Pixel Scroll 2/8/18 I’ve Got A Plan So Cunning You Could Put A Scroll On It And Call It A Pixel

(1) 4SJ. At the Classic Horror Film Board, the webmaster’s reminiscence about Forrest J Ackerman prompted a #MeToo response from Lucy Chase Williams, and since then “Forrest J Ackerman’s #MeToo Moment …” has generated 561 comments.

Speaking of “failures” (!), I guess this is the time to remind the boys here of #MeToo. I and other young women like me were subjected to a different kind of “Forry worship.” How differently would any of you have felt, when all you wanted was to talk about monsters with the “over eager editor” of your favorite monster magazine, if your Uncle Forry had forced wet kisses on you? If he had put his hands all over you, pinching your “naughty bottom” and squeezing your “boobies”? If he had enthusiastically related with a big grin how he wanted to strip off your clothes with everybody watching? And if, in the face of your total refusal of any of his attentions every single time you saw him in person, he never didn’t try again, and again, and again? And if for years, in between those times, he mailed you letters with pornographic photos, and original stories about how naughty you were, and how he wanted to hurt and abuse you, yet all the while make you weep and beg for more? And if he continued that behavior, despite written and verbal demands to cease, entirely unabashed for more than two decades? No, I can’t forget him either — or how he turned my childhood love of monsters into something adult and truly monstrous.

(2) STAUNCH PRIZE. Earl Grey Editing reports on an interesting new non-sff award:

Not strictly SFF or romance, but still within genre, The Staunch Prize has been created to honour crime thrillers where no woman is beaten, stalked, sexually exploited, raped or murdered. The shortlist will be announced in September and the winner will be announced on 25 November.

(3) STAR GORGE. Michael Cavna has a roundup of all the current Star Wars projects, with the news being that Disney is also planning a streaming Star Wars TV series for fans who just want more after Solo, Episode IX, the Rian Johnson trilogy, and the Benioff and Weiss trilogy: “A guide to every Star Wars movie and TV show that’s planned right now”.

  1. Potential spinoffs of other characters

Talk continues to swirl around Obi-Wan Kenobi, Yoda and Boba Fett getting their own films, according to such outlets as the Hollywood Reporter. At this point of galloping Disney expansion, who’s to say that each won’t one day get his own TV trilogy?

  1. The streaming TV series

Iger’s new announcement comes just several months after he first said a live-action Star Wars series would happen. Expect that TV menu to grow at a significant rate, as Disney gets set to launch its own entertainment streaming services by next year.

(4) MILSF KICKSTARTER. M. C. A. Hogarth says, “I stealth launched my newest Kickstarter yesterday to see if I could keep it from blowing past the goal, but it overfunded anyway. So I guess I’ll advertise it? laugh It’s fluffy first contact sf” — “Either Side of the Strand Print Edition”:

MilSF with an all female crew, in an “Old Star Trek” vein! Because we all love first contact stories, with octopuses.

Having already hit $1,241, when the original goal was $500, Hogarth is far into stretch goal territory —

So, some stretch goals! Just in case, even though this is only a week!

  • $750 – I do a bookmark, and everyone who gets a physical reward will receive it!
  • $1000 – the audiobook! This should open an audiobook reward level (details for that when/if it happens)
  • Over $1000 – I will wiggle a lot! And then tuck that money away to pay for the final Stardancer novel (currently in revision).

But Jaguar! You say. Why are your stretch goals so modest! Why don’t you do Alysha plushes! We would totally be on board with Alysha plushes! And Stardancer t-shirts!

Because, dear backers, I don’t want to fall down on this job for you, and that means humble goals. *bows*

I admit Alysha plushes would be adorbs though.

(5) NEW SFF PODCAST. MilSF Authors JR Handley and Chris Winder have unveiled they latest joint project; the Sci-Fi Shenanigans Podcast. JR and Chris are US veterans (US Army and USMC respectively) that focus on producing MilSF stories. They have released five episodes in the last 2 weeks:

(6) LEAVE THE WHISTLE UNBLOWN. Joe Sherry continues picking contenders in the “2018 Nerds of a Feather Hugo Awards Longlist, Part 4: Institutional Categories”. Although the criteria he gives below disregard the actual rules for the Best Fanzine category, most of his picks are eligible anyway – no harm, no foul.

This time we are looking at what are, for lack of a better term, the “nonfiction and institutional categories”: Best Related Work, Best Semiprozine, Best Fanzine and Best Fancast. Now, those who follow this blog know how cranky The G can get on the subject of certain categories and their bizarre eligibility guidelines–and we’ve got two of them today (Best Semiprozine and Best Fancast). Nevertheless, I will do my best to stay calm and stick to the rules, frustrating as they can be. I reserve the right, will, however, get a little snarky and passive-aggressive in the process.
There are, however, some sticky issues that made putting this list together a bit difficult. Knowing what does or does not constitute a “fanzine” in the era of blogs, for example–and given that we may already be on the downward slide of that era, it only promises to get more difficult as time passes. Nevertheless, we have tried to create clear and consistent guidelines for inclusion in this category. Thus, to qualify, a fanzine: (1) must be a fan venture (i.e. must not generate a significant amount of money, or pay professional rates for work); (2) must publish a lot of content in a given year; and (3) must publish “award worthy” content. We did not discount single-author blogs from consideration, but criterion #2 makes it difficult for most single-author blogs to  merit consideration. Consequently, while a couple made it, most did not–including some very good ones.

(7) SHADOW NOMINATIONS. The Australasian Horror Writers Association reminds that nominations are open for the Australian Shadow Awards until February 28. See eligibility and submission guidelines at the link.

The Australian Shadows Awards celebrate the finest in horror and dark fiction published by an Australasian within the calendar year. Works are judged on the overall effect of a work—the skill, delivery, and lasting resonance.

[Via Earl Grey Editing.]

(8) BARLOW OBIT. John Perry Barlow, co-founder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), died February 7. NPR paid tribute:“Cyber-Libertarian And Pioneer John Perry Barlow Dies At Age 70”.

A founding member of the Electronic Frontier Foundation and former lyricist for the Grateful Dead, John Perry Barlow, has died at the age of 70, according to a statement issued by the Foundation.

Barlow was a poet, essayist, Internet pioneer and prominent cyber-libertarian. He co-founded the Electronic Frontier Foundation in 1990 after realizing that the government was ill-equipped to understand what he called the “legal, technical, and metaphorical nature of datacrime.” He said believed that “everyone’s liberties would become at risk.”

Barlow described the founding of the EFF after receiving a visit from an FBI agent in April 1990 seeking to find out whether he was a member of “a dread band of info-terrorists.” Shortly thereafter, Barlow and Mitch Kapor, the creator of Lotus 1-2-3, organized a series of dinners with leaders of the computer industry for discussions that would lead to the creation of the EFF.

And the BBC remembers

In 1996, he wrote the widely quoted Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace, which asked governments of the world to stop meddling in the affairs of net-centred communities.

“You are not welcome among us. You have no sovereignty where we gather,” he wrote.

(9) POLCHINSKI OBIT. Multiverse theorist Joseph Polchinski died February 2 reports the New York Times.

Joseph Polchinski, one of the most creative physicists of his generation, whose work helped lay the mathematical foundation for the controversial proposition that our universe is only one in an almost endless assemblage that cosmologists call the “multiverse,” died on Friday at his home in Santa Barbara, Calif. He was 63. He had been treated for brain cancer since late 2015.

Dr. Polchinski was a giant force in the development of string theory, the ambitious attempt to achieve a “theory of everything,” which envisions the fundamental particles of nature as tiny wriggling strings. The theory has brought forth ideas and calculations that have opened new fields of study and new visions of a universe that is weirder and richer than astronomers had dreamed.

…After months of treatment [for cancer], Dr. Polchinski put his energy into writing his memoir, which he posted on the internet.

“I have not achieved my early science-fiction goals, nor explained why there is something rather than nothing,” he wrote in an epilogue, “but I have had an impact on the most fundamental questions of science.”

(10) TODAY IN HISTORY

  • February 8, 1958Teenage Monster premiered at your local drive-in.

(11) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS

  • Born February 8, 1828 – Jules Verne
  • Born February 8, 1908 — William Hartnell, the first Doctor Who.
  • Born February 8, 1942 – Stephen Hawking
  • Born February 8, 1969 – Mary Robinette Kowal

(12) KOWAL CELEBRATES. As part of her celebration Kowal pointed to a free read short story, “The Worshipful Society of Glovers” that came out last year in Uncanny Magazine. And on her blog she told about how she developed that story:

To begin… When I was writing Without a Summer I was looking at historical guilds as models for the Coldmongers. In the process, I ran across the Worshipful Company of Glovers, which is a real livery company that has been in existence since 1349. Kinda awesome, right?

(13) COMICS SECTION.

  • John King Tarpinian finds Yoda remains in character even in this mundane situation, in Off the Mark.

(14) RETRO COMICS. Edmonton’s Hugo Book Club took a deep dive into the comic books that were published in 1942 and are eligible for the Retro-Hugos this summer. They suggest that in terms of Best Graphic Story “Some of the most exemplary works are little-remembered by the modern reader,” and encourage Hugo voters to consider a wide range of lesser-known works.

In 1942, the modern American comic book was still in its infancy. Sequential art published on pulp paper with gaudy CMYK illustrations was hitting the shelves at a furious pace, led by the success of best-selling books like Captain Marvel, The Spirit, and Archie. But for every Mort Meskin, Basil Wolverton or Jack Cole working in 1942, there were dozens more, often filling pages with inflexible five- and six-panel layouts, stilted dialogue, and rigidly posed figures….

Prior to 2018, the only time there was a Retro Hugo for Best Graphic Story was in 2016, when the Retro Hugos for 1941 were awarded. That ceremony saw Batman #1 take the trophy ahead of Captain Marvel and The Spirt, both of which are superior comic books. Joe Simon’s superb first 12 issues of Blue Bolt didn’t even make the final ballot.

Batman as a character may have had more popular appeal in the long-term, but those early stories are not as dynamic or innovative as The Spirit. Batman may have some science fiction elements today, but in 1940 Blue Bolt told better science fiction stories. Batman may be more popular today, but in 1940 Captain Marvel was the leading comic book character….

(15) STACKS OF FUN. The G takes “Altered Carbon, Episodes 1-3” for a test drive at Nerds of a Feather.

Netflix’s new science fiction show, Altered Carbon, is based on a novel of the same name by Richard K. Morgan. It’s basically a mashup of neo-cyberpunk, detective noir, milSF and techno thriller. Since I have particular interests in the first two parts of that equation, Altered Carbon looked to be right up my alley. So I decided to commit to 3 episodes, after which point I’d take stock. Three episodes in and I like it enough to continue. It’s not quite as good as I’d hoped, however.

Takeshi Kovacs is, or rather was, a kind of super soldier known as an envoy. Envoys were part of an insurrection against the hegemonic polity, the Protectorate. The insurrection failed and the envoys were “put in ice.” However, in the future your mind, memories and soul are stored on a “stack”–a kind of hard drive that is surgically inserted into your body. As long as the stack isn’t damaged, it can be taken out of a dead body and inserted into a new “sleeve” (i.e. a body). Religious types refuse to be re-sleeved, believing that it prevents the soul from ascending to heaven. Pretty much everyone else who can afford to do it, does.

(16) BUNDLE TIME. The latest Storybundle is The Black Narratives Bundle, curated by Terah Edun:

This month is groundbreaking for many reasons, it represents a clarion call to support and uphold cultural heritage, but more than that Black History Month is a time to celebrate accomplishments of the past and the future. From the moment I was asked to curate the Black Narratives bundle, I knew this one was going to be special. I didn’t want to just reach out to authors who were the pillars of the diverse speculative fiction community, but also the ingénues who were becoming stars in their own right.

(17) CANON TO THE LEFT OF THEM, CANON TO THE RIGHT OF THEM. Entertainment Weekly says “Firefly canon to expand with series of original books”.

It may sound like something out of science-fiction, but it’s true: More Firefly stories are on the way.

EW can exclusively report that Titan Books and Twentieth Century Fox Consumer Products have teamed up to publish an original range of new fiction tying in to Joss Whedon’s beloved but short-lived TV series Firefly. The books will be official titles within the Firefly canon, with Whedon serving as consulting editor. The first book is due in the fall.

(18) DON’T YOU JUST TELESCOPE IT? At NPR, “How To Pack A Space Telescope” (text and time-lapse video).

As complicated as it as to launch and operate a telescope in space, it’s almost as complex to move a space telescope around here on Earth.

For the past 9 months or so, NASA has been testing the James Webb Space Telescope in a giant cryogenic chamber at Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas. The $8.8 billion Webb telescope is the most powerful telescope NASA has ever built.

(19) SLICE OF LIFE. BBC tells about “Bodyhackers: Bold, inspiring and terrifying”.

Jesika Foxx has permanently purple eyeballs, and an elf-like ear. Her husband, Russ, has a pair of horns under his skin.

Stelarc, a 72-year-old Australian, has an ear on his arm. Soon he hopes to attach a small microphone to it so people can, via the internet, listen to whatever it hears.

Meow-Ludo Disco Gamma Meow-Meow – yes, that’s his legal name – has the chip from his Sydney travel card implanted into his hand.

I met all these people during BodyHacking Con, in Austin, Texas.

Over the past three years, the event has become something of a pilgrimage for those involved in the biohacking scene – a broad spectrum of technologists, trans-humanists and performance artists. This year it also attracted the presence of the US military.

(20) FAUX COMPETITION. There should be a contest to caption this photo. My entry: “John Scalzi about to make one of his famous frozen garbage burritos.”

(21) SHARKE’S SECOND BITE. Shadow Clarke juror Maureen Kincaid Speller continues her self-introduction.

I find it difficult to talk about how I write critically because it is a thing I’ve learned mostly by doing. There was never a moment when I actively decided that I would become a literary critic. Rather, my critical practice came into being over a long period of time. Even now it is a work in progress. I always feel I could do better, and I’m forever trying to work out how.

What do I do? I read. And then I write about what I’ve read. It is as simple and as complicated as that. In ‘Plato’s Pharmacy’, an exploration of meaning in Plato’s ‘Phaedrus’, Derrida focuses on the word ‘pharmakon’, paradoxical because it means both ‘remedy’ and ‘poison’. Plato sought to argue that speech was superior to writing because it required an act of memory, an act which was weakened by the use of writing. Derrida prompts us to ask whether writing is a remedy, in that it helps you remember things; or a poison in that it enables you to forget things? And I am going to argue that critical writing is both poison and remedy, depending on how you use it.

(22) VENOM. Marvel’s Venom teaser trailer:

[Thanks to Chip Hitchcock, JJ, John King Tarpinian, M.C.A. Hogarth, Dann, Andrew Porter, Martin Morse Wooster, Cat  Eldridge, Olav Rokne, and Carl Slaughter for some of these stories, Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day RedWombat.]

79 thoughts on “Pixel Scroll 2/8/18 I’ve Got A Plan So Cunning You Could Put A Scroll On It And Call It A Pixel

  1. 14) The roundup missed out on Flash Gordon which absolutely should be one of the contenders.

  2. From what I can tell, Brick Bradford (sv: Tom Trick) was around in 1942 and while it’s probably been 30 years since I last read it, I seem to have memories of it being good.

  3. 12) I was trying to remember if the Worshipful Company of Glovers was the ones who sponsor a nuclear submarine. They do, but it turns out most of the livery companies donate to the military as part of their charitable works and several of them have a pet submarine. From their website, it turns out they also sponsor the Artists Rifles – which fans of Charles Stross’ Laundry series may recognise.

    The Livery Companies are all boys’ clubs for retired bankers at this point, so I can only assume they’re buttering up the navy and the SAS in case the rest of us get tired of them.

  4. “From what I can tell, Brick Bradford (sv: Tom Trick) was around in 1942 and while it’s probably been 30 years since I last read it, I seem to have memories of it being good.”

    I have already checked him out and there were no eligible items published for this year. We will have to wait for next year.

  5. 1) After reading through all the comments, I think this link to a police report is the most interesting fact:

    “On March 16, 1960, the Grand Jury for the Southern District of California returned a five-count indictment against the appellant, charging in counts 1 through 5, respectively, that appellant on five separate occasions mailed letters which were obscene, lewd, indecent, lascivious and filthy in violation of Title 18, United States Code, Section 1461.

    Upon plea of not guilty, appellant waived trial by jury and requested the Court to decide the issues involved upon the basis of a stipulation of facts.

    The Court on October 4, 1960, upon the stipulated facts and the briefs of both parties, found appellant guilty as charged and subsequently imposed a fine of $50 on each count of the indictment.”

    It is not only that Ackerman harassed women by sending them pornograpy and unwanted sexual innuendos. It is that he had been convicted for the same crimes in court and still continued with the same behaviour.

  6. I’m sitting in a cold car, waiting for it to get sufficiently not-cold that I can get the ice off. This follows a night in the hospital for my sleep test.

  7. Been in Carmel (Indiana, not California) the last couple of days for work, hence reading and posting have been intermittent here, twitter and elsewhere. I’ve been helping orking the production line for one of our plants due to a manpower issue. This has not been going well…

  8. @Paul Weimer: I know it’s a typo, but my brain is sufficiently familiar with Warhammer naming conventions that it can’t help asking what’s involved in orking a production line…

  9. 1. another important point I saw yesterday on Facebook was…”you guys knew about this stuff and didnt’t warn me?”. from a fan and author who apparently received unwanted attention.

    Oh jeez. there doesn’t seem to be an end to this, does there?

  10. Hampus Eckerman notes It is not only that Ackerman harassed women by sending them pornograpy and unwanted sexual innuendos. It is that he had been convicted for the same crimes in court and still continued with the same behaviour.

    This continuing of this very much unwanted behaviour is perhaps the most common thread in all of these cases. I read through the reporting on the Kellior story before writing the Live from Here Review and the MPR investigation showed that not only had he harassed a great number of women but he wouldn’t stop even when told to.

    MPR is as much to blame for him doing this as is GK himself in that they knew, or at strongly suspected, that this behaviour was going on.

  11. it can’t help asking what’s involved in orking a production line…

    Painting it red so it goes faster, of course.

  12. Entitled Dirty Old Men, in and out of fandom. “Oh, that’s just X. Yeah, he does that. Sorry, didn’t think to mention it.” Feh.

    But hey, 1943! Yeah, I have a box of Spirit sections that Mom gave me. She was working for the Map Service in DC during the war years, and she subscribed to the Chicago Tribune just so she’d get The Spirit. Little did I know, when I checked The Great Comic Book Heroes out of the library in sixth grade and pretty much fell in love with the series, that my own mother had a collection of them. Maybe that’s why she was willing to drive me 60 miles to Denver to paw through bins of back issues of Spider-Man and MAD at Barter Bob’s Books, and A-1 Comics, and that place in Boulder I liked (this was before Mile High, so it wasn’t my then-future boss Chuck Rozanski).

    Mom, in fact, subscribed to Kitchen’s Spirit magazine, got a letter published, and one time when she was driving out east, she detoured to drop in on Kitchen Sink. When I got to talk to Denis Kitchen at the 1984 Dallas Fantasy Fair, he politely said he remembered her.

    So, Yeah! my 1943 vote would go to the Spirit, definitely, though the science fictional element of his origin was pretty much cold in its grave by then, and he hadn’t yet ventured to the Moon with Wallace Wood.

  13. (1)

    At the Classic Horror Film Board, the webmaster’s reminiscence about Forrest J Ackerman prompted a #MeToo response from Lucy Chase Masterson…

    Lucy Chase Williams, isn’t it?

  14. MPR is as much to blame for him doing this as is GK himself in that they knew, or at strongly suspected, that this behaviour was going on.

    Some background: there was only one incident directly involving MPR back in 1999, when a producer who worked with Keillor who had been let go in 1998 sued MPR for age and sex discrimination, also saying that Keillor had habitually bullied her. After 2002, Keillor formed his own independent production company, Prairie Grand, and was no longer an MPR employee. From then until MPR terminated their business relationship with Keillor last year, there were more incidents of Keillor harassing women who worked with him, but complaints about it were to Prairie Grand and dealt with there, not to MPR. So MPR President Jon McTaggart’s statement that he knew nothing about the additional allegations is plausible. Should they have known more? Perhaps. But I wouldn’t place equal blame on MPR for Keillor’s actions.

  15. Hampus Eckerman on February 8, 2018 at 11:45 pm said:
    14) The roundup missed out on Flash Gordon which absolutely should be one of the contenders.

    We argued a lot about this.

    I’d definitely agree that Raymond’s art is spectacular, and on a panel-to-panel basis, what was published in 1942 is among his best illustrations.

  16. @Lis – Here’s some advice from a former Minnesotan for the future: pour some water over the ice encrusted windshield and the ice should soften enough that the wipers can clear it. A 20 ounce bottle is usually enough. ONLY USE water straight from the tap or room temp; DON’T heat the water as that could make the windshield crack. Water is, of course, warmer than ice, and I was never very patient in the cold.

  17. Ferret Bueller: Thanks for the save. What a mistake to make — conflating her name with a celebrity’s name.

  18. Some background: there was only one incident directly involving MPR back in 1999, when a producer who worked with Keillor who had been let go in 1998 sued MPR for age and sex discrimination, also saying that Keillor had habitually bullied her. After 2002, Keillor formed his own independent production company, Prairie Grand, and was no longer an MPR employee.

    Although creators do often form their own production companies for many different reasons, it’s also a not uncommon legal trick by a company seeking to keep working with a known liability. The closeness in time to the lawsuit seems suspicious to me. (IANAL)

  19. @Lorien Gray

    If living in a routinely cold clime, they now sell windshield washer fluid that will do a better job of breaking down frost and ice than water. Of course, there are limits on the thickness of that ice…..

    @Lis Carey

    I hope the sleep test identifies something they/you can do to get you back to where you want to be.

    Regards,
    Dann
    Insert tag filled with wit, wisdom, and humour here…

  20. You’ve got to be careful about warm anything on a cold enough windshield. A year or two back, when the temperature was about -5°F, I got partway to work and my (garage-kept) car’s windshield started to frost up. The air blowing from the vents had warmed up nicely; I turned it to “defrost” and the windshield cracked right across the base, from one end of the windshield to the other except for the few inches on either side by the side-pillars where the defrost-vent stopped.

    Never heard of that happening before. But warm air on a very very cold windshield will crack it.

  21. Re: 1): Is this new news, or is this something that’s come out previously? It feels depressingly unsurprising to me, but I’m not sure if that’s because I heard it before or not.

  22. 1) I’m not in the horror side of the fandom, so I hadn’t heard of uncle creepy (or anyone else save Ms. Williams), but I’m kind of depressed at how unsurprised by these stories I am by now. That thread is getting to be a bit of a bog, too.

    3) Talk continues to swirl around Obi-Wan Kenobi, Yoda and Boba Fett getting their own films. No women in those swirling talks, I assume.

    6) I’m nominating Shimmer for semi-pro for sure. Its delightfully odd, and I love something in every issue.

    14) Nelvana and the Northern Lights, their top pick, is out of print. I’m going to try to find it down used, I guess. (Not finding anything that I can buy and get shipped to Canada for less than $50.) I did find Grand Canyon by Vita Sackville-West on Canadian Project Gutenberg (we have a shorter copyright law up here), but tracking down other stuff from ’43 has been a challenge for me.

    18) I’m so excited about James Webb telescope I could scream.

  23. Meredith Moment:

    Dodger by Terry Prachett is selling on Kindle (US) for $1.99.

    1) This makes me feel physically ill. I never really thought much about Ackerman one way or the other before until now. May ravens feast on his eyes.

  24. Because of the recent hilarity over someone’s claim that Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein was apolitical, I thought some folks here might be interested in a rather long article about Shelley and Frankenstein currently on the New Yorker website. And I had forgotten that this year is its 200th anniversary!

    The Strange and Twisted Life of Frankenstein

  25. @Dann–
    Thanks. The expected/hoped for result is that they say I need a new CPAP machine. Slowly getting the pieces of my life back together.

    @Several–
    I have had one busted windshield due to extreme cold and its consequences this winter already. I’m sticking with the tried and true “put the heater on defrost as soon as the car is started, so that the temperature rises very gradually.” No sudden shocks to the system!

  26. “A scroll may come when we grow weary of Bradbury, where we forsake our books, and break into eternal silence in the comments, but it is not this scroll.”

    Im sorry for basically just lurking recently, its a combination of work and everyone in my familiy taking turns with some viruses.

  27. Windscreens letting go are normally due to unseen/untreated flaws or chips. I had one go on a hot (for Scotland) day when I used the wash wipe to try and clean off the dead insects. The spray must have landed dead on the chip, which was behind the rear view mirror which is why I hadn’t seen it.

    For ice treatment I get the German spec -40C wash fluid and a mister bottle. Though -15C is the worst I’ve seen here.

  28. @Lorien Gray

    The decision to start the independent company was Keillor’s, not MPRs. Keillor’s related publishing and retail businesses were also included, I believe.

  29. @IanP–

    Though -15C is the worst I’ve seen here.

    Which is a mere 5° Fahrenheit. We routinely get some days, and a lot more nights, here in Massachusetts, when it’s significantly colder than that. This winter, we’ve had atypical, nutty swings between as much as double digits below zero Fahrenheit nights and suspiciously warm days, above freezing when we wouldn’t expect them–especially with the extreme cold of the nights. Those swings put a lot of stress on windshield glass, as well as other things.

    And that’s just here in Massachusetts. Parts of the US have serious cold.

    I was not ignoring any pre-existing chips. The center of the shatter did not suggest anything hidden behind the rear view mirror.

    And my car was sitting quietly in its parking spot when the windshield suddenly, very loudly, shattered, without anything available to have hit it.

  30. John Seavey: Is this new news, or is this something that’s come out previously?

    Good question. Forry’s history of this sort of thing was news to me. But it reads as if there were acquaintances of Forry, as well as the people getting these mailings and those they told about them, who knew it all along. And those court cases from 1960/1961, hard to believe they weren’t talked about, but that was 10 years before I was in fandom.

  31. Hm, the Venom teaser trailer isnt really teasing, isnt it? Except there will be a Venom-movie where stuff happens?
    Dont get me wrong, Venom can work without Spiderman imho. But this teaser doesnt tell me anything I didnt know already. Maybe less.

  32. Yep, cracked windscreens because of too quick temperature changes aren’t unknown in Sweden. But still very unusual.

  33. Breamar holds the joint Scottish (and indeed UK) record of -27.2 C with Altnaharra, but yeah we don’t get the extended cold due to the prevailing winds.

    Our weather is notorious for its rapid swings though. Even experienced climbers are frequently wrong footed by the Highlands. Couple of skiers were choppered off one the Cairngorm ski runs just the other day after spending a night in a snow hole. There always seems to be some mad tourist who decides to climb a munro in street clothes in February too.

    At least we’re up to 9 hours of daylight here now, from the min of 7.

  34. IanP on February 9, 2018 at 11:55 am said:
    There always seems to be some mad tourist who decides to climb a munro in street clothes in February too.

    There are people who go to the mountains of Southern California to see the snow up close, and are surprised to discover that several thousand feet above sea level it’s a lot colder than it is in the valleys. (And it can be remarkably cold even in summer – we were in the Yosemite back country one summer, when I as a kid, and it was getting down to 18F at night. The next summer it was hitting 75 to 80 during the daytime, and we were rescuing trout fingerlings from warm-water pools.)

  35. I think -28C is the coldest Stockholm has been when I have been alive, otherwise it is -36C or so. For Sweden as a whole, it is -56C.

  36. The coldest Chicago has gotten in my lifetime is coincidentally the coldest ever recorded for Chicago; -27°F. Which is about -32.7°C. Of course, the windchill was (if memory serves) in the neighborhood of -80°F. It was really, really cold.

    More usual extreme cold in Chicago (every few years) is about 0 F, which is about -17.7°C.

    Of course, we regularly get summer temperatures around 90°F (32°C). And every few years it goes up to 100°F…..

  37. I think Hampus wins, unless someone has temperatures to offer from Point Barrow, Alaska, or Hell, Michigan.

    Or the research station in Antarctica.

  38. 1) @Hampus Eckerman: I don’t think a reading of that appeal necessarily supports your interpretation. There’s nothing in there about unwanted behavior, just use of the mail to send obscenity. All it shows is that he fell afoul of the obscenity laws of the time.

  39. Nah, I was wrong. Coldest in Sweden as a whole was -52 C. Coldest in US is ?80 °F / ?62 °C in Alaska. Montana and Wyoming also has records colder than Sweden.

    And most US states have colder records than Stockholm. I think I’m happy with that. ^^

  40. John A Arkansawyer:

    “There’s nothing in there about unwanted behavior, just use of the mail to send obscenity.”

    There is this part:

    “On the contrary, they are filled with wildly erotic, filthy, prurient comments and inquiries concerning the details of the addressee’s private parts, which could have no conceivable worth for artistic, literary, scientific or serious research. “

    Which sounds more or less exactly like the letters sent to Lucy Chase Williams. But I agree that it is hard to know to what extent they were wanted.

  41. @Lis Carey

    I’m just down the road from Hell. We’ve not been cold enough to compete with all of Sweden. Although there are places in the Upper Peninsula that come close.

    We’ve been below Stockholm a few times.

    Regards,
    Dann
    TRC eht edisni deppart ma I !pleH

  42. Dann, I hear that. My sister said it was eighteen below up there when they got up this morning. At that temperature, they have to pre-heat the flue of the kitchen stove, or it doesn’t draw.

  43. Okay, guys, no fooling around. We need to organize an expedition to somewhere near Hell, Michigan, to rescue Dann from inside his CRT. We need to pull together, for a fellow Filer!

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