Pixel Scroll 12/27/17 A Very Modest Scroll

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(1) SFWA IN TIMES TO COME. Cat Rambo’s yearly recap of all her activities includes a look ahead for SFWA —

  • SFWA’s excellent Executive Director Kate Baker said a few years back, “I want to make the Nebula weekend -the- premiere conference for professional F&SF writers” and I said, “Tell me what you need to do it.” This year’s Nebulas were fantastic; next year’s will be even more, including having Data Guy there to present on the industry, an effort that’s taken a couple of years to get in place.
  • The SFWA Storybundle had its first year and was wildly successful, as was the Nebula-focused HumbleBundle. The Storybundle program will grow 150% in size in 2017, which sounds really impressive but just means 3 bundles instead of 2. Plus – SFWA’s Self-Publishing Committee has taken that effort over, so no work for me! (Last year I read a bajillion books for it.)
  • A long, slow revamp of Emergency Medical Fund stuff driven by Jennifer Brozek, Oz Drummond, and Bud Sparhawk is coming to its final stages. I just saw the EMF stewards in action: they received an appeal, evaluated it within 24 hours, and within a week, if I am correct, funds had been disbursed. The Grants Committee just wrapped up its 2017 work; next year it’ll have even more money to play with, thanks to the aforementioned Nebula HumbleBundle.

(2) A BIT ICKY. A nine-year-old got a lovely note from the outgoing Doctor Who. BBC has the story: “Doctor Who: Peter Capaldi reassures fan over regeneration”

(3) SIPS. Charles Payseur is back with “Quick Sips – Beneath Ceaseless Skies #241”

With its last issue of the year, Beneath Ceaseless Skies delivers two very dark fantasy stories about expectations and rules, curses and sacrifices. In both characters find themselves playing out roles that have been laid out for them, having to find ways to exist in stifling situations. In both, the main characters must contend with the weight of tradition and expectation. In both, the main characters are faced with strong willed women who want to change things. Who want to break the Rules. And in both stories the main characters have to face what the world is like, what their life might be like, should those Rules shatter. It’s an interesting issue that asks some very difficult questions and reveals some visceral hurts. To the reviews! …

(4) DOG STAR. The Storm Trooper K-9 division –

https://twitter.com/Celeb_Dachshund/status/939880915316166656

(5) CURTIS OBIT. The actor who famously played a disfigured Star Wars cantina criminal has died reports Yahoo! Entertainment.

Alfie Curtis, the British actor who earned a place in the Star Wars pantheon for playing the menacing Mos Eisley Cantina scofflaw with the “death sentence on 12 systems,” has died, according to the BBC. He was 87. News of Curtis’s death was first reported by the fan site Elite Signatures.

(6) TODAY IN HISTORY

  • December 27, 1904 — J. M. Barrie’s play Peter Pan premiered in London
  • December 27, 1951 — Captain Video: Master of the Stratosphere premiered.

(7) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY STARGAZER

  • Born December 27, 1571 — Johannes Kepler

(8) YOUNG SETH MACFARLANE’S STAR TREK VIDEO. David Klaus sent this video and made these comments about it on Facebook:

I presume this is only an excerpt of a longer fan film Seth MacFarlane made as a teen, a far better film than I could have made when I had thoughts about trying to do when I was a teen many years before this.

His space background is an artist’s conception of gases spiraling into the event horizon of a black hole, pretty cool, along with what appears to be an AMT model of the refit Enterprise. His voice occasional verges into sounding like Shatner’s instead of his own, and he uses sound effects and music from the original series. I’d get a kick out of seeing the whole thing.

 

(9) NUKE HOBBYIST. He told NPR it’s not that hard, compared to what else is done today in manufacturing: “North Korea Designed A Nuke. So Did This Truck Driver”

To make his models, he drove 1,300 miles to Los Alamos, N.M., the birthplace of the atomic bombs. The museum there has accurate, full-scale replicas of Little Boy and Fat Man that he could work from. As he designed his models, he decided he’d write a brochure to go with them.

“The brochure turned into a 431-page book,” he says.

Coster-Mullen never sold a single model, but he has been adding to his bomb brochure ever since, building up what are basically complete specs for America’s first nuclear weapons. He has traveled the country, and the world, to glean all sorts of supposedly secret details.

“Nobody leaked anything to me,”he says. “I found all this information was hiding in plain sight.”

(10) SOI DISANT DISNEY PRINCESS. She’s willing to take the promotion!

(11) BATTLESTAR GALACTICA. Chris Nuttall argues the case for the original — “Classic Battlestar Galactica – The Review” at Amazing Stories.

Battlestar did it’s level best to depict a society that was different from ours, even though it had points in common. Everything from the ranks and uniforms to the games and terminology smacked of an alternate universe, not men and women who could have walked off a modern day aircraft carrier. It wasn’t that far from America, I admit, but it was different – again, unlike the remake. It’s really a pity they didn’t put quite so much thought into their FTL drive concepts, as the exact nature of ‘light-speed’ is never really addressed.

Like most other shows from that era, Battlestar needed a good cast – the special effects could not carry the show by themselves. And Battlestar had some very good characters – Commander Adama, Apollo, Starbuck, Tigh and Boomer … and, on the other side, Baltar and Count Iblis. (Notably, Baltar was originally executed by the Cylons after betraying the Twelve Colonies, but he was later brought back because they needed someone as the face of the enemy, a problem the remake sought to solve with ‘skin-jobs.’)

[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, JJ, David K.M. Klaus, Will R. Cat Eldridge, and Chip Hitchcock. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day OGH.]

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134 thoughts on “Pixel Scroll 12/27/17 A Very Modest Scroll”

  1. It’s too bad that it’s so awfully hip to hate Seth MacFarlane because he really is pretty talented.

  3. rochrist: It’s too bad that it’s so awfully hip to hate Seth MacFarlane because he really is pretty talented.

    Talented, yes. But I imagine that a lot of people really dislike him for the same reason I do: not because it’s “hip” to do so, but because they find his sense of humor infantile and not at all amusing.

  5. Captain Video …not 1949?

    McFarlane. Yes, there’s some infantile humor there, but there’s also some deep levels of meta as well, or at least what might appear to be meta.

    ETA: Wow! my FIRST Fifth!

  8. Got to see the DW Christmas Special on a movie screen last night. That was fun. Not a perfect DW episode or even a DW Christmas episode, but I’ll take it.

  9. John A Arkansawyer: I’ll take infantile funny over sophisticated unfunny any day.

    Those are hardly the only options, and I don’t find either of them amusing. 🙄

  11. Out with the scrolled, in with the new.

    I watched the first episode of Family Guy, and determined that McFarlane couldn’t tell a joke. When he got hold of something amusing, he would beat it to death with repetition. And people at rec.arts.animation told me, well, he’s just starting! Give him a chance!

    So I watched a couple more episodes, and they were no better. He just seemed to have one trick in his sleeve, which was to have classic characters swear or do something violent, or both. And they still said the show gets funnier later on.

    When I had watched a half dozen shows, and never laughed, I stopped listening to them and gave myself permission to stop trying to like the show. I’ve seen clips and tuned in for a moment or two from time to time, and the stuff they rave about is repetitive and derivative, and the show feels like a weak echo of The Simpsons plus a talking dog and a one-joke baby. The design is ugly and jarring: Characters look like they were pulled randomly from different styles of animation.

    I’m glad he is passionate about science and uses his influence for causes I approve. That’s a nice thing, but it doesn’t make him funny or entertaining. I’m not sure of the date of when I gave myself the rest of my life off from him, but it was one of the best presents I ever received. With all the shows he has running, it’s a gift that keeps on giving. I watched the Simpsons crossover, and still am not inclined to return my wonderful gift. There are so many better choices.

    …

    Now I’m going to tick all the boxes. For a while, I was subscribed to every post here, and that was fine, but it went away. Can someone tell me how to mass subscribe again? Nothing I try seems to do the trick.

  12. Meredith Moment: The Djinn Falls in Love (collection of stories about, um, djinn, edited by Mahvesh Murad and Jared Shurin) is currently $0.99.

  13. John A Arkansawyer: I personally will take almost any funny over almost any not funny.

    And I will take people who engage in genuine, honest interaction over churlish passive-aggressives any day.

  14. Kip W: Can someone tell me how to mass subscribe again? Nothing I try seems to do the trick.

    Kip, try going here (you may need to sign in):
    https://wordpress.com/following/manage

    Find File 770 in the list. To the right of it, click Settings. Toggle (click on) the slidey buttons to turn them off, then do it again to turn them back on. You should end up with them toggled to the right. Theoretically, the new setting is saved right away. Let me know if what you see and are allowed to do does not seem to align with this.

  15. I personally will take almost any funny over almost any not funny.

    Given that MacFarlane is never funny, that leaves him out in the cold.

  16. A quick drive-by Meredith Moment:

    The Bedlam Stacks by Natasha Pulley is on sale for $2.99 from Bloomsbury USA (uses DRM). As I understand it, this is set in the same world as The Watchmaker of Filigree Street, but 20-25 years earlier and mostly in Peru.

    I could only find two Filer comments about it. One was pro (but hadn’t finished it); the other was somewhat pro, but said it wasn’t as good as “Watchmaker.” I don’t know if more folks have read it since then; it’s been out nearly five months. Anyway, FYI!

  17. @JJ: I realize you get off on being confrontational. Your kink is okay by me. Just don’t expect me to play along with your sad little game. When I have an example of something I think isn’t funny, I’ll post it; when I have an example of something I think is funny, I’ll post that too. That’s part of how talking about humor works.

    If you want to call illustrating my point passive-agressive, go right ahead. Watching you use that hammer on every so-called nail? That’s kind of funny, and the joke is on you.

  18. John A Arkansawyer: I realize you get off on being confrontational.

    Nope, I just have no patience for people who mistakenly think passive-aggression is clever. If you don’t like being called out on it, then don’t do it.

  19. @Andrew: I may still have “Melee” and “Wizard,” though I forget where/when/why I got them, waaaaaay back in the day. I’m not sure I remembered they were an RPG, but then, I’m not sure I ever actually played them. 😉

    Back in the day, I’d accumulate RPG & related stuff here and there – sometimes gifts, passed along from friends, or even inherited (one time) – so at this point I have a large, weird assortment gathering dust in the basement.

  20. Battlestar did its level best to depict a society that was different from ours, even though it had points in common.

    I can’t agree. I belong to a culture as close to America’s as almost any in the world, and yet still everything about the original BG said “Space America” to me. They had space pet dogs and smoked space cigars and played space basketball and space poker, and the kids sat in a space classroom with the Flag in the corner. Hardly any other country on Earth has the national flag in the corner in classrooms.

  21. Del Cotter on December 28, 2017 at 7:54 am said:
    and the kids sat in a space classroom with the Flag in the corner. Hardly any other country on Earth has the national flag in the corner in classrooms.

    With no flag, what do the children face when they take the daily loyalty oath?

  22. @Del. Hey, I was obliged to watch the original because it was billed as “decent money being spent on a sci fi epic…on television!” or some such.

    Like Buck Rogers, I placed it in the “skiffy” category as yet another example of people not getting what Sci Fi, let alone SF was all about.

    But what do I know? I just published it and Chris’ viewpoint is a valid one (though I wonder if he had to explain to his friends why he wasn’t watching it as much as I had to).

    Space: Above and Beyond was, I thought, a better take on the trope. Note that “better” in this case is relative.

  23. Iphinome: You face the Sacred Sun, which is in the Sky (note, do not administer Loyalty Oath until after sunrise, this becomes increasingly difficult in winters north of, or south of, the (ant)arctic circle(s)), so that you can Remember What We Stand For (unlimited fusion in massive plasma balls?).

  25. Del Cotter: everything about the original BG said “Space America” to me. They had space pet dogs and smoked space cigars and played space basketball and space poker, and the kids sat in a space classroom with the Flag in the corner.

    Okay, I think that the American fetish of teaching children to revere an object, rather than ideas, and indoctrinating them with a memorized hymn to that object, is obscene and unhealthy for the country and should be stopped. So I’m with you on that.

    But people in other countries don’t have pets, or smoke, or play sports, or play card games? 😕

  26. @Aaron:

    I personally will take almost any funny over almost any not funny.

    Given that I think MacFarlane is never funny, that leaves him out in the cold.

    I fixed that for you by adding the bolded text above.

    I don’t love him myself. I’m a King of the Hill guy. It’s got heart and, in Hank Hill, one of the best fictional dads ever. Family Guy is often cruder than I prefer. But when I watch it or the rest of McFarlane’s stuff, he makes me laugh, even when he also makes me cringe.

    So he is funny pretty much by definition for me and millions of other people. YMMV.

  27. I still remember Seth MacFarlane being “caught” on video by TMZ outside some Hollywood hotspot as he described to his friends the key events of the Battle of Midway. He was somewhat unknown at that point, being a behind the scenes guy with only Family Guy on, so the whole thing was surreal compared to the usual celebrity news.

    My main problem is that his timing is really hit or miss. There was a bit on an early season of Family Guy about playing Marco Polo with Helen Keller. Even if you were OK with the joke in the first place, it went on much, much too long.

    Also I’d say as an actor, he’s an above-average looking good writer.

  28. It is so effing cold outside (and rather cold inside too) that my usual links to you have dwindled. Instead of sending them out, I’m burning them in my e-fireplace.

  29. It’s just as cold here, but I’m putting up a couple of links because my e-fireplace runs on solar. (Today’s discovery: if they’re clear of snow, the panels will generate at max for at least an hour even this close to solstice. They’d probably do more but there’s a tree in the way — and unlike the case of a fellow solar user on a large rural lot, this tree belongs to someone else, so removal or topping to clear the panels isn’t an option.) And I say pshaw to this cold anyway; its worst is ~20 degrees above the bottom we hit 22 months ago, and I’ve changed a tire (at night, on a bridge) in ~20 degrees worse than it is right now. OTOH, the duration of this spell (at least 6 days) is unusual.
    wrt recent discussion: The Gavle Goat survived the holiday.
    just because it’s fun: India’s moonwalking traffic cop. (short video; subtitles note that there are complaints about him spoiling the dignity of the job, but also fellow officers wanting lessons.)
    And an amendment to my earlier comment on Baen: they also publish Lee&Miller, whose Theo thread in the Liaden universe has been interesting and relatively typo-free. The origin pair (Crystal Soldier and Crystal Dragon) were also clean but IMO could have used some disentangling, or at least fewer useful coincidences; building a backstory can be troublesome.

  30. Kendall on December 28, 2017 at 7:31 am said:
    A quick drive-by Meredith Moment:

    The Bedlam Stacks by Natasha Pulley is on sale for $2.99 from Bloomsbury USA (uses DRM). As I understand it, this is set in the same world as The Watchmaker of Filigree Street, but 20-25 years earlier and mostly in Peru.

    I could only find two Filer comments about it. One was pro (but hadn’t finished it); the other was somewhat pro, but said it wasn’t as good as “Watchmaker.” I don’t know if more folks have read it since then; it’s been out nearly five months. Anyway, FYI!

    Squee! This had passed me by. Now added to Mount Tsundoku!

  31. But people in other countries don’t have pets, or smoke, or play sports, or play card games?

    Not in the same way. I had the same problem with the Space Diner in one of the Star Wars Prequel: it just screamed USA to me so much that it destroyed my suspension of disbelief completely. Do other countries have eateries? they certainly do. What they don’t have is diners. That is the difference between doing worldbuilding well or badly.

  32. Speaking of books, and of Baen: for the first time in my life I discovered the joys of comfort re-reading. I was catastrophically depressed over the Christmas holidays (a first for me) and I only survived by re-reading almost the whole set of Vorkosigan books.

  33. the American fetish of teaching children to revere an object, rather than ideas, and indoctrinating them with a memorized hymn to that object, is obscene and unhealthy for the country and should be stopped. So I’m with you on that.

    I’d just like everybody in fandom to be clear I never wrote anything like that, and I don’t think that, so it’s not possible for anyone to be “with me on that”. I was pointing to certain details as culturally highly specific, not criticizing them.

    No more being threatened at cons for what someone says I wrote on the Internet, please?

  34. @Iphinome

    With no flag, what do the children face when they take the daily loyalty oath?

    In many places, a picture of the dear leader.

  35. IanP on December 28, 2017 at 11:26 am said:
    @Iphinome

    With no flag, what do the children face when they take the daily loyalty oath?

    In many places, a picture of the dear leader.

    Now I’m curious: don’t you have pictures of the current President in American schools? I can’t for the life of me remember if we ever had pictures of the President of the Republic in Italy (a mandate that lasts seven years and is often repeated).

  36. John A Arkansawyer: You should do the same FTFY to your own first comment about McFarlane, which flat asserted he was very funny without any kind of “I think” caveat. You can’t complain about someone else excluding the subjective when you didn’t include it.

    My impression of your first comment was that you were none-too-subtly asserting that JJ’s opinion wasn’t just different, but wrong, and I think that’s what got their back up. It would have irked me, too.

    We all know funny is subjective. JJ’s comment, to which you were responding with your flat assertion, specified THEY find his sense of humour unamusing. It left plenty of room for those who find his sense of humour amusing.

  37. I don’t recall having any kind of formal picture of our current PM in any Canadian Schools. I have a hard time imagining it.

    Of course, we tended to start the day with Oh Canada, and in my day we ended it with “God Save the Queen.” (I haven’t noticed that happening in my son’s school, but the number of times I’m there for the actual day’s end are pretty much nil.) So we still had our salute to our dear leader, so to speak, and skipped over the one that changes every 4 years.

    Though I don’t recall royal portraits cropping up so much either.

  38. I fixed that for you by adding the bolded text above.

    Nope. MacFarlane is objectively unfunny.

    Sorry if this revelation bothers you.

  39. Kendall on December 28, 2017 at 7:31 am said:

    A quick drive-by Meredith Moment:

    The Bedlam Stacks by Natasha Pulley is on sale for $2.99 from Bloomsbury USA (uses DRM). As I understand it, this is set in the same world as The Watchmaker of Filigree Street, but 20-25 years earlier and mostly in Peru.

    Currently reading it. A similar sense of an initially very grounded Victorian setting that then gets weird very quickly.

  40. I would be unsurprised to see a photograph of the Queen in photos of many NZ schools mid 20thC. And for a wider timescale in certain types of schools. Prominent Old Boys (and Girls I guess, I haven’t been in any girls/mixed schools of the type) might have a photo in a suitable location in traditional schools, so Prime Ministers etc might be there in that context.

  41. Lenora Rose on December 28, 2017 at 11:50 am said:

    I don’t recall having any kind of formal picture of our current PM in any Canadian Schools. I have a hard time imagining it.

    Of course, we tended to start the day with Oh Canada, and in my day we ended it with “God Save the Queen.”

    I’m told that it used to be common in Australian schools for there to be a picture of the Queen in each classroom. That wasn’t the norm in the UK – a difference that still has vestiges in Australia where the Queen’s Birthday is a public holiday but has never been a holiday in the UK.

    I’ve never seen a British flag in a British school but I assume some schools must have them. Australian flags are often in school halls in Australia and that’s often flags-plural (i.e. The union-jack/southern cross one and the Aboriginal flag and sometimes the Torres Strait flag also).

    I’ve seen flags and/or national emblems in classrooms in a range of countries. I think it is common enough to be non-US specific but it looks very USian to UK audiences.

  42. @Lenore Rose: That’s a fair point about the subjectivity of comedy to individuals, and you’re right that JJ’s original comment did leave room for my opinion.

    I was replying to Aaron’s remark that “McFarlane is never funny”, which I think fails pickily on the “never”–surely he’s been funny once?–and substantively on the fact that millions of people disagree. If we laugh–serious laughter, both in public and in private–the thing is objectively funny.

    I do see that I did something really bad: I left a malformed URL in that first comment without checking it. I don’t blame JJ for finding that frustrating, if that’s what happened.

    Anyway, here’s the link, properly formed:

    I screwed up trying to point it at exactly the moment in the sketch when Sasheer Zamata refers to “the explosive comedy of McSweeney’s”. (For those who want to know what’s there, that’s what.) Sometimes I find the humor in McSweeney’s funny. Most of the time, I find it clever–about as enthusiastically as the guy in the video–and not very funny.

    (One exception. And another. Those are both pretty funny as well as clever.)

    The fart gun in Despicable Me? Probably infantile. Definitely hilarious.

  43. I think Prime Ministers aren’t likely material for schoolrooms. Mind you, it would have been a minor industry supplying photos to schools of the current PMs in Australia over the past decade with the rate we’ve got through them.

  44. I never understood the reverence for the original Battlestar Galactica – even when watching it as a callow teenager, I couldn’t help noticing that it was shamelessly re-using the plots of Westerns, war movies, and generic adventure films, with only a superficial SFnal veneer. (The police procedural one being an excellent example – the scene where they do a ballistics test to prove the fatal shot came from Starbuck’s laser is a minor classic of unintentional comedy.)

    Also, it’s one thing to have a talented cast, it’s another to use that talent – Lorne Greene, especially, always looked to me as if he was only on the set because Glen Larson was holding his family at an undisclosed location.

    Overly portentous, stodgy and self-important, too. It got to be a whole lot more fun when it loosened up, stopped taking itself seriously, and turned into Buck Rogers in the 25th Century. Just my opinion, of course.

  47. @Matt Y: I hadn’t seen that. It was clever enough until I reached the paragraph with the word “incarnadine”, at which point I laughed, very hard.

    In publishing news: Milo’s rejected manuscript, with editorial notes included.

    My favorite:

    On claiming that the Cold War ended when America landed on the moon:
    Comment [A409]: Moon landing was 1969. Berlin Wall didn’t fall till 1990. Russia quitting the space race was NOT the end of the Cold War.

  48. @Anna Feruglio Dal Dan

    As a Scot I cannot comment on what pictures may adorn American schoolrooms. Though Alex Salmond did seem to be heading towards “glorious leader” territory for a while.

  49. When I was in school in the US, there was always a flag in the classroom (and we faced it for the pledge of allegiance) but there was never a picture of the current president of the United States. We did have a poster at least one year that listed the names and years in office of all the US presidents, but that makes some sense; it is material kids are expected to learn. (Maybe not anymore; they’ve added nine more to the list.) 🙂

    As I think about it, I don’t remember ever seeing a US elementary school or high school classroom with a picture of the president in it, but I’ve rarely been in one since I finished high school myself, so maybe things have changed. It would strike me as really strange, though.

  50. Anna Feruglio Dal Dan on December 28, 2017 at 11:38 am said:
    The only ones I remember seeing were in our history/social studies books. Not on the walls, certainly.

    But from 6917, it’s possible that a lot has changed.

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