Pixel Scroll 8/13/18 I Can’t See Me Scrolling Nobody But You, For All My File

(1) SATURDAY AFTERNOON AT WORLDCON. Adam Rakunas is publicizing the availability of help for those who want it:

(2) NEWS CLIPPING. Barnes & Noble Sci-Fi & Fantasy reports that in 2019 Saga Press will publish Rivers Solomon’s novel inspired by a song from 2017 Hugo nominee Clipping,—a group that includes Tony-winner Daveed Diggs. Thread starts here.

(3) BEAM UP MORE GOLD. Borys Kit, in “Chris Pine and Chris Hemsworth ‘Star Trek 4’ Future In Doubt as Talks Fall Through (Exclusive)”  in The Hollywood Reporter says that both Pine and Hemsworth (who was supposed to play Captain James T. Kirk’s father) have said they won’t be in Star Trek 4 because of pay issues.

The deal points came down to the usual suspect: money. Pine and Hemsworth, among Hollywood’s A-list when starring in DC or Marvel movies, are said to be asking the studios to stick to existing deals. Paramount, according to insiders, contends that Star Trek is not like a Marvel or Star Wars movie and is trying to hold the line on a budget.

The actors, according to sources, insist they have deals in place and that the studios are reneging on them, forcing them to take pay cuts as they try to budget a movie that is following a mediocre performer.

Pine, at least, has had a deal in place for several years. The actor, now a key player in the Wonder Woman franchise, signed up for a fourth movie when he made his deal for 2016’s Star Trek Beyond. Hemsworth has been attached to Star Trek 4 since Paramount, then run by the previous regime headed by Brad Grey, announced the fourth installment in 2016, although his exact status remains murky.

(4) SIGNING STORIES. Delilah S. Dawson gets a lot of great answers. Thread starts here.

Includes a RedWombat sighting –

(5) IT’S THAT DAY. In Pogo, Walt Kelly had a running gag: “Be careful, Friday the 13th falls on a Sunday/ Monday/ Tuesday, etc. this month.” Friday the 13th falls on a Monday in August.

(6) A MODERN SAGA. Brought to you by Amal El-Mohtar.

(7) THE BEST OF. James Davis Nicoll looks back at Del Rey Books’ “Best of…” series in “A Survey of Some of the Best Science Fiction Ever Published (Thanks to Judy-Lynn Del Rey)” at Tor,com, although some of the humor made me wonder if he really liked all the collections. (Which I suppose he did, otherwise why write the piece?) Like this note:

John Brunner’s fiction covered a spectrum ranging from morose to intensely gloomy. Readers intrigued by this collection who want to enjoy his strengths at novel length should seek out Brunner’s thematically-related SF standalone novels: The Jagged Orbit, The Sheep Look Up, Stand on Zanzibar, and The Shockwave Rider. Each book tackles One Big Issue (racial conflict, pollution, overpopulation, and future shock, respectively).

(8) HUGHART OKAY. The query about author Barry Hughart’s well-being in the August 4 Scroll (item 5) has been answered, and the news is good. Bill Schafer of Subterranean Press replied today —

Dear Mr. Glyer,

In response to your recent thread about Barry Hughart’s whereabouts…

I am happy to report I just got off the phone with Barry Hughart, who is very much still with us. (He is terrible about responding to emails, which led me into my email archives to dig out his phone number.)

Oddly enough, we’ve been doing business for ten years or more, and this is the first time we’ve spoken.

Best,

Bill

(9) ROHAN OBIT. A note about the passing of Michael Scott Rohan (1951-2018) at the SF Encyclopedia.

Michael Scott Rohan died in hospital in his home town of Edlnburgh on 12 August 2018; he was 67. Although his first novel Run to the Stars (1983, pictured) was a lively science-fiction adventure, his considerable reputation rests mainly on the Winter of the World fantasy sequence beginning with The Anvil of Ice (1986) and the Spiral science-fantasies beginning with Chase the Morning (1990).

Speaking personally, Mike Rohan was an old and valued friend whose unexpected death leaves an aching hole in the world. — David Langford

(10) TODAY IN HISTORY

  • August 13, 1942 — Disney’s Bambi premiered in New York City.
  • August 13, 1953 — The original War Of The Worlds was released in New York City.

(11) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS

  • Born August 13, 1899 – Alfred Hitchcock. Let’s see… The Birds and Psycho. Y’all think anything else might be loosely be genre which I include horror in?
  • Born August 13 – Kevin Tighe, 74. First genre role was in This Immortal series, nearly fifty years ago; appeared also in The Six Million Dollar Man, Tales from the Crypt, Escape to Witch Mountain, The Outer Limits, Star Trek: Voyager, Strange World, The 4400, Lost and Salem. 
  • Born August 13 –Danny Bonaduce, 59. First genre role was in The Ghost & Mrs. Muir; later roles included acting in Bewitched, Shazam!, Fantasy Island (original series), Sabrina, the Teenage Witch and Bigfoot. Voice work includes Dr. DolittleFred Flintstone and Friends and Goober and the Ghost Chasers.
  • Born August 13 – John Slattery, 56. Howard Stark in the MCU film franchise, appeared in The Adjustment Bureau film based loosely I suspect of the Philip K. Dick short story ‘Adjustment Team’, 3rd Rock, From the Earth to the Moon miniseries and Flashpoint.
  • Born August 13 – Michael De Luca, 53. Producer, second Suicide Squad film, Childhood’s End, Ghost Rider and Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance, Dracula Untold, Lost in Space, Blade and Blade II, Pleasantville and Zathura: A Space Adventure which is not a complete listing. Also writer for an episode of Star Trek: Voyager, the first Dredd film (oh well), the Freddy’s Nightmares series and the Dark Justice series which though not genre was rather fun.
  • Born August 13 – Sebastian Stan, 36. Bucky Barnes / Winter Soldier in the MCU film franchise; also appeared in Once Upon a Time series, The Martian, The Apparition, Ares III, and Kings, a contemporary alternate-history series about a man who rises to become the King of his nation, based on the biblical story of King David.
  • Born August 13 – Sara Serraiocco, 28. Currently in Counterpoint, a cross-universe Cold War thriller. That’s it.

(12) COMICS SECTION.

(13) MEDICAL ADVICE. At Dorkly, “Two Doctors Figured Out How To Treat A Centaur Having a Heart Attack”. I hope Rick Riordan is taking notes.

Case in point: centaurs – what’s THEIR deal? Half man, half horse, and ALL anatomical mysteries. See, the way centaurs are broken down is that it’s the torso ‘n up part of a human combined with the whole body of a horse (minus the head and neck). But that presents a problem, because (anatomically-speaking) the two halves share a whole bunch of organs, namely the heart.

So a doctor (@FredWuMD) took to Twitter to ask fellow medical professionals an incredibly important question – if a centaur was in the midst of a cardiac arrest, where would you presume the heart is? Where would you use defibrillator pads?

(14) WHAT’S ON HIS MIND? Mike Alger says: “Weekend project: By combining a 3D scan with an MRI (don’t worry I’m fine), I can now step out of my body and legitimately look into my head at my own brain.”

Thread starts here. Mlex says, “This reminded me of Ted Chiang’s story, ‘Exhalation’, in Lightspeed Magazine.”

(15) COSTUMING HISTORY. The International Costumers Gallery continues its series, “Convention Costuming History: The Post WWII Years – 1946”.

…The Pacificon Convention News, issue #2 promised a Costume Ball, essentially acknowledging how much a part of the convention wearing costumes had become. Hearkening back to the pre-war events, it anticipated “BEMs and MONSTERS from every solar system and dimension; famous characters from the stories you have read and loved and every kind of costume that the fertile mentalities of fen (the best fertilized minds in existence) do be able to thunk up<sic>.”(2) Whether it was actually a “ball” or just a party is not clear.

Participants and costumes reported were Myrtle Douglas winning first prize for her Snake Mother dress (3)(4) and Arthur Joquel II (5) dressed as a “high priest”, winning a prize for “characterization”. Fan and fanzine writer Dale Hart’s “Gray Lensman” costume was judged “most ingenious”. (6)

(16) THE GREAT WALL OF HYDROGEN. The New Horizons probe is looking for evidence of it: “NASA spotted a vast, glowing ‘hydrogen wall’ at the edge of our solar system”.

There’s a “hydrogen wall” at the edge of our solar system, and NASA scientists think their New Horizons spacecraft can see it.

That hydrogen wall is the outer boundary of our home system, the place where our sun’s bubble of solar wind ends and where a mass of interstellar matter too small to bust through that wind builds up, pressing inward….

What New Horizons definitely sees, the researchers reported in a paper published Aug. 7 in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, is some extra ultraviolet light — the kind the researchers would expect such a wall of galactic hydrogen to produce. That replicates an ultraviolet signal the two Voyager spacecraft — NASA’s farthest-traveling probes, which launched in the late 1970s — spotted all the way back in 1992. [Images: Dust Grains from Interstellar Space]

However, the researchers cautioned, that signal isn’t a sure sign that New Horizons has seen the hydrogen wall, or that Voyager did. All three probes could have actually detected the ultraviolet light from some other source, emanating from much deeper in the galaxy, the researchers wrote.

(17) SEEING SPOTS. Lasers been berry berry good to me. NPR: “Growers Are Beaming Over The Success Of Lasers To Stave Off Thieving Birds”.

During every berry-picking season in the Pacific Northwest, blueberry and raspberry growers fight to prevent birds from gobbling up the crop before harvest. This year, some farmers are trying something new to scare away the thieving birds: lasers….

The lasers cross over in erratic patterns. The sweeping green laser beams emanate from what look like security cameras atop metal poles.

They also work during the daytime. But in sunlight, the human eye can only see green dots dancing across the berry-laden bushes.

(18) SFFANZ 500. Congratulations to the Science Fiction and Fantasy Association of New Zealand (SFFANZ) on their blog’s 500th post – “SF Writer at the Manawatu Writers Festival + 500th Post”.

A heads up for SF fans about the Manawatu Writers’ Festival (Sept 7 – 11, 2018). This year they have a session with one of NZ’s longest running successful writers, Lyn Mc Conchie.

Lyn McConchie is an internationally successful author, who has had 44 books published, 300+ short stories, and 150+ articles. Her work has appeared in English, Polish, Russian, Spanish, and from publishers there as well as in America, Australia, New Zealand, and the Irish Republic. Lyn isn’t in any ruts, she writes mysteries, SF/F, animal tales, post-apocalypse, YA, picture books, and humorous and scholarly non-fiction and she has no plans to stop any time soon. Lyn’s latest book, Coal & Ashes, is is one of her apocalyptic stories, set in Australia, one of a series.

(19) THERAPEUTIC POOH. The LA Times profiles Christopher Robin: “With ‘Christopher Robin,’ Winnie the Pooh faces his greatest challenge yet: A marriage in crisis”.

So many Disney films follow a child or young adult suddenly thrown into a grown-up world and forced to overcome all of its headaches. “Christopher Robin,” however, turns a childhood hero of those who grew up admiring A.A. Milne’s “Winnie the Pooh” tales into a depressed and overwhelmed adult — a man whose youthful imagination ultimately proved no match for the realities of war, fatherhood and a thankless job.

In the film, an old and familiar pal comes to the rescue, but is Winnie the Pooh — a plump stuffed bear whose biggest bothers often involved stealing honey from a bee — ready to fix the life of a workaholic whose marriage is entering crisis mode? Or, perhaps more accurately, are Pooh fans ready to see it?

Those who worked on “Christopher Robin” say the mission was to tap into the original Milne template, one that mixed comedy and complex emotions to deliver patient life lessons. The ultimate goal of the film: to dispel any notion that Winnie the Pooh is simply kid stuff.

“I wouldn’t be ashamed to be a grown man going to see a ‘Winnie the Pooh’ movie in the theater with no child next to me, so let’s make sure we’re making that movie,” said Alex Ross Perry, a filmmaker with several acclaimed indies under his belt and one of three credited screenwriters on the picture. “It has to be completely logical in that Pixar sense, where adults can go see it in a roomful of kids, but it doesn’t feel like you’re seeing a kids movie.”

(20) NOW YOU’RE TALKING. John Scalzi boosts a great idea —

(21) EYE-OPENING COLLECTIBLE. Something to find a Worldcon 76 –

(22) THE TRAVELER. Galactic Journey’s Gideon Marcus will interrupt his daily commute to 1963 in order to appear at Worldcon 76 –

(23) RADIO ACTIVITY. SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie tuned into BBC Radio 4 this weekend. He picked out highlights you can access online.

Looks like Dan Dare is a full blown radio series consisting of a number of linked  two-part adventures. Next up next Sunday will be on Radio 4 Extra and shortly after for a month on BBC i-Player linked off here.

Episode 1

Dan Dare, The Red Moon Mystery Episode 1 of 2

4 Extra Debut. Infected by the Mekon’s virus, Dan’s crew orbit Earth until the Inter-Planet Space Force orders them to Mars. Stars Ed Stoppard

Next Sunday 18:00

BBC Radio 4 Extra

Also this weekend we had on BBC Radio 4

Open Book  “Claire Fuller, Neil Gaiman, Iranian fiction”

Claire Fuller talks to Mariella Frostrup about her new novel Bitter Orange and the appeal of the crumbling country house as a setting.

Neil Gaiman explains why forgotten classic Lud-in-the-Mist by Hope Mirrlees deserves a wider readership.

What does the combination of sanctions and censorship mean for Iran’s writers? The Guardian’s Saeed Kamali Dehghan and publisher Azadeh Parsapour discuss.

And Carrie Plitt, agent at Felicity Bryan Associates recommends Sally Rooney’s Normal People for our monthly Editor’s Tip.

This is available to listen to for next 4 weeks

[Thanks to JJ, David Langford, Jonathan Cowie, Chip Hitchcock, Mike Kennedy, Martin Morse Wooster, Carl Slaughter, Andrew Porter, Leo Doroschenko, and Cat Eldridge for some of these stories, Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Soon Lee.]

129 thoughts on “Pixel Scroll 8/13/18 I Can’t See Me Scrolling Nobody But You, For All My File

  1. @Rick Moen: I reskimmed The Shockwave Rider recently (~40 minutes for a ~2-hour book); ISTR that there were some predictable gender roles — but not a lot, and Precipice was shown as less biased than the outside world. (I read not long after that the game of fencing turns out to have simple solutions rather than requiring strategic brilliance, but it’s not a major plot point.) Parts of it seem more real now than they did 40 years ago, unfortunately.

    @Standback: that’s a weakness of bad SF, and even some SF of (once-?)good repute. (I remember a friend doing a thorough takedown of Gladiator-at-Law on grounds resembling yours, with sexism for sauce.) But how thorough the fix is claimed to be varies widely.

  2. @Charon: Karl helps you tell time, too! Once we were in SF with tourists and they asked “What time is it?” Instead of looking down at watches or phones, us locals looked up and went “Little after 4”. Consultation of devices then revealed it was 4:07 PM. The tourists were agog at our knowing the predictable ways of Karl.

    Karl doesn’t get to San Jose as much, though.

  3. So I’ve read the mayo article; I admit to not being the best judge of tone, but I think she’s serious. (Her position is not helped by what she thinks goes into a good Jello salad. Cream cheese balls?!?) The worst of it is not just the direct flamage, but the lack of acknowledgment of what was lost when her ancestors homogenized themselves. (Mine didn’t, as much; my mother’s coleslaw and hot-potato salad were pure Pennsylvania Dutch although she was ~4 generations from Germany. But mileage varies massively on this.c) It’s not just that people are trying to grab trendy new identities that don’t match their old ones; many people are looking into reviving their own ancestry — or even keeping what they just brought over, like the I-kid-you-not-Moldovan restaurant a couple of miles from me.

    PS1: ISTM that mayonnaise has itself become a matter of identity politics; notice what respectable Belgian restaurants serve with their frites.

    PS2: possibly relating to the failure-to-populate: I notice that if I type a letter I get a few logical choices — but even after I pick one that letter is all that appears in the preview.

  4. When I was a young lad, my father drew me aside. He explained that some people like this vile condiment called “mayonnaise”; it’s insidiously crept its way practically everywhere. But we of my family abhor it — I, and my father, and my father’s father before me. And we do not speak its name; to us, it is known only as “The M Word.”

    I am not making this up. Exaggerating slightly, perhaps, but “The M Word” is 100% real. I’ve hardly ever even tried mayonnaise, and the few times I have, haven’t left me inclined to try more.

    Millennials: killing mayonnaise since 1930!

  5. I was moved to put up a more in-depth analysis of the mayonnaise article here if anyone is interested. Fair warning: comments are welcomed, but you’ll have to have a DW account if you want to comment — I don’t enable general commenting.

  6. @Mike Glyer: Yay! Every Pixel Scroll should have an item about Centaurs. 😉 This is a good start.

    @Various: My other half’s been talking about making mayonnaise. I like mayo fine, but I’m a little scared. But intrigued, to see a few others also saying homemade is different and better.

  7. When I was a kid, the proper post-Thanksgiving turkey sandwiches were made with white bread and mayo, multiple thick slices of breast meat, maybe a little dark meat, salt, and pepper. Nowadays it’s more likely to be whole wheat bread spread with guacamole bracketing the stack of turkey. I’ll use mayo if I don’t have guacamole.

    I usually do have a small jar of mayo in the fridge, since I may need to make stuffed or curried eggs for a picnic or party. Can’t think of anything I eat it on regularly.

    While I will eat raw things (mmmm, sushi), I won’t eat live things. Jello never stops moving, so it’s not sufficiently dead.

  8. Re: wypipo foodstuffs

    I will tolerate a little mayo on chicken sandwiches, as a lubricant, but that’s about it. I definitely want nothing to do with big gloppy globs of the stuff as a primary ingredient in anything.

    For me, the One True Jell-O Salad is based on lime jello, with vanilla ice cream, cream cheese, crushed pineapple, and (optional) chopped walnuts added. (It’s possible that I’ve omitted some ingredients by accident. I don’t make the stuff; I just eat it.) It’s a dessert for sure, with none of the transparency traditionally associated with gelatin; done properly, the dish is a light green.

    ETA: Darn, still no autofill joy.

  9. @Lin McAllister:

    A real native will reply, “During the rainy season, duh”.

    Long decades ago (1980s?), I had & cherished a gag purchase from, if memory serves, Cody’s Books in Berkeley: A ‘California Passport’, done up as a cheerful parody of the then-prevalent USA passport, but rewritten to use local in-jokes, such as the page saying

    ‘This passport is not valid for travel in Communist-controlled portions of:
    Madison
    Berkeley
    Cambridge’

    But my favourite bit in the whole thing was the page advising about California’s climate. It advised that you can distinguish seasons by looking at the trees:

    If they’re dripping, it’s the wet season.
    If they’re on fire, it’s the dry season.

  10. Thanks for the responses, everyone! Sorry to not reply earlier; I read the thread on my phone while waiting at the vet (there were THREE emergencies for them that morning which delayed everything) but by the time I got home with Velcro I was exhausted and eventually conked out. Hence why it is again after 2:30a. And now I need to go to bed again. And drat, I forgot to call the animal ophthalmologist to schedule another cat’s eye surgery.

    Thanks again, and I’ll try to actually retain what I read next time…

  11. Nicholas – I am! I do! Clough has people from all over, I’ve stopped being surprised when it turns out nearly everyone knows someone connected to us.

  12. @ Cheryl S:

    Um, aioli and mayonnaise are only similar in-so-far as they contain oil. And garlic may also has garlic. But aioli is “garlic, and oil”, no eggs. It’s suppose dto be 100% vegan, otherwise it’s a jazzed-up mayonnaise.

  13. @Ingvar, you have failed to take into account the polymorphous perversity of American cuisine. Also, Wikipedia:
    Aioli or aïoli is a Mediterranean sauce made of garlic and olive oil; some regions use other emulsifiers such as egg. The names mean “garlic and oil” in Catalan and Provençal.

    So, yes and also no. 😉

  14. @Cherly S:

    Ah, “whatever you call it, if it contains egg, I will not acknowledge it as aioli, and I will urge everyone else to do likewise”. 🙂

    I also have strong views on sauce Bearnaise (and somewhat less string on sauce Hollandaise). Amusingly, I don’t have strong views on cornbread, but those I have are almost certain to be heretical somewhere.

  15. @Ingvar: “Amusingly, I don’t have strong views on cornbread, but those I have are almost certain to be heretical somewhere.”

    A local foodie place serves cornbread purée. Why? Dear god, why?

  16. Nicholas – tell her the wine and cheese thing at Sheelagh na Gig on Friday has been postponed.

  17. Rob Thornton, thanks. I think I saw something about that before, but it really helps to see it again. I am going to be much more careful in the future about saying something isn’t Southern.

    I do prefer cornbreads that are not too sweet. The soul food place I liked in Newark (now closed) had cornbread that I liked, so not all soul food places made cake-like cornbread.

    Listening to other people talking anout taste preferences is making me a lot less didactic about some of mine!

  18. @Lenore Jones

    You’re welcome. 🙂

    My mom, who came from an formerly religious Jewish family in Ohio, learned how to make cornbread from my father’s mother, who was white and lived in Monroe, North Carolina. (She was known to me as “Nonnie.”) So I love no-sugar cornbread as well, which is awkward given that all the commercial cornbread I encounter is sweet. I need to make some cornbread for myself soon.

  19. @Lenore Jones, Rob Thornton
    If you can find “Martha White” cornbread mix, it has much less sugar than “Jiffy”. (It’s more a southern-style bread. Really good baked in the traditional cast-iron skillet.)

  20. [6] @paulcarp & I are both Gen-Xers and do not keep mayonnaise in the house because we have both loathed it for our entire lives. He will sometimes buy the smallest available jar of Miracle Whip (which I think is WORSE than mayonnaise, but he thinks is better), make tuna salad exactly once, and then act surprised when it rots in the fridge because I never use it for anything.

    His grandmother hails from County Mayo. So that’s ironic.

    Also, we’ll be at Worldcon and try to attend one of the 770 meet-ups!

  21. @Cora,
    Do you have a recipe for that matjes dish?

    (Here in 8080.the fields aren’t autopopulating; I hope I put in the right email address, i.e. the one I usually use here.)

  22. @Vicki Rosenzweig
    I can’t find one in English right now, but it’s pretty easy:

    Take equal parts greek joghurt and sour cream and mix. Chop up an apple, an onion (preferably red) and some pickled gherkins and mix into joghurt/sour cream mixture. Season with salt, pepper and dill. Some recipes also call for a few squirts of lemon juice or vinegar. I’d use lemon juice, if it needs a bit of acid. Sometimes, heavy cream or mayonnaise is also added to the sauce, but I’d leave the mayonnaise out. You can also use only joghurt, if you like. Pour the housewife sauce over matjes and serve with rye bread (if you can get German Schwarzbrot, that’s best) and/or potatoes boiled in the skin, until you can peel it off.

    For more matjes recipes, here is the recipe for Grandma Buhlert’s famous (and mayonnaise free) herring salad, which I shared during the Skiffy and Fanty Show’s month of joy earlier this year. This is a tradittional Christmas and New Year’s dish in my family, though it would also work well at a picnic.The pork can be omitted or substituted with other meat.

  23. @Lise Andreasen: those haiku are seriously demented. Yes, that’s a compliment.

  24. @Lurkertype: My family could not possibly be any whiter if we were transparent, and somehow my mom always had a cupboard full of spices. We regularly essayed spaghetti, manicotti, eggplant parm, tacos, tamales, chips and salsa, gumbo, hoppin’ john, sukiyaki, and all these leftovers sat contentedly in the fridge next to the Best Foods mayo, near the Wonder Bread, alternating with pot roast and potatoes and tuna salad.

    That sounds very much like my growing up, except that as an early reader of Adelle Davis, Mom had long since swapped out the Wonder Bread for Oroweat and other whole-grain brands. But yeah, we ate stuff from our very white heritage, and from others, because why wouldn’t we want to appreciate diverse foods? Who wouldn’t like to have more yummy options? It took me a long time to learn that the answer actually is “a whole lot of people”.

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