Pixel Scroll 6/16/19 You Always File The Pixels You Love, The Ones You Shouldn’t File At All

(1) FOR MY FATHER…AND FOR ALL OUR FATHERS. It’s a good day to reread Steve Vertlieb’s Father’s Day tribute to his dad — “My Father/Myself” (from 2017).

Here is a very special Father’s Day tribute that I wrote for my beloved dad, Charles Vertlieb. I hope that you’ll find it moving. Happy Father’s Day in Heaven, Dad. I love you, and I miss you more and more with every passing day.

And I also returned to the late James H. Burns’ “My Father and the Brontosaurus”

… The first dinosaurs we would have shared must have been at the New York World’s Fair in 1965, in Flushing Meadows, Queens (where the baseball Mets still play).  In the second, and final year of that unparalleled spectacular’s existence, we saw Dinoland,  Sinclair Oil’s famous “dinosaur garden.” (A small plastic stegosaurus soon became one of my prized possessions).

(2) NEW NEW NEW! Coca-Cola is the sponsor of today’s practically daily Stranger Things tie-in commercial. New Coke may go better with popcorn than on it.

(3) ADVICE FROM THE MASTER. Screencraft published a collection of “31 Must-Read Screenwriting Lessons From The Twilight Zone Creator Rod Serling” in 2016.

… Here we go to the great one for his wise advice on writing. We’ll elaborate on some of his most famous quotes on the subject to showcase how screenwriters can apply the wisdom to their screenwriting art and craft….

4. “You see. No shock. No engulfment. No tearing asunder. What you feared would come like an explosion is like a whisper. What you thought was the end is the beginning.”

Screenwriters wait and wait for that big inspirational moment to come, often leading to endless months and months of waiting. Sometimes years. The best ideas come like a whisper in the night. It could be a single visual, a single line of dialogue, a single moment, a single character trait or arc, etc. Don’t wait for some big explosion of inspiration. Listen.

(4) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

  • Born June 16, 1894 Mahlon Blaine. Illustrator whose largely of interest here for his work on the covers of the Canaveral Press editions in 1962 of some Edgar Rice Burroughs editions. He told Gershon Legman who would put together The Art of Mahlon Blaine “that he designed the 1925 film, The Thief of Bagdad, but Arrington says that his name doesn’t appear in any of the published credits.” He also claimed to have worked on Howard Hawks’ Scarface, but IMDB has no credits for him. (Died 1964.)
  • Born June 16, 1896 Murray Leinster. It is said that he wrote  and published more than fifteen hundred short stories and articles, fourteen movie scripts, and hundreds of radio scripts and television plays. Among those was his 1945 Hugo winning novella “First Contact” which is one of the first (if not the first) instances of a universal translator in science fiction. So naturally his heirs sued Paramount Pictures over Star Trek: First Contact, claiming that it infringed their trademark in the term. However, the suit was dismissed. I’m guessing they filed just a bit late. (Died 1975.)
  • Born June 16, 1920 T.E. Dikty. In 1947, Dikty joined Shasta Publishers as managing editor. With E. F. Bleiler he started the first Best of the Year SF anthologies, called The Best Science Fiction, that ran from 1949 until 1957. He was posthumously named to the First Fandom Hall of Fame in a ceremony at the 71st World Science Fiction Convention. (Died 1991.)
  • Born June 16, 1939 David McDaniel. He wrote but one non-media tie-in novel, The Arsenal Out of Time, but most of his work was writingThe Man from U.N.C.L.E. novels, six in total, with one, The Final Affair, which was supposed to wrap up the series but went unpublished due to declining sales but which circulated among fandom. He also wrote a Prisoner novel, Who is Number 2? (Died 1977.)
  • Born June 16, 1940 Carole Ann Ford, 79. Best known for her roles as Susan Foreman in Doctor Who, and as Bettina in The Day of the Triffids. Ford appeared in the one-off 50th-anniversary comedy homage The Five(ish) Doctors Reboot.
  • Born June 16, 1958 Isobelle Carmody, 61. Australian writer best known for her Obernewtyn Chronicles which she began at age fourteen. She’s rather prolific with I count at least twenty four novel and three short story collections to date. 
  • Born June 16, 1972 Andy Weir, 47. His debut novel, The Martian, was later adapted into a film of the same name directed by Ridley Scott. He received the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer. Artemis, his second novel, has been optioned as a film.

(5) COMICS SECTION.

  • Bizarro devises emoticons for aliens.

(6) BY POPULAR DEMAND. Is there someone who hasn’t sent me a link to this photo?

(7) GETTING WITH THE PROGRAM. The Verge’s Adi Robertson says “Neal Stephenson’s Fall is Paradise Lost with brain uploading and weaponized fake news”.

Like many Stephenson novels, Fall features a huge, multigenerational — and in this case, periodically reincarnated — cast of characters. But at its center is Richard “Dodge” Forthrast, an aging game company CEO and protagonist of Stephenson’s earlier novel Reamde.

The broad strokes of the story: Dodge dies during a routine medical procedure, and his consciousness is uploaded to a quantum computer. This digital Dodge (known as Egdod) slowly gains self-awareness and constructs a mystical space called Bitworld, presiding over a growing number of newly uploaded “souls.” But the wealthy transhumanist Elmo “El” Shepherd is furious that Dodge has seemingly recreated an old, regrettably human social system. He throws Dodge out of his own paradise, setting up a power struggle that will shake Bitworld’s very foundations.

(8) CHUCKY’S BACK. NME tells why everyone should “Watch Snoop Dogg’s hilarious review of the ‘Child’s Play’ reboot”

The Child’s Play reboot is out in cinemas next week, and it’s already gotten the seal of approval from the one and only Snoop Dogg.

The rapper’s not one to mince his words, whether he’s reacting to the Game of Thrones finale or American president Donald Trump. So naturally, his quick-fire review of the new Chucky film, in a short clip for his Hot Box Office show on VH1, was filled with puns and quips.

(9) SCOUTING PARTY. Links to a cornucopia of recent reviews at Todd Mason’s Sweet Freedom: “Friday’s ‘Forgotten Books’ and more: the links to reviews 14 June 2019. (Reviewer’s name comes first, followed by title and author of work.)

  • Patricia Abbott: Landscape with Fragmented Figures by Jeff Vande Zande
  • Hepzibah Anderson and John O’Neill: Stand on Zanzibar by John Brunner
  • Pritpaul Bains: The Day of the Jackal by Frederick Forsyth
  • Brian Bigelow: Journey through a Lighted Room by Margaret Parton
  • Les Blatt: A Knife for Harry Dodd by George Bellairs
  • Joachim Boaz: Seconds by David Ely; Daybreak on a Different Mountain by Colin Greenland 
  • John Boston: Amazing: Fact and Science Fiction Stories, July 1964, edited by Cele Goldsmith Lalli
  • Ben Boulden: A Talent for Killing (including Deadman’s Game) by Ralph Dennis
  • Brian Busby: The Black Donnellys by Thomas P. Kelley
  • Martin Edwards: Goodbye, Friend by Sébastien Japrisot (translated by Patricia Allen Dreyfus)
  • Peter Enfantino: Atlas (pre-Marvel) horror comics: June 1952
  • Peter Enfantino and Jack Seabrook: DC war comics, February 1975
  • Will Errickson: In a Lonely Place and Why Not You and I? by Karl Edward Wagner
  • José Ignacio Escribano: Maigret in Vichy by Georges Simenon (translated by Ros Schwartz)
  • Curtis Evans: Who wrote which of the “Patrick Quentin”/”Q. Patrick”/”Jonathan Stagge” novels
  • Olman Feelyus: Horizon by Helen MacInnes
  • Paul Fraser: Famous Fantastic Mysteries, August 1946, edited by Mary Gnaedinger (The Twenty-Fifth Hour by Herbert Best and a short story by Bram Stoker); The Great SF Stories 11 (1949) edited by Isaac Asimov and Martin H. Greenberg
  • John Grant: Summer of the Big Bachi by Naomi Hirahara; Silk by Alessandro Barrico (translated by Guido Waldman)
  • Aubrey Hamilton: The Cat Screams by Todd Downing
  • Rich Horton: Kate Wilhelm short fiction; The Accidental Time Machine by Joe Haldeman
  • Jerry House: Three by Kuttner by Henry Kuttner (edited and introduced by Virgil Utter)
  • Kate Jackson: The Strange Case of Harriet Hall by “Moray Dalton” (Katherine Dalton Renoir)
  • Tracy K: The Dusty Bookcase by Brian Busby
  • Colman Keane: Snout by Tim Stevens
  • George Kelley: The Golden Age of Science Fiction by John Wade; Best Seller: A Century of America’s Favorite Books by Robert McParland
  • Joe Kenney: Hickey & Boggs by Philip Rock (from the script by Walter Hill); Revenge at Indy by “Larry Kenyon” (Lew Louderback)
  • Rob Kitchin: London Rules by Mick Herron
  • Kate Laity: “Rabbit in a Trap” by Sandra Seamans
  • B. V. Lawson: The Saint in Europe by Leslie Charteris; Exeunt Murderers: The Best Mystery Stories of Anthony Boucher by “Anthony Boucher” (William White)
  • Fritz Leiber: “Try and Change the Past” (Astounding Science Fiction, March 1958, edited by John W. Campbell, Jr.)
  • Evan Lewis: A Badge for a Badman by “Brian Wynne” (Brian Garfield)
  • Steve Lewis: The Dark Kiss by Donald Enefer; Joy Houseby “Day Keene” (Gunard Hjertstedt) 
  • John F. Norris: The Sealed Room Murder by Michael Crombie
  • Matt Paust: The Everrumble by Michelle Elvy
  • James Reasoner: Tall, Dark and Dead by Kermit Jaediker
  • Richard Robinson: Starman Jones by Robert Heinlein
  • Janet Rudolph: Crime Fiction for Father’s Day
  • Gerard Saylor: Bluebird, Bluebird by Attica Locke 
  • Steven H Silver: Heavy Metal magazine, edited by Sean Kelly, Valerie Merchant, Ted White et al.
  • Kerrie Smith: A High Mortality of Doves by Kate Ellis
  • Duane Spurlock: Santa Fe Passage by “Clay Fisher” (Henry Wilson Allen)
  • Kevin Tipple: Oregon Hill by Howard Owen
  • “TomCat”: Damning Trifles by Maurice C. Johnson 
  • Matthew Wurtz: Galaxy Science Fiction, August 1954, edited by H. L. Gold

(10) THAT’S CAT. ScreenRant invites you to step inside the pitch meeting that led to 2004’s Catwoman!

[Thanks to JJ, Andrew Porter, Carl Slaughter, Andrew Liptak, John King Tarpinian, Mike Kennedy, Chip Hitchcock, Cat Eldridge, and Martin Morse Wooster for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Ann Nimmhaus.]

29 thoughts on “Pixel Scroll 6/16/19 You Always File The Pixels You Love, The Ones You Shouldn’t File At All

  1. If you can’t be with the scroll you pixel, pixel the scroll you’re with.

  2. Back from 4th Street Fantasy. Good con, went well, we had 213 people come…which is double what it was five years ago. Lots of new faces.

  3. @3: ISTM that a lot of this boils down to “99% perspiration” (or more) — but that’s a lesson I hear a lot of would-be writers (screen and otherwise) don’t learn.

    @4: typo correction: “it is said that he published more than fifteen hundred…”

  4. Thanks for linking to James Burns’s memories of being with his father, which I found was charming.

  5. 2) I’m pretty sure “First Time” by Robin Beck came out later than 1985 and a quick google reveals that the Coke commerical came out in 1987 and the single in 1988. An easily corrected mistake and I now wonder why they didn’t use a real New Coke commercial from 1985.

    But then, I’ve never understood why the whole New Coke thing was considered such a big deal anyway. In fact, I assumed for a long time that Cherry Coke was New Coke.

  6. (4) IIRC, Leinster is the only author born in the 1800s who won a non-Retro Hugo Award in a fiction category. The only other two shortlisted authors who were born in the 1800s were EE Smith (posthumous) and Edgar Rice Burroughs (posthumous).

    [Can anyone guess the first non-retro Hugo-shortlisted author born in the 1900s?]

  7. You’ve knocked ten years off Carol Ann Ford’s age. She was born in 1940, not 1950, which makes her 79.

  8. Chip says @4: typo correction: “it is said that he published more than fifteen hundred…”

    Seriously? Typos are part of the charm of doing these. Wrong birthdates and factual errors are to be corrected, anything less ain’t worth it. Some of these Birthdays are composed when I can’t sleep and so being typo free ain’t gonna happen. Asking OGH to fix everything after the fact is going above and beyond the call of duty.

    (Cat who got four hours sleep last night.)

  9. Stuart Hall: Time machine adjusted — appertain yourself your favorite beverage!

  10. If they want to use a real New Coke commercial on Stranger Things, they should use the Max Headroom ones.

  11. Mark Clifton (1906–1963) won a Hugo for Best Novel for They’d Rather Be Right (also known as The Forever Machine) in 1955. I think he’s the earliest Birthdate for a Hugo winner.

  12. Martin Wooster says No, Clifford Simak is older than Mark Clifton!

    You’re right. And what did Simak win a Hugo for Best Novel? Way Station, wasn’t it?

  13. In case anyone hasn’t read enough reviews of the Good Omens miniseries, I’ve got one, even though anyone who was going to watch it has probably watched it. I recommend it with a few reservations. It probably goes without saying that if you are fond of either of the two lead actors, then you have no choice but to see it.

  14. @Cat Eldridge: It is possible I was hallucinating, but IIRC your bio for Leinster initially said he wrote and published more than fifteen short stories and articles; I’d say that’s a major factual error compared to the fifteen hundred that I quoted from Wikipedia.

  15. Chip say It is possible I was hallucinating, but IIRC your bio for Leinster initially said he wrote and published more than fifteen short stories and articles; I’d say that’s a major factual error compared to the fifteen hundred that I quoted from Wikipedia.

    It must be ever so nice to be perfect. And why bring it up now considering it is correct as it stands? OGH obviously corrected if indeed it was in error. Counting coup serves no purpose except to seem petty now.

  16. @OlavRokne: And Sylva was the first translated work nominated for a Hugo (I just read Jo Walton’s book, didn’t I?)

  17. @Cat Eldridge: you answered my original comment with Typos are part of the charm of doing these. Wrong birthdates and factual errors are to be corrected, anything less ain’t worth it. Nobody is asking you to apologize, but blowing off something that in fact fits your criteria for correction is … odd; it was wrong when I was commenting, so I pointed it out — without the clarifying emphasis that there have been complaints about.

  18. Andrew on June 17, 2019 at 7:53 pm said:
    @OlavRokne: And Sylva was the first translated work nominated for a Hugo (I just read Jo Walton’s book, didn’t I?)

    Yes. What I find odd is that Three-Body is always listed and credited to both the author Cixin Liu, and the translator Ken Liu. But when discussing Sylva, everyone forgets the work of Rita Barisse, who did a brilliant job of translating the book.

    IMHO, the translators should get credit if a work gets shortlisted.

    (anyone remember Pierre Boule’s acceptance speech for the “Best Screenplay” Oscar?)

  19. Belated thanks for the plug! Things have been hectic, and I wondered a bit at the spike in hits, but didn’t quite get around to finding out the source…the Blogspot indicators didn’t choose to credit your address…

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