Pixel Scroll 6/15/18 Pitch Pixel With His Pals Scroller And Paddlefile In Another Exciting Adventure, The Case Of The Appertaining Explorer!

(1) VARIATION ON A THEME. James Davis Nicoll launches a new theme with a new panel reading some newish sff in “The City Born Great by N.K. Jemisin”:

Welcome to the first post in the Old People Read New SF project, in which I will present my volunteers with a selection of recent (online) speculative fiction to see how they react.

Few authors are as representative of the modern face of SF as N. K. Jemisin. Similarly, few venues are as representative of modern SF in short form as tor.com. It seems only logical, therefore, to begin this project with Jemisin’s The City Born Great. The City Born Great was nominated for a Hugo and won the 2017 Eugie Award.

The City Born Great is available here.

(2) THE RIGHT ANSWER. This Jeopardy! champ will be 2020’s Arisia chair — Diana Hsu has won the past two days.

Malden’s Diana Hsu, a legal records assistant, outlasted a software developer from Santa Clara, Calif. and a political science professor from York, Penn. to become the new Jeopardy! champion last night, June 13.

Hsu won a total of $24,001 on the program, as she defeated returning champion Catherine Ono, a two-day champion, who ended up in second place.

Going into Final Jeopardy, Hsu was in the lead with $16,000, ahead of Ono by $4,600 and ahead of Nick Anspach by $11,000.

The Final Jeopardy clue on the episode, in the category of 1990s Animated Films, was: “Though it draws elements from ‘Hamlet,’ Disney says this was their first all-animated feature based on an original story.”

The correct response was, “The Lion King.” All three contestants answered correctly.

(3) NERDIST ERASES FOUNDER. Deadline reports “Chris Hardwick Wiped From Nerdist Website He Founded Amid Allegations By Ex-Girlfriend”.

Chris Hardwick, the Nerdist founder and host of NBC’s game show The Wall, AMC’s Talking Dead aftershow and a regular emcee in Hall H at Comic-Con, has been scrubbed from the Nerdist website he founded after being accused of sexual abuse and “long-term abuse” by his former girlfriend Chloe Dykstra.

Legendary Entertainment, which owns Nerdist Industries where Hardwick launched his career as a comic and podcaster, just released a statement.

“Chris Hardwick had no operational involvement with Nerdist for the two years preceding the expiration of his contract in December 2017,” it reads. “He no longer has any affiliation with Legendary Digital Networks. The company has removed all reference to Mr. Hardwick even as the original Founder of Nerdist pending further investigation.”

The move comes after Dykstra, a TV personality and host, penned a first-person account of their three-year relationship that posted on Medium. Dykstra never mentioned Hardwick by name, but details about the “mildly successful podcaster” who grew into “a powerhouse CEO of his own company” suggest she was referring to him.

Chloe Dykstra’s Medium article is here: “Rose-Colored Glasses: A Confession.”

(Trigger warning: If abuse, sexual assault, or anorexia makes you uncomfortable, you might want to avoid this one.)

Over the years, I’ve attempted to write this, quite literally, 17 times. I’ve spoken to friends, therapists, lawyers, publicists. The drafts have ranged from cathartic, angry letters to litigious, hardened accounts of inexcusable treatment. Until I got one piece of advice from a friend: Write from your heart. You’ll know it’s right when it’s right. So, here I go.

(4) MEME WARS. Yahoo! Entertainment says you can add Millie Bobby Brown to the list of the sci-fi actresses run off social media by the rabid dogs. “Millie Bobby Brown of ‘Stranger Things’ leaves Twitter after becoming an antigay meme. She’s 14, y’all.”

Millie Bobby Brown, who found fame as Eleven in Netflix’s sci-fi show Stranger Things, has left Twitter because of Photoshopped images that have turned her into a homophobic meme.

The 14-year-old actress, like most people her age, is active on social media, including Twitter and Instagram.

For whatever reason, and there usually isn’t one when the internet gets involved, the new trend is Photoshopping fake antigay images on Brown….

In reality, Brown is an antibullying advocate and an LGBTQ rights supporter.

(5) DAWN OF THE DEAN. Cartoonist Patrick Dean revealed he has ALS – in a cartoon. His Twitter bio: “I draw comics that no one reads and talk about the weather a lot. I also believe in ghosts. I will be one soon.”

(6) SECRET AGENT MAN IN THE MOON. At World of Indie, “McMoon: How the Earliest Images of the Moon Were so Much Better than we Realised” tells how some of the (very) high-resolution images of the moon were taken and transmitted to Earth prior to the Apollo missions, and how they are being preserved and restored:

Fifty years ago, 5 unmanned lunar orbiters circled the moon, taking extremely high resolution photos of the surface. They were trying to find the perfect landing site for the Apollo missions. They would be good enough to blow up to 40 x 54ft images that the astronauts would walk across looking for the great spot. After their use, the images were locked away from the public, as at the time they would have revealed the superior technology of the USA’s spy satellite cameras, which the orbiters cameras were designed from. Instead the images from that time were grainy and low resolution, made to be so by NASA.

(7) EATING THE FANTASTIC. Scott Edelman invites the internet to join A. M. Dellamonica for an Italian lunch in Episode 69 of Eating the Fantastic.

A.M. Dellamonica

It’s time to return to Pittsburgh for another episode of Eating the Fantastic recorded during last month’s Nebula Awards weekend, following up on my Nebula Awards Donut Jamboree and dinner with Kelly Robson. On the Friday of that event, I snuck away with A. M. Dellamonica for lunch at Senti, which my research told me was one of the best places to go in the city for classic Italian.

Dellamonica‘s first novel, Indigo Springs, won the Sunburst Award for Canadian Literature of the Fantastic. Her fourth, A Daughter of No Nation, won the 2016 Prix Aurora. She is the author of more forty short stories on Tor.com, Strange Horizons, Lightspeed and most recently Beneath Ceaseless Skies. She was also co-editor of the Heiresses of Russ anthology.

We discussed how a long list of random things she liked eventually grew into her first novel, the intricate magic system she created for her series, how her novel Child of a Hidden Sea taught her she was less of a plotter and more of a pantser than she’d thought, the doggerel she wrote when she was five years old (which you’ll get to hear her recite), how discovering Suzy McKee Charnas at age 15 was incendiary, which run of comics made her a Marvel fan, what it was like attempting to live up to the pioneering vision of Joanna Russ while editing the anthology Heiresses of Russ, which YouTube series happens to be one of her favorite things in the world, the way John Crowley’s teachings might have been misinterpreted by her class during the Clarion Science Fiction Writers Workshop, the three mystery novels of her you’ll hopefully be reading in the future, and much more.

(8) IRON WOMAN ON STAGE. The Bookseller brings word: “Andrew Lloyd Webber theatre to stage Ted Hughes’ The Iron Woman”.

 The Other Palace, a London theatre owned by Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Really Useful Theatres Group, will this autumn stage an adaptation of Ted Hughes’s classic children’s book The Iron Woman (Faber Children’s).

The story, first published 25 years ago as a sequel to The Iron Man, is about how a girl called Lucy fights back against pollution, caused by a waste factory in her town, with the help of an Iron Woman who has emerged from the marsh.

Carol Hughes, Ted Hughes’ widow, said she approached Andrew Lloyd Webber about doing a play to mark 20 years since the poet’s death.

“I wanted to mark that anniversary in a positive way by highlighting his writing for children and also his lifelong passion for the environment,” she said. “This story of Lucy and the Iron Woman is a gripping, magical fable of what we can achieve once we, and the generations of children who follow us, realise we do have within us the power to fight back against the seemingly-relentless pollution that is blighting our lands, rivers and seas.”

The play will be written by Mike Kenny, whose previous stage adaptations include one for The Railway Children, with music by songwriter Pippa Cleary. It will open at The Other Palace theatre on 9th October.

(9) TODAY IN HISTORY

  • June 15, 1948Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein in movie theaters.(Where else would they meet him?)
  • June 15, 1955 The Beast With A Million Eyes premiered.
  • June 15, 1973 — The original series concludes with Battle for the Planet of the Apes.

(10) UNKISSED FROGS. Something else for Jurassic World? “Prehistoric frogs in amber surface after 99 million years”.

Frogs trapped in amber for 99 million years are giving a glimpse of a lost world.

The tiny creatures have been preserved in sticky tree resin since the end of the Age of the Dinosaurs.

The four fossils give a window into a world when frogs and toads were evolving in the rainforests.

Amber from Myanmar, containing skin, scales, fur, feathers or even whole creatures, is regarded as a treasure trove by palaeontologists.

(11) STARTING POINT. Mary Robinette Kowal, author of The Calculating Stars, analyzes “The Responsibility of Narratives” on the Tor/Forge Blog.

As mainstream culture becomes increasingly vocal about the politics of gender, it makes me aware of all of the damaging narrative that I’ve internalized and which has created internal biases in myself. Those show up in my fiction. So when I sit down to write, I now assume that I have a bias.

Why is this a problem?

Kowal will tell you.

(12) UNEXPECTED VACANCIES. Star Trek: Discovery discovers it needs new showrunners. The Hollywood Reporter, in “’Star Trek: Discovery’ Showrunners Out; Alex Kurtzman to Take Over (Exclusive)”, cited unnamed sources who told them ST:D has made another change at the Producer level. Aaron Harberts and Gretchen Berg are out because of “budget woes and complaints of staff mistreatment.” Executive producer and co-creator Alex Kurtzman will step in as “showrunner” (basically, producer) as well as heading the writers’ room. Harberts and Berg had replaced original showrunner Bryan Fuller. All this in less than two seasons.

(13) ANTIQUE SJW CREDENTIAL. “137 in Human Years: Thought to Be the Oldest Cat in the World, Rubble Celebrates His 30th Birthday”. People speculates:

Is this the oldest domestic cat in the world? The lucky feline in the photo above has lived nine lives and then some. Rubble, a long-haired ginger-and-white kitty living in the U.K., may just be the newest cat contender for the O.G. title. His owner, Michele Foster, recently celebrated her super-senior pet’s birthday in Exeter, Devon, reports Bored Panda.

Cat Eldridge sent the link with a comment: “My Ex got Mabinogion aka. Mibble when we divorced. We rescued her from a gat station after we heard a very pitiful cry and found her near the pumps, her all black bod covered in tiny cuts and smelling strongly of diesel. We know that she was at least twenty-six years old when she passed on as we’d had her for twenty-five years. My current SJW creds are (I think) eleven years old, Freya, a tortie, and Taliasen who’s prolly three years younger.”

(14) MUSICAL MARVEL. Variety says “‘Captain Marvel’ to Be Scored by Female Composer, Marking Major Breakthrough”.

In a major breakthrough for women composers, Pinar Toprak has been signed to score “Captain Marvel,” the superhero movie due for release in March 2019.

Toprak, who just finished scoring the first season of SyFy’s “Krypton” and who penned additional music for the DC film “Justice League,” is the first female composer to score a major comic-book movie.

Captain Marvel” also happens to be about a female superhero (played by Brie Larson). It’s slated for release in March.

(15) THE HECK YOU SAY. Lucifer has risen from…wherever he was before. Infernal Dis, perhaps. “‘Lucifer’ Rises! Netflix Has Ordered The Fourth Season For Axed FOX Series”.

Praise ‘Lucifer’!  Or rather, ‘Lucifer’ fans should praise Netflix as the streaming service has rescued another cancelled series– FOX’s ‘Lucifer’ which was cancelled last month.  Though neither Netflix nor Warner Bros. Television would officially comment, insiders have divulged that 10 new episodes have been ordered for the show’s fourth season.  This is particularly odd since Netflix has never offered episodes of ‘Lucifer’, but presumably the existing three seasons will surface on the streamer soon.  (FOX shows are pretty much exclusively available on Hulu.)

(16) GOT MIA. Two popular shows will pass on this year’s SDCC. The Wrap has the story: “‘Game of Thrones’ and ‘Westworld’ Won’t Present at San Diego Comic-Con, HBO Says”.

This is the first time “Game of Thrones” will be absent from the convention. The wildly popular drama will air its eighth and final season in 2019. “Westworld” made its Comic-Con debut at last year’s convention, and its Season 2 finale airs June 24. Production on Season 3 has yet to begin on the drama, so there would probably be little to promote for “Westworld.”

(17) WHO AND WHO ELSE? ScreenRant posted its feature “New Doctor Who Cast Making First-Ever Panel Appearance at SDCC 2018” today. Will Chris Hardwick still be the moderator when SDCC comes round?

Introducing a brand new era of Doctor Who, this summer’s SDCC panel will include Whittaker; two of her co-stars, Tosin Cole and Mandip Gill, who will play two brand new characters in the series named Ryan and Yasmin, respectively; the series’ new showrunner Chris Chibnall (Broadchurch); and executive producer Matt Strevens (who also produced An Adventure in Space and Time, the made-for-TV movie based on the making of Doctor Who). The panel will be moderated by The Nerdist’s Chris Hardwick, an outspoken, diehard fan of Doctor Who.

[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, Eric Franklin, Cat Eldridge, rcade, JJ, Martin Morse Wooster, Chip Hitchcock, Mike Kennedy, Rich Lynch, Carl Slaughter, Scott Edelman, and Andrew Porter for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Kip W.]

53 thoughts on “Pixel Scroll 6/15/18 Pitch Pixel With His Pals Scroller And Paddlefile In Another Exciting Adventure, The Case Of The Appertaining Explorer!

  1. First…

    2) Nice!

    7) I’ve also been enjoying Alyx and Kelly’s adventures in China via Twitter…

    10) Frogs in Amber. I’d hope someone would name the Frog Corwin…

  2. Bringing this PSA forward from yesterday’s comment thread:

    The Incredibles 2 is being described by some moviegoers as dangerous to viewers with visually-triggered epilepsy due to full-screen strobing effects in multiple scenes, lasting from a few seconds up to about two minutes.

    This is a strong enough warning that I have personally scrapped plans to see the movie in theaters, and I will be watching for word that the problem has been fixed before I purchase or watch the Blu-ray.

    Tell your friends. Spread the word. From the descriptions I’ve seen, this makes “that episode” of Pokémon look trivial.

  3. Rev Bob, thanks for letting me know. I don’t have epilepsy but strobing effects make me dizzy. Knowing that they’re in the film, I can prep my husband to whisper in my ear what’s happening and when I can open my eyes….

  4. Hooray!

    The Locus Foundation edition of R.A. Lafferty’s first (short) novel, The Reefs of Earth, is out. $6 for the Kindle edition.

    Here’s looking forward to lots more affordable Lafferty reprints.

  5. 15) THE HECK YOU SAY.

    Well it airs on Fox but Warner Film produced and distributed it, so it’s not surprising that it’s on Netflix as the other DC series are there now. Even Gotham which is still on Fox is on Netflix already and it too is a Warner production. Is anyone surprised Warner held unto secondary airing rights? I’m not.

  6. (1) Good thoughts, all. I agreed with many of them, and even the ones I didn’t were supported really well. The Old People done good. Interesting how so many of them mentioned Leiber and Ellison — very on-point, I think. Some of those old white guys used to be the New Wave, after all.

    (3) That is… scary to read. But I absolutely believe her. Not just because of #MeToo and #TimesUp, but because her details ring true. And the quick removal of every reference from Nerdist suggests they believe it as well.

    (5) I hope it goes as well as it can for him.

    (6) Neat to see now. 40×54 feet pictures!! And a reminder that Apollo was a part of the Cold War.

    (12) O… kay? If this wasn’t titled “Star Trek” and wasn’t the come-on to subscribe to their new service, it wouldn’t have gotten one episode at this point.

    (13) I love that someone named Cat sent this in. What SF should we ask Rubble to sleep on for a photo — perhaps something from his birth year?

    (14) Lots of women in those credits — about time.

    (17) A problematic-to-women dude hosting the panel with the first female Doctor? That… is not good PR optics for the con. (Although I’m sure Hardwick would be welcomed with open arms at ConCarolinas. Grope away!)

    That panel’s going to be frustrating anyway — they won’t be able to tell anything (spoilers, sweetie!), and nobody knows the characters yet.

    @Paul, re: 10 — applause.

    @Rev. Bob — aaaargggh. Wondering if all mitigation procedures will be enough since I don’t have epilepsy. Times like this I miss drive-ins, where the screen was so dim these problems didn’t happen.

  7. 12) Seems like Discovery continues to be a mess behind the scenes and likely also on screen.

    15) Glad to see Lucifer saved, though I hope that the usual German broadcaster will still carry it.

  8. How do they miss something as obvious as “strobe lights are dangerous to a nontrivial minority of the population. If you mst use them, you need to warn people.” It shouldn’t be hard, right?

  9. Love to see the Lucifer has been picked up by Netflix. Just yesterday on Twitter, Carl’s Jr. was making overtures about maybe picking it up for a fourth season despite the fact that they are a fast-food restaurant chain rather than a television network.

  10. @rochrist: I’m happy too! “Lucifer” is so much better than it has any right to be.

    Of course now I’m debating whether or not I wish “Alphas” had returned. It ended on an enormous cliffhanger, but one of the most beautiful, haunting endings I’ve seen.

  11. I wonder if the people at McMoon, that place where early-’60s photographs of the moon’s surface were recently digitized, knew of Cosmé McMoon, the accompanist of the famed soprano Florence Foster Jenkins (1868 – 1944). Jenkins was the subject of a movie a couple of years ago starring Meryl Streep, with Simon Helberg (of the TV series “The BIg Bang Theory”) as McMoon. I’m not exaggerating when I say FFJ’s voice was extraordinary.

  12. And I Awoke and Found Me Here on the Scrolled Pixelside.

    @Lis: Particularly to a non-trivial minority of the child audience, as would be expected for a Pixar movie! And of course there’s an even less trivial minority of people with migraines affected by flashing lights.

  13. Lurkertype says @Lis: Particularly to a non-trivial minority of the child audience, as would be expected for a Pixar movie! And of course there’s an even less trivial minority of people with migraines affected by flashing lights.

    The severe head trauma I suffered in falling last August (and dying repeatedly afterwards as well) has decided it really, really doesn’t like the combination of heat and light we got this past week making my nine month long headache much worse. So I’ll be skipping this even though I’d love to see it on the big screen.

  14. @Rev. Bob

    Yikes. Thanks for the warning; I was going to go see it this week but will now wait until it’s on Netflix or something. Flashing lights tend to be less of a problem for me when they’re on a small screen, and I can leave the room or fast-forward or something if necessary. (I’m not epileptic, but like plenty of people my migraines are triggered by such things.)

  15. “Yahoo! Entertainment says you can add Millie Bobby Brown to the list of the sci-fi actresses run off social media by the rabid dogs.” Hey, I said that, not Yahoo Entertainment. It reminds me of a episode during one of my lessons here in China. One of my students brought a dog to class. I told my team teacher/translator, “Get this dog out of here.” But she told me to ignore it. Then the dog peed on the floor. So I asked her to find the school maid. But she again told me to ignore the situation and continue with my lesson. I said no, do something about the dog. Then the dog went to the other side of the room and pooped. I got more insistent with her about the dog. But she just kept urging me to continue teaching in spite of the dog. So now I have dog pee on one side of the rood, dog poop on the other side of the room, students who are paying attention to the dog instead of following the lesson, and a team teacher who won’t help me resolve the situation. When I finally had enough of her and enough of the dog, I said, “Stop talking to me about my lesson and GET THIS PEEING, POOPING DOG OUT OF MY CLASSROOM!” First the anti girl gamers, then the anti literature crowd, now the anti actress Star Wars zealots. I realized perhaps my previous editorials haven’t been expressive enough to get published. I don’t want to explain to why they are wrong, just GET THESE PEEING, POOPING, BARKING, BITING DOGS OUT OF MY SPECULATIVE FICTION COMMUNITY. And yes, it’s my community and your community and not theirs. We are all inside the house enjoying a pot luck dinner, everyone contributing and everyone benefiting. They are out on the sidewalk peeing on, pooping on, barking at, and biting everyone who goes in or out of the house and trying to convince us they belong in the house. They don’t belong in the house, or on the lawn, they don’t belong on the sidewalk, they don’t belong anywhere in the neighborhood. They belong in the pound. So somebody TAKE THESE DOGS TO THE POUND.

  16. @Kip W: And the word for scroll is pixel.

    In seizure-related news, one delightful Twitter user elected to respond to my statement there that I was very uncomfortable with her “just look away” advice as an option. She doubled down by saying “Shield your eyes or look away don’t boycott it” [sic] and blocked me before I could respond. (Trés mature, these Twitter folk…)

    Since when does “I hope they fix this issue for the disc so I can watch it without risking my life” constitute a boycott?

    I stopped breathing during my last seizure, which was several years ago now. I was at a convention, and they called an ambulance. This is not something I trust a theater full of random strangers to do, nor would I wish to repeat the experience in any case. I’ve grown rather fond of oxygen in my lifetime…

  17. “Shield your eyes or look away don’t boycott it”

    Which is rather like saying “Cover your ears during the 200 dB bursts of noise don’t boycott it”

  18. Gotta second Rev. Bob on the Incredibles 2 warning. There’s a fight about midway through the movie inside a strobing, spinning box and another scene near the end showing a wall covered in screens with a spinning checkerboard. Probably others, but as I’m not sensitive, they didn’t make much of an impression.

    The “don’t boycott” idiot on Twitter should be forced to read about Kurt Eichenwald’s experience where a troll sent a strobing image into his Twitter feed. The troll has been found and charged with aggravated assault with a deadly weapon.

  19. (2) Very impressive. I only won one game (tied, actually), then went down in flames on Day 2.

  20. How do you “just look away” when you don’t know it’s coming? Or worse, after it’s started and you’re reacting to it.
    (I hate that kind of visual stuff. Not because I get seizures or migraines from it, but because it’s hard to take, period – hard on the eyes, hard on the brain. FIND ANOTHER WAY, PEOPLE, instead of punishing the people watching.)

  21. Love to see the Lucifer has been picked up by Netflix.

    So now we have a show on Netflix (internationally anyhow) saved by Amazon, in the Expanse, and a show on Amazon saved by Netflix. It just gets confusing.

  22. In a truly just world, they’d also be in the process of rescuing Hap & Leonard.

  23. Almost forgot – small correction to (2): Diana Hsu will be the 2020 Arisia chair, not next year’s. She is an assistant con chair for 2019.

  24. 10) When I read that there’s a frog that’s been preserved in amber for 99 million years, I imagine that they’re going to remove the frog from the amber, and it’s going to jump up and start singing “Hello, My Ragtime Gal.”

  25. I’m happy for the Lucifer fans but sad that People of Earth, a really wonderful little show, was renewed and then un-renewed, which I suppose might just as well be called regular old canceled. Although renewed/unrenewed/canceled is more descriptive of the yanking-away-my-candy feeling I am currently experiencing.

  26. Joshua K., I will now inevitably be disappointed when this fails to happen.

    Then again, maybe it did happen, but it only happens when the scientists are watching alone, and nobody else believes them. Yeah, that’s the ticket.

  27. P J Evans sysvHow do you “just look away” when you don’t know it’s coming? Or worse, after it’s started and you’re reacting to it.
    (I hate that kind of visual stuff. Not because I get seizures or migraines from it, but because it’s hard to take, period – hard on the eyes, hard on the brain. FIND ANOTHER WAY, PEOPLE, instead of punishing the people watching.)

    The local downtown theater has notices on all its doors warning that the film has this in it, and warning at risk from it to skip seeing it.

  28. @Cat Eldridge:

    The local downtown theater has notices on all its doors warning that the film has this in it, and warning at risk from it to skip seeing it.

    That is good to know. I see such warnings occasionally for live theater eprformances (though less often than they’re needed, I think), but almost never for movies.

  29. I have seen strobe light warnings for movies on occasion.

    Regarding Incredibles 2, I honestly wonder what they were thinking putting something that is known to cause seizures into a children’s film of all things.

  30. @ Cora

    When I went to see Incredibles 2 today in Columbia, Maryland (USA), the theater posted multiple strobe warnings at the ticket booth. For what it’s worth.

  31. Glad to hear about Lucifer. While a lot of people (including me) felt that the quality had fallen off a lot in the third season, that still (according to me) left it better than most stuff on TV. 🙂

    For those who aren’t aware: it’s very loosely based on a spin-off of Neil Gaiman’s Sandman comics. And loosely-based or not, there’s a definite Gaimanesque flavor and humor to the series.

  32. The first I ever ran across the response to flashing lights was in the film The Andromeda Strain. Kate Reid’s character, Dr. Leavitt, “zones out” when exposed to them. She doesn’t want to admit that she has epilepsy, so when questioned about why she avoids the lights, she says they remind her of her days i a bordello. In the book, Dr. Leavitt is a man, and the line says he is reminded of his days as an ambulance driver in the war.

  33. Dang, Bill, I hadn’t thought of that, but it’s in the novel, too. That’s where I first learned about strobes and seizures.

    Which reminds me: I read The Andromeda Strain via odd means, and I wonder if anyone else read it serialized in their local daily newspaper. That’s how I read it, I think in the Enid Morning News (rather than the Eagle, the afternoon paper). Did anyone else read it in the papers?

    I don’t recall any other serialized novel in the daily papers when I was a kid. I read everything and I’d think I’d remember if I’d seen others, but it’s a lot harder to know what you don’t remember than what you do, so I could surely be wrong. I’d love to hear from even one other person who had this experience.

    It was cool, actually, and gave the book a realistic feel.

  34. Finally saw Solo, it was a lot better than the early rumors suggested. It was quite fun.

    Good news on Lucifer, but yeah, I really hope they try to lean a bit away from the Firstborn Light-Bringer as ‘goofy annoying doofus’.

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