Pixel Scroll 2/29/16 Leap Scroll

Your host will be on the road for a couple days attending Nic Farey’s wedding to Jennifer AlLee on February 29. I have prepared a couple of Scrolls in advance.

(1) A RINGING ENDORSEMENT. Tor.com has the story – “Star Trek’s Best Writer/Director EVER Has Joined the Crew of CBS’ New Star Trek TV Show”.

Star Trek fans of every shade just received the best news: writer/director Nicholas Meyer is joining CBS’ new Star Trek television show, which is set to debut in 2017 with Bryan Fuller producing.

Not sure who Nicholas Meyer is? He’s the guy who saved Star Trek from obscurity and made it smarter than you ever realized. Here’s why this is possibly the best geek-related news of the past 20 years.

(2) AUTUN PURSER. See Autun Purser Illustration, the online gallery, portfolio and shop for a gifted part-time illustrator and full-time deep sea ecologist.

I am a lifelong science fiction fan and I have enjoyed some success with my series of travel posters, advertising travel to destinations from unusual fiction — the ‘Fantastic Travel Destinations’. The majority of these are available for print purchase direct, or from various bookshops and conventions.

Click to see the artist’s fantastic travel posters – first up, Arrakis. Purser also did the cover and some of the interiors for the 24th issue of the Hugo-winning Journey Planet, plus artwork for Gollancz covers, and numerous other works.

(3) DELANY. Here’s a one-hour interview with Samuel R. Delany at the University of Pennsylvania on February 16.

(4) ELIZABETH EISENSTEIN OBIT. Elizabeth Eisenstein died January 31 at the age of 92 reports the New York Times.

A retired faculty member of the University of Michigan, Professor Eisenstein was renowned for “The Printing Press as an Agent of Change: Communications and Cultural Transformations in Early Modern Europe,” first published in 1979. Spanning two volumes and nearly 800 pages, the work has been translated into many languages and remains in print…..

“It’s quite unusual for an academic book to achieve its 25th anniversary and still be vital to the discourse in the field,” Professor Baron, a historian at the University of Maryland, said. “Her book continues to be reviewed as if it just came out.”

In “The Printing Press as an Agent of Change,” Professor Eisenstein argued that the development of movable type by Johannes Gutenberg in the mid-15th century helped inaugurate a set of sweeping social changes thanks to the authoritative, widely tangible dissemination of information it allowed.

“What printing did was to standardize texts,” Professor Baron explained. “So you would have numerous people all over Europe reading exactly the same thing. Information had a much greater reach, a much wider audience, a much greater impact.”

(5) TERRI WINDLING’S QUIET MORNING. Artist Terri Windling, in “A Quiet Morning in the Studio”, uses a compelling 1974 essay by Ursula K. Le Guin as the frame for some fine dragon and unicorn pencil drawings, and a couple of dog photographs.

(6) NEXT COMPANION. Screen Rant speculates about 12 actors whose selection as the next companion would be a Doctor Who dream cast. Number 6 —

Eleanor Tomlinson is known for a variety of roles, most recently that of Georgiana Darcy in the BBC Miniseries Death Comes to Pemberley and currently as Demelza Poldark in Poldark. Still relatively young and establishing her place in the British acting world, a companion role on Doctor Who would serve not only to bring awareness to her talent, but also help guide her in refining her skills.

Tomlinson’s sweet, young and endearing nature would allow audiences to relate to her and set her up to become a fan favorite. But much like Rose Tyler (Billie Piper), youth would give younger Whovians a reason to connect with her and be impressed by the talent she brings to the role. Tomlinson would play off Capaldi’s Doctor extremely well.

(7) NOT ENTIRELY ALTERNATE HISTORY. Destination Planet Negro by Kevin Wilmott (co-writer of Spike Lee’s Chiraq). Release date May 20, 2016.

“Three brave explorers in search of a better place… instead found Kansas City…”

I’m not making this up! But the trailer has a review quote from Ray Bradbury, so somebody’s making it up…

(8) MAYBE THERE’S STILL SOME LUCK IN IT. During Heritage Auction’s Rare Books Signature Auction on April 6 the public will have a chance to bid on assorted Harry Potter items – including the very chair used by J.K. Rowling as she wrote the first two books of the Harry potter series.

In 2002, she decorated one of the chairs from her welfare days—taking care to paint “I wrote Harry Potter while sitting in this chair” on the seat’s apron—and donated it to a private charity auction for the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children. Her philanthropy inspired her fans as well who used their own communities to bring awareness to social causes, including the non-profit organization The Harry Potter Alliance.

(9) CTHULHU BREW. Narragansett has introduced I Am Providence Imperial Red Ale.

Narrr beer COMP

Taste & Enjoy:  I Am Providence pours a mysterious dark red with a complex amalgam of flavors. The blend of malts lead to flavors of biscuits and sweet caramel, and the Warrior and Citra hops bring aromas of pine and citrus that meld on the palate to create an intriguing balance.

The History: The latest chapter in the Lovecraft Series pays tribute to Lovecraft’s adoration for his hometown by heralding his famous words – “I Am Providence.” Later inscribed on his gravestone in 1977, this resonant phrase lives on as a tribute to Lovecraft and anyone who has ever called Providence home.

(10) ANOTHER TOLKIEN. Simon Tolkien, grandson of J. R. R. Tolkien, and the eldest child of Christopher Tolkien, is keeping up a family tradition. From Publisher’s Lunch:

Simon Tolkien’s NO MAN’S LAND, the story of a boy who grows up between the turbulent years of 1909 to 1919, starting life as an impoverished child in London who moves to a hard-living coal mining community and is subsequently adopted by the wealthy owner of an Edwardian country house, where he and the owner’s younger son become fierce rivals for the same girl, a rivalry that leads them to develop a murderous hatred for one another which affects all the characters around them, in a novel of faith, class, and war including the horrors of the Battle of the Somme which has profound effects on them all, [sold] to Nan Talese at Nan A. Talese, in a pre-empt, by [agent] Marly Rusoff at Marly Rusoff & Associates (NA).

[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, Andrew Porter, Will R., and JJ for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Will R.]

205 thoughts on “Pixel Scroll 2/29/16 Leap Scroll

  1. @Kendall
    If we ever meet in person I owe you a sweet drink. 😀

    Mutant huh? Does that come with cool super powers?

    My super powers are:
    1. Telling nighttime stories which put people to sleep
    2. Reorganizing my job so I’m not needed anymore
    3. Scaring engineers with the thought they might have to listen to me explain why something is the right thing to do

  2. @Tasha Turner: (bowing) Thanks. I’m not sure it was a compliment, when someone called me a mutant in college, BTW. The only super power I’ve exhibited since then was being able to drive all night one time, on the strength of good music and a package or two of Pepperidge Farm cookies (Milanos and/or Brussels, IIRC). Yum!

    Admittedly, it probably wasn’t a super power, so much as the music + the never-ending sugar rush.

  3. Jim Henley
    Ah, Bughouse! A pleasure I could only indulge in at an actual chess club, since it required multiple boards, multiple participants, and multiple chess clocks. Now, at least, the chess clocks are less of a problem, since anybody who has a fairly standard cell phone (which kings a generation ago couldn’t have for love or money) can get an app for a chess clock, though care must be exercised in slamming on it while shouting “A ROOK! GIVE UP ANYTHING FOR IT, BUT GET ME A ROOK NOW!”

    (Cylindrical chess was within my means, requiring no additional hardware. Also, my little magnetic chess set with the little disk pieces that also made acceptable checkers happened to be usable for 3D 4x4x4 tic-tac-toe, though I played it a lot more often on chalkboards at speech meets.)

  4. It belatedly occurs to me that this should’ve been named “Quantum Leap Scroll.” Maybe if we’re lucky, an intangible man with really bad taste in ties will show up to help a Filer with a Swiss-cheese memory set right what once went wrong…

  5. Cassy B on March 3, 2016 at 12:45 pm said:
    Lorcan Nagle, never even heard of Risk 2310.

    Blargh, forgot to reply to this. I actually got the name slightly wrong, it’s Risk 2210. The board is altered from regular Risk, in that there are undersea ‘continents’ of two or three territories that link the regular ones, and the moon is colonisable (split into three continents). As well as the regular 1, 3 and 5 army pieces, you have commanders, one each for land, sea and space, a nuclear commander and a diplomat. If you’re defending with a commander you roll a D8 instead of a D6, and they roll a D8 if they’re attacking from or into their sphere of influence (the nuclear commander aways rolls a D8, and the diplomat always attacks with a D6). You can’t attack the undersea territories unless you have a sea commander, and the same for the moon and space commander (though they don’t have to attack the specific territory). Also, 4 territories are randomly destroyed before the game begins, making them impassable.

    As well as troops, at the start of each turn you get money, which cna be used to bid on turn order, and to buy new commanders or replace dead ones, space stations (allows you to roll a D8 for any defending forces, and you can only get to the moon from a space station) and command cards. There’s one deck for each commander, and they provide bonuses ranging from extra troops, ambushes, and free space stations. These cards frequently also cost money to play. The Nuclear command cards generally involve mass destruction, and one card allows veryone to play every nuclear card they have for free, which can totally level the board.

    The game has a hard 5-turn limit, at the end of which the player with the most points (being territories owned, plus continent bonus, plus any bonus points from command cards) wins.

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