Pixel Scroll 11/8/19 I Tell You My Friend, You Got Tribbles — Right Here In River City

(1) STAR WARS FAN. Craig Miller’s book, Star Wars Memories is now available in paperback and as an eBook on Amazon.

Craig Miller was the original Director of Fan Relations at Lucasfilm, working on “Star Wars” and “The Empire Strikes Back”. As part of that, he was a publicist, a writer, an editor, and a producer. He wrote press material and articles, created and ran the Official Star Wars Fan Club, oversaw a staff who opened and responded to the seeming tons of fan mail the films received, worked with licensees, created a telephone publicity stunt that accidentally shut down the state of Illinois’ phone system, was the producer on projects ranging from episodes of “Sesame Street” to commercials for Underoos (“underwear that’s fun to wear”), operated R2-D2, and spent weeks hanging out on the set of “The Empire Strikes Back”. “…It’s a book of stories you haven’t heard before; an insider’s look from someone who, himself, is a fan and found the whole experience joyful and exciting. These stories are told in a way that brings you in and makes you feel like you were there.”

(2) HOWLING AGAIN. Jim Freud’s long-running sff-themed radio show “Hour of the Wolf” on New York station WBAI was one of the casualties when Pacifica closed the station down, claiming the non-for-profit could no longer support WBAI and its multimillion-dollar debt. But a state court ruling has restored power to the people, so to speak: “‘A victory for free speech’: WBAI is back on air” – the Brooklyn Daily Eagle has the story.

… Until Nov. 6, Pacifica had only complied with half of the ruling, keeping WBAI staffers on payroll. But after New York State Supreme Court Judge Melissa Crane ruled in favor of WBAI Wednesday, the Brooklyn-based station finally regained control of its own programming….

One of the first programs back on air, White said, was the station’s science fiction talk show, “Hour of the Wolf.” Shortly after the shutdown, the show’s host Jim Freund vowed in an interview with the Eagle that he would dedicate his first show back to fielding questions from listeners about the shutdown.

And that’s exactly what he did, White said. “We have a lot of work to do in dispelling some of the misinformation that’s out there,” he said.

(3) MORE CHIZINE INFORMATION. Some deeper dives into ChiZine’s finances amplify things learned from the last two days’ revelations.

For those unfamiliar with the Canadian publishing industry, many publishers benefit from subsidies and grant money. For example, according to a 2013 article in the National Post between 50% and 60% of ChiZine’s operating budget comes from grants. And in 2016, the Ontario Arts Council gave a $20,262 block grant to ChiZine

ChiZine has also received grants from the Canada Council for the Arts, such as a “Supporting Artistic Practice” grant for $42,000 for 2017-18 and the same amount for 2018-19 (note: link is a spreadsheet download from Canada Council for the Arts; all amounts are in Canadian dollars).

… A publisher does not get every amount of grant money they vie for. BUT, in a year where you get OAC and Canada Council for the Arts block operating grants you can pull in something close to $60,000. CZP also vied for the OMDC Book Fund, though as far as I know was not successful in that aim – you know, that fund they kept promising I could get paid out of if they acquired it. They later sought additional aid from the OMDC (unsuccessfully as I recall, though others can speak to what happened after I left in 2015). I don’t know that CZP ever got Toronto Arts Council block operating grants. Though I know they were looking to apply at various points. But your revenue has to be up over $100,000/year as a threshold. I don’t know that CZP ever hit that.

I recall a lot of the numbers because, along with others, wrote a lot of those arts council grant and other granting body applications. It was shared work. And multiple grant applications were successful.

CZP also applied for, and on different fronts and in different years received, project-based operating grants for both the Chiaroscuro Reading Series, and the annual SpecFic Colloquium conference. And sought funds over the years for the CZP/Rannu Fund fiction contest (though I could not tell you without more digging into my emails whether that ever got grants).

All of these grants, block operating and project-specific, require as part of ther fulfillment that publishers publicly disclose and acknowledge receipt of funds or face violation of terms, and the CCA, OAC, and TAC may request return of dispersed funds. That’s easy to do with books – you put the acknowledgement on the colophon page, which CZP did. But CZP wasn’t always so great with doing that around the other projects..

  • Silvia Moreno-Garcia has written about the CZP news from the viewpoint of operating her own small press. She also touches on one of the less obvious motives for CZP writers to stay silent. Thread starts here.
  • Bracken MacLeod makes the case in a Facebook post that an ethical publisher should allocate sales and place the portion representing author royalties into a separate escrow account that cannot be reached for the operating expenses of their press. He models this on how attorneys are required to handle client funds (by their professional ethical code, and in some jurisdictions, by law).
  • Lucy A. Snyder is another writer who has pulled a story from a ChiZine project:

(4) DOCTOR SLEEP REVIEW. NPR’s Scott Tobias finds that “‘Doctor Sleep’ Is Haunted By The Ghost Of Stanley Kubrick”.

The screen history of Stephen King adaptations has for decades couched a peculiar irony: Namely, that of the dozens and dozens of films that have been produced from his work — many of them not-so-great — the author famously detested the most revered, Stanley Kubrick’s 1980 version of The Shining.

…Over time, images from Kubrick’s The Shining have so dominated the culture that King’s efforts to redirect the public to the source, including the sequel novel Doctor Sleep, have fallen under its shadow. Director Mike Flanagan’s new adaptation represents near-total capitulation, lifting many of Kubrick’s familiar visual and aural cues to continue the story of Danny Torrance, the child whose psychic sensitivities are referred to as “the shining.”

Flanagan proved a gifted steward of King’s Gerald’s Game, a seemingly unadaptable book he pulled off for Netflix, and he has borrowed from Kubrick’s film with the author’s blessing. By King’s apparent calculation, it’s the finer points that count.

To that end, King and Flanagan have restored the legacy of alcoholism in the Torrance family, which ignited Jack’s madness like gasoline to flame, and has been passed along to a now-middle-aged Dan. In Dan’s case, however, alcohol muffles the traumas of the past and the voices that still echo in his head through his extrasensory perception.

Played by a sad-eyed Ewan McGregor, Dan is a loner who has bused his way to small-town New Hampshire on the modest hope of a steady job, a small apartment and a path to recovery. And he finds it, too, going a full eight years as a sober contributor to society. He even discovers the perfect application of his unique talent, sitting bedside at a hospice center and gently guiding patients into the hereafter.

But from there, Doctor Sleep gets complicated. Around the time the Torrances were battling ghosts in the Overlook Hotel, a hippieish death cult called the True Knot, led by Rose the Hat (Rebecca Ferguson), were traveling across the country, recruiting new members and feasting on the psychic energy (called “the steam”) of people like Danny. “The steam,” passed around and inhaled like pot smoke, gives Rose and company immense power and eternal life, and those with the shining radiate to them like a beacon of light. It’s only a matter of time before they catch up with Dan, but he finds an ally in Abra (Kyliegh Curran), a teenager who shines just as brightly.

(5) CAN’T WAIT TO SEE IT — ER. Universal Pictures has dropped a trailer for The Invisible Man, in theaters February 28.

What you can’t see can hurt you. Emmy winner Elisabeth Moss (Us, Hulu’s The Handmaid’s Tale) stars in a terrifying modern tale of obsession inspired by Universal’s classic monster character. Trapped in a violent, controlling relationship with a wealthy and brilliant scientist, Cecilia Kass (Moss) escapes in the dead of night and disappears into hiding, aided by her sister (Harriet Dyer, NBC’s The InBetween), their childhood friend (Aldis Hodge, Straight Outta Compton) and his teenage daughter (Storm Reid, HBO’s Euphoria). But when Cecilia’s abusive ex (Oliver Jackson-Cohen, Netflix’s The Haunting of Hill House) commits suicide and leaves her a generous portion of his vast fortune, Cecilia suspects his death was a hoax. As a series of eerie coincidences turns lethal, threatening the lives of those she loves, Cecilia’s sanity begins to unravel as she desperately tries to prove that she is being hunted by someone nobody can see.

(6) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

  • Born November 8, 1847 Abraham “Bram” Stoker. You know that he’s author of Dracula but did you wrote that he other fiction such as The Lady of the Shroud and The Lair of the White Worm? Of course you do, being you. The short story collection Dracula’s Guest and Other Weird Stories was published in 1914 by Stoker’s widow, Florence Stoker. (Died 1912.)
  • Born November 8, 1898 Katharine Mary Briggs. British folklorist and author who wrote A Dictionary of Fairies: Hobgoblins, Brownies, Bogies, and Other Supernatural Creatures , and the four-volume Dictionary of British Folk-Tales in the English Language, and the Kate Crackernuts novel. Her The Anatomy of Puck: An Examination of Fairy Beliefs among Shakespeare’s Contemporaries and Successors is fascinating read. (Died 1980.)
  • Born November 8, 1914 Norman Lloyd, 105. His longest genre role was as Dr. Isaac Mentnor on the Seven Days series. He’s been on Star Trek: The Next Generation, Get Smart! in the form of the Nude Bomb filmand The Twilight Zone, and in a fair of horror films from The Dark Secret of Harvest Home to The Scarecrow
  • Born November 8, 1932 Ben Bova, 87. His more than one hundred and twenty books have won six Hugo Awards. He’s a former editor of Analog, along with once being editorial director at Omni. Hell, he even had the thankless job of SFWA President. (Just kidding. I think.) I couldn’t hope to summarize his literary history so I’ll single out his Grand Tour series that though uneven is overall splendid hard sf as well as his Best of Bova short story collections put out recently in three volumes. What’s your favourite book by him? 
  • Born November 8, 1952 Alfre Woodard, 67. I remember her best from Star Trek: First Contact where she was Lily Sloane, Cochrane’s assistant. She was also Grace Cooley in Scrooged, and polishing her SJW creds, she once voiced Maisie the Cat in The Brave Little Toaster Goes to School. And yes, I know she’s portrayed a character in Marvel Universe. I just like the obscure roles. 
  • Born November 8, 1956 Richard Curtis, 63. One of Britain’s most successful comedy screenwriters, he’s making the Birthday List for writing “Vincent and the Doctor”, a most excellent Eleventh Doctor story. He was also the writer of Roald Dahl’s Esio Trot which isn’t really genre but it’s Roald Dahl. And he directed Blackadder.
  • Born November 8, 1968 Parker Posey, 51. Doctor Smith on the rebooted Lost in Space series. I’ve not seen it, so how is it?  She was in a film based on based on Dean Koontz’s version of Frankenstein. And she shows in Blade: Trinity as well.
  • Born November 8, 1972 Gretchen Mol, 47. Dr. Agatha Matheson in the Nightflyers series off Martin’s novel. Canceled after a single season. Annie Norris In Life on Mars which also made it but a single season. She’s also in The Thirteenth Floor, a genre crime thriller where she plays two roles, Natasha Molinaro and Jane Fuller. 

(7) KLINGON COVERS. This is timely, given the upcoming “Re-Frozen” movie: Klingon Pop Warrior – yIbuSQo’ (Let It Go) from Warrior Woman CD, “Pop songs translated into the Klingon language.”

(8) IT’S THE LAW. “The ‘law’ that explains why you can’t get anything done”.

A British historian famously wrote that work expands to fill available time – but what was he actually saying about inefficiency?

“It is a commonplace observation that work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.” British naval historian and author Cyril Northcote Parkinson wrote that opening line for an essay in The Economist in 1955, but the concept known as ‘Parkinson’s Law’ still lives on today.

…But what fewer people know is that Parkinson’s original intent was not to take aim at old lady letter-writers or journalists like me, but at a different kind of inefficiency – the bureaucratisation of the British Civil Service. In his original essay he pointed out that although the number of navy ships decreased by two thirds, and personnel by a third, between 1914 and 1928, the number of bureaucrats had still ballooned by almost 6% a year. There were fewer people and less work to manage – but management was still expanding, and Parkinson argued that this was due to factors that were independent of naval operational needs.

Get more subordinates, create more work

One scholar who has taken a serious look at Parkinson’s Law is Stefan Thurner, a professor in Science of Complex Systems at the Medical University of Vienna. Thurner says he became interested in the concept when the faculty of medicine at the University of Vienna split into its own independent university in 2004. Within a couple years, he says, the Medical University of Vienna went from being run by 15 people to 100, while the number of scientists stayed about the same. “I wanted to understand what was going on there, and why my bureaucratic burden did not diminish – on the contrary it increased,” he says.

He happened to read Parkinson’s book around the same time and was inspired to turn it into a mathematical model that could be manipulated and tested, along with co-authors Peter Klimek and Rudolf Hanel. “Parkinson argued that if you have 6% growth rate of any administrative body, then sooner or later any company will die. They will have all their workforce in bureaucracy and none in production.”

(9) NANO NANO. SYFY Wire admits “Nanomedicine looks like a Borg implant but can save lives in space”.

…Next for Grattoni’s team is something even more extraordinary and Borg-like; nano-telemedicine. An implant about the size of a grape (below), equipped with Bluetooth technology to consult doctors back on Earth, will rely on a remote control to tell it to store and release medication as needed. Remote doctor appointments will determine how an astronaut’s medicine is adjusted and enable the doctor to control the device by sending a command that makes it increase, decrease, or stop dosage. This unreal device will be tested on the ISS next year.

(10) TWO EYES GOOD, FOUR EYES BAD. BBC finds that “Japan ‘glasses ban’ for women at work sparks backlash”.

Wearing glasses at work has become an emotive topic in Japan following reports that some firms have told female employees to remove them.

Several local news outlets said some companies had “banned” eyewear for female employees for various reasons.

Among them, some retail chains reportedly said glasses-wearing shop assistants gave a “cold impression”.

That has sparked heated discussion on Japanese social media over dress practices and women in the workplace.

The Nippon TV network and Business Insider were among the outlets to report on the issue, which looked at how firms in different industries prohibit women from wearing glasses.

They included safety reasons for airline workers, or being unable to see make-up properly for women working in the beauty sector.

(11) FIRST, CATCH YOUR MAMMOTH. “Mexico mammoths: Human-built woolly mammoth traps found in Tultepec” — BBC’s article contains several photos (none taken at the time, naturally.)

At least 14 woolly mammoth skeletons have been uncovered in Mexico in traps built by humans about 15,000 years ago.

The two pits in Tultepec north of Mexico City are the first mammoth traps to be discovered, officials say.

Early hunters may have herded the elephant-sized mammals into the traps using torches and branches.

The recent discovery of more than 800 mammoth bones could change our understanding of how early humans hunted the enormous animals.

Mexico’s National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH) says more traps could be uncovered in the area north of Mexico City.

Archaeologists thought early humans only killed mammoths if the animals were trapped or hurt.

However, INAH’s discovery of the human-built traps could mean such hunts were planned.

(12) A STORY THAT GROWS IN THE RETAILING. Just like every science fiction fan, I want to ask the author – “Where do you get your ideas?” Today it’s James Davis Nicoll I want to hear from – whatever made him think of “Adventures in Retail! SFF Stories Set in Department Stores” for Tor.com.

Savertown USA in Erica L. Satifka’s Stay Crazy doesn’t offer protagonist Em much in the way of pay or happiness, but it’s not as if Em has options. Clear Falls, Pennsylvania is in the heart of the rust belt and Em herself is still dealing with the paranoid schizophrenia that ended her college days; a job at a soulless big box store is the best offer available.

It’s just too bad that this particular Savertown USA was built over a dimensional rift. Thanks to her psychiatric history, Em isn’t inclined to take a voice in her head warning her about the fate of the world at face value. Nor would the people around Em place much faith in her claims if Em did reveal the dire warnings she is receiving. As is so often the case, it’s up to an expendable clerk and whatever allies she can scrounge to face down danger and save the world.

(13) I’LL BE BACK. “How airships could return to our crowded skies” – let BBC tell you.

Airships lost out to conventional aircraft after a series of disastrous crashes. But now safer technology could be the key to their return.

Zeppelins fill the skies of Philip Pullman’s epic trilogy of fantasy novels, His Dark Materials. The giant airships of his parallel universe carry the mail, transport soldiers into battle and explorers to the Arctic. What was once my local post office in Oxford is in Pullman’s fantasy – a zeppelin station where I could catch the evening airship to London.

When I put the books down the reality is rather disappointing. A handful of smaller airships can be found flying proudly across the United States on promotional tours for brands like Goodyear and Carnival Cruise Line. Last year, a blimp demeaned itself by setting two world records, including one for the fastest text on a touch screen mobile phone while water skiing behind a blimp. A few more are employed to fly well-heeled tourists on sight-seeing trips over the German countryside. Another can be found flying over the Amazon. And that’s about it.

The good news is that soon, the real world may finally drift closer to Pullman’s fantasy. In four to five years, all being well, one of the first production models of the enormous Airlander airship dubbed “the flying bum” will be the first airship to fly to the North Pole since 1928. The men and women on board the Airlander are tourists on an $80,000 (£62,165) luxury experience rather than explorers. Tickets are on sale today

The Airlander won’t be alone in the skies either. About the same time, a vast new airship the shape of a blue whale, at 150m the length of an A380 and as high as a 12-storey building should rise up above its assembly plant, out of the heat and humidity of Jingmen, China. Its job: heavy lifting in some of the toughest places on Earth. The manufacturers have some Boeing-sized ambitions for this new age of the airship. They expect there to be about 150 of these airships floating around the world within 10 years.

In the history books, the crash of the Hindenburg in 1937 marked the end of the brief, glorious era of the airship – except it didn’t. The US Navy continued to use blimps for anti-submarine warfare during World War Two. The American Blimp Corporation manufactured airships for advertising. New, bigger, hi-tech airships were built by Zeppelin in Germany. Engineers and pilots have spent whole careers in an industry that wasn’t supposed to exist anymore.

(14) VIDEO OF THE DAY. “Life of Brian 1979 Debate–Complete” on YouTube is an episode of Friday Night…and Saturday Morning from 1979 in which John Cleese, Michael Palin, Malcolm Muggeridge, and Mervyn Stockwood, the Bishop of Southwark, discuss The Life of Brian, which had just been released.

[Thanks to JJ, John King Tarpinian, Cat Eldridge, Mike Kennedy, Chip Hitchcock, Martin Morse Wooster, Daniel Dern, and Andrew Porter for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Daniel Dern.]

23 thoughts on “Pixel Scroll 11/8/19 I Tell You My Friend, You Got Tribbles — Right Here In River City

  1. 6) I haven’t kept up with Bova, but my favorite books by him were the Exiles Trilogy, The Dueling Machine, and the Orion books.

  2. 6) I don’t think The Thirteenth Floor is best described as a “genre crime thriller”. It’s a pretty decent SF film based on Daniel F. Galouye’s novel Simulacron-3, and the main idea is that there are (potentially more than one) simulated worlds, and people can go from the “real” world (Or is it???) into a simulation of the “real” world, and even from the simulation into the simulation world’s simulation … (it’s turtles all the way down, I guess) …

    Really, not a bad SF movie. And Gretchen Mol is certainly worth watching.

  3. Odd, interesting fact about those mammoth traps: they found a lot of scapulas, all of them from the right shoulder. The press release speculates mildly that the two shoulders may have had “distinct connotations” for the ancient people working in the pit traps. (The linked press release is in Spanish, but I saw another article about this yesterday, which led to me doing a control-F for “izquierda”)

  4. (11) I thought we’d been aware for years of places that looked an awful lot like early humans stampeding mammoths off cliffs, for ease in butchering?

  5. @14: was this actually a discussion? A number of reports have said it was more like a mugging (by the establishment of the Pythons); if there’s actually some give and take it would be worth watching.

    wrt the discussion some time ago of catastrophic underpasses (mostly Down Under IIRC): it takes the BBC to report that a bridge called “The Canopener” has lost the reason for its name — but there are some spectacular Before video clips.

    and just in case anyone still wondered, there’s now a formal demonstration that girls and boys start out equally good at math.

  6. @Lis: catching one mammoth in a trap is harder but less wasteful than running a herd over a cliff, and can be done anywhere the soil can be dug — it doesn’t require a cliff. (And I’ve seen evidence for stampeding buffalo over cliffs, but hadn’t heard of evidence of so ~hunting mammoths.)

  7. (13)
    I wandered lonely as an airship
    That floats on high o’er vales and hills,
    When all at once I saw a fleet
    A host, of modern dirigibles;
    Above the lake, beyond the trees,
    Floating and dancing in the breeze.

    For oft, when at my laptop I browse
    In vacant or in pensive mood,
    They flash upon that inward eye
    Which is the bliss of altitude;
    And then my heart with pleasure fills,
    And dances with the dirigibles.

    [From Wordsworth’s steampunk phase]

  8. Bova books:

    The Starcrossed. Ben’s best novel about Ellison, bar none.

    Also, should have been my guidebook when negotiating with NBC. There have been many times I’ve mentally pictured the production meeting scene that involved running across a boardroom table and included much punching and choking.

    One of the field’s best satires, truly.

  9. (1) I caught a glimpse of an advance copy of this and I’m really looking forward to reading it!

    (11) @Lis – you’re right, there is evidence of mammoth (and bison, as Chip notes) stampedes off cliffs, with human processing of the resulting bodies. There were indications of human intent in the mammoth stampedes (definite evidence for the bison stampedes) but there were people who argued the humans were just taking advantage after the fact. It seems to me this new discovery really clinches that humans stampeded mammoths into human-made or natural hazards.

  10. @steve Davidson: “The Starcrossed. Ben’s best novel about Ellison, bar none.” There are other Bova novels about Ellison? Dish, dish! (I don’t know that anyone wrote another genre novel about Ellison; his own “The New York Review of Bird” is a novelette, and Asimov’s Murder at the ABA is mundane.) But I do like this novel, and was even more amused when it provoked a joke lawsuit by one of the other real-world people portrayed in the book.
    I also liked The Dueling Machine and The Weathermakers in my youth, but haven’t read either in a long time; I have vague recollections that both drop people into slots in ways that readers would choke on nowadays, but I don’t recall any of the unsubtly unthinking libertarianism that made me give up on him in the early 1980’s(?).

  11. (6) Richard Curtis wrote and directed a lovely genre film called About Time, which has a unique take on time travel. I can’t recommend it highly enough. It stars Bill Nighy, Domnhall Gleeson, and Rachel McAdams.

  12. 5) Spray paint, people! Instant anti-invisibility!

    6) Born November 8, 1968 — Parker Posey, 51. Doctor Smith on the rebooted Lost in Space series. I’ve not seen it, so how is it?

    The first episode was deeply ridiculous in science failures and plot holes. That’s as far as I could stomach it. IIRC, Posey was pretty darned creepy (she was meant to be).

  13. @Rich Horton

    6) I don’t think The Thirteenth Floor is best described as a “genre crime thriller”. It’s a pretty decent SF film based on Daniel F. Galouye’s novel Simulacron-3, and the main idea is that there are (potentially more than one) simulated worlds, and people can go from the “real” world (Or is it???) into a simulation of the “real” world, and even from the simulation into the simulation world’s simulation … (it’s turtles all the way down, I guess) …

    Really, not a bad SF movie. And Gretchen Mol is certainly worth watching.

    There is also an earlier adaptation of Simulacron-3 by Daniel F. Galouye called Welt am Draht (world on a wire), made by Rainer Werner Fassbinder of all people and starring Klaus Löwitsch (still with hair, too). It was originally a two-part West German TV movie in 1973.

    You can watch the whole thing with English subtitles here.

    13)
    Around the turn of the millennium, a German start-up called CargoLifter planned to built airships for cargo transport. They eventually went bankrupt and all that was left was their huge airship hangar outside Berlin, which was eventually turned into a tropical indoor resort. I’d much rather have had airships than that stupid resort.

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