Pixel Scroll 6/28/19 A Pixel’s A Pixel, No Matter How Scrolled

(1) LEADING EFFECTS ARTISTS GATHER. Last night in Beverly Hills, The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences hosted “Galactic Innovations: Star Wars and Rogue One”, with some people who have made special effects history.

Over the last 40 years, technology has advanced by leaps and bounds. But the impetus to create and inspire remains the same. This event contrasted the analog technologies developed for the first STAR WARS released in 1977 with the all-digital toolsets used to create ROGUE ONE released in 2016.

Key contributors from both STAR WARS and ROGUE ONE shared the journey of creating the impossible with their breakthrough visual effects. Our list of stellar participants included: John Dykstra, Dennis Muren, John Knoll, Ben Burtt, Marcia Lucas, Bill George, Harrison Ellenshaw, Bruce Nicholson, Richard Edlund and Rachel Rose. Hosted by Kiri Hart, co-producer of ROGUE ONE.

A recording of the livestreamed video is available today:

I learned from Craig Miller, “Lucasfilm has donated the original Dykstraflex Camera – used to do the miniature photography for Star Wars – to the Academy Museum and the significance of the camera prompted them to put together this event.”

(2) CELEBRATE. FIYAH Literary Magazine is making headway to fund its staff Hugo Meetup in Atlanta. Any donation helps.

(3) NEXT YEAR’S HUGOS. Renay has kicked off what some admirers call 2020 Hugo Spreadsheet of Doom to collect recommendations of works published this year.

(4) THE FIFTH SEASON AUTHOR ON TV. See video of N.K. Jemisin’s appearance on the PBS News Hour in connection with her book being a selection for their #NowReadThis book club.

(5) ANTHOLOGY NEWS. Haka is an anthology of speculative / science fiction in Filipino by European authors, organized by Julie Novakova and Jaroslav Olsa Jr. that will include stories from 15 authors of different nationalities.

The publisher, Anvil Publishing, will announce the launching date soon.

Line Up:

  • Peter Schattschneider: Brief aud dem Jenseits (Austria)
  • Ian Watson: Walk of Solace with My Dead Baby (Britain)
  • Hanuš Seiner: Hexagrammaton (the Czech Rep.)
  • Richard Ipsen: The Null in the Nought (Denmark)
  • Johanna Sinisalo: Äänettömät Äänet (Finland)
  • Aliette de Bodard: Three Cups of Grief, by Starlight (France)
  • Michalis Manolios: Aethra (Greece)
  • Péter Lengyel: Napkelet Cím? (Hungary)
  • Francesco Verso and Francesco Mantovani: iMATE (Italy)
  • Tais Teng: Silicium Snelwegen (the Netherlands)
  • Stanislaw Lem: Podró? siódma (Poland)
  • Pedro Cipriano: Seeds of Hope (Portugal)
  • Zuzana Stožická: ?repiny z oblohy (Slovakia)
  • Bojan Ekselenski: ?asovni kredita (Slovenia)
  • Sofía Rhei: Secret Stories of Doors (Spain)
  • Bertil Falk: Gjort är gjort (Sweden)

(6) NEVER STEAL ANYTHING SMALL. Meanwhile, back at the slushpile, Neil Clarke thought he might have seen this one before:

(7) KEENE TELETHON CANCELLED. Brian Keene has announced they will not be holding the 3rd annual The Horror Show with Brian Keene telethon, which was scheduled to take place at Dark Delicacies in September. One of the hosts is medically not in a condition to do what needs to be done and the rest of the hosts are unwilling to proceed without him. Keene explained on Facebook:

It is with profound regret that I have to announce the cancellation of the 3rd annual The Horror Show with Brian Keene telethon, which was scheduled to take place at Dark Delicacies in September.

Listeners to the show know that co-host and engineer Dave Thomas has been experiencing some health problems. I am not going to share the private details of what has been occurring, but while Dave’s condition so far hasn’t greatly impacted his abilities to participate on the weekly program, his doctors this week have strongly advised against doing the telethon, given what is required for it. He can’t travel to California. And doing it here on the East Coast isn’t an option either because — to be blunt — staying awake and energized for 24 hours will kill him….

If Dave’s health fortunes change, I will absolutely reschedule this for early-2020. But as it stands right now, he simply can’t do it, and we simply won’t do it without him.

Keene hopes people will still find the cause worth supporting

If you’d still like to help, you can donate to Scares That Care by clicking here. And you can shop at Dark Delicacies from anywhere in the world by clicking here.

(8) ANIME MILWAUKEE BANS RYAN KOPF. Anime News Network reports “Convention Runner Ryan Kopf Banned from Anime Milwaukee Following Alleged Sexual Assault”, the consequences of a 2018 incident:

Anime Milwaukee (AMKE) staff confirmed with Anime News Network that Ryan Kopf, the chief executive officer of the AnimeCon.org convention organization, is banned from future Anime Milwaukee conventions following an incident that took place during the 2018 convention between February 16-18 at the Hyatt Regency Milwaukee hotel. Police were called to the hotel to respond to an alleged sexual assault involving Kopf.

Anime Milwaukee made a statement (full text at the linked post) which begins:

As the leadership of Anime Milwaukee, we take safety standards seriously. That is why we, AMKE’s parent non-profit organization (the Entertainment and Culture Promotion Society, Inc.) are choosing to come forward about an incident that happened at our show, and the preventative action we have taken since.

Anime Milwaukee can confirm there was an incident involving Mr. Kopf, a representative of Anime Midwest, at AMKE 2018. In this case, per protocol, Milwaukee PD were called by Hyatt staff. Convention staff also responded to assist the attendee as needed, until we were dismissed by police upon their arrival. Our details are pretty sparse from there, since this became a matter for law enforcement personnel. For our part, Mr. Kopf was immediately banned from Anime Milwaukee for 2018 and all future years. He is not permitted to attend AMKE in any capacity. We were also informed that the Hyatt Regency Milwaukee banned him from their property.

Our convention chair at the time, Corey Wood, acted decisively to ensure Mr. Kopf, all associated events staff, and promotional materials were ejected fully from Anime Milwaukee events space….

ANN asked for Kopf’s side of things:

Anime News Network reached out to Kopf for comment on alleged incidents at Anime Milwaukee 2018 and Anime-zing! 2013. Kopf denied he was removed from the Anime Milwaukee 2018 event or that any incident took place. He also denied anything improper took place at Anime-zing 2013.

“When attending Anime Milwaukee in 2018, I was always in the company of at least one of my staff members. We were not approached by anyone and we were not asked to leave. The precise nature of these allegations remain [sic] unclear to me. I have not done anything improper at either of these events, and I fully intend to pursue holding accountable those who have continued to repeat defamatory statements about me,” Kopf wrote.

Kopf has been involved in a number of incidents, and some litigation against those who reported them, over the pat few years – see File 770’s 2016 post “Ryan Kopf Refiles Suit Against Nerd & Tie”.

(9) NASA MISSION TO TITAN. NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine announced yesterday that “NASA’s Dragonfly Will Fly Around Titan Looking for Origins, Signs of Life”.

NASA has announced that our next destination in the solar system is the unique, richly organic world Titan. Advancing our search for the building blocks of life, the Dragonfly mission will fly multiple sorties to sample and examine sites around Saturn’s icy moon.

Dragonfly will launch in 2026 and arrive in 2034. The rotorcraft will fly to dozens of promising locations on Titan looking for prebiotic chemical processes common on both Titan and Earth. Dragonfly marks the first time NASA will fly a multi-rotor vehicle for science on another planet; it has eight rotors and flies like a large drone. It will take advantage of Titan’s dense atmosphere – four times denser than Earth’s – to become the first vehicle ever to fly its entire science payload to new places for repeatable and targeted access to surface materials.

Titan is an analog to the very early Earth, and can provide clues to how life may have arisen on our planet. During its 2.7-year baseline mission, Dragonfly will explore diverse environments from organic dunes to the floor of an impact crater where liquid water and complex organic materials key to life once existed together for possibly tens of thousands of years. Its instruments will study how far prebiotic chemistry may have progressed. They also will investigate the moon’s atmospheric and surface properties and its subsurface ocean and liquid reservoirs. Additionally, instruments will search for chemical evidence of past or extant life.

… Dragonfly took advantage of 13 years’ worth of Cassini data to choose a calm weather period to land, along with a safe initial landing site and scientifically interesting targets.

(10) MALTIN AND GRRM. Leonard Maltin interviewed George R.R. Martin for his podcast Maltin on the Movies.

The prolific author behind Game of Thrones is also a lifelong movie buff and invited us to interview him at his very own theater, The Jean Cocteau Cinema in Santa Fe, New Mexico. George and Leonard compared notes about starting out as a fan and contributing to fanzines, back in the pre-Internet era. (For more on this, go to www.leonardmaltin.com.) George went on to teach writing and enjoyed success as a novelist before moving to Hollywood, where he spent a decade working in television. Ultimately he returned to his roots as an author, little dreaming that his novels would inspire one of the most elaborate and successful television shows ever produced. George is a great conversationalist and was a gracious host to Leonard and Jessie; you can join them vicariously by listening in.
Read more at http://maltinonmovies.libsyn.com/george-rr-martin#rKoWVaWd6LogrJmZ.99

Maltin also wrote a post about his fanpublishing roots: “My Link to Game of Thrones’ George R.R. Martin: Fanzines”. (Apropos to our current discussion of gatekeeping, Maltin put out a movie fanzine, and obviously would be shocked if anyone didn’t consider that a link to young GRRM’s fanac.)

We had a great conversation for our podcast, Maltin on Movies, which you can find HERE. In doing homework for that chat I discovered that Mr. Martin and I have at least one thing in common, other than growing up in New Jersey: we both got our start writing for fanzines….

It turned out that the school paper had no use for cocky freshmen, so another friend, Barry Gottlieb, and I launched a more ambitious publication we called Profile. It reflected my growing interest in film history and Barry’s love of magic and magicians. Profile was reproduced on a used mimeograph machine, which was given to me by my father’s cousin, who was in the printing business. It lacked an automatic paper feed, so it was truly labor-intensive—and messy, to boot. I still feel like I have black ink under my fingernails from that experience. Barry had artistic skills and graced our covers with lineoleum-block prints. When we felt flush we sprang for wraparound covers featuring photos and posters from a local job-printer. That spruced up our little magazine, which was starting to build a following outside of our schoolmates.

I was 13 years old when Forrest J. Ackerman’s popular newsstand magazine Famous Monsters of Filmland printed a survey of fanzines. That’s how I learned of The 8mm Collector, published by Samuel K. Rubin in Indiana, Pennsylvania and Film Fan Monthly, published by Daryl Davy in Vancouver, B.C. I submitted articles to them both and they were accepted. That’s when I saw my byline in print for the first time in a publication other than my own. Believe me, that was a heady experience. Only after they published my pieces did I tell them that I was 13. Sam Rubin said he didn’t care and Daryl Davy said the same, adding that he was 19 at the time. I became a regular contributor to both magazines.

(11) COWBOY V. ROBOTS. The Autry Museum of the American West in Los Angeles is running a “Weird West Film Series” and on July 13 will host a marathon screening of the cowboy star’s serial The Phantom Empire (1935)”

Join us for a marathon screening of all 12 chapters of the classic sci-fi Western serial The Phantom Empire! The underground empire of Murania threatens the world with robots, ray-guns, and Thunder Riders—and only Gene Autry, in his first starring role, can save the day! Watch for Griffith Observatory (the super-scientific, highly advanced kingdom of Murania 20,000 feet below Gene Autry’s Radio Ranch). Chapters are screened every half hour and introduced by Karla Buhlman, President of Gene Autry Entertainment. Drop in or stay for the whole show, cliffhangers and all.

For more details on the cast and songs in this film, visit the Official Gene Autry website page for The Phantom Empire.

(12) TODAY IN HISTORY.

  • June 28, 1957 Beginning of the End premiered. (Think giant grasshoppers)
  • June 28, 1957The Unearthly debuted in theaters.

(13) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

  • Born June 28, 1926 Mel Brooks, 92. Blazing Saddles I’ve watched, oh, at least two dozen times. Get Smart several times at least wholly or in part. Spaceballs, errr, once was enough. And let’s not mention Robin Hood: Men in Tights though The Producers (not genre I grant you) was brilliant. So what do you like or dislike by him? 
  • Born June 28, 1941 Martin Greenberg. Founder of Gnome Press who’s not to be confused with Martin H Greenberg. Not on Asimov’s list of favorite people despite being the first publisher of the Foundation series. Not paying authors is a bad idea. (Died 2011.)
  • Born June 28, 1944 Peggy Rae Sapienza. Anything I could possibly say, Mike has said of this fan of the first order far more eloquently here. (Died 2015.)
  • Born June 28, 1946 Robert Asprin. I first encountered him as one of the editors (along with Lynn Abbey) of the Thieves’ World Series for which he wrote the superb “The Price of Doing Business” for the first volume. I’m also fond of The Cold Cash War novel. His Griffen McCandles (Dragons) series is quite excellent. I’m please to say he’s well stocked on both Apple Books and Kindle. (Died 2008.)
  • Born June 28, 1948 Kathy Bates, 71. Her performance in Misery based on the King novel was her big Hollywood film. She was soon in Dolores Claiborne, another King-derived film. Other genre roles included Mrs. Green in Dick Tracy, Mrs. Miriam Belmont in Dragonfly, voice of the Sea Hag in Popeye’s Voyage: The Quest for Pappy, voice of Bitsy the Cow in Charlotte’s Web and Secretary of Defense Regina Jackson in The Day the Earth Stood Still , a very loose adaption of the Fifties film of the same name.
  • Born June 28, 1951 Lalla Ward, 68. She is known for her role as Romana (or Romanadvoratrelundar in full) on Doctor Who during the time of the Fourth Doctor. She has reprised the character in Dimensions in Time, the webcast version of Shada, and in several Doctor Who Big Finish productions. In addition, she played Ophelia to Derek Jacobi’s Hamlet in the BBC television production.  And she was Helga in an early horror film called Vampire Circus.
  • Born June 28, 1954 Alice Krige, 65. I think her first genre role was in the full role of Eva Galli and Alma Mobley in Ghost Story. From there, she plays Mary Shelley (née Godwin) in Haunted Summer before going onto being Mary Brady in Stephen King’s Sleepwalkers. Now Star Trek: First Contact in which she first plays the Borg Queen, a role she’ll repeat in the 2001 finale of Star Trek: Voyager, “Endgame”. She’s had a number of other genre roles but I only note that she was Eir in Thor: The Dark World.
  • Born June 28, 1954 Deborah Grabien, 65. She makes the Birthday list for her most excellent Haunted Ballads series in which a folk musician and his lover tackle the matter of actual haunted spaces. It leads off with The Weaver and the Factory Maid. You can read the first chapter here. Oh, and she makes truly great dark chocolate fudge. 
  • Born June 28, 1954 Raffaella De Laurentiis, 65. Yes, she’s related to that De Laurentiis hence she was the producer of the Dune film. She also did Conan the Barbarian and Conan the Destroyer, both starting Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Kull the Conqueror. She also produced all films in the Dragonheart series.
  • Born June 28, 1957 Mark Helprin, 72. Author of three works of significance to the genre, Winter’s TaleA City in Winter which won the World Fantasy Award for Best Novella and The Veil of Snows. The latter two are tastefully illustrated by Chris Van Allsburg. I know Winter’s Tale was turned into a film but color me very disinterested in seeing it.  
  • Born June 28, 1966 Sara Stewart, 53. Martha Wayne in Batman Begins, she played the Sheriff of Nottingham’s sister, Davina, in “Sister Hood”, the opening episode of Season 2 of Robin Hood, her voice appears in the Dr Who episode “The End of the World”, and a loa possess her in the London Voodoo film.
  • Born June 28, 1979 Felicia Day, 40. She was Vi in  Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Dr. Holly Marten in Eureka, and had a recurring role as Charles Bradbury on Supernatural. She also appears as Kinga Forrester in Mystery Science Theater 3000.

(14) COMICS SECTION.

  • The Flying McCoys shows somebody who’ll be surprised that Dracula doesn’t think this is good news.

(15) ST:P. Picard is slated to debut later this year, and famed genre figure Michael Chabon will be at the helm: “‘Star Trek: Picard’ Names Michael Chabon Showrunner”.

“‘Star Trek’ has been an important part of my way of thinking about the world, the future, human nature, storytelling and myself since I was ten years old,” said Chabon. “I come to work every day in a state of joy and awe at having been entrusted with the character and the world of Jean-Luc Picard, with this vibrant strand of the rich, intricate and complex tapestry that is ‘Trek.’”

(16) UP, PERISCOPE. The Cut brings its investigative powers to bear on “A Close Reading of the Most Deranged Sandwich Commercial Ever”.

Those of you who’ve spared yourselves of Twitter might have missed the absolute calamity that ensued when Simmons shared this example of advertising run wild. At the time of writing, it had been retweeted tens of thousands of times, received thrice as many faves, generated roughly 5,000 comments, and immediately cemented itself as a meme. It has also raised a lot of questions:

(17) FRANKENSTEINLY SPEAKING. Daniel Kimmel, a film critic and author of several humorous sf novels, is interviewed by the Jewish Journal: “In new book, Somerville author explores ‘What is it like to be Jewish in the 21st century?’” The accompanying photo shows Kimmel posed with his Skylark Award

…Kimmel’s earlier novels include “Jar Jar Binks Must Die … and Other Observation about Science Fiction Movies,” and “Time On My Hands: My Misadventures In Time Travel.” He’s the winner of the 2018 Skylark Award, given by the New England Science Fiction Association for lifetime contributions to the genre. It’s a distinction he shares with such notables as Isaac Asimov, Jane Yolen, and Bruce Coville.

…In a recent conversation, Kimmel said his new novel is a mashup of two classic films, “Father of the Bride” (1950, remade in 1991), and “The Bride of Frankenstein” (1935), an irresistible challenge for the 63-year-old who lives in Somerville.

It’s Kimmel’s first work of explicitly Jewish fiction, with memorable characters – including a rabbi – enlivened with Kimmel’s Jewish sensibilities from growing up in Queens, N.Y.

“Father of the Bride of Frankenstein” opens with a prologue from the father-narrator, a bank executive who sets the stage of the wildly imaginative tale of the unlikeliest Jewish wedding about to unfold: the marriage of his darling daughter Samantha, a college philosophy major, to Frank, the charismatic human who, only a few years earlier, was brought to life from tissues taken from a corpse in an (illegal) experiment by scientists (who are now behind bars).

With a witty pen, Kimmel manages to touch on issues of the day, from bioethics to politics and human rights, all wrapped up in hilarious family dynamics bursting with Borscht-Belt humor.

(18) LOVECRAFT BOBBLEHEAD. World Fantasy Award winners didn’t want little Lovecraft statuettes, but maybe you do. Especially if it’s a bobblehead. On sale at MVD Entertainment Group: “H.P. Lovecraft – Limited Edition Bobblehead By Rue Morgue Rippers”.

Rue Morgue Magazine’s next release in the Rue Morgue RIPpers line is the father of cosmic horror, H.P. Lovecraft. This 7-inch polyresin figure of Lovecraft is limited to 1500 numbered units. Sculpted with incredible accuracy, the H.P. Lovecraft Rue Morgue RIPper will surely please fans worldwide.

(19) DEAD CERT. There’s not a ghost of a chance that the lease will be renewed – details in The Brag: “Melbourne’s Haunted Bookshop lease denied on account of landlord’s ‘Spiritual Beliefs’”.

A Melbourne paranormal bookstore has had a lease application denied because of the potential landlord’s “spiritual beliefs.”

The Haunted Bookshop was established in 1997 but will be closing permanently this year. Any hope of remaining open at a new, nearby location seems to have been diminished with the establishment becoming the latest flashpoint to dominate national discourse in the debate around a perceived attack on religious expression.

… In the post, Sinton mentioned that the landlord is “a high-profile member of the Buddhist community” though The Brag is unable to confirm this at the time of publish. The Brag has also reached out to the agent representing the property for comment.

(20) ALL KNIGHT LONG. “Michael Palin to produce Radio 4 specials for Monty Python birthday” – BBC has the story. Chip Hitchcock comments, “A pity the world record attempt is too late for Worldcon-related tourism — I bet a lot of fans would have shown up.”

Sir Michael Palin is to serve as the executive producer on five new Radio 4 specials to mark the 50th anniversary of the Monty Python comedy troupe.

The shows, to air in September, will feature “never-before-released material from the Monty Python sound archives”.

The 50th anniversary of Monty Python’s Flying Circus first airing on BBC One will be marked as well by a month-long season at BFI Southbank in London.

The 5 October anniversary will also be marked by a world record attempt.

Organisers are hoping to encourage the largest gathering of people dressed as Gumbys – the spectacle-wearing, knotted handkerchief-sporting imbeciles who became part of Python lore.

[Thanks to Standback, John King Tarpinian, Mike Kennedy, Chip Hitchcock, JJ, Cat Eldridge, Dann, Michael Toman, Martin Morse Wooster, Carl Slaughter, and Andrew Porter for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Rick Moen.]

46 thoughts on “Pixel Scroll 6/28/19 A Pixel’s A Pixel, No Matter How Scrolled

  1. (6) Next time I see Neil on a “Tales from the Slush Pile” panel, I’ll expect to hear this story.

  2. Andrew on June 28, 2019 at 5:46 pm said:
    “I get by with a little File from my friends”

  3. 13) Well, there’s a lot of Mel Brooks’s work I don’t know, but “Young Frankenstein” is wonderful, and is surely genre.

  4. (13) Yep! YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN for me, too. If I was to pick one of his movies, it’d be that one. Everybody in it is first-rate. Great scenes. Good jokes. Fabulous sets and photography. Top-notch sets. Superb singing and dancing. If I wasn’t afraid of being mistook, I’d say something nice about the knockers.

  5. 13) Another Young Frankenstein vote here!

    As for Robert Lynn Asprin, I also read Another Fine Myth and a bunch of other Aahz and Skeeve books back in the day, which at the time I enjoyed quite a bit.

  6. Cat Eldridge: Your judgments are correct; WINTER’S TALE is a terrible movie BUT the novel is excellent and I highly recommend it.

  7. 13) again — Felicia Day has also done quite a bit of online stuff, including The Guild and Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog. Plus she did voicework for the game Dragon Age II and appeared in a (questionable) live-action tie-in film.

  8. Back when they didn’t clear the theaters after each showing, we sat through Young Frankenstein twice.

    (Since the italics button disappeared, I just usually don’t bother with them.)

  9. Loved Blazing Saddles, with Young Frankenstein and Producers close behind. Twelve Chairs is a cute and underrated film made very early in his career, about two Russian bumblers trying to track down a set of dining chairs. History of the World Part 1 is uneven but the Inquisition musical number is outstanding.

  10. @Charon Dunn: The Brooks film of The Twelve Chairs is closely based on an absolutely classic Soviet satirical novel of the same name from 1928, by Ilya Arnoldovich Feinsilberg and Yevgeni Petrov (yclept ‘Ilf and Petrov’), who were wildly popular at the time for taking the stuffing out of Soviet pretensions and, one might say, functioning as the Soviet equivalent of Damon Runyon. Brooks’s version is one of about 20 adaptations, mostly in Eastern Europe, and is faithful except for a Hollywood-style happy (happier?) ending that is very much not present in the original.

  11. 13) Me too for Young Frankenstein. Still can’t help saying my bad ‘putting on the ritz’ impression whenever we pass by The Ritz. And Felicia Day also shows up in The Magicians.

  12. Just finished Stephensons FALL or Dodge in hell, and this is going to be a divisive book (even more than his other work)! Its starts somewhere like “The social network” and ends with “Willow”.
    Some spoiler-free thoughts:
    Let me start by saying, this is not really a sequel to Reamde – some characters are shared, but the story has nothing to do with the events in Reamde. If anything Id even say its better to know Cryptonomicon and/or the Baroque cycle than Reamde, to understand some certain scenes, but not necessary for the enyoment of the book.
    Also: This is Stephenson. There are infodumps and long monologues. Characters literally having lectures about the themes in the book. If you never liked those, you wont like it here. It doesnt reach up top Sevenevens-Level (which was too much for me), but its not as light as DODO either.
    If you read the blurb on the cover youll be surprised that the first 400 pages are not what you expect. The first chapter is a lot of foreshadowing. Then there is a lot of built-up and introduction of characters but you may ask yourself: “Is this really necessary for the plot”? And the answer is: a) Well, its Stepehenson and b) Not really, but if you look closely youll find a lot of themes that are picked up later – in different forms. Something similiar can be said for some characters – you have to read closely to understand some references. But its possible to enjoy the book without, I daresay.
    The second part is completly different and I wont spoil it more than I did in my first line. It will be averting expectations a lot and probably cause a lot of dissapointed reviews fro people that dont want THAT in their Tech-SF. Even worse: The two parts are tied together by a somewhat tedious describtion of a process. This has TMK never done before in this detail, so this is interesting in a certain way, but, yeah I found it too long. But the seond part was better.
    This book has very weird parts and most of all (in its vaguest sense) it takes a look at religion, both as in theology, but also as in “stories being told”. The way it does look at it, is certainly unique and quite what you expect from Stephenson (i.e. full of interesting ideas and discussions). The SF-part is certainly weaker than usual, and is mostly the verhicle to drive the story – “Gimmick SF” as I call it (A gimmick is introduced and than the story revolves what would happen if this gimmick exists). It has some things to say about social media and such, but if you read Stephenson for the tech you probably will be dissapointed by the scond half of the book.

    Overall I very much enjoyed the book, but Im aware that I might be in the minority. I never much liked Greg Egans Cyber-city, but I found the idea fascinating. Stephenson took that idea and ran with it and delivers a much richer and thought-through version of it.

  13. (13) It’s true that Spaceballs is perhaps less than perfect (although I think it’s fine), but I love the very opening joke which needs to be seen in a cinema to work properly (as, indeed, should the opening of the film that it is parodying, of course.) On a tv, it loses almost all of the grandeur (as, indeed, does the opening of etc. etc.)
    The trio of Young Frankenstein, High Anxiety and Blazing Saddles is very hard to beat though. They all display such a love of their various genre sources – indeed I think this is why Spaceballs fails; he clearly doesn’t really love the genre in the same way.

  14. My favourites are Young Frankenstein, High Anxiety and Silent Movie. The rest of them I don’t even like and mostly find childish and annoying.

  15. My favorite bit of Geek Trivia is that Mel Brooks is not only an EGOT [Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, Tony] award winner, but he also has a Hugo, a Nebula, and a Saturn Award as well.

    “It’s pronounced Franken-Stalk!”

  16. @David agreed. The opening joke of Spaceballs works best on a large screen.

    @Peer I did like Permutation City, so maybe I will like Stephenson’s look at the same concept. Does anyone else but me remember the Time Gate series which had a bunch of historical characters in computer simulated worlds?

  17. #13 Winter’s Tale was butchered by the film-makers, who took the least interesting portions of the book and discarded everything less mundane. Helprin is an outspoken conservative, who served a foreign policy advisor and speechwriter to presidential candidate Bob Dole (and has some odd ideas on copyright).
    #13 Ken Moore of Nashville fandom fame had a 16mm print of Young Frankenstein, which he would provide for con film rooms to show in the era before videotape made the con film room obsolete. (I once spent an evening watching that copy of Young Frankenstein three times in a row, having nothing useful to do with my time that night.)

  18. Meredith Moment: GRR Martin’s “Dying of the Light” is on sale at the Usual Suspects.
    (I read it in the dead-tree edition, way back when. It’s good. And not a doorstop.)

  19. StephenfromOttawa on June 28, 2019 at 6:36 pm said:

    Let’s try this version:
    “When I get Scrolleder, losing my File,
    Pixeled years from now”

  20. @P J Evans

    “Will you be sending me a Worldcon bid, Birthday listing, Higo so fine”

  21. Was Winter’s Tale the novel which had a great engine of some kind and the final stage of building it was dropping in a silver dollar so it would make a glorious ringing rattling noise when it ran? That image has stuck with me for probably 20 years, although nothing else about whatever book it was in has….

  22. @Paul Weimer: Oh yes Permutation City is the Original title. If the German translation has an English title I get confused…

    Autumn or Dodgeball in hell

  23. Andrew, bravo!!

    (I knew there had to be a next couplet, but my brain wasn’t getting there.)

  24. Felicia Day didn’t just star in The Guild, she also wrote and produced it, and it was successful enough that she was able (with some help from a YouTube funding initiative) to launch the production company Geek & Sundry, which makes a wide variety of on-line video series, covering video games, tabletop games, and general SFF stuff including both reviews and some original fiction. Patrick Rothfuss had a roundtable series on Geek & Sundry’s channel for a while.

  25. Sale heads-up: Ann Leckie’s The Raven Tower is currently 99p on Amazon UK.

  26. @6: there are always people who think they can get away with a sufficiently barefaced lie.

    @13: I’ll join the love for Young Frankenstein — funny even if the funny-then un-PC stuff is left out, ,strong>and it reused props from the first Hollywood movie about the “monster”. I’d argue that Blazing Saddles is randomly meta rather than genre, but not too heatedly.

    @13bis: was “Griffen McCandles” better than the Myth books? Myth had their moments, but I wouldn’t commend them to anyone now; it would be interesting to see whether Asprin did better elsewhere.

  27. @Chip Hitchcock: I thought that reusing original Frankenstein movie props was to Young Frankenstein’s credit.

  28. Pixels keep on scrollin’, scrollin’, scrollin’, into the future

  29. Four scrolls and seven beers ago, Our Gracious Host brought forth on this continent, a new fanzine.

  30. Chip Hitchcock asks was “Griffen McCandles” better than the Myth books? Myth had their moments, but I wouldn’t commend them to anyone now; it would be interesting to see whether Asprin did better elsewhere.

    I think the worldbuilding and character development is much better is his Griffen McCandles if only for being firmly rooted in New Orleans. Like the work That George Effinger did in building a world for his Marîd Audran series, Asprin used New Orleans to create a fantastically embellished reality here.

  31. The MythAdventures novels led to the comics, which led to me running the officially licensed (we paid Bob a token $1/year license fee) Fan Club. That in turn meant I learned a whole lot about organization, membership databases, bulk mailing, and other stuff that was useful later when San Francisco won its Worldcon bid. There’s a reason I include “compulsive organizer” in one version of my convention bio.

    As it happens, Bob and I only met in person a couple of times; once in Spokane (I recognized the now-derelict hotel while walking around at Worldcon there) and once at a San Diego Comic-Con where he treated the fan club organizers to dinner. It would have been three times, as he was a guest of honor at MarCon in Columbus the year I was fan guest of honor, but tragically he died just before the convention.

  32. @Cat Eldridge: TFTR; I’ll look them up.

    @Kevin Standlee: wrt the comic books, was there any truth to the rumor that Asprin got Foglio fired because the first series was funnier as a graphic (with IIRC Phil doing text as well as pictures) than the book? I liked the first series, but looked at the first issue of Valentino’s work and decided that making Skeeve look so shifty() didn’t fit, and didn’t read further.
    (
    ) I would have said “like Keanu Reeves with a fishing line attached to someone else’s ace”, but Reeves wasn’t much known back then.

  33. @Bruce Baugh: I intended it as a credit; typoing the HTML may have blurred that.

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