Pixel Scroll 8/17/19 There Is Something You Should Scroll – I Am Not Left-Pixelled

(1) DUBLIN 2019 MASQUERADE. The convention tweeted photos of the winners:

Other entries:

(2) DUBLIN 2019 ATTENDANCE. At the end of Thursday, Dublin 2019’s daily newzine reported the “total warm bodies registered” at 4,700.

(3) 2019 HUGO LIVESTREAM. Here’s where you find the 2019 Hugo Awards Ceremony on Vimeo tomorrow.

The premiere event of the Worldcon will take place on Sunday evening, as we celebrate the best science fiction and fantasy of 2018. Hosted by Afua Richardson and Michael Scott, we invite you to join us in congratulating this year’s finalists and winners of the prestigious Hugo Awards.

(4) DUBLIN 2019 ART SHOW AWARDS. The daily newzine posted the results:

  • Best Jewellery Collection: Angela Jones-Parker  
  • Best Collection Of Work: Maja Winnacka  
  • Best Traditional Original: Johnman (John Green) for We Are All Majestic  
  • Best Artwork: Jim Burns for Jane Delawney Had Her Dreams  
  • Best Digital Art: Fred Gambino for 2nd Gen  
  • Spirit Of Dublin: Paul Sheridan for An Unexpected Pub Crawl  
  • Best 3D: Didier Cottier for Le Grand Chambellan  
  • Best Textile Art: Sarah Haddock aka Cryptozoo

With thanks to the judging panel, Alice Lawson, Colin Harris, Jo Playford and Serena Culfeather, who had a hard task.

(5) RETRO HUGO VOTING STATISTICS. Hugo Administrator Nicholas White has published the Retro-Hugo results for this year. He also tweeted an analysis of how differently this year’s Retro Hugos would have been reported if the “Notability Still Matters” amendment had been in force for this year’s awards. The thread starts here.

(6) T WRECKS. Camestros Felapton revisits Rachel Swirsky’s Nebula-winning story: “Hugosauriad 4.4: If You Were a Dinosaur, My Love by Rachel Swirsky”.

But there is something (intentionally) not quite right from the start. A T-Rex? The tyrannosaur has been stomping through dinosaur stories throughout this project and in almost every instance they have been symbols of sudden violence and an agent of vengeance and punishment of the wicked or cowardly. Symbolically in dinosaur stories the T-rex has been a kind of saurian Fury punishing the cowardly or those who in hubris forgot to show the proper respect to time-travel or dinosaurs.

Yet, in the very next sentence Swirsky flips this around, emphasising the vulnerability and muted scale of this fantasy T-Rex. The tyrant lizard is more of a benevolent and humane despot with fragile bones like a bird and a gentle gaze. The contrast is severe and adds to the sense that there is something going on here other than a fanciful musing.

(7) TOLKIEN’S ART. James Trilling considers “One Man’s Modernism: J. R. R. Tolkien” at the Yale Review. Robin Reid sent the link with a note, “I bristled a bit at the opening section about the ‘academic and critical community’ (seemed way oversimplistic) but was intrigued by the shift to focus on his visual art and provide some commentary.” The article focuses on Tolkien’s artwork, and the catalog of the recent Bodleian exhibit Tolkien: Maker of Middle-Earth, edited by Catherine McIlwaine.

…Only in one respect does the new catalogue suggest a new approach [from the Bodleian’s previous exhibit]: the greater attention paid to Tolkien’s achievements as a visual artist. His visual world was complex and unresolved. He made, for example, naturalistic, largely academic early drawings in pen and ink, depicting buildings and landscape features. One of the best, from 1912, is reproduced in the catalogue. It is recognized that Tolkien’s most important drawing teacher was his mother. Even her handwriting shimmers with energy and elegance (see, e.g., cat. 17), and it is tempting to see in it the basis of her son’s medievalizing fantasies. Unfortunately we are deprived–like Tolkien himself–of the chance to investigate her influence in detail. After her tragically early death in 1904, her sister-in-law burned her papers: not from fear of any scandal, but because she simply could not imagine anybody wanting them.

(8) WILLIAMS OBIT. Animator Richard Williams, famed for his work on Who Framed Roger Rabbit, died August 16 at the age of 86. The NBC News profile begins:

The Oscar-winning artist died from cancer at his home in Bristol, England, on Friday, his daughter Natasha Sutton Williams said Saturday.

Williams’ career straddled the “Golden Age of Animation,” which petered out between the 1950s and 1960s, and the rise of computer-assisted animation in the 1990s and beyond.

His best-known work may be as director of animation for “Who Framed Roger Rabbit,” a 1988 film that married live action cinema and cartoons from all eras, a process involved the laborious insertion of animated characters into each individual frame and complex lighting effects. The result — a madcap and slightly dark comedy where “toons” and humans interact seamlessly against a live action film noir background — was commercial and critical hit and helped revitalize Disney’s flagging animation department.

He won Oscars for Who Framed Roger Rabbit? and A Christmas Carol.

(9) TODAY IN HISTORY.

  • August 17, 1939The Man They Could Not Hang debuted in theatres.
  • August 17, 1960 The Time Machine premiered in theaters, later losing the Hugo to a TV show called The Twilight Zone.

(10) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

  • Born August 17, 1917 — Oliver Crawford. Screenwriter who overcame the Hollywood blacklist during the McCarthy Era of the 1950s. He wrote three scripts for Trek, “The Cloud Minders”, “Let That Be Your Last Battlefield” and “The Galileo Seven”.  He also wrote for The Outer Limits (“The Special One”), Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea (“The Lost Bomb”) and The Wild Wild West (“The Night of the Cossacks” and “The Night of Sudden Death”). No, that’s not everything hescripted. (Died 2008.)
  • Born August 17, 1930 — Harve Bennett. The individual who gave us Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. Really he did. He would then serve as produced on the next three Trek films, The Search for SpockThe Voyage Home and The Final Frontier. His only on scene appearance is in the latter as Starfleet Chief of Staff. (Died 2015.)
  • Born August 17, 1945 — Rachel Pollack, 74. She’s best known is well known for her run of issues 64–87 (mid-Nineties) on DC’s Doom Patrol which took it up to its cancellation. She also had a run on the New Gods, the Jack Kirby created mythos.  Two of her novels won major awards. Unquenchable Fire won the Arthur C. Clarke Award; Godmother Night won the World Fantasy Award. 
  • Born August 17, 1956 — John Romita Jr., 63. If you’ve read Spider-Man since the Sixties, it’s very likely that you’ve seen his artwork as he had six stints on it between 1980 and 2009. He find a number of other titles on Marvel and DC including Superman, Ghost Rider, Hulk, All-Star Batman, Eternals, Captain America and Daredevil to name but a few of the titles he illustrated. He also worked with Mark Miller at Image Comics on Kick-Ass, and did the one shot Punisher/Batman: Deadly Knights
  • Born August 17, 1960 — Chris Baker, 59. He’s the cover artist for British and German versions of the Redwall books, as well as a storyboard and conceptual artist having worked with Steven Spielberg, Stanley Kubrick and Tim Burton. Among his films are Big Fish, Skyfall, Charlie and the Chocolate FactoryA.I. Artificial Intelligence and Corpse Bride
  • Born August 17, 1962 — Laura Resnick, 57. Daughter of Mike Resnick. She is a winner of the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer in Science Fiction for “No Room for the Unicorn”. I’ve not read her Manhattan Magic series so I’m interested to know what y’all think of it. She’s readily available ion iBooks and Kindle. 
  • Born August 17, 1966 — Neil Clarke, 53. Editor in Chief of Clarkesworld Magazine which has won an impressive three Best Semiprozine Hugos. SFWA also gave him a Kate Wilhelm Solstice Award. He edits The Best Science Fiction of the Year series for Night Shade Books.  

(11) THE SHEEP SHOW UP. A reliable source says an anonymous package was waiting for RedWombat at her panel this afternoon…

(12) THE BIRDS. “The New ‘DuckTales’ Is ‘Game of Thrones’ for Kids” according to Fatherly’s Andy Kryza:

The new Disney DuckTales reboot has taken on a mythology all its own, one far more complicated than the show we might remember from the nineties. The theme song threatens “racecars, lasers, aeroplanes,” but those things seem tame compared to what the ducks are facing now: Duels on erupting volcanoes, shadow creatures, sorceresses, gladiators, sky pirates, undersea realms, cursed talismans, and full-blown demigods. That’s more than a duck-blur. This is some Game of Thrones action, only with less murder, more jokes and a lack of crushing disappointment from the conclusion. At least for now. 

Sound silly? Well, the new version of Ducktales; which started in 2017 and recently ended its stellar second season on — of course — a cliffhanger, has more in common with the world of Westeros than the Disney-verse of old. And not just because its characters are perpetually pantsless…. 

(13) TRUE LOVE. The News arm of The Beeb brings us an in depth article (Why I ‘married’ an anime character) about a young man who fell in love with Miku, an anime character.

There is a word in Japanese for people who are obsessed with video games and anime – otaku. An increasing number of otaku now say they have fallen in love with anime characters and given up on the idea of real-world romance, reports the BBC’s Stephanie Hegarty.

Akihiko Kondo wakes up every day to the sound of his wife’s voice. She calls him from across the room in her high-pitched, girlish, sing-song voice. She dances and swirls around, urging him to get out of bed.

At the same time, he’s holding her in his arms on the bottom tier of their metal-framed bunk bed – and if he was more awake he could be watching an illustrated cartoon of her singing on YouTube.

This is because Akihiko’s “wife” is an idea – an anime character called Miku.

She’s the hologram that lives in a glass capsule on a shelf in the corner of the room, and the cuddly toy with its big soft head and small body that he holds close at night. But she can take innumerable other forms.

(14) BY A WHISKER. I’d Watch That shows how the upcoming CATS musical is even scarier when it comes from the mind of Stephen King!

(15) ONE SMALL STEP. BBC reports “Nasa picks headquarters for Moon lander”.

A Nasa facility in Alabama that developed the giant rocket for the Apollo programme in the 1960s will play a key role in sending astronauts down to the Moon’s surface in 2024.

The Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville will lead the development of a vehicle that will land astronauts on the body for the first time since 1972.

The decision was announced by Nasa’s administrator Jim Bridenstine.

But it’s a disappointment for Texas, which was in the running.

The White House wants to send a man and a woman to the South Pole of the Moon in five years, under a programme called Artemis.

(16) VIDEO OF THE DAY. “New Civilization VI Theme *EPIC CHOIR* Performance” on YouTube is the Oregon State University choir singing the theme music to the video game Civilization VI.

[Thanks to JJ, Cat Eldridge, Chip Hitchcock, Michael Toman, Robin Reid, John King Tarpinian, Martin Morse Wooster, Mike Kennedy, and Andrew Porter for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Patrick Morris Miller.]

26 thoughts on “Pixel Scroll 8/17/19 There Is Something You Should Scroll – I Am Not Left-Pixelled

  1. (16) Peter Hollens, the guy who’s heading up that performance, is well worth following if you like genre-related music. He does amazing a cappella renditions of music from the LOTR and Hobbit films, Game of Thrones, Skyrim, Star Wars and all sorts of other things, often singing all the parts himself.

  2. @MF —

    (16) Peter Hollens, the guy who’s heading up that performance, is well worth following if you like genre-related music.

    Oh! He has a lovely version of Amazing Grace on Youtube, singing with the group Home Free. 🙂

  3. 9) Well, obviously once George has established civilization in 802,701 CE, he’ll have to come back and make sure the Best Dramatic Presentation Hugo is split into Short and Long Forms decades early.

    16) As a dedicated CivVI fanatic, that gave me chills.

  4. I am most definitely not left pixeled. That would be sinister.
    16) Oh, so very cool.

  5. @10: the JWC for Best New Writer is officially for a body of work rather than a specific work; ISFDB says Resnick had 7 other short pieces in print in the period for which she was nominated.

  6. Thirding the recommendation for Peter Hollens. I especially love his version of “I See Fire” from the Hobbit movies.

  7. (16) Most of this video has singers in a line or a V, but sometimes they’re in a staggered formation of 8 men. When that happens, all 8 men are Peter Hollens. One of his specialties.

  8. @Nina —

    Thirding the recommendation for Peter Hollens. I especially love his version of “I See Fire” from the Hobbit movies.

    Dayum.

    I curse all of you for sending me down a Youtube rabbit hole for the past hour or so. 😉

    I will, however, inject one note of — ahem — contrariness, and opine that his version of “Hallelujah” isn’t even in the same ballpark as Jeff Buckley’s.

  9. Chip Hitchcock says the JWC for Best New Writer is officially for a body of work rather than a specific work; ISFDB says Resnick had 7 other short pieces in print in the period for which she was nominated.

    That’s not what the listing of JWC Awards says. They say it’s for that story. She may of had a number of stories in print during that period but they gave her an award for that story.

    And ISFDB doesn’t say what you say it say at all as it says this:

    The John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer (not to be confused with the John W. Campbell Memorial Award) is sponsored by the publisher of Analog magazine and honors the best new writers whose work has first appeared professionally during the previous two calendar years.

    So one work is indeed enough to be nominated for the Award. Her first genre work came out in the previous two years.

  10. (10) Speaking indirectly of Bennett, I just had the pleasure of attending a special screening of The Wrath of Khan featuring a Q&A with producer Robert Sallin. Sallin was a hoot – he was clearly having a great time, and took it completely in stride that he was being interviewed by a drag version of William Shatner (Leigh Crow, who leads an extremely funny Trek stage show in SF). He was effusive in his praise for pretty much everyone involved with the movie, but was also very eager to mention the various things that were his idea, as I’m sure I would be if I were him. He admitted that he had been a bit too quick to approve the idea of killing off Spock, because he didn’t really have a clue about the nature of Trek fandom. Sallin was a TV commercial director who had been put on the project by Bennett to reassure Paramount that they had people who could get things done for cheap (of the first Trek movie, Sallin said the only reason it cost $46 million was “they didn’t really… er… know what they were doing”). I’m sure all the trivia he mentioned has been covered elsewhere, but I for one didn’t know that the final scene on the Genesis planet was shot in Golden Gate Park with some fake vines added to the trees.

  11. @Cat Eldredge:You said

    She is a winner of the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer in Science Fiction for “No Room for the Unicorn”.

    I said

    the JWC for Best New Writer is officially for a body of work rather than a specific work.

    You said

    That’s not what the listing of JWC Awards says. They say it’s for that story. She may of had a number of stories in print during that period but they gave her an award for that story.

    Which list of Campbell New Writer awards are you referring to? Whatever it is, either it’s wrong or you’re reading it wrong; the award is for the writer, not a specific work. If you mean the Wikipedia page, it appears to be listing mostly the first published work (from my memory, not cross-checking with ISFDB — I note it lists Resnick’s second work), rather than all the works that could have been part of a judgment. (No, I don’t know why some authors have two works listed.) Note specifically this page’s opening statement:

    The John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer is an award given annually to the best new writer whose first professional work of science fiction or fantasy was published within the two previous calendar years.

    and what it says under “Winners and nominees”, just above the ~listing:

    Although the Campbell Award is not given explicitly for any particular work, and such works are not recorded by the World Science Fiction Society or Dell Magazines, a selection of works that the writer in question published in the eligibility period are listed.

    thehugoawards.com should be reliable, but all I find is nomination history and a currently-dead for-more-info link.

    And ISFDB says exactly what I said it says. I said

    ISFDB says Resnick had 7 other short pieces in print in the period for which she was nominated.

    This is correct; go to a chronological sort of her ISFDB listing and scroll down to “Short Fiction”, and you will see 8 works published in the period 1991-1992. This is relevant because, as noted, the award is for a body of work, not a specific work — just as your cite from elsewhere in ISFDB says.

    It is certainly possible for a writer to win this Campbell Award after only publishing one eligible work; e.g., the only Mary Doria Russell work that voters should have considered when giving her the 1998 award was The Sparrow, although some may have also been thinking of Children of God (first published in March 1998, says ISFDB). It is also possible for voters to be so wowed by a single work that they don’t read anything else before marking the nominee #1 on their final ballot — but that personal decision does not change what the award is officially given for — and, fans being less herdable and more opinionated than cats, I’d expect several such wows to cancel each other out.

  12. @Cat Eldridge: I don’t know whether I failed to hit Post or something/one decided I was being too verbose, so I’ll make this short: the Campbell for Best New Writer is awarded to the person, not the work. (This is the inverse of the fiction awards, cf the discussion about awards/trophies for translators.) If you’re relying on the fact that the Wikipedia article has a table listing selected works of all nominees, note that this princple is stated twice in the text preceding the table, and not contradicted by your quote from ISFDB. The reference to ISFDB was to the chronological sort of Resnick’s works, which shows eight works that could have been weighed by voters; what each voter actually considered is ~impossible to know.

  13. Chip Hitchcock: This is strange — I saw your longer message last night. This morning it’s in with the spam. I’ve restored it. I can’t tell whether the spamming was done by the software, or I did it by mistake. Apologies!

  14. Peter Hollens is on Spotify. Aaannndddd I’m off to a rabbit hole. Thanks!!

    Regards,
    Dann
    I do not fear computers. I fear the lack of them. – Isaac Asimov

  15. Dann —

    Peter Hollens is on Spotify. Aaannndddd I’m off to a rabbit hole. Thanks!!

    Sometimes his vids add to the fun, so look at some of those too. 😉

  16. @Contrarius

    Thanks for the recommendation. I’ll look for those in the future. I’m lucky enough to be able to listen to Spotify at work.

    His Christmas album was very good. And at this point, part of the Misty Mountains album may make it to my funeral playlist.

    Turns out that I’m familiar with Mr. Hollens’ work. The Sing-Off series remains a favorite for me. And he’s worked with several a cappella groups/individuals that I like. So this is a real treat.

    Regards,
    Dann
    In a room full of ducks, sometimes the one that woofs is needed to point out the quacks.

  17. @OGH: thank you for digging that comment out of the trash heap (and for verifying my sanity — there have been times where I intended to make one last tweak and then post, but got distracted and never did so). Looking at it now, I wonder whether it got filtered because I put too many links (5); I remember a limit on links being mentioned as a spam filter, but am blurry on whether it was here or in one of the small number of other blogs I follow. If that’s it, I’ll try to remember not to cram in future comments.

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