Pixel Scroll 8/4/18 Your Pixeled Pal Who’s Fun To Scroll With!

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(1) AMERICA HELD HOSTAGE, DAY FOUR. Crusading investigative fanwriter Camestros Felapton has been trying to find out why the Dragon Awards ballot wasn’t released August 1, the date posted on the site, and when it will come out. Here’s what he’s been told:

The latest report is this. I got an email saying that the finalists will be announced this upcoming Tuesday (presumably US time). Don’t all get too excited at once.

(2) COME BACK, JEAN-LUC. “Patrick Stewart to star in new Star Trek TV series” – Entertainment Weekly has the story.

Stewart will reprise his iconic character, Jean-Luc Picard, for a CBS All Access series that “will tell the story of the next chapter of Picard’s life.”

Stewart himself just announced the news in a surprise appearance at the Las Vegas Star Trek Convention.

“I will always be very proud to have been a part of Star Trek: The Next Generation, but when we wrapped that final movie in the spring of 2002, I truly felt my time with Star Trek had run its natural course,” Stewart said. “It is, therefore, an unexpected but delightful surprise to find myself excited and invigorated to be returning to Jean-Luc Picard and to explore new dimensions within him. Seeking out new life for him, when I thought that life was over.”

And Michael Chabon will be one of the executive producers reports Variety.

The untitled series hails from Alex Kurtzman, James Duff, Akiva Goldsman, Michael Chabon, and Kirsten Beyer. Kurtzman, Duff, Goldsman, and Chabon will also serve as executive producers on the series along with Stewart, Trevor Roth, Heather Kadin, and Rod Roddenberry. CBS Television Studios will produce. The new series does not currently have a premiere date

(3) BOREANAZ ON BUFFY. Ethan Alter, in the Yahoo Entertainment story “David Boreanaz has no plans to be in controversial ‘Buffy’ reboot: ‘I just let it be and lend my support from afar'” says that Boreanaz is too busy with SEAL Team to worry about the forthcoming Buffy reboot (which is controversial because showrunner Monica Owusu-Breen might find a new actor to play Buffy) but he doesn’t have any objections to it.

 “I think it’s great,” says David Boreanaz, who played the ensouled vampire Angel on Buffy for three seasons before graduating to his own self-titled spin-off. “I’m sure they’ll find the right storylines and the right people to fill shoes of whatever characters they want to portray. It was great to be a part of it when it first started, and now to see it being revived is just another testimony to the hard work that we did. I congratulate that, and applaud that.”

(4) KRESS REQUEST. Nancy Kress announced on Facebook:

A few people have asked if I will autograph their books at Worldcn San Jose. However, I was disappointed that Programming Reboot has given me no panels, no autographing session, and no kaffeklatch. I do have one reading, at 4:30 on Sunday, which I cannot linger afterwards because of a Hugo dinner. So if anyone wants anything autographed, I will hang around the Hyatt lobby at 10:00 a.m. on Saturday.

(5) REACHING OUT TO HUGHART. Mike Berro, who runs the Barry Hughart Bibliography website is asking for help:

If anyone knows how to contact Barry Hughart, please let me know. I run a fan page, and would constantly get emails from people wanting to contact him, mostly about doing a movie or theatrical adaptation of Bridge of Birds. I would forward them to him, and he would always politely reply (with “no thanks”). I haven’t had a reply now for over a year, and just got an email from someone who reported that even his publishers cannot contact him. I fear something unfortunate has happened.

Berro says neither SFWA nor Subterranean Press have been able to offer any help.

Mike Berro’s contact email address is — [email protected]

(6) PRO ADVICE. Not certain who Mary Robinette Kowal had in mind, although JDA was sure it was about him. (Of course, he thinks everything is.)

(7) CLOUDS OF WITNESSES. Crisis Magazine recalls “When C.S. Lewis Befriended a Living Catholic Saint”.

When Luigi Calabria, a shoemaker married to a housemaid, died in Verona, Italy in 1882, the youngest of his seven sons, Giovanni, nine years old, had to quit school and take a job as an apprentice. A local parish priest, Don Pietro Scapini, privately tutored him for the minor seminary, from which he took a leave to serve two years in the army. During that time, he established a remarkable reputation for edifying his fellow soldiers and converting some of them. Even before ordination, he established a charitable institution for the care of poor sick people and, as a parish priest, in 1907 he founded the Poor Servants of Divine Providence. The society grew, receiving diocesan approval in 1932. The women’s branch he started in 1910 would become a refuge for Jewish women during the Second World War. To his own surprise, since he was a rather private person, his order spread from Italy to Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, India, Kenya, Romania, and the Philippines.

With remarkable economy of time, he was a keen reader, and in 1947 he came across a book translated as Le lettere di Berlicche by a professor at the University of Milan, Alberto Castelli, who later became a titular archbishop as Vice President of the Pontifical Council of the Laity. Berlicche was Screwtape and “Malacode” served for Wormwood. The original, of course, had been published in 1943 as The Screwtape Letters and Calabria was so taken with it that he sent a letter of appreciation to the author in England. Lacking English, he wrote it in the Latin with which he had become proficient since his juvenile tutorials with Don Pietro.

… Lewis’s correspondence with Calabria went on for about seven years, and after the holy priest died, Lewis wrote at least seven letters to another member of Calabria’s religious community, Don Luigi Castelli, who died in 1986 at the age of 96. Learning of Calabria’s death, Lewis referred to him in a message to Castelli with what I suspect was a deliberate invocation of the phrase about “the dearly departed” that Horace used to console Virgil on the death of Quintilius Varo: tam carum caput. It appears as well in Sir Walter Scott’s Waverley Novels. It was an unfortunate habit of Lewis to throw out letters he received when he thought he might otherwise betray confidences. So what we have are only what he sent. The letters are a radiant model of philia friendship that he described in his 1958 radio talks:

(8) WHO’S THE HERO? John Dilillo claims “Amazon’s Proposed ‘Lord of the Rings’ Series Misses the Point of Middle-Earth” at Film School Rejects.

…Every conventionally heroic duty performed by Aragorn in The Lord of the Rings is performed in service of a greater act of heroism by Hobbits, characters who choose their own destiny instead of following the path their bloodline lays out for them. Without Hobbits, Middle-earth is just another cliched fantasy tapestry, painting with the same old tired strokes. What makes Aragorn special is not his heritage or his backstory; it is that he recognizes that he is not the hero of this story. Aragorn is the king who bows to the Hobbits. Stripped of that identity, he is indistinguishable from any other gruff sword-wielding badass.

On top of all this, we’ve already seen the type of story that results from a Tolkien adaptation that loses sight of true heroism in favor of grand tales of redeemed sons and doomed kings. The great failing of the Hobbit trilogy is that it abandons its titular character all too often in favor of the gloomy angst of Richard Armitage’s Thorin Oakenshield. Armitage does a fine job projecting gloomy wounded pride, and whoever assumes the lead role in Amazon’s series will doubtless give just as effective a performance. But all of that is ultimately wasted when the real appeal of a Middle-earth story comes from the Shire, not the Lonely Mountain. A Hobbit story that isn’t about Bilbo Baggins is a failure, and it’s a failure that should be learned from….

(9) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS

  • Born August 4 — Richard Belzer, 74. The Third Rock fromThe Sun series as himself, also the Species II film and an awful adaption of Heinlein’s The Puppet Masters, along with series work too in The X-Files, The Invaders, Human Target, and acrecurring role in the original Flash series to name a few of his genre roles.
  • Born August 4 — Daniel Dae Kim, 50. First genre role was in the NightMan series, other roles include the Brave New World tv film, the second Fantasy Island series, recurring roles on Lost, Angel and Crusade, the Babylon 5 spinoff series, Star Trek: Voyager, Charmed and voice work on Justice League Unlimited.
  • Born August 4 — Abigail Spencer, 37. First genre role was in the Campfire horror anthology series, other roles include Ghost Whisperer, Jekyll, a film that’s an sf riff off that meme, Cowboys & Aliens, the Oz the Great and Powerful film and Timeless, the sf series recently allowed a proper ending
  • Born August 4 — Meaghan Markle, 37. Yes, Her Royalness. Appeared in Fringe and the newer Knight Rider. Also the near future legal drama Century City.

(10) INSTAPOLL. Survey says –

(11) KEN LIU TO TV. Andrew Liptak says an animated show is on the way: “AMC is developing a sci-fi show based on Ken Liu’s short stories”.

Ken Liu is one of science fiction’s most celebrated writers working today. In addition to translating Cixin Liu’s acclaimed Three Body Problem and Death’s End, he’s also earned numerous awards, most significantly for his short story, “The Paper Menagerie”. Now, it looks as though his works could reach a new audience: AMC is developing series based on his works called Pantheon, according to Deadline.

If it’s produced, Pantheon will be an animated show “based on a series of short stories by [Liu] about uploaded intelligence,” reports Deadline. Craig Silverstein, who created and produced AMC’s American revolution drama Turn, will serve as showrunner, producer, and writer.

(12) SOLO. Lela E. Buis points out the casting problems: “Review of Solo: A Star Wars Story”.

…The worst problem with this film, of course, was Alden Ehrenreich trying to step into Harrison Ford’s shoes. Ehrenreich did a workmanlike job with the character, but workmanlike just isn’t Han Solo. Donald Glover as Calrissian got glowing reviews, but it was really the charismatic Woody Harrelson as Beckett who lights up the film—an understated, low key performance notwithstanding. Also prominent was Lando’s co-pilot L3-37, an animated character fighting against the slavery of droids.

This brings up another question. Why isn’t Disney investing in flashier talent for these movies?

(13) BAEN CHALLENGE COINS. Baen Books is taking orders for the first pressing of its new Challenge  Coins commemorating iconic names or events in the books of Ringo, Williamson, Kratman and probably whoever else you’d expect to fill out a list that starts with those three names.

Each coin is $15. Buy all 13 author coins, and the “I Read Baen’d Books” coin comes free. Shipping and handling is a flat rate of $15, $45 international, for up to 13 coins. Write to [email protected] for rates on bulk orders.

These coins were designed by Jack Wylder with the active participation of the authors. Here’s an example —

Front: I Read Baen’d Books

Reverse: RIP Joe Buckley

All profits from this coin will go to support two charities founded, supported, and run by Baen readers: Operation Baen Bulk, which provides care packages for deployed service members, and Read Assist, a 501c3 company that serves our disabled readers. http://www.readassist.org/ Each coin is $15. Buy all 13 author coins, and the “I Read Baen’d Books” coin comes free. “I read Baened Books” was first used by Chris French. “Joe Buckley” used courtesy of Joe Buckley. Don’t forget to duck

(14) A CENTURY OF STURGEON. Scott Bradfield tries to jumpstart the party — “Celebrating Theodore Sturgeon’s centenary – so should we all” in the LA Times. (Unfortunately, the Times initially failed to get David Gerrold’s permission to run his photo of Sturgeon with the post…)

I’ve always been a bit confused by these various centenary and multi-centenary celebrations that punctuate our discussions of literature, such as Thoreau’s recent 200th birthday (2017), or the centenary of James Joyce’s “Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man” (first published in 1917), or even the fourth centenary of the death of Cervantes (d. 1616), etc. (By the way, celebrating the anniversary of someone’s death strikes me as pretty grisly.) But while some writers seem to continually receive such posthumous honors, others suffer unfairly in silence. No cake, no candles, no old friends leaping out of closets, no nothing. And this year, that seems to be the case for one of America’s greatest and most original short story writers, Theodore Sturgeon, who was born on Feb. 26, 1918. From what I can tell, nobody has yet to pitch in and even buy him a decent card.

…Take, for example, the opening of his brilliant (and often poorly imitated) 1941 novelette, “Microcosmic God”: “Here is a story about a man who had too much power, and a man who took too much, but don’t worry; I’m not going political on you. The man who had the power was named James Kidder, and the other was his banker.”

Or this, from the aforementioned “The Dreaming Jewels” (1950): “They caught the kid doing something disgusting under the bleachers at the high-school stadium, and he was sent home from the grammar school across the street.”

Or even this, from his haunting and beautiful story, “The Man Who Lost the Sea” (1959): “Say you’re a kid, and one dark night you’re running along the cold sand with this helicopter in your hand, saying very fast witchy-witchy-witchy.”

Every opening plops you down bang in the middle of a story that is already happening and in the life of a character it is already happening to. And while many of his stories were collected in “horror” or “suspense” anthologies, they are rarely shocking or violent or grotesque. Instead, they begin by introducing you to a slightly strange world and a slightly strange character who lives there; then, before the story is over, you both feel at home in the world and compassion for the character who now lives there with you.

The greatness of Sturgeon’s stories reside in their almost inflexible, relentless unfolding of strangely logical events and relationships; each sentence is as beautiful and convincing as the last; and the science-fictional inventions never rely on tricks or deus ex machinas to reach a satisfying resolution; instead, a Sturgeon story always resolves itself at the level of the all-too-human.

(15) ACCESS. At io9 Ace Ratcliff asks “Staircases in Space: Why Are Places in Science Fiction Not Wheelchair-Accessible?”

I never used to notice stairs. They were simply a way for me to get from one place to another. Occasionally they were tiresome, but they never actually stymied or stopped me entirely. Eventually, I managed to get where I needed to go.

Then I started using a wheelchair. Suddenly, stairs became a barrier that prevented me from getting from here to there. One step was often enough to stop me in my tracks. It turns out that when you start using a wheelchair, you quickly realize that there are a lot of staircases and steps in our world—and a lot of broken (or nonexistent) elevators and ramps….

Once you start realizing how many stairs there are stopping you in real life, it becomes impossible not to notice them existing in the sci-fi you adore. Turns out they’re everywhere, in all of our sci-fi. Whether it’s decades-old or shiny and brand-new, our sci-fi imitates a real-world reliance on steps and stairs in our architecture.

When we think of sci-fi that’s run the test of time, Doctor Who immediately springs to mind. The inside of the TARDIS is littered with steps—from Christopher Eccleston to Peter Capaldi, there’s no way a wheelchair using companion would be able to navigate that beautiful blue time machine. Prior to the 2005 reboot, previous embodiments of the spaceship were no less inaccessible. You’d think that a spaceship that is regularly re-decorated could easily manage ramps in at least one iteration, but no set designers seem bothered enough to make it happen. I was pleased to learn that a quick finger snap seems to occasionally unlock the TARDIS doors—a quirky replacement for the buttons that exist in real-life, usually installed near closed doors and pressed by disabled people to assist with automatically opening them—but trying to scootch through the narrow opening of that British police box with an accessibility device looks nigh impossible, even without the need for a key.

(16) KERMODE ON SF FILMS. On August 7, BBC 4 airs an episode of Mark Kermode’s Secrets of the Cinema about science fiction.

SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie says —

This is an excellent series for film aficionados but the August 7th edition will also appeal to SF fans as this episode will be on science fiction film.

Also the series is co-written by the genre critic Kim Newman whom,  some Worldcon fans will recall, with SF author Paul McAuley,  co-presented the last CalHab (formerly known as Glasgow) Worldcon Hugo Award ceremony (2005). So be assured this episode has a solid grounding.

Mark Kemode’s Secrets of the Cinema SF film episode should be available on BBC iPlayer for a few weeks after broadcast.

BBC 4’s intro reads —

Mark Kermode continues his fresh and very personal look at the art of cinema by examining the techniques and conventions behind classic film genres, uncovering the ingredients that keep audiences coming back for more.

This time Mark explores the most visionary of all genres – science fiction, and shows how film-makers have risen to the challenge of making the unbelievable believable. Always at the forefront of cinema technology, science fiction films have used cutting-edge visual effects to transport us to other worlds or into the far future. But as Mark shows, it’s not just about the effects. Films as diverse as 2001, the Back to the Future trilogy and Blade Runner have used product placement and commercial brand references to make their future worlds seem more credible. The recent hit Arrival proved that the art of film editing can play with our sense of past and future as well as any time machine. Meanwhile, films such as Silent Running and WALL-E have drawn on silent era acting techniques to help robot characters convey emotion. And District 9 reached back to Orson Welles by using news reporting techniques to render an alien visitation credible.

Mark argues that for all their spectacle, science fiction films ultimately derive their power from being about us. They take us to other worlds and eras, and introduce us to alien and artificial beings, in order to help us better understand our own humanity.

(17) GETTING BACK IN BUSINESS. “NASA Announces Crew For First Commercial Space Flights” – NPR has the story.

NASA has announced the names of the astronauts who will be the first people in history to ride to orbit in private space taxis next year, if all goes as planned.

In 2019, SpaceX’s Crew Dragon capsule and Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner are both scheduled to blast off on test flights with NASA astronauts on board. “For the first time since 2011, we are on the brink of launching American astronauts on American rockets from American soil,” NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine said Friday, standing in front of a giant American flag at Johnson Space Center in Houston.

Since NASA retired its space shuttles, the agency has had to buy seats on the Russian Soyuz spacecraft to get its crews to the International Space Station.

(18) MUNG DYNASTY. FastCompany predicts “Plant-based eggs are coming for your breakfast sandwiches”.

When you order a breakfast sandwich or a scramble at New Seasons Market, a local chain in Portland, Seattle, and Northern California, you’ll bite into a yellow, fluffy food that tastes just like an egg, but did not, in fact, come from an animal. Instead, what you’re eating is a mung bean, a legume that people have been eating for thousands of years that, when ground into a liquid, happens to scramble and gel just like an egg.

Mung beans are the key ingredient in Just Egg, the latest product from Just, Inc.–the company formerly known as Hampton Creek, which manufactures plant-based alternatives to products like mayonnaise, cookie dough, and salad dressing. Just Egg, a liquid that scrambles in a way that’s eerily similar to an egg when cooked in a pan, is derived from mung bean protein, and colored with turmeric to mimic the light yellow of an egg. It’s slowly rolling out in stores and restaurants across the U.S., and New Seasons Market has gone as far as to entirely replace its regular eggs with the mung bean mixture.

[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, Mike Berro, Cat Eldridge, JJ, Martin Morse Wooster, Mike Kennedy, Carl Slaughter, Andrew Porter, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, and David Langford for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day jayn.]

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125 thoughts on “Pixel Scroll 8/4/18 Your Pixeled Pal Who’s Fun To Scroll With!”

  2. @14: what a wonderful piece on an author we don’t much hear about these days.

  3. (3) The showrunner was quick to clarify that she is not remaking the original series, so there is no need to recast any of its characters. This is a sequel in the same world, not a remake or reimagining… which leaves me curious about how/whether it will mesh with the upcoming Slayer series of novels.

  5. 15) I looked up Sophie Stone, the deaf actress mentioned in the article, to remind myself which Doctor Who episodes she was in. I found a Doctor Who Extra episode which interviewed her and some of the other actors involved about what it was like to do that work. Unfortunately I couldn’t understand most of what they said because the video was not captioned, at least where I found it. Grrr

    Which is to say, yes, the world is very inaccessible, and science fiction absolutely should be doing better.

  6. @8: while there are good point in the article a lot of the stuff very clearly refers to movie Aragorn, rather than book Aragorn.

  7. 2) Having Patrick Stewart and Michael Chabon involved is exciting. Unfortunately, CBS All Access.

    8) Talk about missing the point of Middle Earth. This guy certainly was at the head of the line.

    12) I thought Alden Ehrenreich did a pretty fine job. There were times in that movie where I could swear he was channeling a young Harrison Ford. As to flashier talent, the worst thing they could do is stick some big name star in that role to compete with Ford.

    Plus, Donald Glover was spectacular.

  8. @rochrist, I thought the article was spot on. You don’t think the hobbits are the heroes of the story?

  9. The inside of the TARDIS is littered with steps—from Christopher Eccleston to Peter Capaldi, there’s no way a wheelchair using companion would be able to navigate that beautiful blue time machine.

    Somehow, based on what we know of the TARDIS, if there was a wheelchair-using companion, I’d expect the TARDIS to be wheelchair-friendly the moment they came aboard, with no explanation.

    I’m not sure how the door would be managed, but that, at least, is a malfunction, and not design.

  10. 1) Is DragonCon kind of a mess? I haven’t been following the Scrolls closely for a while now but am asking because twice I’ve submitted to their Comics and Popular Arts Conference. Both were accepted by the academic peer review but were conditional upon DragonCon’s approval. I withdrew the first time because DragonCon said there weren’t enough spots after all and then again this year because while I got a spot they only told me a few days ago and I decided that wasn’t enough time to prepare a presentation and make travel arrangements (I was only planning to go to give the presentation which isn’t to say I wasn’t also looking forward to attending my first Con). It also didn’t help that there wasn’t going to be any A/V equipment.

    I don’t have anything bad to say about how I was treated–the people I communicated with were very nice and I really like the idea of the conference–it just doesn’t seem that either year DragonCon was on the ball. Needless to say I’m not submitting again (though of course now I worry I have a reputation, perhaps deserved, for being flakey).

    And of course I wouldn’t be surprised if the conference was sort of an after-thought for DragonCon and this isn’t at all indicative of its organization.

  12. 15) I’m now trying to think of the first time steps appeared in the TARDIS – I think there might have been some in the “secondary control room” introduced in “The Masque of Mandragora”; prior to that, everything we saw was all on one level, at least.

    I think I agree with Kurt Busiek, though – on the whole, the TARDIS tends to be pretty user-friendly, and adaptable. Wouldn’t hurt to see this, of course.

  15. (8) So, by now we’ve learned that we aren’t getting the long-awaited comedy of manners set at Brandy Hall, culminating in the boating party with Drogo and Primula?

  16. @David Shallcross: nor the crime series where a pipesmoking hobbit detective solves the murder case of the Drogo & Primula drowning.

  18. 15: Dalek proofing.

    @Steve Wright: Being boring, up until the hiatus the Tardis control room was always a studio set in TV Centre so needed to be Vinten pedestal accessible. Split level sets would have needed film cameras or to wait for electronic single camera operation to become common place. No-one was going to seriously consider repositioning EMI-2001 cameras off the studio floor.

  19. @Lenore Jones/jonesnori & David Shallcross: one could add the multigenerational family saga about Dorwinrim wine merchants and the noir crime series about an older dunadan ranger who has seen better days, drinks to much, and works as a private eye in Bree or Laketown.

  20. My theory: the stairs in the TARDIS are an anti-Dalek security measure. For accessibility reasons, they can be converted into ramps or elevators as needed, but stairs are the default state Just In Case.

    Edit: Oops, Anthony got there ahead of me! It didn’t seem that way when I was posting in 266. Must be timey-wimey stuff again.

  21. A Breaking Bad-style series set in Moria where a dwarven patriarch, in an effort to ensure his family’s financial security, delves too greedily and too deep.

  23. @Leonore Jones It isn’t that the hobbits aren’t heroes. It’s that Dilillo seems to see the movie version the be-all and end-all of the story and regards Jackson as the true author instead of Tolkien. He refers to ‘cliched fantasy tapastry’ without acknowledging that the cliches are cliches largely BECAUSE of LotR. He seems dismissive of the written work (calling it a ‘cult work’ while bowing before Jackson and the movies. A book widely cited in lists of the most popular and most sold books of all time. I know a lot of people love the movies, but I pretty much despise them. They missed all of the subtlety and nuance in the books and instead replaced it with ill-conceived Hollywood trash. They would have been fine, even admirable, if they had no relation to LotR. As a film adaptation, they fail spectacularly.

    In any event, the notion that the vast backstory Tolkien created can’t provide enough fodder to sustain a tv show seems ludicrous.

  24. (4) KRESS REQUEST. Kress is an interesting panelist. @Camestros Felapton – glad to hear it (for W76 attendees & Kress; I won’t be at Worldcon).

    (6) PRO ADVICE. Sound advice, as usual.

    (12) SOLO. I’m not really a Harrelson fan, but I felt Ehrenreich did a good job!

    (15) ACCESS. Ratcliff spends a lot of time on decrying sets, which aren’t real-world spaces designed for real people, before finally getting to what seems like the real issue – a lack of disabled characters. There’d be an elevator or ramp in Star Wars and the TARDIS, antigrav wheelchairs in Star Trek, etc. if any characters needed them, but mostly they don’t existing in SFF TV and movies. I feel like the article put the cart before the horse.

    Of course in 2955, horses are extinct. 🙁

    BTW, Geordi La Forge from ST:TNG was blind?! /s Easy to forget, given his visor. 😛

  25. (12) I really didn’t pay attention to the reviews, but got the gist that Solo was a box office disappointment, presumably because Ehrenreich is not Harrison Ford. I thought it was a perfectly good SF caper movie, and didn’t have any complaints about his acting.

    Another Meredith Moment: Kevin J. Anderson’s Saga of the Seven Suns septology is on sale at Amazon UK/ Kobo UK for £0.99 each. I’ve never read them, nor did I get around to reading the first of the follow-up trilogy when it was a Hugo award finalist. I’m tempted to pick it up because it’s cheap, but a lot of the reviews on Goodreads which were not 4-5 stars like to use words like infodump, repetitious, and slog, so maybe not.

  27. (2) Do I have to subscribe to some new service to see it? I’m getting a little tired of all the different streaming services. Can’t keep track of them in my old age.

    (13) There was a time when Challenge Coins actually had meaning… Ah well, if they want to create goofy fictional ones and pay someone to make them, more power to the manufacturers.

    (15) As I recall, K9 had extremely limited mobility and yet managed the TARDIS just fine. Ok, in real life the tin dog was a nightmare to shoot, but the *character* managed. Kurt is correct – the TARDIS will reconfigure to suit its occupants.

    (18) “Mung” is what we called the food in the dorms at university. It has very unpleasant connotations for me.

  28. Greg Hullender: (8) Obviously Tolkien’s series is an allegory for the dangers of letting the telephone system be controlled by a monopoly.

    Yeah… I remember seeing the movie about that, The President’s Hobbit.

  29. Shao Ping: Is DragonCon kind of a mess? I haven’t been following the Scrolls closely for a while now but am asking because twice I’ve submitted to their Comics and Popular Arts Conference.

    I mean, it is a science fiction convention….

    You’re right about the Comics and Popular Arts Conference being sort of an after-thought, because it’s not an official part of Dragon Con. It’s an academic conference outside of Dragon Con’s existing structure, and run by non-Dragon Con volunteers. The CPAC organizers take submissions, sort through them, and then shop their accepted talks to the various track directors.

    That has two knock-on effects. One, CPAC participants aren’t guests or attending professionals invited by the guest committee, and so miss out on track directors knowing they’re coming and the guest committee encouraging track directors to schedule them on panels and events. Two, CPAC often won’t know what spots are available until track directors set their draft schedule at the end of July.

    I understand why it’s like this: CPAC is focused on being an academic conference, which lets its participants use grant funding for travel expenses and similar, and for their presentations be part of their CVs. Having an entertainment organization give input into which presentations to make the cut goes against the conference’s desire for academic independence.

    I’m sorry that’s left you squeezed out, and with not enough notice to actually participate.

  30. (14) Regarding Scott Bradfield’s piece on Sturgeon:

    I hate to be writing this on the fifth of August, but when the centenary of an important SF writer comes up, my mind always leaps to this: Suggest a Worldcon panel.

    My search of the Worldcon 76 schedule doesn’t turn up any mention of Theodore Sturgeon. There’s still time to suggest programming at fall regional conventions, though.

    Windycon, are you listening? Can we scrounge up some Sturgeon buffs and hold a conversation?

    Meanwhile, keep an eye on SF writers born in 1919, or 1819, and start planning for next year’s centennials.

    ObCentenary: For some reason, File 770’s comment-drafting apparatus tells me that the date of this comment is several months past my own 900th birthday.

  31. @Shao Ping

    I’m a track director at DragonCon and the Popular Arts and Whatever group is a constant annoyance. They are not sanctioned by DragonCon and are just trying to piggyback off a larger, more established convention. I’m not the only track director who politely turns down their offers to put together panels for me, as they are pretty disorganized. If you’d like to be on programming for the convention, I’d reach out directly for the track you think fits your interests best and go from there. For myself, I love putting academics on programming. This year I have two geneticists from Duke discussing the impact of hereditary in GoT and an English professor presenting on several Tolkien related topics. Last year I had a professor of medieval history participating in several panels.

  32. 4: Kress is not the only author to be left out of programming. I understand Joe Haldeman is in the same boat.

    This all makes me feel good that I’m in good company. OTOH, it was perhaps cruel and unnecessary for Programming to send me a form listing my program items that was just blank.

  34. I tried to read Kevin J. Anderson’s The Dark Between the Stars when it was a Hugo finalist. I promised myself I’d give it at least 200 pages. I couldn’t manage it: I gave up at page 180. I am left with very negative interest in reading anything else he’s written.

  35. 18) As a vegan who loves and misses the taste of eggs, this is tremendously exciting news!

  36. Re: Kevin J. Anderson, my online SF reading-and-discussion group tried to read The Dark Between The Pages Stars the year it was nominated for a Hugo. We abandoned it about a third of the way through; that’s the ONLY time in some twenty-five years of book discussions that the discussion group has ever voted to abandon a book and read something else. It has dozens of characters and absolutely nobody in the discussion cared about a single one of them. The protagonists could have all died in fire and we would have yawned. I have less-than-zero interest in reading any more Anderson.

    Bill Higgins, I’ve forwarded your comment to Programming at Windycon.

  37. I read The Dark Between The Stars at a Glastonbury festival. It was dreadful, but ideally suited to such an event.. Very short chapters. Only one thing happening in each of them. All characters annoying.

  38. Many, if not most, names on the Worldcon “speakers” list in the Grenadine app are not linked to any program items yet. I assume this will gradually be fixed.

  39. What David Goldfarb and Cassy B. Said. As a Hugo voter, I tried to read everything, but gave up on that one less than 100 pages in.

  41. @Cora: And I’m an unthinking idiot, sorry. I should’ve started with “Thanks for posting that!” because yes, thank you. 🙂

  43. Cassy B: I have less-than-zero interest in reading any more Anderson.
    Since I don’t particularly care for space opera, I’ve never tried the BIG books. But I enjoyed his Dan Shamble, Zombie P.I. series for a fun, light read.

    18). That headline just annoys me. Makes it sound like they’re growing eggs like eggplants. The San Francisco Chronicle had an article this week-end raving about some plant-based veggie burger called the Impossible Burger that expresses pink juices that turn brown as the wheat-gluten “meat” cooks, leading people to label it “the veggie burger that bleeds.”

  44. Meredith Moment:

    Them Bones by Howard Waldrop is available at Amazon in Kindle format for free (release date is shown as July 24, 2018). I still have the PB original. It’s very good.

    15) In other words, Sunday. The world is designed for the convenience and comfort of the majority. Even I was surprised at the extent to which my life changed when I found myself needing a wheelchair as opposed to crutches. Stairs are manageable on crutches, not so in a chair without greater effort and risk. Even managing doors is harder. *SIGH*

    Here in 4559, stairs don’t exist, as we’re non-corporeal. But we still read SF.

  45. Thanks for the fix, Kendall. It’s very difficult to even copy those links, because the Kobo website keeps directing me back to the German store.

  46. The only KJA I’ve read, I believe, was the first set of Dune prequels and the books that completed the series; they were … not great.

    Having said that, does anybody have recommendations for something like the Seven Suns books? Sprawling epic-fantasy-as-space-opera series, preferably with politics and aliens and battles?

  47. 18). That headline just annoys me. Makes it sound like they’re growing eggs like eggplants. The San Francisco Chronicle had an article this week-end raving about some plant-based veggie burger called the Impossible Burger that expresses pink juices that turn brown as the wheat-gluten “meat” cooks, leading people to label it “the veggie burger that bleeds.”

    And one place here in Portland that has been heavily advertising The Impossible Burger is…New Seasons Market. (Home of the mung “eggs”.)

    It’s hilarious to see New Seasons show up in the scroll–the original store is about a mile from our house and we shop at at least one of the stores multiple times a week.

  48. I bounced hard off the first book of the first series of Seven Suns books, but I quite like Kevin J. Anderson’s Dan Shambles Zombie PI series.

    With respect to item #4, while I do think Worldcon programming needs to have up and coming authors and Hugo finalists in addition to old pros on panels, it does seem as if the current version of the program overcompensated in the other direction and left off a number of “grandmaster” level pros like Kress and Haldeman who really ought to be on at least one panel and/or reading and/or kaffeeklatsch and be part of one of the group autograph sessions.

    Still, programming my small local con is difficult enough with only 5 tracks and under 100 program participants. I can’t imagine trying to program something the size of a Worldcon.

  49. I’m still on two feet and mostly mobile, but I have arthritis very badly in almost every joint on the left side of my body. When it flares up, as it has at the moment, even a single step seems to become a 10 foot wall. I have complete faith that the TARDIS would give me a ramp if I needed it.
    But I am SO envious of Christopher Pike’s amazing life support/mobility chair from Star Trek TOS! Seems as if it could handle ALL the stairs in all of Federation space. Where do I sign up?

  50. Joe Haldeman has 2 panels, a kaffeeklaatch, and a signing — and has had them for several days now, including at the time the first complaint about his schedule was posted. Kress has 2 panels now. People would be well-advised to check the schedule themselves rather than relying on hearsay accounts.

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