her adult novels), and Zachary Grey dates both Vicky and Poly. And then the Chronos novels connect with other L’Engle YA and adult novels, and I think eventually almost all of her fiction connects. Not in chronologically-logical ways, but such is authorship.

  35. Sorry to hear about Daredevil. I thought it was the best, and Iron Fist the worst of the Defenders group.

    CS Lewis was one of the great Christian writers of the last 100 years. I just finished “The Bus.” I recently purchased the Space Trilogy (on sale for $1.99 for the trilogy on kindle) and the Narnia books. I’m looking forward to rereading the Space Trilogy after 40 years. I’m sure I did not comprehend much of it on my initial reading.

  36. HelenS: I read an interesting short piece on L’Engle this week by a Unitarian Universalist minister. He too refers to her as a universalist (referring to her theology) and not a Universalist (referring to the denomination). I think that’s fair. I also think he’s a little too generous to C. S. Lewis in referring to him as a near-universalist. I haven’t read The Great Divorce, so my opinion is less well-informed than his. Perhaps he’s right. And today there are quite a few Christian universalists out there.

  37. @John A. Arkansawyer: It’s the ones who want to move to 5, because you’d have to be stoned and Finnish to want two kernel 5s. Can you explain the explanation? Bear in mind that while I was a developer over 20 years, that ended 6 years ago, and I was working almost entirely on manufacturers’ Unixes (and, to my sorrow, on Windows); I’ve read about Torvalds in a book intended for less-technical people, but I haven’t been significantly aware of free-unix developments since giving up on GNU decades ago.

    @Greg Hullender: that contradicts the above, but I do have a vague recollection of hearing about 420. TFTI.

    @Contrarius: also TFTI; I’ll see if I can remember that trick. Boy, that went on at length….

    @Bob Roehm: Not me — and I was re-skimming that part of the story not that long ago. Short-term memory is the second thing to go, and I forget what’s first.

  38. @Chip
    “The three As of old age are arthritis, amnesia, and…I forget the third one.”
    (Seen somewhere many years ago.)

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