Pixel Scroll 2/4/19 Like Pixels Through File 770, So Are The Scrolls Of Our Lives

(1) COVER REVEAL. Here is The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction’s March/April 2019 cover. The cover art is by Kent Bash.

(2) BETTER WORLDS. The latest short story (and video adaptation) in The Verge’s “Better Worlds” series is “A Sun Will Always Sing,” by Karin Lowachee. (Video byYeah Haus.)

There’s also a Q&A: “Karin Lowachee on how humanity can peacefully coexist with AI” conducted by Andrew Liptak.

What inspired this story, and how did you construct this future?

I’d seen on YouTube a discussion from scientists about if an AI possessed an exact neural map of the human brain that it would not be out of the realm of possibility to believe that they would also be imbued with curiosity and maybe even a sense of responsibility for the Earth because now they, too, were a part of its systems. Around the same time, I stumbled on articles written by social scientists who believed that in taking care of certain economic necessities, humanity ideally could free up resources for creative problem-solving on the world scale and exploration.

These points of reference were really the general jumping-off points for me to try to logically extrapolate a human society that accommodated AIs (though not without some implied struggle) because the AIs were not, in fact, seeking a judgment day. They wanted to live and progress just as humans, and though their consciousness was not exact to humans, they were their own kind and just as worthy to be respected. We recognize this in intelligent animals, or even animals as a whole, so my thinking was it could be possible for AIs as well.

(3) WASTE NOT, WANT NOT. Max Florschutz offers advice about “Being a Better Writer: Garbage”. His ideas are far more realistic than J.K. Rowling’s.

Consider, for example, your trash. What happens to it? How do you dispose of it? Is it a garbage can next to your desk or in the kitchen? What happens to it once the can is full? Where does it go? Who deals with it? Do you know? Or does it simply “vanish?”

Well, here’s the thing. It definitely doesn’t vanish. Refuse is refuse: Someone has to do something with it or it piles up. Waste from your home, for example, at least in the US, is collected in a larger can and taken to the side of the road for a garbage truck to collect (99% of the time. The US’s coverage with this system is so ubiquitous that I’ve been to rural places where the only vehicle in town that isn’t a four-wheeler or a boat is the town garbage truck). That truck then takes it to a landfill or a processing center. At the first, the garbage is dumped out. At the second, it’s sorted and separated, usually with an end-goal in mind of dividing up the garbage into smaller, more dedicated end-states, from compost to recycling.

(4) NYRSF READINGS. Jim Freund asks, “Why waste your time with the State of the Union, when we have such a brilliant and more fulfilling alternative?”

The New York Review of Science Fiction Readings Series resumes Tuesday, February 5.

Mimi Mondal (Bone Stew) writes about history and politics, occasionally disguised as fiction. Her first co-edited anthology, Luminescent Threads: Connections to Octavia E. Butler won a Locus Award and was nominated for a Hugo Award in 2018. In the past Mimi has worked as an editor at Penguin India and Uncanny Magazine, and spent eleven years at universities in India, Scotland and the US, from which she is currently recovering in New York and at @Miminality on Twitter.

Karen Heuler’s stories have appeared in over 100 literary and speculative magazines and anthologies, from Conjunctions to Clarkesworld to Weird Tales, as well as a number of Best Of anthologies. She has received an O. Henry award, been a finalist for the Iowa short fiction award, the Bellwether award, the Shirley Jackson award for short fiction (twice), and others. She has published four novels and a novella, and her fourth story collection has just been published by Tartarus Press.

The events begins at 7:00 p.m. in The Brooklyn Commons Café, 388 Atlantic Avenue (between Hoyt & Bond St.) in Brooklyn, NY.

(5) FIVE STORIES IN ONE. Syfy Wire gets to Hogwarts by way of Korea: “Geek Road Trip: Harry Potter fans in South Korea just opened a five-story cafe devoted to the boy wizard”.

Once we get inside, we’re quickly pointed to the counter. The food and drink offerings here are relatively run-of-the-mill Seoul cafe classics: Americanos, various flavored lattes and milk teas, and fruity adeS. On the menu, they promise chocolate wands are coming soon, and on select days there’s Butterbeer. Dessert-wise there’s a selection of cakes, none of which are themed, save for one: the wizard cake, a mini replica of the birthday cake Hagrid brings to Harry. We ordered the wizard cake for a cool 17,000 Won (around $15), grabbed our pager, and began to explore.

And trust me, there’s a lot to explore. Everywhere you turn there’s a poster or a reference to something Harry Potter-esque. Quotes in English and Korean line the staircases along with posters and portraits. Even the elevator is fully decked out.

(6) NO CODE FOR THIS CONDUCT.  The infosec industry conference DerbyCon is calling it quits after this year. Their explanation sounds like “We’re closing down rather than resorting to enforcing our code of conduct.”

Read their announcement here: “DerbyCon 9.0 – Every Beginning Has an End”.

…This year, we had to handle issues that honestly, as an adult, we would never expect to have to handle from other adults. Conferences in general have shifted focus to not upsetting individuals and having to police people’s beliefs, politics, and feelings. Instead of coming to a conference to learn and share, it’s about how loud of a message a person can make about a specific topic, regardless of who they tear down or attempt to destroy. To put it in perspective, we had to deal with an individual that was verbally and mentally abusive to a number of our volunteer staff and security to the point where they were in tears.

This is not what we signed up for.

Admittedly, we had no idea how to handle this person, and in fear of repercussion of removing this person, allowed them to stay at the conference in order to “not upset the masses”. The best we could do was just apologize, for other apologies, and apologize more for another’s actions. This is just one example of many we have had to deal with over the past few years, and each year it becomes increasingly harder for us to handle. We do everything as a conference to ensure the safety, security, and go above and beyond that of others. Maybe that puts us on a different level where something that would normally not be an issue explodes into a catastrophic situation on social media.

Who knows? What we do know is each year it gets harder and harder.

2019 will be our last year of DerbyCon.

Motherboard reports “Hackers Baselessly Blame Women and ‘SJWs’ for the End of DerbyCon Security Conference”.

…Some in the infosec community read the organizers’ statement and began to blame the shutdown on “Social Justice Warriors,” and women who complained too much. For example, far right blog Gateway Pundit pointed to an incident where an attendee complained that other attendees were joking about sexual assault outside of the conference’s Mental Health Village. Others on Twitter latched on to the rumor that “SJWs” killed DerbyCon.

Regardless of the reason for the conference’s cancellation, the announcement renewed a conversation about toxicity in the infosec community that has been taking place in earnest since at least 2017 (and in smaller circles before then), when the Verge reported on chat logs from well-known security researcher Morgan Marquis-Boire, in which he confessed to a series of sexual assaults; the Verge and VICE corroborated that reporting with multiple women who have knowledge of the assaults.

While some women in the cybersecurity world were discussing the toxic interactions, sexual harassment, and assaults they’ve faced in the infosec community, members of a popular closed Facebook hacking group called “illmob” began to attack women who have spoken up about these issues, including Georgia Weidman, a security researcher who recently tweeted that her career was hurt by attending and speaking at DerbyCon in 2013….

(7) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

  • Born February 4, 1925 Russell Hoban. Riddley Walker may well be one of the most difficult novels I’ve ever read but it’s certainly also worth it. ISFDB lists a lot of other SF works by him but I must say I hadn’t realised that he’d written any beyond this work. Had any of you known this? (Died 2011.)
  • Born February 4, 1940 John Schuck, 79. My favorite SF role by him is as the second Draal, Keeper of the Great Machine, on the Babylon 5 series. I know it was only two episodes but it was a fun role. He’s also played the role of Klingon ambassador Kamarag in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home and in  Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country. He guest starred in Deep Space Nine as Legate Parn In “The Maquis: Part II”, on Star Trek: Voyager as Chorus #3 in the “Muse” episode, and on Enterprise as Antaak in the “Divergence” and “Affliction” episodes. Oh, and he was Herman Munster in The Munsters Today.  Now that was a silly role! Did you know his makeup was the Universal International Frankenstein-monster makeup format whose copyright NBCUniversal still owns? 
  • Born February 4, 1961 Neal Asher, 58. I’ve been reading and enjoying his Polity series since he started it nearly twenty years ago. Listing all of his works here would drive OGH to a nervous tick as I think there’s now close to thirty works in total. I’m listening to The Line War right now and it’s typically filled with a mix of outrageous SF concepts (Dyson spheres in the middle of ten thousand year construction cycles) and humans who might not be human (Ian Cormac is back again). He’s the sort of writer that I think drives our Puppies to madness — literate pulp SF pumped out fast that readers like. 
  • Born February 4, 1970 Gabrielle Anwar, 49. Currently Lady Tremaine on Once Upon a Time. On the BBC series Prince Caspian and the Voyage of the Dawn Treader, she once played Ramandu’s Daughter. Marti Malone in Body Snatchers which is the third film adaptation of that Finney novel.  She was Queen Anne in The Three Musketeers which I love and Emily Davenport in The Librarian: Return to King Solomon’s Mines

(8) COMICS SECTION.

  • Patriotic Ewoks will shed a tear over this Brevity.

(9) STAR TREK: RENT. On The Late Late Show With James Corden, the cast of Star Trek: Discovery leaves the bridge for this week’s episode of Carpool Karaoke. Sing along with Sonequa Martin-Green, Anthony Rapp, Doug Jones and Mary Wiseman. Complete show is accessible through an Apple app.

There’s another preview on Twitter.

(10) WORLDCON ECONOMICS. Persistent Scribble tasks an unnamed author who feels the Worldcon should give them a free membership. Thread starts here.  

(11) VAMPING IT UP. What We Do in the Shadows, from writer Jemaine Clement and director Taika Waititi, premieres March 27 on FX.

What We Do in the Shadows is a half-hour comedy series based on the feature film of the same name by co-creators Jemaine Clement and Taika Waititi. Set in New York City, the show follows three vampires who have been roommates for hundreds and hundreds of years. Stars Matt Berry, Kayvan Novak, Natasia Demetriou, Harvey Guillen and Mark Proksch.

(11) Y? Y NOT? The Hollywood Reporter has posted that, “‘Y: The Last Man’ Ordered to Series at FX.” Much of the cast had been announced as early as mid 2018 (The Hollywood Reporter: “‘Y: The Last Man’ FX Cast Unveiled, Diane Lane and Barry Keoghan to Star”), but FX has now definitized the series order.

File this under “years in the making.”

Brian K. Vaughan’s beloved comic series Y: The Last Man is finally coming to a screen. FX on Monday announced that it has picked up its TV adaptation to series. The network has handed out a series order for the drama from showrunner Michael Green and starring Barry Keoghan and Diane Lane. It is expected to premiere in 2020.

[…] Green (American GodsBlade Runner 2049Logan) and Aïda Mashaka Croal (Luke CageTurn) serve as showrunners and executive producers. Nina Jacobson and Brad Simpson of Color Force (American Crime StoryPoseThe Hunger Games) and Vaughan executive produce and developed the series. Melina Matsoukas (InsecureMaster of NoneBeyonce: Formation) directed the pilot and exec produce the FX Productions drama. In addition to Keoghan and Lane, the cast also includes Amber TamblynImogen Poots, Lashana Lynch, Juliana Canfield and Marin Ireland.

(12) BLUER MARBLE. BBC story says “Climate change: Blue planet will get even bluer as Earth warms”.

Rising temperatures will change the colour of the world’s oceans, making them more blue in the coming decades say scientists.

They found that increased heat will change the mixture of phytoplankton or tiny marine organisms in the seas, which absorb and reflect light.

Scientists say there will be less of them in the waters in the decades to come.

This will drive a colour change in more than 50% of the world’s seas by 2100.

(13) AS EASY AS A. Chip Hitchcock says BBC’s article “How easy will it be to build a Moon base” is an “interesting overview despite one huge error-of-fact.” (Can you spot it?)

How can astronauts build a lunar base if traditional building materials are too heavy to load into a rocket?

In 1975, three years after the final Apollo Moon landing, Space: 1999 first aired on British television. It began with a nuclear explosion wrenching the Moon, and an international lunar colony of over 300 people, out of its orbit and into an unknown journey into space.

The TV series obviously made an impression on a young Elon Musk because, when the SpaceX founder revealed their plans for a lunar colony in August 2017, he called it Moonbase Alpha after the lunar base in Space: 1999. “Cheesy show,” Musk tweeted, “but I loved it.”

SpaceX is not alone is wanting to get humans back on the Moon. The Chinese space agency CNSA (China National Space Administration) has announced the next stages of its successful Chang’e lunar exploration missions – shortly after Chang’e 4 became the first spacecraft to make a soft landing on the far side of the Moon.

Chang’e 5 and 6 will be sample return missions while Chang’e 7 will survey the South Pole, a region of specific interest for human habitation because it contains water ice. “We hope that Chang’e 8 will help test some technologies and do some exploring,” deputy head of the CNSA Wu Yanhua said in January, “for the building of a joint lunar base shared by multiple countries.”

China is not alone in this ambition. Across the globe, 50 years after the Moon landings, the practicalities of a moonbase are taking shape. The irony is that, while only the United States of America has left footprints on the Moon, the Americans are now having to play catch up. It didn’t unveil plans for a permanent moonbase until August 2018. Nasa’s primary focus until then had been Mars. The European Space Agency (Esa) was already one step ahead.

(14) YARN V. GLASS CEILING. Pixar has a new short film that blurs the line between genre and a workplace dramedy (Mashable: “Pixar’s newest short ‘Purl’ is a must-watch for every workplace”).

Pixar’s new animation program SparkShorts has released its first short film, a powerful story about the difficulty of fitting into a workplace of human males. 

“Purl” might be about a pink ball of yarn, but its title character adopts new behaviors and aggression to be one of the boys, a transparent allegory for women trying to break the glass ceiling in corporate culture.

[Thanks to Martin Morse Wooster, Gordon Van Gelder, Chip Hitchcock, Daniel Dern, Mike Kennedy, Errolwi, JJ, John King Tarpinian, Cat Eldridge, Carl Slaughter, and Andrew Porter for some of these stories. Title credit goes to ULTRAGOTHA.)

78 thoughts on “Pixel Scroll 2/4/19 Like Pixels Through File 770, So Are The Scrolls Of Our Lives

  1. (7) I was sure Shuck had been in “Get Smart” as a robot, but apparently I was thinking of “Holmes and Yoyo” in which Shuck played the robot, Yoyo (so, genre!).

  2. (3)
    The landfill where I worked had recycling for oil, for tires, for yard waste – branches got run through a chipper – and the city had recycling bins as well as dumpsters for residents. (Businesses could contract with trash companies, and the larger ones did.) Sometimes non-residents would sneak trash into dumpsters – I still remember the time there was a dead ostrich in one (not legal within city limits and people outside the city limits couldn’t legally use the dumpsters, so…). People in rural areas could get dumpsters that would be picked up every week or so – they were generally alongside driveways, so the trash trucks could get to them. (Ours was a 1.5 yard bin.) The only stuff I ever saw left at the side of the road for collection was dead animals.

  3. Re (3) WASTE NOT, WANT NOT.

    Well, here’s the thing. It definitely doesn’t vanish.

    To quote Theodore Sturgeon, re ‘throwing stuff out”: “There is no ‘out.'”
    (Although “doesn’t vanish” calls to mind one (or more?) sf stories, the names and authors of which I’m not immediately recalling, which do involve such an apparent “garbage vanisher.”)

  4. The concept of “throwing out” turns out to be important to the resolution of a Bujold novel (which I’m not naming to avoid spoilers).

  5. (6) Well, that sounds like a hot mess. If they’re such cowards that they can’t bring themselves to remove a clearly abusive person, then they need to shut down.

  6. (6) Derbycon: We do everything as a conference to ensure the safety, security, and go above and beyond that of others.

    … except, apparently, enforce their Code of Conduct. 🙄

  7. WHAT WE DO IN THE SHADOWS was a very funny movie, so I’m looking forward to the TV series.

  8. @3: Rowling’s approach was that magic is, well, magic; spells (as opposed to potions) can be endlessly remembered and cost no energy (personal or from the universe) to cast. That’s not unique in fantasy; I recall a story in which a showoff commercial wizard had everything he might need to sell or host with pre-spelled to do what would be useful, as a demonstration of ~competence. But that approach doesn’t work in science fiction; some things can be ignored, but showing bits of them gives texture in a way that makes the world un-flat for many readers. (I remember Cherryh talking about Cyteen when it was in process, and the fact that Ariane was so wealthy she’d actually put milk and/or sugar in her coffee — people who didn’t like the taste of coffee straight generally didn’t pay the huge price to ship from Earth.) I don’t write, but this article seems wonderfully effective advice.

    @5: to each their own.

    @Daniel Dern: I remember at least one of those — possibly by Knight — in which all the “vanished” garbage came back in heavy streams a month or so later.

  9. (6) Poor Derbycon. So unfair, that anyone should expect them to enforce their code of conduct! Wasn’t it enough that they had one?

  10. 3) I’m always surprised that there is comparatively little recycling mentioned in science fiction, compared to how much recycling is already going on in the real world.

    Over here, every household has four different garbage cans, one for organic/biological garbage (will be composted), one for paper and cardboard (will be recycled), one for other recyclable garbage (plastic packaging and tin cans, mostly, will be recycled) and one for leftover garbage, i.e. anything that doesn’t fit into any of the other categories and cannot be recycled. This garbage can is the smallest.

    There also are return stations for reusable glass bottles and returnable plastic bottles and drink cans (will be recycled) in every supermarket. You put in your bottles and plastic crates and get your deposit back. This system was initially designed to reduce waste and is remarkably effective. Even if someone decides that they don’t need the 10 or 15 cents deposit a plastic bottle or beer can is worth and just tosses it, someone else will quickly collect and return it.

    For those glass bottles that can’t be reused (wine and hard liquor bottles, jam jars, etc…) there are collection stations around town. Once more the glass is recycled. There also are collection stations for clothing (sold or recycled, depending on condition) and collection stations for spent batteries (hazardous waste). I can return my printer cartridges to the store for credit and there is a recycling center for washing machine, fridges and other household equipment.

    6) “We’d rather close down our con than enforce our own code of conduct and kick out that one abusive person.” In that case, your con probably deserves to be shut down.

    9) Aw, how sweet! They’re clearly having so much fun. Plus, it pays to have a castmember who is also a Broadway star.

  11. I was sure Shuck had been in “Get Smart” as a robot, but apparently I was thinking of “Holmes and Yoyo” in which Shuck played the robot, Yoyo (so, genre!).

    I was thinking the same thing–but then I realized that Hymie the Robot was played by Dick Gautier.

  12. 7) Antother birthday…

    Born February 4, 1818 – Joshua Abraham Norton, Emperor of the United States and Protector of Mexico. A man with such a fantastic life that he managed to insert Fantasy into reality itself. First time I came upon Emperor Norton was in the non-genre comic book Lucky Luke. Second time was in the genre work Sandman by Neil Gaiman. And without knowing it, I had also stumbled upon him as an inspiration for the King in Mark Twain’s book Huckleyberry Finn. As an Emperor of United States, Joshua Norton brought happiness and fantasy to all the citizens of San Fransisco. He was saluted by the police and at the theaters, there were seats reserved for him and his companion dogs Bummer and Lazarus. He had his own currencies and by pure force of personality stopped a riot. At his death, the funeral cortège was two miles long. I visited his grave in 2006 to serve my respects.

  13. Chip Hitchcock said: @3: Rowling’s approach was that magic is, well, magic; spells (as opposed to potions) can be endlessly remembered and cost no energy (personal or from the universe) to cast.

    That’s not difficult to do in science fiction as well; just say the incantation “Nanotech Disassemblers” and your waste will vanish away or be transformed into useful stuff, no muss, no fuss, no worrying about energy requirements or thosempesky Laws of Thermodynamics. Star Trek had a similar thing going with the replicators turning the waste stream into food, clothing, security guards…

    On the other end of the spectrum is the classic Junkyard Planet. The most recent rentertaining example being the planet Sakaar from Thor Ragnarok.

  14. He’s a down-on-his-luck cop who can’t keep a partner, until he’s teamed up with an android!

    They fight crime!

  15. @Cora Buhlert:

    I’m always surprised that there is comparatively little recycling mentioned in science fiction, compared to how much recycling is already going on in the real world.

    Not sure whether this counts, but “planet-size garbage/recycling operation” certainly seems to be a common trope, e.g. in Wall-E and A Closed and Common Orbit.

    Cyberpunk was full of electronics surplus operations with shady people repurposing electronics.

    ObPixelScrollTitle: “Recycling Day: Leave Your Blue Bins on the Shoulders of Orion Tomorrow”

  16. (6) Well, I don’t think I’d want to be volunteering at a con with that kind of a-hole community. Hard to tell if the online abuse is coming from attendees or just couch dwellers.

  17. 10: Yes, Virginia (I have internet authorities that assure me this name has been given to both males and females), people do actually pay for the privilege of ‘working’ on a convention, though most who do don’t consider it “paying” nor do they consider it “work”. They consider all of it a privilege and an important thing to do.

    General: I too am experiencing some formatting issues with images, using Safari on a tablet, though not on the PC using Chrome.

  18. @Steve:

    A lot of the people I know who work on conventions do think of it as work–what it isn’t, most of the time, is drudgery. They (we) do it out of some combination of finding the specific work satisfying, and seeing a job that needs doing.

  19. Meredith Moment: The ebook version of The Traitor Baru Cormorant by Seth Dickinson is on sale at Amazon (and possibly elsewhere) for $2.99.

  20. @microtherion

    Not sure whether this counts, but “planet-size garbage/recycling operation” certainly seems to be a common trope, e.g. in Wall-E and A Closed and Common Orbit.

    Yes, the planet of garbage, which is the intergalactic equivalent of Chittagong in Bangladesh or whatever the town in Ghana where much of the world’s electronic garbage winds up is called, does show up in science fiction on occasion, but you don’t often see recycling happening on site where the trash is generated or fairly close to it. The closest you get are the trash compactors anbd incinerators in Star Wars, even though places like Jakku and Tatooine clearly have a recycling industry.

  21. steve davidson: I think this might be key to why all future civilizations are so enamored of the 20th–21st centuries: We will have mastered recycling before too much longer, so these will be the last centuries for which they’ll have so much garbage and detritus that they’ll know them as intimately as their own time.

  22. 3) One of many nice incidental (I nearly said throwaway) ideas in Delaney’s “Stars in my Pocket Like Grains of Sand” is that in the narrator’s culture garbage disposal is a high-status occupation because analysing what’s being thrown away is the best way to monitor the state of the economy.

    Though I also have a soft spot for the bit in “Bill, the Galactic Hero” where Harry Harrison wonders what you do with all the landfill in one of those cities that covers the whole planet.

  23. @13: actually, there are two errors:
    1. Gur grzcrengher enatr vf jebat (cbffvoyl n fvta reebe); gur Zbba nyfb trgf jryy nobir Rnegu grzcrengherf.
    2. Gur 2aq pbairefvba vf jebat, ntnva va n jnl gung pna or rkcynvarq ol n fvta reebe.
    I’ve gotten used to Filers pointing out Auntie’s errors and elisions, but these could have been corrected without even sending an email.

  24. 7) Really enjoy Asher’s Polity Not for everyone I’m sure but generally works very well for me. Even if I often damn it with Banks’lite faint praise.

  25. @Cora: I think it’s in Ringworld where Larry Niven inserted one of his little contrarian rants where the universe just so happens to prove him right… about how the ancient concept of “recycling” turned out to be a huge mistake because it doesn’t actually save you any energy. IIRC, it’s implied that this was a major factor in the waste heat problem that had threatened the Puppeteers’ civilization. I’m not sure Larry exactly showed his work there.

  26. 7) It’s Neal, not Neil. I really like The Skinner and its sequels. The spatterjay virus is totally bonkers, but he invents fun (and vicious) ecosystems.

  27. (7) ISFDB lists a lot of other SF works by [Russell Hoban] but I must say I hadn’t realised that he’d written any beyond this work

    ISFDB is being flexible there. Hoban did use fantasy elements in a lot of his books, but it’s usually more along the lines of magic realism and usually something that only affects one or two people. That basically describes The Lion of…, The Medusa Frequency, Amaryllis Night and Day, Linger Awhile, and Angelica Lost and Found. Fremder is very much SF even though the “science” is entirely based on a metaphor. Pilgermann is historical fiction with mystical tendencies. The Mouse and His Child, The Trokeville Way, and Soonchild are children’s books with a variety of fantasy themes. All the other novels on that list (besides RW) are, as far as I can remember, entirely realistic (despite which Turtle Diary is one of my all-time favorite novels; NB, the movie is not a good adaptation).

    I’ve read Riddley Walker many times (first when I was, appropriately, 12) and ended up putting together this mess of notes about it. I have a Punch puppet given to me by the theater company that performed the stage version in Waterford, Ireland. I met Hoban and his wife a couple times, did some research for him and kept up a correspondence. I miss him every year at this time.

    (He also hilariously told me, after I’d had a breakup, that he remembered my ex [they had met] and that he hadn’t thought we were a good match. So it’s official!)

  28. Hoban also cowrote Emmet Otter’s Jug Band Christmas (the book, that is, on which the more famous TV special was based), though aside from the talking animals there’s nothing particularly genre about it.

  29. Camestros Felapton: You reminded me that in Bill the Galactic Hero Harry Harrison satirized Trantor’s trash problem with various solutions, including using the military’s free franking privilege to mail it to the colonies where the “gift” of raw materials presumably would be welcome.

  30. @CountZeroOr: Well, yeah – I didn’t say it made sense. Similarly, there are people who argue that public services provided by governmental agencies are a drain on the economy because they don’t make a profit. People argue a lot of things.

  31. @ P J Evans

    I am now imagining the adventures of trying to dispose of the carcass of a dead ostrich in a semi-urban environment. For some unknown reason, I’m hearing the tale told in the voice of a Red Wombat…

  32. @Mike This in turn reminded me of Battle Angel Alita (which I’ve been reading in advance of the movie – just finished the main manga and moved on to Last Order) – where the Scrapyard is where a lot of the waste and debris from Zalem goes, to be reclaimed, repurposed, and recycled into more products for both the Scrapyard, and to be shipped back to Zalem.

  33. @Heather Rose Jones

    I am now imagining the adventures of trying to dispose of the carcass of a dead ostrich in a semi-urban environment. For some unknown reason, I’m hearing the tale told in the voice of a Red Wombat…

    When the yellow plastic bags for to collect plastic and metal garbage for recycling were introduced in Germany approx. 20 years ago, the geniuses who came up with the idea distributed them to all households with instructions what to put into the bags only in German (and pretty bureaucratic German at that). So immigrants with a shaky grasp of German didn’t understand the instructions and dumped all sorts of things into those recycling bags. One thing that was surprisingly often found in the yellow recycling bags in the early years were the heads of lambs and goats slaughtered for Eid al-Adha. Eventually, they printed the instructions in multiple languages and the problem vanished, though I still wonder where the lamb and goat heads wound up now.

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