(1) STAR WARS VIII. Cameras are rolling for the next chapter of the Star Wars saga, written and directed by Rian Johnson.
(2) THAT WAS THE FUTURE THAT WAS. A 1983 cover of BYTE.
And if I squint real hard, will one of the options say, “I’ll be back”?
(3) EYE SING THE BODY ELECTRIC. A mere $3.50 on eBay!
Twilight Zone Prop Reproduction From the only Twilight Zone episode, scripted by Ray Bradbury, I Sing The Body Electric comes a Facsimile UnLimited original – entitled: Eye Lettuce, it represents one of the eyes available for the fabrication “Grandma”.
(4) RONDO NOMINATING OPEN. If you’re a fan who’s enjoyed James H. Burns’ columns for File 770, affirming that you’d like to see him as a nominee for this year’s Rondo Awards could make a difference.
Check in at the Classic Horror Film Board’s Rondo Hatton Classic Horror Awards threads “For Best Blog or Online Column: James H. Burns at File 770” and “The Geography of Eden” for “Best Article”. While a nomination apparently is not decided by raw numbers, enthusiastic comments are likely to help,
(5) APEX ACQUISITION. Apex Publications has acquired Yours to Tell: Dialogues on the Art & Practice of Writing by Steve Rasnic Tem and Melanie Tem, and expects to release the book in 2017.
Yours to Tell is a writers guide to fiction based on Steve and Melanie’s writing processes and experiences they’ve had teaching fiction, including two stints at the annual Odyssey Writing Workshop in New Hampshire.
About Yours to Tell, Steve says, “The book consists of a series of dialogues in which we discuss a number of topics on the writing of fiction, a method which we developed while teaching and continued to use for various articles and columns on both genre and non-genre writing. This is a unique approach for a writing guide, and has the advantage of presenting two different, but complimentary points of view for the basic issues of craft and encouragement which face all writers, whatever their level of skill and experience. We made this guidebook dense with practical information, empowering for new writers desiring a path for learning the craft, and inspiring even for those with more experience but wanting a fresh and encouraging view of the fiction writing process.”
(6) RECOGNIZING THE LESSON. “GUNN: ‘Hollywood Will Misunderstand The Lesson’ Of DEADPOOL’s Success” is the warning quoted by a Newsarama story.
Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 director James Gunn has come out with a very positive review of 20th Century Fox’s Deadpool, but warns that some in Hollywood already have misguided reasons on why the film is a success.
“I love Deadpool even more – the film is hilariously funny, has lots of heart, and is exactly what we need right now, taking true risks in spectacle film,” Gunn posted on Facebook.
However, Gunn takes issue with the perception of an unnamed studio executive who stated (via Deadline) that Deadpool succeeded because “The film has a self-deprecating tone that’s riotous. It’s never been done before. It’s poking fun at Marvel. That label takes itself so seriously, can you imagine them making fun of themselves in a movie? They’d rather stab themselves.”
“Come on, Deadline,” said Gunn, going on to state that saying Marvel wouldn’t poke fun at itself is “rewriting history.”
“Let’s ignore Guardians for a moment, a movie that survives from moment to moment building itself up and cutting itself down – God knows I’m biased about that one. But what do you think Favreau and Downey did in Iron Man? What the f*** was Ant-Man??!”
Gunn goes on to say that he worries studio executives will learn the wrong lessons from Deadpool.
“Deadpool was its own thing. THAT’S what people are reacting to. It’s original, it’s damn good, it was made with love by the filmmakers, and it wasn’t afraid to take risks.”
(7) TODAY IN HISTORY
- February 15, 1950 — Disney’s Cinderella opens
(8) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY BOY
- Born February 15, 1954 – Matt Groening, creator of The Simpsons.
(9) CONTINUED NEXT SLATE. Vox Day posted his slate for another Hugo category – “Rabid Puppies 2016: Best Related Work”.
The preliminary recommendations for the Best Related Work category:
- Appendix N by Jeffro Johnson.
- Between Light and Shadow: An Exploration of the Fiction of Gene Wolfe, 1951 to 1986 by Marc Aramini.
- The Story of Moira Greyland by Moira Greyland.
- Safe Space as Rape Room by Daniel Eness.
- SJWs Always Lie by Vox Day.
(10) OCCURRING IN NATURE. The weekly science journal Nature for at least a decade has run an SF short story on the last page of each issue. The story in the February 4 issue was Robert Reed’s “An investment for the future.”
Nature’s brief background statement about author Reed says —
Affiliations
Robert Reed is the author of several hundreds stories and a few novels. He won a Hugo before it was controversial. He lives in Lincoln, Nebraska.
(11) FAVORITE SON. Jim C. Hines pleads for equal time for the “Adventures of Michigan Man”.
From time to time, I see people collecting headlines about the wacky adventures of “Florida Man.” I decided to take a look and see what my home state’s “superhero” has been up to lately…
Two of his ten amusing examples:
- Michigan Man proposes at Wal-Mart, gets arrested. Remember kids, don’t steal edible thongs!
- Michigan Man Flies Off Car Hood When It Rams Police Cruiser. You will believe Michigan Man can fly!
(12) KEYBOARD KOMEDY. Meanwhile, Ohio Man was surprised when his fingers didn’t type what his brain commanded.
I was searching for news on Scalia and accidentally typed my own last name in the search box. Was deeply confused by the result.
— John Scalzi (@scalzi) February 15, 2016
(13) DREAM LOUDER. At The Space Review, Dwayne Day’s article “In space no one can hear you dream” discusses the importance of entertainment set in outer space.
Space enthusiasts, particularly those who have a vision of humanity spreading out into the solar system and establishing settlements, have had a difficult time convincing anybody other than a small group of true believers of the legitimacy of their cause. To have a broader impact they need as much help as they can get, particularly in the form of mass entertainment that can shape the popular culture and influence the general public, making settlement seem not fantastical or crazy but instead acceptable, as simply another step in human evolution….
The Expanse is the closest depiction of what space settlement advocates must see when they dream—and yet it is not a very positive vision of the future….
Life is not entertainment and entertainment is not life. But space advocates need popular entertainment to provide positive depictions of humanity’s future in space, not negative ones. They need a culture that is not hostile to their religion, and so far they haven’t gotten that, not even from the most sophisticated portrayal of solar sci-fi to date. Dying of asphyxiation or starvation on Ceres is not an appealing vision, and none of these examples of popular entertainment have provided a satisfactory explanation of why humanity should spread out into the solar system. So far popular entertainment is not helping. Perhaps somewhere right now a space advocate is penning the next great movie about humans moving beyond low Earth orbit, one where the achievement may involve struggle, but where the payoff is greater than simply survival against all odds. After all, survival is a heck of a lot easier by simply staying on Earth.
(14) DEPRESSION ERA MARS. BoingBoing reproduces the colorful alien tableaux from the astonishing “Psychedelic Space Alien themed Art Deco style 1931 high school yearbook” produced by Los Angeles University High School.
(15) MARS MY DESTINATION. Motherboard has the story about how “Britain’s Mapping Agency Made a Map of Mars”.
We’ll need maps when we go to Mars, too. At least, that’s the thinking behind British mapping organisation Ordnance Survey’s new map of the Martian landscape, which presents an otherworldly location in a format earthly ramblers will find familiar.
“There’s certainly no reason why you couldn’t imagine a future where someone might actually use a map on Mars in the same way that they would use a map on Earth,” said cartographic designer Chris Wesson, who made the map of a patch of Martian topography 3672 by 2721 km across, to a scale of 1:4 million.
(16) MARTIANS NEED PHONES TOO. This 1995 ad for AT&T stars Ray Walston who played a Martian living on Earth in the 1960s TV series My Favorite Martian which is the in-joke
[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, Dave Doering, Martin Morse Wooster, Mark Olson, and Will R. for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Steve Davidson.]
Discover more from File 770
Subscribe to get the latest posts to your email.
I imagine the black and white Felix Leiter exchanging eye rolls over how Bond still hasn’t noticed he knows two guys named Felix Leiter.
Reminds me of Callan, in which Callan’s boss was always Colonel Hunter, no matter what his name was originally (for a short while, in fact, Callan became Colonel Hunter himself.)
The Dread Pirate Roberts functions much like Bond.
No offense meant to Stan, but he’s a figurehead at this point. He isn’t telling Hollywood what to do and they’re not asking him.
The Marvel Entertainment team (and people like Joe Quesada as CCO) are smart and know what they’re doing. But it’s not coming from Stan.
I’m Felix Leiter and so’s my wife!
Oh, and DEADPOOL, as an X-Men-based property, was made by Fox, the same studio that made the FF movies. They “had to” listen to Stan and/or the Marvel crew exactly as much on both movies.
Thank you enormously for hosting this site, Mike. It is a great community and I’ve had a great time since discovering it last year.
re: “James Bond” as a multiply-assigned/assumed identity. First movie version of Casino Royale, anyone?
Didn’t Skyfall make the whole Bond as code name thing” a lot more difficult to fanwank, what with the whole parents graves and ancestral home bits?
Thanks to the poster who provided the link to a number of Asimov’s stories-I am sorry that I can’t recall which one, and the wifi in hospital is of the get out and push variety, hence no searches- I can commend to you Sarah Pinsker’s Our Lady of the Open Road in which Bruce Springsteen plays a supporting role.
I thought it matched today’s title rather well…
I agree with Stevie that “Our Lady of the Open Road” is quite fine, and with Standback that “Please Undo This Hurt” is downright brilliant.
@RevBob: Surely the simplest explanation is that James Bond is a Timelord. That even deals with the OHMSS and Skyfall issues…
nickpheas: I’m dubious about Thing Explainer. It’s great, but is it genre?
Thing Explainer is awesome cool — but it’s no more SFF genre-related than a science textbook is SFF genre-related. I will be deeply disappointed if it makes the ballot while pushing a genuine, quality SFF genre work off.
@JJ
Pfft
@snowcrash: “Didn’t Skyfall make the whole Bond as code name thing” a lot more difficult to fanwank, what with the whole parents graves and ancestral home bits?”
All of which was distinctly new to the 50-year-old canon. 🙂
It’s funny, yesterday I almost made a post about how while media (including books) are subject to commercial concerns, this is often not so much genuine market pressures but conventional wisdom that “everybody knows” but which is actually just a result of confirmation bias.
I was thinking specifically of the tendency to blame an unsuccessful action movie with a female lead on the fact that it has a female lead, while an unsuccessful action movie with a male lead might be unsuccessful for any number of reasons… but then I thought, heck, everybody here knows that stuff already…
I’m not sure what “respect for the source” means in the case of John Carter: slavishly sticking to the original plot; getting the title right; having the Red Martians be actually red of hue; Dejah Thoris laying an egg?
Happy birthday, Mike!
NelC
To quote the Wikipedia quoting Burroughs
Good luck getting that outfit into a Disney film…
And it just occurs to me – mammalian attributes, lays eggs, lives in a desert surrounded by red sand…
OMG – John Carter was never on Mars – he was simply transported to Australia…
I’m not sure. I guessed it might not be for long because the paperback is $16.99. That seems way too big a gap unless it’s a short-lived sale.
Also, happy birthday, Mike!
@Mike Glyer: It’s your birthday? Happy Birthday! Thanks so much for enriching my life via your avocation.
@BGHilton: Dammit I saw “Burnside” and thought you were repping a Sandbaggers crossover for a minute.
Dammit I saw “Burnside” and thought you were repping a Sandbaggers crossover for a minute.
Such a good show.
@Mike Glyer:
Happy birthday indeed!
http://youtu.be/E_qriqVBcho
@Rev. Bob: And yet we had Moore-Bond visiting the grave of Lazenby-Bond’s wife. And Brosnan-Bond said “The world is not enough” is the Bond family motto. Craig-Bond has an ancestral home. At this point, 007’s backstory comes in many alternate versions, like anime series. His accent varies, the race of his pal Felix varies, Moneypenny looks different, and his age goes up and down over the decades. It’s either anime continuity, a reset button, or wibbly wobbly timey wimey.
John Carter stuck close enough to the original plot AFAIK; it’s just that after a century of pulp fiction and sci-fi movies, it seemed like a bunch of cliches. (Like that Shakespeare guy, all his dialogue is cliche!) Had it been made before 1977, it would have seemed original (Though you couldn’t have CGI for Tharks and Woola). The marketing sucked, the movie cost way WAY too much to begin with, and the framing story was a waste of time, but it wasn’t a terrible movie per se.
“Thing Explainer” is a fine book, but doesn’t deserve a nomination when there are so many directly-about SF/fannishness works out there.
Could I make requests. If your going to declare something doesn’t deserve a nomination would you give a few reasons/examples.
For some reason seeing a growing list of possibilities feels great. Seeing declaration of “no this would be bad” feels wrong almost puppyish. I’m having a hard time putting my feelings into words – the previous words don’t really capture it.
@RFD: And, of course, it’s not just Dejah Thoris (no matter what fan art might suggest). I have several friends who were disappointed to realize that Willem Dafoe’s role as Tars Tarkas did not mean that they’d get to see his schlong painted green!
For that matter, didn’t Carter himself eventually adopt the Martian style of (un)dress after he’d been there for a while? Yeah, they could have appealed to a whole different crowd if they’d wanted to, by staying close to the source material.
—
Re Thing Explainer: are you guys trying to suggest that someone who has won a Hugo doesn’t automatically have all later works classified as SF? Is that why Michael Chabon’s excellent Telegraph Avenue didn’t make the Hugo or Nebula ballots?
snowcrash on February 16, 2016 at 10:15 am said: I think it’s really, really …lacking in perspective to think that it came down to “Johnny Storm is not black”.
I see a lot of people like yourself positively leaping on the chance to jump to a conclusion here, Crashy. Good on you for at least being civil about it.
It’s an -example- of the kind of change that guys with no respect for the source material make. The fact that they make major changes with no regard for the story they are supposed to be trying to tell is indicative of exactly how badly the story is going to suck. The bigger and more pointless the change, the more massive the suckage. What they did to Victor Von Doom was spectacularly stupid as well, but changing the race of main characters tops it.
Could have been worse, I suppose. Why not have Janey Storm instead? Played by Beyonce. More eye candy will make the movie a CLASSIC, right?
And by the way, for all of you screaming Samuel L. Jackson at me, the comics changed Nick Fury from a white guy to a black guy over ten years ago. As I recall, nobody cared. Plus he started as a minor side character in Iron Man, they could have put anybody in that role.
Can Heimdal be played by Idriss Alba? Apparently, although it is a bit silly since he’s the only black guy we ever see in Asgard. It’s the equivalent of having one Scottish guy in a kilt wandering around a Bollywood thriller, or a Hong Kong kung fu flick with one Korean dude. It’s tokenism. Tokenism means you’re not serious, you’re just trying to slide by. It’s stupid, and it’s insulting.
Can Idriss Elba play Professor X? Or Wolverine? No. Why not? Main character, pointless revision done for politics, the movie will suck. When you change important things for reasons other than storytelling, it breaks the story.
Happy birthday Mike! And now we can sing Happy Birthday To You without paying royalties!
Tasha Turner: Could I make requests. If your going to declare something doesn’t deserve a nomination would you give a few reasons/examples.
With regard to Thing Explainer, my opinion is that it’s a really awesome, really accessible science textbook. But it’s about explaining real things, not science-fictional or fantasy-fantastical things, and therefore — to me — it’s not a Related Work.
ETA: I don’t personally think that the Ordnance Survey of Mars is a Related Work, either. It’s a real map of a real planet.
Thanks to everyone who left birthday wishes in the comments today. And to John King Tarpinian for his card —
Happy Birthday, Your File-ness!
@lurkertype: (Bond as codename)
I never claimed the idea was a seamless fit in the continuity, such as that continuity is. I’m not surprised that there are holes in the theory. I just said I liked it… which I do. For me, it covers enough of the big stuff that I don’t mind the little inconsistencies it causes. Spending a penny to buy a dollar still leaves me ahead of the game.
Personally, I look at the Daniel Craig movies as a new series, inspired by but not connected to the previous movies. His Casino Royale works wonderfully as an origin story, and I like the way the following movies have been less episodic and more of an extended arc. My copy of SPECTRE just arrived, and I’m looking forward to seeing where it leads.
@The Phantom:
You’ve…never actually read a comic book, have you?
Was Apollo 13 the film properly eligible for a Hugo?
@ Jim Henley – Sorry.
@ The Phantom –
Why? Why does that top it? Why is changing Doom from everybody’s favorite ranting pantomime villain into someone dull a smaller deal than changing one character’s race?
I honestly don’t think that would have made the movie any worse.
Dear Lord above, I’m not even a Marvel fan and I know that’s wrong. Nick Fury first appeared in his own comic, Sgt Fury and his Howling Commandoes. He’s been around for almost as long as Johnny Storm and been the anchor character in several titles, where I believe that Johnny has always been part of a ensemble cast. The black version of Fury was in the Ultimate Marvel line, not in the main Marvel Universe. So I guess the people making the source material didn’t respect the source material? How does that work?
And what does respect for the source material even mean? People exporting comic characters into other media have been making their own changes to the ‘source material’ since the Superman radio show introduced the non-canonical substance known at ‘kryptonite’. Other attempts to meddle with the ‘source material’ have given us Batgirl and Harley Quinn. By the same token, some of the most faithful renditions of comic book stories are those late 60s Marvel cartoons, adapted straight from the original comic stories and they reek. (Though they do have catchy theme songs).
I, personally, can’t accept superheroes that don’t talk in speech balloons and have off-register halftone dots all over them. I’m a purist.
Sure. But why do you ask?
This could be fun. I was on the Hugo Award subcommittee in 1996 (the only time) when it was a nominee.
(The Hugo Administrators did all the work, but because I was chair of the convention I decided to put myself on the subcommittee and recuse myself from eligibility.)
The Phantom on February 16, 2016 at 9:12 pm said:
Can Heimdal be played by Idriss Alba? Apparently, although it is a bit silly since he’s the only black guy we ever see in Asgard. It’s the equivalent of having one Scottish guy in a kilt wandering around a Bollywood thriller….
Would that be something like this?
Which I have to confess is very silly indeed.
That’s a terrific birthday card.
Regarding related works, I’m as uneasy as Tasha Turner with the categorical statements about eligibility. Opinions are great, we all have them, but an opinion isn’t fact.
So far, nobody has questioned Felicia Day’s book (I thought it was terrific), which is largely a memoir about life as a math and gaming geek who acts, produces a web series about gaming, plays an instrument and goes to Comicons. There isn’t a lot of SF in it. Conversely, science underpins science fiction and I get to decide if that’s enough to warrant having Thing Explainer on my ballot.
@Phantom – Can Heimdal be played by Idriss Alba? Apparently, although it is a bit silly since he’s the only black guy we ever see in Asgard.
Has anyone mentioned Frog Thor? That was silly. A Black Heimdal is not silly. Although I do see your point about him being the only POC, so I say we start making noise to get a more diverse cast in the Asgaard scenes.
No, they introduced a black Nick Fury into a different continuity.
Because it wasn’t the main continuity. When they did switch out the white guy in the main continuity for his black son with the same name, they got a lot of fans yelling about it.
Noooooo.
The SHIELD agent who started out as a minor side character in IRON MAN was Jasper Sitwell. Most of whose personality and mannerisms were given to Agent Coulson in the movies. They later introduced an Agent Sitwell in the movies who apparently has no personality at all.
Of the Iron Man supporting character? Yeah, they put Clark Gregg in that role and changed his name. And he was a hit and got his own TV series.
Because Jasper Sitwell rocked.
Don’t yield, back SHIELD!
Like their Hogun the Grim?
http://vignette4.wikia.nocookie.net/marvelcinematicuniverse/images/6/6a/Hogun_TTDW.png/revision/latest?cb=20140206142412
@The Phantom I don’t understand your ‘respect for source material’. You can get miffed by character changes in films for several reasons:
A) You already have a clear image of the character in your head. My mental image of Hermione is Emma Watson. If Hermione was played by Emma Stone, it would be disconcerting – like a friend has been replaced by an imposter. Is your problem that Johnny Storm doesn’t look like the character in the comics and you feel he’s been ‘face swapped’? [Interestingly, Dr Who doesn’t have this problem because it’s explained in universe].
B) The personality of the character has changed. So, if Emma Watson’s Hermione was replaced by Megan Fox or Melissa McCarthy. One is usually cast as monosyllabic eye candy, the other is a comic. Now, I think Melissa McCarthy would make a great interpretation of Hermione, but she would arguably not be the swatty, uptight Hermione of the books.
Related to B):
C) The character’s role in the story has changed or their backstory is changed. Hermione has a scar on her forehead and fights Voldermort while eventually getting together with Ron. She’s also still a mudblood and a swot. That’s ‘a different story’ and will disappoint anyone who wanted the original.
D) The character has been changed to fit a protected identity category where this has no bearing on the plot. The viewer gets mad at the film makers for being politically correct, seethes about this and – if the film sucks – blames that single change.
Is your problem with Johnny Storm A), B), C) or D)?
Thing Explainer is a funny illustrated science textbook. But that makes it nowhere near worthy of a science fiction award as, say the companions to WoT and Outlander, Letters to Tiptree, Felicia Day’s book, even the various responses to Puppies. If we had a dearth of stuff, sure — but I can think of a dozen things off the top of my head that are more related to the field than a simple science picturebook.
And, no, I didn’t vote for Apollo 13, either.
(10) OCCURRING IN NATURE. “He won a Hugo before it was controversial.”
Hahahaha, nicely done, “Nature.”
@Mike Glyer: Wait, it is (was) your birthday? Let me be the 5th 5th to wish you Happy Birthday!
@JJ: I don’t like the BRW category anyway, but if Thing Explainer gets on the ballot, I may roll my eyes just a little.
@Cheryl S.: Not having read either, Day’s book sounds a bit more SFF-related to me than Thing Explainer does. But neither book interests me, so I’ll only find out the hard way, if either/both gets on the ballot. 😉 I generally like Day’s and Munroe’s other work, so it wouldn’t be a hardship.
@Phantom
“It’s an -example- of the kind of change that guys with no respect for the source material make. “
I disagree. I don’t see how being black contradicts any aspect of Johnny Storm’s character. Some characters have a distinct racial identity – Shang Chi and Jimmy Woo are ethnic Chinese, due to their descent from Fu Manchu and the Golden Claw being a core part of their identity. Black Panther is ethnically African, and by nationality Wakandan, as well, duh. Steve Rogers needs to be a blue-eyed blonde American, as it pretty much defines his perspective as well as how the world/ MU sees him
But characters like Captain Marvel , or the Hulk are are not tied to any one ethnicity as part of their character. Heck, I would argue that even Iron Fist isn’t, as his main deal is that he’s an outsider to Kun Lun, not that he’s white.
Casting a black actor as Johnny Storm is not disrespecting the source material. There is no core, or even tangential element of Johnny Storm’s character that is contradicted by this.
Making Doom a whiny twit? Making Reed someone who abandons his friends at the drop of a hat? Turning the Thing into an abused and monstrous character? Those are exemplars of disrespect. What you have harped on – what you have *only* picked on is the least of that movies many, many problems.
Apparently, although it is a bit silly since he’s the only black guy we ever see in Asgard. “
Look again.
When you change important things for reasons other than storytelling, it breaks the story.
Again, why is Johnny Storm’s, or Professor X’s, or Logan’s ethnicity important?
Like their Hogun the Grim?
Thanks. Forgot about him until I saw the picture (wasn’t there some controversy over casting that role too?), but I was thinking more of Valkyries. Although now that I write that, I can’t see any reason for any role to be White as a default merely because Asgaardians are typically thought of as Northern European.
Not sure that this is true. The core FF is family. It’s about Sue and her brother Johnny.
Making Sue adopted (not seen the film yet, DVD has a price drop still to come) but I think She is the adopted one, does change things. Does it change them for the worse? Not qualified to say. But it is a change to a central relationship, and a fairly arbitrary one at that.
A black Reed Richards would not have changed anything.
Happy (belated) Birthday Mike!
Re F4, I didn’t see the latest version. I thought it was great that the Storm family was mixed race in the reboot. Sue and Johnny being family is intrinsic to the F4. I don’t care about their ethnicity.
Please tell me that they are siblings in this version.
@World Weary
They are siblings, but honestly I don’t recall if they were step-, half-, or adopted. That movie was painful to watch, and I fast-forwarded through it.