Pixel Scroll 4/8/2017 Fly Me To The Moon And Let Me Pixel To The Stars

(1) SCENERY WILL BE CHEWED. Nerd & Tie says we can look forward to multiple Masters in Season 10 of Doctor Who: “John Simm Will Reprise His Role as The Master in ‘Doctor Who’ Series 10”.

In a turn of events I’m sure most of us didn’t expect, John Simm will be stepping back into the role of The Master this upcoming series of Doctor Who. Simm last played the character in 2010, during David Tennant’s final story as The Doctor.

Michelle Gomez took over the part a couple of series ago, and will also appear this series….

(2) CLARKE CENTER CLARION BENEFIT. On May 2, the Arthur C. Clarke Center for Human Imagination will present an evening on the craft of writing science fiction and fantasy with George R. R. Martin (“A Song of Ice and Fire,” adapted for television as Game of Thrones, the Wild Card series) in conversation with Kim Stanley Robinson (New York 2140, the Mars trilogy). Shelley Streeby, faculty director of the Clarion Workshop, will moderate.

All proceeds will support the Clarion Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers’ Workshop at UC San Diego, “the oldest and most highly regarded training ground for new science fiction and fantasy authors.”

Note – Martin will not be doing a signing.

(3) UNITED. In “A Personal Note”, Steve Davidson of Amazing Stories wishes his wife, Karen, a happy birthday, and talks about her medical struggles over the past year.

I can not express the degree of my admiration for this woman who has suffered more than most but who continues to fight, each and every day.  She (and I) get frustrated with the pace, we have our down days (the weather around here certainly doesn’t help)…but we still manage to have our laughs;  we still discuss world affairs, are involved with family matters….

(4) MISSED THIS ONE. This was an insurance company’s April Fool –

(5) AND THIS ONE. Fly SJW-Credential Airlines! Cheapflights posted this on April 1.

Book a flight and have a furry friend waiting for you when you board.

As part of our goal to make flight search super simple and provide travelers with the most options, Cheapflights is launching our new Catflights filters. With the rising popularity of cat cafes, cat bars and cat-friendly flights around the world, it’s easier than ever to enjoy a little kitten companionship while traveling.

And the benefits are pretty purrsuasive….

 

(6) WORSE THAN ALLIGATORS IN THE SEWERS. Where better to watch Them! than a place practically on top of where the giant ants entered the Los Angeles River? It will happen, at one of several special showings at Union Station.

Next up in the series, on May 12, is the 1954 Them! The campy flick about enormous man-eating ants is considered the first big hit in the “nuclear monster” sub-genre of Cold War-era science fiction. Several scenes were filmed at Union Station and others were shot along the banks of the L.A. River.

Sci-Fi at Union Station wraps up on June 9 with the most contemporary film in the slate, Her, from 2013. The film was selected for the series in part because of the vision it includes of what riding the Metro in L.A. might be like in the near future. Subway to the beach? Well, we’re pretty much there. Operating systems that we fall in love with might still be a little further off, though not if Elon Musk has anything to say about it.

Sci-Fi at Union Station takes place at 8:30pm on April 5, May 12 and June 9. Entry is free with seating on a first-come, first-serve basis. Films are shown indoors in the main ticketing hall.

(7) SF AT ANOTHER ICONIC THEATER. ‘Superman: The Movie’ is being shown at the Egyptian Theater in Hollywood on Sunday, April 16th at 7:30pm as part of a double bill with 1951 ‘The Day The Earth Stood Still’.

(8) ZIEGLER OBIT. The Washington Post’s Michael Cavna has an appreciation of Jack Ziegler, the great New Yorker cartoonist who passed away on March 29 at the age of 74 – “How Jack Ziegler became ‘the godfather’ of the New Yorker’s modern wave of cartoonists”.

It was February 1974, and young Jack Ziegler had just sold his first drawing to the New Yorker. Yet in the months that followed, even as his cartoons continued to sell, he was having trouble actually getting published. The roadblock, it turned out, was a lone layout man who, having been at the magazine a half-century, saw himself as the bulwark against the institution’s would-be ruin.

“He didn’t like my work, apparently,” Ziegler once said of this one-man bottleneck — a makeup editor named Carmine Peppe who aimed to exercise control over which cartoons to hold. But what Peppe didn’t realize was that Ziegler represented a new wave of New Yorker cartoonists, and that this tide would not be denied.

“It turned out that Carmine thought that if they printed my stuff, it would be the end of the magazine and that it would just destroy The New Yorker as we know it. Which it did, apparently,” Ziegler said with a laugh in Richard Gehr’s 2014 book of profiles, “I Only Read It for the Cartoons: The New Yorker’s Most Brilliantly Twisted Artists.”

(9) TODAY IN HISTORY

  • April 8, 1961 — Stan Laurel received his honorary Oscar.

John King Tarpinian adds, “My all-time favorite short story of Ray Bradbury’s is ‘The Laurel & Hardy Love Affair’ which can be found in the anthology The Toynbee Convector.”

  • April 8, 1990  — Twin Peaks premieres.

(10) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY GIRL

  • April 8, 1980 – Katee Sackhoff, best known for playing Lieutenant Kara “Starbuck” Thrace on the Sci Fi Channel’s television program Battlestar Galactica (2003–2009).

(11) GAME AMPLIFIES A POSITIVE TREND. Pokemon Go may be reducing Japanese suicides, at least in one location.

Most people who choose to take their own lives do so in a private place, often their own home, she says. Since the game came out there have been many media reports of crowds of gamers at Tojinbo, suggesting it may no longer hold the same appeal for those seeking isolation.

With media attention a major factor in drawing people to suicide hotspots, it is not impossible that different coverage of the area is also helping change its reputation.

Tell’s director also says the Tojinbo story comes at the same time as a very welcome decline in suicide across Japan, from about 33,000 a year at its peak a decade ago to about 21,000 now.

(12) ADDITIONS TO MOUNT TBR. Hot off the virtual press – Strange Horizons April 2017 issue.

(13) PATHFINDER. Lela E. Buis reviews Rabid Puppy Hugo nominee “Alien Stripper Bones From Behind By The T-Rex”. Unsurprisingly, there’s not much to say about porn.

(14) AUTHOR WRITES BOOK ON SMARTPHONE. A man from the Borders area of Scotland has written a 100,000-word novel over three years on his 90-minute daily train commute. Billy Twigg and the Storm of Shadows by Ninian Carter is a “genre-blurring” young adult SF novel.

(15) REALLY. Wasn’t that long ago people complained if anything looked like normalizing the current state of affairs.

(16) CLEAN SWEEPDOWN FORE AND AFT. Working to clean up space trash: the BBC reports on “The race to destroy space garbage”.

Chip Hitchcock adds, “I can remember only one story, by the lesser-known British writer Hugh Walters, that mentioned cleaning up space — and he talked about a tug that would bring down entire satellites in one piece. Nobody thought we’d pollute space, even when writers were starting to talk about pollution on Earth.”

(17) KEEPING WRITERS OFF THE STREETS. Atlas Obscura has heard “The Mall of America Is Looking for a Writer-in-Residence”.

The job: Spend five days “deeply immersed in the Mall atmosphere” and write “on-the-fly impressions” of the place. The position is open to all sorts of writers (journalists, poets, musical comedy writers, etc.) of various levels of experience. The initial application involves writing a short pitch about “how you would approach this assignment.”

The compensation: The Mall will put the writer up in the on-site hotel, give them $400 for food and drink, and a “generous honorarium…

Apply here.

(18) LOST ITS CARBONATION. At The Verge, Kwame Opam says “Legion’s first season fizzled into a conventional superhero story”.

Right until the end, it’s a tight, quirky, well-acted, visually arresting series that’s unlike just about anything on television, including its superhero show kin.

So why am I left wanting?

By the end of its run, Legion reminded me a great deal of the first season of HBO’s True Detective. Even though Legion never becomes the water-cooler show Detective became, Hawley’s series is similarly ambitious, sprawling, atmospheric, and frustrating. It rewarded weekly viewing by changing the stakes, raising new questions, and dangling the possibility of a mind-bending mystery. But in its final act, that hoped-for mystery gets cast aside in favor of a smaller, more straightforward conclusion. In the end, Legion is auteur television at its strongest and weakest. It’s a well-told, even innovative story, but in spite of the gorgeous window dressing, it’s still deeply conventional.

[Thanks to rcade, Chip Hitchcock, JJ, Cat Eldridge, Carl Slaughter, and John King Tarpinian for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day John King Tarpinian.]

94 thoughts on “Pixel Scroll 4/8/2017 Fly Me To The Moon And Let Me Pixel To The Stars

  1. (4) MISSED THIS ONE. My former car insurance company! And from their name, you know it’s run by SJWs. 😉

    (5) AND THIS ONE. Is there a filter for type and age of desired cat companion? Coloration and temperament? Etc.?

    (18) LOST ITS CARBONATION. Funny, we’re so behind on this and just watched 2 episodes. I’m not that into horror, and it has a horror feel so far; I’m hoping it gets slightly less choppy, confusing, and horror-esque, and it sounds like maybe that’s the case. (At the slow rate I watch TV, it’ll take a while for us to get caught up.)

    ETA: One-fifth(ish).

  2. Totally OT, but for the anime-watching Filers I would like to announce that ERASED is kicking my ass. I like ’em dark, and I like being hit hard in the feels, but I can only watch one episode of this every couple of weeks. The whole thing hinges on dead women and children but there are such wonderful character moments and genuine love and connection too.

    I just finished episode 7 and once again found myself saying “oh god, no, no,” to the TV.

    I have started watching Hunter x Hunter as a hopeful palate cleanser and fun adventure anime. Please somebody warn me if it’s one of those shows that does a twist and gets dark. I’m good for dark.

  3. 6) A few years ago, I shot a commercial in the L.A. River, and we were filming around the tunnel exit that was featured in “Them”.

    “Them” was always one of my favorite movies as a kid, and finding myself filming in the same location was a thrill!

  4. 16) Space garbage: This is mentioned in the novel Exo, by Steven Gould, part of his Jumper series. His protagonist goes into business launching satellites, and has as a selling point that for every one launched, they will deorbit five pieces of floating junk. (I think it was five, might have been two or four.)

  5. A scroll of permutations in pixels and tickboxes.

    13) “There’s not much to say about porn” is a risky statement to make!

  6. (16) The Manga (and subsequent anime) Planetes is worth a gander. It deals with a crew cleaning micro debris from Earth orbit.

  7. @8: I wonder what Peppe would have thought of Roz Chast, who’s not at all in the mold of the earlier New Yorker cartoonists (e.g., nervous rather than sophisticated) but was recently recognized by a retrospective at the Museum of the City of New York.

    @Dave Langford: I reread my observation and figured somebody would have a correction, but I didn’t expect anything that far back — I’m not even sure that Walters was first, as I’m blanking on which of his early novels (1957 through early 1960’s) had the garbage tug.

  8. @14: So who’s up for reviewing this? It doesn’t sound like the established mundane authors we’ve seen making a hash of being “innovative” in SF, but I wonder whether it holds together — I’d go crazy trying to keep a novel organized if I had only the tiny screen of a phone to view it on.

  9. I reckon I can throw some cat treats at Timothy The Talking Cat and get him to do a review. Especially if I promise to kill a few squirrels while I’m at it.

    He did such a great job on the review of the movie La-La Land. 😉

  10. (15) not hard to guess who will be selling pins for a “Fascist Fiction Club” soon.

  11. 16) I seem to recall someone claiming that space garbage would possibly make space flight or launching things into orbit no longer possible. But as Dave points out, its an idea that’s been around a long time.

  12. The pixel must scroll
    down the file of Mike’s dreaming
    Flow Glyer, slow let the fifths and nears
    come streaming onto my screen,
    onto my screen

    There’s a file, over at the fannish place
    there’s a file, scrolling in a pixel place
    there a hive, a hive of villany in every fans life

    ***

    15: it’s probably me, but this effort to “build a community” coming so soon after their articles on the problems with the genre has the scent of manipulation on it.

  13. @Dawn Incognito

    ERASED will run you through the wringer. Kayo’s situation even without the murders would be bad enough. But my favorite character is Sachiko who is mother of the year any year.

    How far along are you in Hunter x Hunter? Because it is more serious then it looks even in the first two arcs(episodes 1-26) but from the third arc ,Heaven’s Arena, onward it really shows that our two leads are moving into an adult world at a very young age. Also Gon is one of the scarier lead characters I have run across, magnified because he is so young.

  14. The scroll to end all scrolls

    Well, these files are made for scrolling, and that’s just what they’ll do
    One of these days these files are gonna scroll all over you
    You keep tickin ‘ when you oughta be clickin’
    You keep stalking when you oughta not God
    You keep fifthing ‘ when you oughta be a’seconding’
    What’s right is right but you ain’t been left just yet
    These files are made for scrolling, and that’s just what they’ll do

  15. Birds do it, bees do it
    Even pixel scrolling files do it
    Let’s do it, let’s fall in love

    (Apropos of the romance-on-SF-discussion in the scroll from a few days ago.)

  16. Chip Hitchcock on April 9, 2017 at 4:36 am said: (re space pollution) I’m not even sure that Walters was first, as I’m blanking on which of his early novels (1957 through early 1960’s) had the garbage tug.

    Let me know if you remember — I can add it to the relevant para in the SFE entry for Pollution.

  17. I’ve seen pixels through the tears in my eyes
    And I realize
    I’m scrolling home

  18. @Steve:
    Let’s do the Godstalk again.
    Let’s do the Godstalk again.

    It’s just a click with the left.

    And then a box from the right.

    Scroll your hands with your hips.

    You bring your comments in tight.
    But it’s the puppydrek
    That really drives you insane.
    Let’s do the Godstalk again.
    Let’s do the Godstalk again.

    Magenta:
    It’s so dreamy, oh fantasy free me.
    So you can’t vote me, no, not at all.
    In another dimension, with
    scientific invention,
    Well pixelated I scroll all.
    RiffRaff:
    With a bit of a Mars flip
    Magenta:
    You’re on the file drip .
    RiffRaff:
    And nothing can ever scroll the same.
    Magenta:
    You’re read like a mountain.
    RiffRaff:
    still more books;you cant count´em .
    All:
    Let’s do the Godstalk again.
    Let’s do the Goldstalk again.

  19. I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe. Pixel scrolls on file off the shoulder of Orion. I watched TBR piles grow in the dark near Tannhäuser’s Gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like books in a goat. Time to post.

  20. Good morning?

    Sitting in the NESFA clubhouse, waiting for the meeting to start. Reading an urban fantasy I expected to be so-so; being very pleasantly surprised.

  21. Hugh Walters… I’m sure the time is ripe for a Hugh Walters revival. Possibly.

    I don’t actually remember the space tugs, but my memories are dim and distant, and I only managed to get hold of two of them before my local library liquidated all its remaining stocks. The “fun things to do in low Earth orbit” one, as I recall, was the one that somehow never made it to that library, Terror by Satellite. I wonder if that might be it?

  22. The Mount Tsundoku pile is hangin’ over my head
    And if it falls over I reckon it’ll render me dead
    Oh! Woe is me! Typos are a misery!
    But I-I-I’ve got to read
    So I’m off to start ‘nother pretty thick doorstop!

    (One from the vaults.)

  23. A long time ago, when pixels scrolled the earth, a filer was climbing Mound Tsundoku. He was not climbing because he thought he could reach the top, nor did he climb because of a monentous quest. No, the filer was climbing because he found it fun and rewarding, enjoying the different experiences the climb gave him.

    He sometimes wondered what would happen, should he ever reach the top. But he was sure there would be more mountains to climb. After all, that is what he liked doing.

  24. Filers we,
    Scroll-born,
    pixel-letters,
    filk-wielders,
    victors still.

    Just been re-reading some of Gemmell’s Drenai series as a change of pace after finishing Babylon’s Ashes.

  25. So. The Filers in days gone by
    and the SMOFs who ruled them had courage and greatness.
    We have heard of those pixels’ heroic scrolling.

  26. You’re the scroll in my pixel
    The file of my tsundoku
    You will always be my seven seventy
    I’d be lost without you

  27. Hampus Eckerman: A long time ago, when pixels scrolled the earth, a filer was climbing Mound Tsundoku.

    Bravo!

  28. Scrollers, ask not
    Now or ever,
    Where to war your pixels go….

    I want to change that to:

    “Filers, tick not
    Now or ever,
    Where to scroll your pixels go…”

    Apologies.

  29. @ Kurt Busiek

    I want to change that to:

    “Filers, tick not
    Now or ever,
    Where to scroll your pixels go…”

    Apologies.

    Works for me!

  30. At least 10 usable Scroll titles today* — is this like the blooming of spring?

    * And I’ve written them down

  31. 16) I recall an old SF novel where the main character, taken on at a space station to retrieve old space junk. All fairly routine, until he finds there’s something else in orbit, something that drains the power of any vessel it encounters. Unfortunately he finds this out the hard way, when it strains his space tug, leaving him stranded.

    Wish i could remember the name.

  32. OK, which of you sodomites lives near to John C. Wright?

    One of you has been on his lawn by the looks of his blog. Or maybe it was an antinomianist in the shrubbery. Something has set him off, anyhow.

  33. Cora on April 9, 2017 at 3:23 pm said:
    Worse than usual, you mean?

    Maybe. Does he usually use wrong verb forms in the midst of his spittle flecked rants? Leave out articles? Paragraph strangely? (Yes, I know, I should remember, but for some reason I don’t recall anything about his writing style other than it’s turgid and empty of contractions (and reason).)

    Did the Pope say something in his homily about tolerance?

  34. @Niall McAuley

    Hmm, yes, someone has definitely interfered with his cornflakes this morning.

  35. Just read it. Apparently, he’s pissed that he’s still not allowed to beat gays with tire irons.

    He also says something about socialist regimes in Germany, Russia and China committing genocide. Uhm, the only socialist regime Germany ever had, the GDR, did shoot people for trying to leave the country, but while that was awful, I wouldn’t call it genocide. The only ones who committed genocide were the Nazis, who – for the last time – were not socialists.

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