Pixel Scroll 12/1/21 Scrolls, Glorious Scrolls, Fresh Godstalked And Pixeled

(1) FUTURE RACE. Kathryn Finch discusses the way sff uses cross-species “hybrid” characters to discuss racial issues and how those depictions still often fail in “The Kids Aren’t Alright: The Race Essentialism of Sci-fi Hybrids” at Blood Knife.

…Whether it’s the regal elves and (literally) down-to-earth dwarves of the Lord of the Rings or the regal Vulcans and (not-so-literally) down-to-earth Klingons of Trek, world building often relies on generalizations. Race essentialism has been a useful shorthand for some writers, and giving each new race in a populous universe a specific “hat” to wear allows for the appearance of novelty and diversity, without the requirement to actually flesh out individual characters more than the minimum necessary for the purposes of the plot. This does not strike the casual observer as problematic, as the innate foreignness of a creature from another world is much more expected than any sort of familiarity.

And therein lies the problem. In the future, racism is not extinguished, but transformed. A conflict between two completely different species is patently understandable; they are, quite literally, otherworldly….

(2) LAVISH EDITIONS. [Item by Jeffrey Smith.] Unsurprisingly, Michael Dirda is living in our libraries. “Critic’s picks: Best illustrated nonfiction books” in the Washington Post.

What do Santa Claus, Sen. Joseph McCarthy, a certain Washington Post reviewer and the Lord High Executioner from “The Mikado” all have in common? Give up? Each of us has been known to say, “I’ve got a little list.” This holiday season, though, my list isn’t so little. In fact, it will extend over three weeks. This is the first, focusing on large-sized, illustrated nonfiction….

‘Spider-Man,’ by Roy Thomas (Folio Society, $125)

To complement his three-volume historical sampler of Marvel Comics (“The Golden Age,” “The Silver Age,” “The Bronze Age”), the company’s former editor in chief, Roy Thomas, has begun to assemble additional volumes, each devoted to a major superhero. After last year’s Captain Marvel, this fall’s release showcases everyone’s favorite web-slinger in eight representative Spider-Man adventures, starring either Peter Parker or Miles Morales. Given the ritzy Folio Society treatment, Spidey never looked so good — and that goes for his archenemies, too, including my grandson’s favorites, Venom and Doctor Octopus. So if you know someone enthralled by the Spider-Verse, your shopping is done.

(3) WATCH THIS SPACE. The Planetary Society lists “The Best of 2021” in space exploration. For example:

Most exciting planetary science moment

2021 was quite a year for space exploration firsts, but the one that voters loved best was the Ingenuity Mars helicopter’s first flight. On April 19th the little spacecraft took its first leap off the Martian surface, becoming the first aircraft to complete a powered, controlled flight on another planet. 

(4) AFRICAN BOOKS HONORED. Brittle Paper’s list of “50 Notable African Books of 2021” includes several genre works, most notably —

The Year’s Best African Speculative Fiction (2021)

(Editor) Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki

The collection celebrates African speculative fiction at its best, giving lovers of the genre an immersive experience of non-realist worlds. Well-known and new authors offer stories in sci-fi, fantasy, horror, and more.

(5) DOUGLAS Q&A. Ian Douglas is one of the many pseudonyms for William H. Keith, creator of many sff works. Writer’s Digest has published an interview with him: “Ian Douglas: On Telling the Truth in Science Fiction”.

What prompted you to write this book?

Alien Hostiles is the second entry in a three-book series, picking up where Book One—Alien Agendas—leaves off and continuing with plot elements introduced there … though it can also be read as a stand-alone work.

My reason for writing the entire series was, I suppose, prompted by my distaste for the extremely bad science and logic behind so many current UFO conspiracy theories, most of which read like very bad B-movie sci-fi. I was at particular pains to weave those theories—those I chose to include, of course—into a seamless whole, a plausible story with at least some reasonable science behind it.

Probably the one idea that was the most important in shaping the entire series has to do with the ubiquitous alien Grays, those big-headed guys with big black eyes and spindly bodies we seem to see everywhere nowadays. It is my contention that the Grays are far, far too human to literally be alien life forms. At several points throughout each of the books, I introduce real aliens, and try to show how different they would be in anatomy, biochemistry, and psychology.

In this way I suppose I follow in the sandal-prints of Poo-Bah, in Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Mikado, as I provide “corroborative detail intended to give artistic verisimilitude to an otherwise bald and unconvincing narrative.”…

(6) EH? WHAT’S THAT? “Here’s Why Movie Dialogue Has Gotten More Difficult To Understand (And Three Ways To Fix It)” at SlashFilm.

I used to be able to understand 99% of the dialogue in Hollywood films. But over the past 10 years or so, I’ve noticed that percentage has dropped significantly — and it’s not due to hearing loss on my end. It’s gotten to the point where I find myself occasionally not being able to parse entire lines of dialogue when I see a movie in a theater, and when I watch things at home, I’ve defaulted to turning the subtitles on to make sure I don’t miss anything crucial to the plot.

Knowing I’m not alone in having these experiences, I reached out to several professional sound editors, designers, and mixers, many of whom have won Oscars for their work on some of Hollywood’s biggest films, to get to the bottom of what’s going on. One person refused to talk to me, saying it would be “professional suicide” to address this topic on the record. Another agreed to talk, but only under the condition that they remain anonymous. But several others spoke openly about the topic, and it quickly became apparent that this is a familiar subject among the folks in the sound community, since they’re the ones who often bear the brunt of complaints about dialogue intelligibility…. 

(7) PODCAST PEOPLE. Podside Picnic episode 145 features Karlo Yeager Rodriguez and Connor Southard making their “Hugo Predictions Beer Run”. My hearing isn’t good enough to take a listen, which is too bad because there are a couple categories I’m curious to hear them talk about.

(8) SCORING ENCANTO. At Nerds of a Feather, Arthur Serrano’s “I’m Colombian. Here’s what ‘Encanto’ means to me” provides analysis of how the new Disney animated movie makes use of Colombian culture.

…So when I, a Colombian reviewer, draw attention to the significance of Mickey Mouse dancing cumbia at the end of Encanto, I’m absolutely not in any way framing it as our culture being finally worthy of being showcased by Hollywood. The question to ask is exactly the opposite: it’s whether Hollywood is worthy of getting its hands on our culture….

One example of it being deployed effectively:

…Just like in the United States you hear of a divide between the prosperous, educated, productive coastal cities vs. the neglected flyover country, in Colombia we have prosperous, educated, productive mountain cities vs. the neglected coasts and forests. It has become a habitual refrain to say that ruling elites in Colombia live secluded between mountains and oblivious to what goes on elsewhere. In the flashback scene where the matriarch of the Madrigal family loses her husband, bursts into tears and magically creates an entire town (am I the only one getting WandaVision vibes here?) so that she can raise her kids in safety, the most striking image is the rising of the mountains that keep her refuge closed off from the world. This is a symbolic clue to the persistent anxiety that defines this character: she’s afraid of everything outside of her microcosm.

It’s a brilliant move by the film to establish the grandmother’s character flaw in terms of her relation to physical space. It has been pointed out that Encanto is the rare adventure story where the adventure doesn’t leave the home, and there’s a solid reason for that. There’s a certain current in Colombian literature that treats the extended family household as a metaphor for the country…. 

(9) MEMORY LANE.

1995 [Item by Cat Eldridge.] Twenty-six years ago, The Adventures of Captain Zoom in Outer Space premiered in the USA at theaters though details of where are scant to say the least. It was not released elsewhere in this manner as far I can determine. 

It is about the adventures of Fifties actor Ty Farrell who plays the title character in The Adventures of Captain Zoom in Outer Space, a series akin to Captain Video. And it won’t surprise you that it was intended to pay homage to both Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon.

The cast was Nichelle Nichols as Sagan, High Priestess of Pangea, Ron Perlman as Lord Vox of Vestron, Daniel Riordan as Ty Farrell / Captain Zoom, Liz Vassey as Princess Tyra, Native Leader of Pangea and Gia Carides as Vesper, High Priestess of Vestron. 

Reception was excellent with critics universally liking it. It hasn’t apparently been given a video release, nor does it apparently made it to the streaming services, so it has no rating over at Rotten Tomatoes. 

(10) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

  • Born December 1, 1905 Charles G. Finney. Writer and Editor. It’s rare that I pick writers whose main accomplishment is one work which has defined them, but his one such work is, well, phenomenal. His first novel and most famous work, The Circus of Dr. Lao, was a Hugo finalist at Loncon II and won one of the inaugural National Book Awards, the Most Original Book of 1935; it is most decidedly fantasy. Ray Bradbury liked the novel so much that he included it as the headline story in his anthology The Circus of Dr. Lao and Other Improbable Stories; it is said that the carnival in his Something Wicked This Way Comes is modeled upon The Circus of Dr. Lao. (Died 1984.)
  • Born December 1, 1928 Malachi Throne. You’ve likely seen him if you watched genre television on the Sixties and Seventies as he had roles on Voyage to the Bottom of the SeaStar TrekNext GenLand of the GiantsThe Time TunnelMission: Impossible, Lost in SpaceOuter LimitsThe Man from U.N.C.L.E. , Batman,  and The Six Million Dollar Man. He provided the voice of the Keeper in Trek’s first pilot episode “The Cage”. Throne was cast in another role in “The Menagerie”, Commodore José I. Méndez, so his voice has altered in his “Cage” role. (Died 2013.)
  • Born December 1, 1936 Melissa Jaffer, 85. Likely you best remember her as Utu Noranti Pralatong on Farscape though she was also in Mad Max: Fury Road where she played Keeper of the Seeds. And she was Annie in the Good Vibrations series. And she played Adeline Fitzgerald on Glitch, the Australian paranormal series. It ran for seven seasons. 
  • Born December 1, 1942 John Crowley, 79. I’m tempted to say he’s a frelling literary genius and stop there but I won’t. Mythopoeic Fantasy Award and World Fantasy Award winning Little, Big is brilliant but if anything his crow-centric novel of Ka: Dar Oakley in the Ruin of Ymr which received the Mythopoeic Fantasy Award makes that novel look like child’s play in comparison. (Yes Little, Big did a Hugo nomination at Chicon IV.) Did you know he wrote a novella called The Girlhood of Shakespeare’s Heroines? Or Lord Byron’s Novel: The Evening Land, which contains an entire imaginary novel by the poet? 
  • Born December 1, 1962 Gail Z. Martin, 59. Best known for known for The Chronicles of The Necromancer fantasy adventure series. Her single award to date, and it is impressive, is the Manly Wade Wellman Award for North Carolina Science Fiction and Fantasy for her Scourge novel. It was the seventh time that she had been a finalist for it. 
  • Born December 1, 1964 Jo Walton, 57. She’s won the Astounding Award for Best New Writer. In her World Fantasy Award-winning Tooth and Claw dragons got positively and delightfully Victorian. Even if they eat each other. Her Small Change trilogy may be the finest WW II novels I’ve read bar none, and her Sulien series is an excellent retelling of the Arthurian myth.  Among Others which won a Hugo at Chicon 7 is she says about the “coming-of-age experience of having books instead of people for friends and solace”. I can relate to that as I imagine many here can too. She even won an Aurora Award for her “Nidhog” poem! 
  • Born December 1, 1965 Bill Willingham, 56. Best known I’d say for his long running Fable series though personally I think his best work was Proposition Player. He got his start in the late 1970s to early 1980s as a staff artist for TSR games where he was the cover artist for the AD&D Player Character Record Sheets and a lot of games I don’t recognize not being a gamer at that time. I do recognize his superb 1980s comic book series Elementals, and he later write the equally excellent Shadowpact for DC. I was always quite ambivalent about the Jack of Fables series that he spun off of Fables. Though his House of Mystery was rather good. 

(11) COMICS SECTION.

(12) SIX-PACK. In “6 Books with Marissa Lingen”, Nerds of a Feather’s Paul Weimer gets to hear what’s on a writer’s shelves, or might be soon.

1. What book are you currently reading?

I’m currently reading Megan E. O’Keefe’s Catalyst Gate, which is the culmination of a trilogy that starts with Velocity Weapon. It’s space opera that’s filled with spaceships, alien intelligence, nanites, and shooty-shoot–and also personal relationships and the human heart. The series is full of twists and turns, and I can’t wait to see where it all ends up.

(13) KDRAMA. The Silent Sea comes to Netflix on December 24.

With Earth in ruins, 24 hours on the clock, and the odds stacked against them, a team of space specialists embarks on a seemingly routine mission to the moon. But when things quickly take a turn for the worse, they’ll fight for their lives and uncover secrets that make their mission seem more and more impossible by the minute.

(14) THE MACHINES ARE TAKING OVER. ARE WE READY? [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] And now for a bit of science culture from the nation that first put someone on the Moon (with the aid of Cavorite;).

A bit of one of the many cultural traditions in Brit Cit are the annual Reith LecturesBaron Lord Reith, in case your memory needs jogging, was the first Director-General of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC). The BBC’s Reith Lectures were instituted in 1948 in his honour. These annual radio talks, with the aim of advancing “public understanding and debate about significant issues of contemporary interest” have been held every year since, with the exception of 1992.

This year the Reith Lectures’ topic will be Living With Artificial Intelligence. There will be one lecture per week this month broadcast Wednesdays 09.00 GMT. “The Reith Lectures – Reith Lectures 2021 – Living With Artificial Intelligence”.

Stuart Russell, Professor of Computer Science and founder of the Centre for Human-Compatible Artificial Intelligence (AI) at the University of California, Berkeley will be the 2021 BBC Reith Lecturer. He will deliver four lectures this autumn, which will explore the impact of AI on our lives and discuss how we can retain power over machines more powerful than ourselves.

The lectures will examine what Stu Russell will argue is the most profound change in human history as the world becomes increasingly reliant on super-powerful AI. Examining the impact of AI on jobs, military conflict and human behaviour, Stu Russell will argue that our current approach to AI is wrong and that if we continue down this path, we will have less and less control over AI at the same time as it has an increasing impact on our lives. How can we ensure machines do the right thing? The lectures will suggest a way forward based on a new model for AI, one based on machines that learn about and defer to human preferences

The first lecture (already broadcast and online) is entitled What is AI and should we fear it?

In it Stuart Russell reflects on the birth of AI, tracing our thinking about it back to Aristotle. He will outline the definition of AI, its successes and failures, and potential risks for the future. Why do we often fear the potential of AI? Referencing the representation of AI systems in film and popular culture, Russell will examine whether our fears are well founded. As previous Reith Lecturer Professor Stephen Hawking said in 2014, “Success in creating AI would be the biggest event in human history. Unfortunately, it might also be the last, unless we learn how to avoid the risks.” Russell will ask how those risks arise and whether they can be avoided, allowing humanity and AI to coexist successfully.

The lectures will be downloadable as an .mp3 for a month after broadcast. The
first is here.

(15) TOP 10. JustWatch says these were the Top 10 Sci-Fi Movies and TV Shows in the United States in November 2021:

Rank*MoviesTV shows
1Free GuyThe Wheel of Time
2DuneDoctor Who
3GhostbustersCowboy Bebop (1998)
4Venom: Let There Be CarnageHawkeye
5Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten RingsArcane
6Spider-ManFoundation
7Spider-Man: Far From HomeRick and Morty
8VenomBlade Runner: Black Lotus
9Spider-Man: HomecomingBattlestar Galactica
10The Amazing Spider-ManInvasion

*Based on JustWatch popularity score. Genre data is sourced from themoviedb.org

(16) THE HOLE TRUTH? [Item by Mike Kennedy.] Ars Technica reports “Russia threatens criminal charges against a NASA astronaut”.  (1) This traces back to the August 2018 “hole in the Soyuz” incident. (2) The headline implies criminal charges may be pending. That seems to be an overstatement, based on what is actually written in the article. The article could, however, have left out information that would support the headline.

The Russian space corporation, Roscosmos, said it has completed an investigation into a “hole” found in a Soyuz spacecraft when the vehicle was docked to the International Space Station in 2018.

Moreover, Roscosmos told the Russian publication RIA Novosti that it has sent the results of the investigation to law enforcement officials. “All results of the investigation regarding the hole in the habitation module of the Soyuz MS-09 spacecraft were transmitted to Law Enforcement officials,” Roscosmos said. No further details were provided.

In Russia, the results of such an investigation are sent to law enforcement to allow officials to decide whether or not to initiate a criminal case, which would be akin to issuing an indictment…. 

Since then, the focus has been on what—or who—may have caused the hole. A micrometeoroid strike was soon ruled out. Some Russian media reported that the hole had been caused by a manufacturing or testing defect, and this seems to be the most plausible theory. At the same time, however, sources in the Russian government started baseless rumors that perhaps a disgruntled NASA astronaut had drilled the hole….

(17) MONSTROUS BEHAVIOR. “2022 National Park Monsters Calendar” strikes me as a highly amusing product. However, the seller I ordered it from bit me with an $8.99 “tax” that was not shown to me as part of my order and now I am disputing it. So no link….

Real National Parks; Fake Monsters! It’s the 2022 Alternate Histories Calendar, packed with monsters, aliens, zombies, and other creatures rampaging through America’s National Parks.

(18) ONE HACKER’S OPINION. Behind a paywall at Wired, Andy Greenberg makes the argument that “The Matrix Is the Best Hacker Movie“ ever. Oh, he admits that the actual amount of hacking shown is quite small, but, quoting an early viewer of the movie, Neo understood that “by interfacing with this black screen with glowing green writing on it, he could change the world in ways that it was not necessarily meant to be changed.”

Or, in Greenberg‘s words, “The real hacking in The Matrix is metaphorical. The red-pill lesson Morpheus gives Neo is that a user in a digital system doesn’t have to abide by its terms of service.“

…For years the generally accepted canon of classic hacker movies has been a kind of holy trinity: 1983’s WarGames, with its digital delinquent caught up in Cold War geopolitics; the 1992 computers-and-cryptography heist film Sneakers; and 1995’s teen cyber-hijinks thriller Hackers. With a couple of decades of hindsight, however, it’s well past time to recognize that The Matrix has in some ways eclipsed that triumvirate. As other hacker films ossify, turning into computer cat-and-mouse-game time capsules, The Matrix has become the most abiding, popular, and relevant portrayal of hacking—a brain-plug jacked so deeply into our cultural conception of the genre that we’ve almost forgotten it’s there….

(19) WE HAVE IGNITION. Yahoo! recaps a network TV show which includes a genre Christmas light extravaganza: “Homemade ‘Nightmare Before Christmas’ decorations set high bar for Christmas displays”.

The holiday season was in full swing Sunday as ABC’s The Great Christmas Light Fight returned for yet another year. While there were no large crowds in attendance this year, due to COVID-19 restrictions, it was still a festive celebration filled with thousands of lights and incredibly creative decoration themes. One of the more popular themes from the night was based on the stop-motion holiday classic The Nightmare Before Christmas.

(20) VIDEO OF THE DAY. [Item by Martin Morse Wooster.] In “Ghostbusters: Afterlife Pitch Meeting” on Screen Rant, Ryan George, in a spoiler-packed episode, has the writer pitch that all the fans who were mad at the 2016 Ghostbusters reboot will pay to see a “loving tribute” to the original, including the last third that “follows the third act of the original, beat for beat.”  Also the writer has the producer play “product placement Mad Libs,” which is why we have characters buying a lot of Baskin-Robbins ice cream at Wal-Mart.

[Thanks to Cat Eldridge, Mike Kennedy, Martin Morse Wooster, JJ, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Kurt Schiller, Jeffrey Smith, John King Tarpinian, Andrew Porter, and Michael Toman for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Daniel Twisty Dern.]

49 thoughts on “Pixel Scroll 12/1/21 Scrolls, Glorious Scrolls, Fresh Godstalked And Pixeled

  1. (6) EH? WHAT’S THAT?

    Subtitles. I now watch everything with subtitles on where available. I can’t fix the problem so I work-around it.

  2. Rob Thornton says Totally agree with Cat’s entry on John Crowley. Though I think fandom undervalues him, he has extra appeal in literary circles. There aren’t many other writers that had Harold Bloom stumping for them.

    When I do these Birthdays, I’m constantly fascinated by which authors don’t nominated get for Hugos. Crowley is one of them. He’s gotten just two, one for Little, Big and his “Gone” story. I really though Ka: Dar Oakley in the Ruin of Ymr which was brilliant would get nominated.

  3. Crowley’s also an interesting essayist, as in, writing on topics I might not have been curious about and still may not be, but so engagingly that I read ’em anyway. In his recent (in terms of my reading) collection READING BACKWARDS, Among other joys are his use of words I’ve never even seen/read before (), e.g.

    There’s a lot of polysyndeton — clauses and sentences hooked up with ‘and.’

    [Paul] Park’s Roumania series—to a much greater degree even than the Starbridge books–is are dense with synecdochic detail as the great realist novels of the place and time in which (mutatis very much mutandis) it is set…

  4. Daniel Dern says Crowley’s also an interesting essayist, as in, writing on topics I might not have been curious about and still may not be, but so engagingly that I read ’em anyway. In his recent (in terms of my reading) collection READING BACKWARDS

    And that collection qualifies as a Meredith moment as it is only five dollars and ninety nine cents at the usual suspects, quite a deal for over four hundred and sixty pages of reading. It surprised me that Subterranean Press has this up as a digital publication this fast.

  5. 9) I never even knew that this existed, and now I want to see it based just on the cast list.

  6. Joe H. It passed me by, too — don’t recognize the name. With a cast like that, you’d think — though I see from the poster it was exclusive to STARZ, a cable channel, and I was only taking basic cable in those days so that’s probably the explanation.

  7. (3) WATCH THIS SPACE. Groovy, and I especially love the photo of the LightSail!

    (6) EH? WHAT’S THAT? Very interesting, thanks! We get frustrated at home with movies, but also TV, sometimes. But in movies, especially: it seems like over-loud music and sound effects trample the dialogue, but clearly there’s a lot more going on. I’m annoyed at actors and directors purposely making dialogue unclear; that doesn’t make it more realistic — it just makes me want to give up on what I’m watching.

    (7) PODCAST PEOPLE. Speaking of sound, there’s a sort of static-y fuzziness to the dialogue in this podcast. (I only listened to a tiny bit; it’s distracting.) I can understand it fine, but either they purposely ran it through a “make it sound like a bad AM station” filter (ugh) or they need a new mic.

    (10) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS. Gail Z. Martin has a pen name, Morgan Brice, for her urban fantasy, male/male paranormal romance books. I haven’t read any of her Brice books (yet).

    Re. Bill Willingham, I’d forgotten about his “Elementals” comic book! Thanks for mentioning it.

  8. (6) My impression is that sound mixes have increased the volume of background and effects (rumbles, explosions, gunshots, crashes, etc.) relative to speech. If you increase the playback volume so that speech is loud enough to discern, then the other sound is so loud that it’s uncomfortable. So you dial back the volume, and the speech becomes hard to hear.

  9. (17) In the real Yosemite, you can see El Capitan and Bridalveil Fall from Tunnel View, looking up the valley, with Half Dome in the distance. Here is a picture:
    Yosemite National Park, El Capitan, Half Dome, and Bridalveil Fall, from Tunnel View

    In the calendar, El Capitan and Bridalveil Fall are flipped, as if in a mirror. Also Half Dome is not to be seen, and the valley seems to be narrower. Whatever timeline it is from, powerful forces have been at work. I would be cautious about visiting Mirror Lake.

  10. I am saddened to pass on that Darrell Osborn has died of heart issues. He’s the husband of Stephanie Osborn. They’ve made a number of appearances at SF cons in the Southeast, with Stephanie as a writer and Darrell doing magic and balloon animals. Darrell’s day job was as a graphic designer for an aerospace contractor, and he did cover art for SF books.

    He was a friend for decades, and the loss is great.

  11. @bill: I’m so very sorry for the loss of your friend! My sympathies to you and his wife, and other friends and family!

  12. Roku has a setting where you can leave the subtitles off, but if you miss a line and back up a little, the subtitles will show up temporarily.

  13. (6) EH? WHAT’S THAT?

    I’ve had this issue in theatres for years, where the action segments are deafening, and the dialogue segments are barely intelligible. It’s really frustrating, because in the theatre I have no control over the volume. I recently watched Edge of Tomorrow at home, and I had to keep turning the volume up and down because of it — but at least I had some control over that.

  14. (6) Every film I see has subtitles, and they are a great help, both in understanding what’s being said and improving my knowledge of the local language. It does keep one’s vision flicking to the bottom of the screen, of course, so one sees a lot of belt buckles, etc.

    @Cat Eldridge, thanks so much for the birthdays, especially as a source of new reading. I’m chasing 2 Naomi Mitchison novels new to me, and will now pursue Crowley’s novella. And happy birthday to Jo Walton, and long may she write.

    @ bill, I’m sorry for your loss. Losing a close friend is very painful.

  15. 6) I do have a nice 5.1 sound system at home, but because I live in a condominium with people in units both above and below me, I have to be conscious of the volume, so I have every volume compression/night mode setting I can find turned on in both my receiver and my various playback devices.

    And there are still movies where I need to sit with my remote in hand and ride the volume to try to keep it manageable, and yes, I also often have subtitles turned on.

  16. (6) Thank you! I knew that there was more than just my aging ears at work in causing the increasing unintelligibility of movie dialogue (and also now dialogue in big-budget, theatrical-tech-level TV shows on premium cable and streaming). I agree with the reasons given and have a few of my own:

    — Yes, producers overuse music tracks to try to punch up emotions, and they also do it wrong. Use that big swelling music for scenes without dialogue, or where the dialogue would be unintelligible anyway (battle scenes, say). And don’t use background music with lyrics when actors are speaking! I hate it when the sappy ballads cut in when the characters get to the emotionally-laden scenes, and then I can’t understand the meaningful dialogue. (This happens often at the end of some TV shows.)

    — Another reason is, I think, a sign of the times. As productions become more international, so does casting. Actors with a wider and wider variety of English accents are being employed in the movies I watch, which is a good thing, but I’m not so used to the wide variety of English, Irish, Scottish, Indian, East Asian, Aussie, Kiwi, South African, etc., etc. accents I’m hearing, especially if a lot of them are in one film. Plus, for a lot of the actors English is not a first language, and even though fluent, many have non-Anglophone accents. This reason for unintelligibility on my part has resulted in me using closed-captioning on such internationally-cast productions at home, with hope that over time I grow more able to better comprehend this wonderful multiplicity of accents.

  17. 14) I think it has long been acknowledged in the world of AI research that developers are creating “Cat” AIs, when what we all really want (and hope we get) are :”Dog” AIs.

    By way of example:

    Dog: You have food! Yay food! I’d really like some food. Please, please, please, gimme gimme gimme. Oh, you’re not giving me any food? OK. I’ll just wait here to see if maybe some falls on the floor.

    Cat: You have food. Food I might be interested in eating. Give me some of your food. Now. No? OK, I’m going to go kill and eat something. Buh-bye.

    Pretty clear, I think, which future AI we want around us.

  18. 6) If you own an Apple TV 4K, you can receive Dolby Atmos via Air Pods Pro or Air Pods Max earphones. (Yeah, it’s all Apple but I am in thrall to their ecosystem).

    @ bill – So sorry to hear. My condolences.

  19. @Msb,

    I grew up with subtitles (in Malaysia where I grew up, with three main languages, most everything was broadcast with subtitles) so it’s instinctual for me. In the same way that if someone asks me what I do when reading comics, whether I look at the picture first of read the words first, I have to think first before I answer.

    (I glance at the image first usually as it gives the (if you’ll forgive the phrase) ‘Big Picture’ & the words provide more specifics.)

  20. @Soon Lee
    For me, too. I always look at the bottom of the screen, even when seeing a movie with no subtitles.

  21. One thing that video games are doing that I’d love to see movies start to do (though it’s probably not possible with the current generation of technology) is offer three separate volume sliders for dialog, music, and sound effects.

  22. (10) Remembering Charles G. Finney’s “The Circus of Dr. Lao” also makes me remember its 1964 movie adaptation, George Pal’s “The Seven Faces of Dr. Lao”. Its sentimental script by Twilight Zone writer Charles Beaumont is just about the opposite of the acid cynicism Finney was going for in the novel. Nevertheless, a couple of scenes from Finney’s novel survive in the movie more or less intact. If you can endure Tony Randall’s performance in yellowface as the title character (he also plays several other heavily made-up and costumed roles), the movie has its charms.

  23. (9). It’s news to me that Captain Zoom had a theatrical release. I saw it on television once and thought it was just a cheap made-for-tv film. I wasn’t very impressed with it.

  24. Troyce says It’s news to me that Captain Zoom had a theatrical release. I saw it on television once and thought it was just a cheap made-for-tv film. I wasn’t very impressed with it.

    Well IMDB says it had a theatrical release but I’ve not altogether convinced it did. There’s no actual box office figures associated with its release, so I’m skeptical.

  25. I just searched the usual suspects for Charles G. Finney’s The Circus of Dr. Lao and was quite surprised to find that it hasn’t been published in digital form. Given that the novel came out eighty six years ago, it is in the public domain, isn’t it?

  26. @Cat Eldridge

    I just searched the usual suspects for Charles G. Finney’s The Circus of Dr. Lao and was quite surprised to find that it hasn’t been published in digital form. Given that the novel came out eighty six years ago, it is in the public domain, isn’t it?

    It was published in 1935, so to still be in copyright, it would have had to have been renewed in 1962.
    The indicia on the 2002 Viking Edition implies that it was (“Copyright 1935, 1962 by Charles G. Finney”). And Project Gutenberg’s archive of renewals confirms it:

    FINNEY, CHARLES G.

    The circus of Dr. Lao. Drawings by
    Boris Artzybasheff. © 19Jul35;
    A84688. Charles G. Finney (A);
    23Jul62; R298838.

    So, it appears to still be under copyright.

    (And to my way of thinking, this is a clear example of how the copyright extensions have gone too far. Finney was not motivated in 1935 to write the book by the prospect of retaining control in 2021, 86 years later — copyright for this long does not “promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts”.)

    I had not known that the book was illustrated by Artzybasheff. His work was always interesting, and often excellent.

  27. P J Evans says He died in 1984, so we have to wait. (IA has it for borrowing only.)

    Ahhh. It’ll be awhile yet. Let’s have some publisher does a legit copy.

    And Internet Archive is illegally lending it. They’ve no right to be providing a digital copy.

  28. 9) Ow. Name conflict detected. “Kapten Zoom” was the eponymous protagonist of the Swedish TV 1976 kids’ program “Galaxer i mina braxer, sade Kapten Zoom” (‘Galaxies in my trousers, said Captain Zoom’).

  29. @ Bonnie McDonald:

    Another Swedish kids’ program (“Five ants are more than four elephants”) had a very catchy song about one letter of the alphabet, called “The song of O”. My memory says that the female presenter had high-heeled black boots, and a black vinyl or leather dress, and the two make presenters had leather trousers, leather caps, and harnesses. I expect Hampus will chime in and tell me my memory is false and constructed. 🙂

    And yet another kids’ program (“Lost in the pancake”) had a giant potato with an obliteration ray, that said Big Potato used indiscriminately.

    Galaxies in trousers, like groins of sand, are truly the least of if. 70’s Swedish kid telly was fundamentally weird in MANY ways.

  30. (10) A couple of years ago I found a copy of Finney’s The Ghosts of Manacle, his 1964 collection of stories about the fictional town of Manacle, Arizona, in a used bookstore. It is best described as eccentric; some of the stories have aged less well than others, but it is very much in the style of The Circus of Dr. Lao.

  31. You know how to pixel, don’t you? You just put your files together and scroll.

  32. @Patrick Morris Miller
    It’s been done.
    Really, it has.

    (And it’s such a good suggestion, it’ll probably come up again before long. Maybe by me . . . )

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