(1) “A Halloween garden gnome” is what John King Tarpinian calls one of the pieces Tokyo University of Arts students created for a festival —
This massive work of art, which features a giant octopus wrapped around a Greek-style temple, has captured the attention of people across Japan. Now that the festival is over, though, the students are asking if anyone wants to buy it!
More photos of the work on parade at the Rocket News 24 website.
(2) Of course, being scientists, these folks had to do what every science fiction fan knows better than to do — revive the ancient giant virus.
It’s 30,000 years old and still ticking: A giant virus recently discovered deep in the Siberian permafrost reveals that huge ancient viruses are much more diverse than scientists had ever known.
They’re also potentially infectious if thawed from their Siberian deep freeze, though they pose no danger to humans, said Chantal Abergel, a scientist at the National Center for Scientific Research at Aix-Marseille University in France and co-author of a new study announcing the discovery of the new virus. As the globe warms and the region thaws, mining and drilling will likely penetrate previously inaccessible areas, Abergel said.
“Safety precautions should be taken when moving that amount of frozen earth,” she told Live Science. (Though viruses can’t be said to be “alive,” the Siberian virus is functional and capable of infecting its host.)
…The new virus isn’t a threat to humans; it infected single-celled amoebas during the Upper Paleolithic, or late Stone Age.
(3) Next step, Wolverine? Claws still required, and it’s titanium not adamantium, but… a Spanish hospital recent replaced a significant amount of a man’s rib cage and sternum with a titanium replacement.
Putting titanium inside people’s chests is nothing new, but what made this different was the implant was 3D printed to match his existing bone structure.
(4) Lost In Space first got lost on September 15, 1965. The Los Angeles Times visited with some of the original cast.
Fifty years after the CBS sci-fi series “Lost in Space” blasted into orbit on Sept. 15, 1965, the show’s five surviving stars are still very close. A few gather each year to have dinner to celebrate the birthday of Jonathan Harris, the late actor who played the diabolical and very funny Dr. Zachary Smith.
“We have stayed very much like a normal dysfunctional family,” said Bill Mumy, who played child prodigy Will Robinson during the series’ three-season run.
Baby boomers who grew up watching “Lost in Space” still have a strong connection to the campy show, which boasted a terrific early score from Oscar-winner John Williams, then billed as Johnny Williams.
“When I do these conventions, people are still so wrapped up in it,” said June Lockhart, who played matriarch Maureen Robinson. “The last time I did one, I said, ‘Excuse me.’ I looked out at the audience and said, ‘I must remind you: It was all pretend!'”
“Lost in Space” was created and produced by Irwin Allen, who went on to make such disaster film classics as “The Poseidon Adventure” (1972) and “The Towering Inferno” (1974).
The series revolved around the Robinson family — John Robinson (Guy Williams), his wife (Lockhart) and their children Judy (Marta Kristen), the brilliant Penny (Angela Cartwright) and Will.
On the anniversary date, Cartwright and Mumy released a new book, Lost (and Found) in Space, a memoir with rare photographs.
(5) Steven H Silver recreates a convention report of the 1976 Worldcon in Kansas City in “A Brief History of MidAmeriCon” at Uncanny Magazine.
Early projections seemed to indicate that Big MAC would have as many as 7,000 members and the committee knew they couldn’t handle a con that size. To ensure it didn’t happen, they introduced the sliding rate scale, making the con more expensive the later a fan bought a membership, they announced that they would not run an all–night movie room, and they also announced there would be no programming related to comic books, Star Trek, Planet of the Apes, or the Society for Creative Anachronism. All of these decisions were met with howls of protest. MidAmeriCon was clearly attempting to destroy fandom and the Worldcon.
Keller was also concerned that people would crash MidAmeriCon, so prior to the convention, he announced that the convention would have a foolproof way of ensuring that only paid members were in attendance. There was much speculation prior to the Worldcon that this meant holograms on the badges. Keller had something else in mind and each attendee was given a plastic bracelet that could not be put on again once it was taken off. Of course, foolproof doesn’t mean fanproof, and some fans set themselves the goal of subverting the security measure. They found a woman who was being released from the hospital and convinced her to continue to wear her hospital ID, so they could try to bring her to the various official functions of the convention. They succeeded.
(6) People are still hard at work mapping what parts of the universe SFWA controls.
…and yet again: pic.twitter.com/rrI8qPObo6
— Steven Gould (@StevenGould) September 4, 2015
(7) Ursula K. Le Guin is interviewed by Choire Sicha at Interview Magazine.
SICHA: There’s a sort of growing professional class of writers that may not have had access to being a professional. Before the internet, you would go to your terrible job and then you would write at night. I actually found that system really rewarding, separating out the money and the work.
LE GUIN: On the other hand, if it was a nine-to-five job, and if you had any family obligations and commitments, it’s terribly hard. It worked very much against women, because they were likely to have the nine-to-five job and really be responsible for the household. Doing two jobs is hard enough, but doing three is just impossible. And that’s essentially what an awful lot of women who wanted to write were being asked to do: support themselves, keep the family and household going, and write.
SICHA: And the writing was the first thing to go when things got tough, I’m sure.
LE GUIN: I had only a little taste of that. I did have three kids. But what my husband and I figured—he was a professor and teaching a lot—was that three jobs can be done by two people. He could do his job teaching, I could do my job writing, and the two of us could do the house and the kids. And it worked out great, but it took full collaboration between him and me. See, I cannot write when I’m responsible for a child. They are full-time occupations for me. Either you’re listening out for the kids or you’re writing. So I wrote when the kids went to bed. I wrote between nine and midnight those years. And my husband would listen out if the little guy was sick or something. It worked out. It wasn’t really easy but, you know, you have a lot of energy when you’re young. Sometimes I look back and I think, “How the hell did we do it?” But we did.
(8) A Kickstarter appeal seeks to fund the printing of 5,000 copies of Understanding Jim Crow: Using Racist Memorabilia to Teach Tolerance and Promote Social Justice by David Pilgrim.
David Pilgrim is the founder and curator of the About the Jim Crow Museum of Racist Memorabilia at Ferris State University in Big Rapids, MI.
For many people, especially those who came of age after landmark civil rights legislation was passed, it is difficult to understand what it was like to be an African American living under Jim Crow segregation in the United States. Most young Americans have little or no knowledge about restrictive covenants, literacy tests, poll taxes, lynchings, and other oppressive features of the Jim Crow racial hierarchy. Even those who have some familiarity with the period may initially view racist segregation and injustices as relics of a distant, shameful past. A proper understanding of race relations in this country must include a solid knowledge of Jim Crow—how it emerged, what it was like, how it ended, and its impact on the culture.
Understanding Jim Crow introduces readers to the Jim Crow Museum of Racist Memorabilia, a collection of more than ten thousand contemptible collectibles that are used to engage visitors in intense and intelligent discussions about race, race relations, and racism. The items are offensive. They were meant to be offensive. The items in the Jim Crow Museum served to dehumanize blacks and legitimized patterns of prejudice, discrimination, and segregation.
Using racist objects as teaching tools seems counterintuitive—and, quite frankly, needlessly risky. Many Americans are already apprehensive discussing race relations, especially in settings where their ideas are challenged. The museum and this book exist to help overcome our collective trepidation and reluctance to talk about race.
(9) In “An Interview With Jennifer Brozek” at Permuted Press, the author and editor is unflinching, positive and brave.
Permuted: With the Hugo Awards sparking so much debate this year, do you have any thoughts on the controversy in general as a nominated editor?
Jennifer: Awards are a funny thing. I’m honored to have been nominated. I’m glad my part in the controversy is over. I’m also really pleased that there is a renewed interest in the Hugo award itself. Talk about an adrenalin shot in the arm.
Permuted: Your protagonist in the NEVER LET ME series, Melissa, has bipolar disorder. Can you describe your experience writing a character with a mental illness?
Jennifer: As a high functioning autistic adult, I am very aware of how people in media are portrayed. Either the mental illness is a superhero power (Alphas, Perception) or it makes a person a psychopathic criminal. It is rarely shown in-between. It is rarely shown as it really is—something millions of people deal with every single day. There are a lot of physical aspects to mental illness as well as coping mechanisms. With Melissa, I wanted to show a protagonist who had mental illness but it was neither a “power” nor something that made her unable to cope with the world. She is medicated and it works. This is the goal of every person suffering from mental illness on meds.
(10) Light in the Attic Records has released soundtrack to the documentary Jodorowsky’s Dune. It is available in 2xLP and CD.
This is the soundtrack to the story about the greatest film that never was.
Jodorowsky’s Dune tells the tale of cult filmmaker Alejandro Jodorowsky’s unsuccessful attempt to adapt Frank Herbert’s classic sci-fi novel, Dune, to the big screen. Composer Kurt Stenzel gives life to a retro-futuristic universe as fantastic as Jodorowsky’s own vision for his Dune–a film whose A-list cast would have included Salvador Dalí, Orson Welles, and Mick Jagger in starring roles and music by psychedelic prog-rockers Pink Floyd.
Building upon director Frank Pavich’s idea for a score with a “Tangerine Dream-type feel,” Stenzel lays out a cosmic arsenal of analog synthesizers that would make any collector green at the gills: among other gems are a rare Moog Source, CZ-101s, and a Roland Juno 6, as well as unorthodox instruments like a toy Concertmate organ and a Nintendo DS. “I also played guitar and did vocals,” says Stenzel, “some chanting… and some screaming, which comes naturally to me.” The score also features narration by Jodorowsky himself. As Stenzel notes, “Jodo’s voice is actually the soundtrack’s main musical instrument–listening to him was almost like hypnosis, like going to the guru every night.”
[Thanks to Rob Thornton, Will R., Mark, JJ, and John King Tarpinian for some of these stories. Title credit to File 770 contributing editor of the day Kendall.]
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@Mark I backed Women in Practical Armor we ended up ~$500 short of Women in Comfortable Shoes being funded in stretch goal
Should I mention Kickstarters I think Filers would be interested in? Mike would you like me to email/contact you about them so they get their own entry?
@cmm
“Passenger was in and out of conscientiousness…”
I’m like that in the morning until I’ve had sufficient caffeine.
@Anna
“It’s like Usenet, we even have killfiles.”
If only we could kill threads too, so you selectively knock out $TROLL and people taking the bait.
@Tasha
I think kickstarters for things like anthologies and mags would be interesting to hear about, personally.
@Simon Bisson: Nice! IMHO these are the best of your Heinlein batch: I Will Fear No Pixel and To Scroll Beyond The Sunset . . . with The Scrolling Stones a close third.
@Tasha: That could be a very long list. 😉 SF Signal periodically mentions some SF-related Kickstarters (rarely interesting to me), but similar to Mark, I’d be more likely to perk up at the mention of fiction-related Kickstarters, if you and/or Mike happen to mention any.
I worry that I’m on the verge of a Kickstarter Habit. It’s entirely too easy to say, “Hey, cool!” and hit that button (thanks to a laptop that remembers account log-ins).
It reminds me of the long period when I staunchly resisted ever buying books on-line because I knew that once I got started I’d be in trouble. *pets the $100 academic press book that arrived from UPS yesterday*
Found a fun story today: “Service Charge” by Jane Read. (In Supernatural Tales 29, only 99 cents for a fine issue!) It’s a version of “Tam Lin” that doesn’t end well for Tam. It’s all very well to expect a woman to fight and sacrifice for her man, especially if he’s the father of her child, but what if he’s not actually the kind of guy she needs in her life? What if he left her as soon as he found out she was pregnant, but now that he needs to be rescued, he comes trying out his charmingest smile, saying “Look, I can see you’re annoyed with me still…”
I like versions of fairy tales that question the values in them. There’s another skeptical take on “Tam Lin” in Liz Lochhead’s poem “Tam Lin’s Lady”.
@Heather Rose Jones: I’ve found that Humble Bundle and StoryBundle are my new nightmare. If there’s even a single thing I want to buy in one of the bundles, I’ll probably throw in enough to get all the bonus items too even if I have no intention of ever reading them.
@Meredith (& anyone else interested): Did you know about the Dragons & Darkness bundle on StoryBundle right now?
[ticky]
@Tasha, I’d love to hear about anthology/magazine Kickstarters. I’ve already gotten several books that way.
I can’t believe how many people seem to have missed the entire point of Lost in Space. After the first half of the first season, it segued into a comedy. And it was pure gold. The Intergalactic Garbage Man? The Interstellar Department Store? The Robot turned giant so they have to go inside to fix him?
Still one of my favorite shows ever. But no, nobody /ever/ took it to be serious SF.
@cmm – If you haven’t read it I highly recommend Ellison’s introduction to Strange Wine, Revealed At Last! What Killed the Dinosaurs! And You Don’t Look So Terrific Yourself
I was <10 when Lost In Space was running in syndication, and I too thought it was terrible at the time, even as a dedicated Saturday morning Jason of Star Command fan.
Big MAC and No Room at the Inn…
When we checked into the hotel, we were warned that renovation was being done on several floors. So, having completed check-in, hordes of fans hie themselves to the elevators…
We board the elevator and ride up several floors. The doors open and a couple of fen exit into a maze of ladders, paint buckets with brushes and/or rollers, and the smell of fresh paint wafting on the air-conditioned breeze. They disappear around a corner, and just as the elevator doors begin to close we hear a plaintive wail:
“They’re renovating MY room….”
Crouching Fandom, Scrolling Pixel
Simon Bisson
Consider how lucky I was growing up on original showings of Thunderbirds, Captain Scarlet and UFO…
Aside: I was sitting at a hotel at Heathrow Airport in the late ’70s, about to emigrate to Canada. I’m watching the TV the evening of my departure, and I see episode 1 of The Hitchiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Took me 15 years to see episode 2
Off my lawn…
@Exarch Cathedra:
Oh lord, Jason of Star Command (with James Doohan). Same-universe show Space Academy (also with Johnathan Harris of Lost in Space). Tarzan and the Super Seven. Ark II. Excuse me for a minute as I attempt to outrun the wave of nostalgia before it crashes over me and washes me away.
(Can you tell when I grew up?)
@Jenora Feuer — Apparently you grew up right around the same time I was growing up. Myself, I’d also add Thundarr the Barbarian to the list, and the first season (IMPORTANT: ONLY THE FIRST SEASON!!) of the Flash Gordon cartoon.
#10: “Tangerine Dream-flavored soundtrack”… didn’t we already have Legend?
—
I don’t care how fallen by the wayside it is. Pixel-Stained Technopeasant Wretch Day falls on my birthday (as well as Shakespeare’s, which was more the point) and I will continue to celebrate it as best I can.
—
“What if he left her as soon as he found out she was pregnant, but now that he needs to be rescued, he comes trying out his charmingest smile, saying “Look, I can see you’re annoyed with me still…””
Reminds me of Kelly Link’s take on a well-known fairy tale in “Travels with the Snow Queen,” actually.
Yeah the second season of the Flash Gordon cartoon has their “Scrappy Doo”
add on character ruin the whole thing…
I had completely forgotten (or never seen) the stupid pink dragon thing until I got the Flash Gordon cartoon DVD set, was enjoying the first season (which actually had an arc!), then hit the second season and became sad.
I had forgotten about those other live action shows–the only ones I remembered off the top of my head were Isis/Shazam, Electra Woman and DynaGirl, and Land of the Lost and the other trippy Kroft shows. I was also a Jason fan, and dimly remember Ark II.
If you grew up in the golden age of Saturday morning cartoons, you might want to check out a book a friend of mine wrote (wow over a decade ago now)…Saturday Morning Fever by Timothy and Kevin Burke. It’s only available as a paperback (no ebook) but used copies are cheap on Amazon.
We got sporadic reruns of Land of the Lost and I only got to watch them on days when my grandmother was not watching People’s Court, but to this day, I will recoil in horror from anything that looks like a Sleestak.
They had a bad inflatable Geico gecko at the State Fair a few years back that was verrrrry Sleestak-esque, and I didn’t turn my back on that thing for an instant.
…I am also a little concerned by Judge Wapner.
Judge Wapner is extremely worthy of concern. I trust him not at all. Is he even mammalian? My mitochondria feel he may have no symbiotic life forms within him at all.
Hmm, even if Worldcon was Scalzi’s first fanac, I suspect he was probably an SF fan before then, since the first novel he’d just sold was not his first attempt at writing SF. Of course, the chart doesn’t make it clear how it defines “fan”, but I think anything other than a fairly broad definition is doomed to failure.
For professional writers who have attended Worldcon but aren’t SF fans, I think you might have to look at someone like Atwood, assuming she attended Worldcon for some reason. People who have attended Worldcon but are neither fans nor professional writers is another tricky category, but it probably includes some kids of fans (I was 9 at my first Worldcon, and wasn’t quite a fan yet), as well as some people involved in publishing who aren’t writers. I can’t think of much else.
I think the chart would be more interesting if the areas were to scale, based on the estimated size of each class, but then I think several of the areas would be too small to see very easily. In fact, compared to “fans”, I think most areas would be too small to see very easily. 🙂
Regarding Lost in Space: yes, it was crap. But crappy TV shows are hardly an unusual thing. And at the time most people did consider SF to be for kids. The “sci-fi ghetto” was a much more real concept back then.
It can be hard to recognize just how revolutionary Star Trek was in its time. Yes, Twilight Zone existed before it, but I think most people considered that a suspense/horror series. The SF elements were treated as secondary. Star Trek was really the first straight-up science fiction show pitched to adults. And it was short-lived in part because that really was a somewhat foolish risk. It didn’t capture a mainstream audience; too much of the mainstream was still convinced that SF was for kids. But, of course, once it went into syndication, it allowed a broader audience to begin to see that yes, it really was possible to write reasonably intelligent SF aimed at an adult audience. I think it marked the beginning of the end of the SF ghetto.
Detroit Piston Bill Laimbeer was a Sleestak. (IMDB credits him with four episodes, so he was probably a Sleestak extra.) He must have been a teenager when he appeared. One wonders if his Land of the Lost experience turned him into the evil person he was to become or whether his evil nature made him gravitate to the role of a Sleestak.
I used to be pretty addicted to both. But I’ve noticed they generally trend heavily SWM and I’m trying to read over 50% non-straight, non-white, non-male this year. I’ve frequently bought the non-SWM/W stuff already so it’s not as attractive as it was 2-3 years ago when I wasn’t paying as much attention to who I was reading… And didn’t understand why I was so frustrated and angry with books.
It’s 9440 and Amazon, StoryBundle, Humble Bundle, and Kickstarter are only known by a few historical nuts.
Tbq Fgnyx
@Anna:
This is very much my experience, including the last part. I recently started an MFA program which is part-time during the spring and fall, but full-time for four weeks in the summer. I was lucky enough to be able to take that summer month off of my job, and it was a goddamn revelation— I had never, ever had the experience of being able to focus for that long on creative work. Now that I’m back to part-timing it, it’s… a challenge, but I’m hopeful that it’s still doable.
My addictions are proving rather expensive: I’ve just discovered that the company I prefer sailing with are changing their itineraries to focus more on the western Mediterranean. This is undoubtedly wonderful, since there’s amazing stuff to see, but there’s a lot of places which I still haven’t got to.
Obviously my life would be incomplete without ever visiting Albania, so my plastic may be taking another hammering…
CMM —
They were designed by the same guy, Robert Kinoshita, so the confusion may be understandable.
Thanks NelC!
Yeah the arms are very similar on both. and wow! the designer dude only died just this year. Clean living and lots of robot assistance I guess.
NelC: There are images of three famous robots he designed in this Robert Kinoshita obit.
Here’s a handy chart that even you pros might want to print out and hang near your computer…
http://ebookfriendly.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/The-69-rules-of-punctuation-infographic.jpg
@Darren Garrison,
a useful chart. Of course, in spoken conversation, the actual symbols (commas, periods, exclamation marks, whatnot) are not readily available; so I use wordplay, instead, as punctuation.
Also, am I the only one who read the first entry as talking about a “Halloween garden genome“, and thought about how to sequence it?
Xtifr: Hmm, even if Worldcon was Scalzi’s first fanac, I suspect he was probably an SF fan before then, since the first novel he’d just sold was not his first attempt at writing SF. Of course, the chart doesn’t make it clear how it defines “fan”, but I think anything other than a fairly broad definition is doomed to failure.
As I have always seen it, “fan” is a self-selecting category: I am a fan because I consider myself to be a fan, for whatever reason, with whatever “credentials,” and no one can tell me otherwise. (Or, in reverse, no one can tell me I am a fan if I don’t consider myself to be one–none of their business.) That’s both subjective and inclusive, I suppose. Did Scalzi consider himself a fan before he attended that first Worldcon? I don’t know, but it’s possible he didn’t, or at least had never thought about whether or not he considered himself a fan.
Leaving Scalzi aside, the dividing line for the “pro writer/Worldcon attendee/non-fan” subgroup might well be con attendance–which would might tend to collapse the category into “pro writer/Worldcon attendee/fan” fairly quickly, unless the individual chose otherwise. After attending a convention–even if the first convention is a Worldcon–I suspect it would be more difficult to not be aware of at least the possibility of such self-definition. How about someone who goes to his/her first Worldcon as a non-fan, hates it, and resolves never to return and to reject all fannish self-definition after that? But remains a professional writer and (given that one year attendance) a member of Worldcon/Hugo nominator for a least a year?
(Speaking of the self-selection of fans)
@Anna Feruglio Dal Dan
Fatigue can be such a huge problem. I wish there were better solutions for it. Pacing is all well and good but it isn’t a cure, and it can be frustrating to stick to, too.
@ULTRAGOTHA
Oh, I used to have the t-shirt for that. Sadly it got horribly and irretrievably stained by something or other and had to be thrown away. I should try and get a new one at some point.
@Oneiros
I did not! Thanks!
@Darren Garrison
Am I the only one who noticed their apostrophe is upside down? (It’s usually like a raised comma.)
@Christian Brunschen:
Unless Victor Borge is involved.
Fannish news from the Transformative Works Fandom sector:
The Organisation for Transformative Works, best known for running the Archive of Our Own but they also campaign for legal protections for fans etc., are currently holding an election; the first time an election has been contested since it was started. More infomation. A $10 dollar donation before (I think) the end of the month gets you membership and the right to vote. (I believe there is also a ticky box involved to claim the membership.)
(svmadelyn has some more stuff here.)
@Jenora Feuer:
True, Victor Borge was a pioneer in the field. (I watched him live once – he was a great musician and entertainer!)
When I was a teenager, there was a summer where USA showed Lost In Space and Land of the Giants back-to-back in the mornings, and that was just gold for me. Yeah, those shows were cheesy as all get out, but still a lot of fun. But neither had aged well then (late 80s? Early 90s?), and probably even less so now.
One thing that boggled my mind in the terrible movie (well, one of MANY things) was how, after having a bunch of cameos in the beginning, the time-travel plot seemed an obvious set-up for old Will Robinson to be a Bill Mumy cameo, but they didn’t cast him because he’d have been “too distracting”. Frankly, at that point in the movie, the audience needed some distraction.
(Edited to say, I apparently double-posted minutes apart. This one is the real one, as I fixed my incorrect assumption.)
At work I received an email with the subject “thinking about progressives…”
After the Kerpupple, my initial reaction was that this was something political. But of course it was someone asking about progressive lenses. Whew!
In the year 258, the Goths are laying siege to Trebizond.
Sylvia Sotomayor: I finished Just One Damned Thing After Another late last night.
If one can resist making the nearly-inevitable Connie Willis comparisons, the books in The Chronicles of St. Mary’s series are very enjoyable to read. I like that they skew a bit on the darker side of people than do Willis’ books. Book 6 came out at the end of August; I’m waiting for it to come in at my library.
There are 3 short stories in that universe available free from Audible:
Roman Holiday
When A Child Is Born
Christmas Present
The matching e-books, plus another short story “Ships and Stings and Wedding Rings”, are avaialable on Amazon priced from 68 cents to 95 cents.
@JJ – Thank you! I have already downloaded and started #2 A Symphony of Echoes. I think it is the narrator/point-of-view character’s voice that really makes them for me. And the snarky humor.
There are people who attend Worldcons, often invited guests, who are neither fans nor professional writers — some of the science guests or speakers, sometimes studio flacks who get sent to pick up a Hugo if the Worldcon is in LA, the occasional parent of a kid fan. It’s not a large group, but they are there.
Oooh! I love the Chronicles of St. Mary! And there are a few other (non-SF, but also entertaining) books now available by the same author. However, when I first started reading her, she only had the one book published and it appears that the she shares the name with some sort of porn star, which led to some very interesting google results when I was trying to find if there were any sequels.
Wait, I take it back about her other books not being SF. They do feature a very large golden (and yet invisible) talking horse who smells of ginger biscuits. I guess that qualifies
Ah, the temporal vortex is back! 3848 and all is at peace. We feed on nectar from the queen and are thoughts are less than the ripples on the mercury lake.
John Scalzi: When I became a fan.
ETA: Does this circular linking cause temporal loops? Asking from 8638…
This is a symptom of using Word (or similar) and not being careful. “Smart quotes” (like ‘these’ ones) guess at if they’re opening or closing quotes based on the presence of a character to the left. A standalone ‘, then, get’s turned into an opening, rather than closing, quote.
Also, of being a doofus. It’s getting more and more common in signage/uniforms/etc. for this to occur. The ’67s, ’76ers, ’twas, and other phrases that start with an apostrophe get this a lot. In some circles it’s called ‘an apostrophe catastrophe’, which amuses me. It looks like the engine WP uses for the preview pane and for the real post is different, so I’m editing out some snark..
(In 8137 our typography engines remain troublesome..)
@Devon thanks for the explanation.
Back in 816 we aren’t having any apostrophe catastrophes.
Honestly, I never really felt like part of SF Fandom–I did cons to sell art, and just furry cons for a long time, since you go where the money is, and the occasionally comic book convention, when I started doing webcomics. When I started getting GoH invites, I started going to those cons. I never did a Worldcon until I was actually nominated for an award. (I, um, never heard of Worldcon until then, actually…)
Gradually as I joined SFWA and met other authors, I started running into Fandom, but it felt a bit like a thing I was emphatically not part of–I hadn’t grown up going to cons, I didn’t know what filk was, and I had no strong feelings about Doctor Who.
Ironically, I think I’ve felt more like Part of Fandom hanging out here on File770 than at any point before. And here in 2448, where I have now been in fandom for 433 years, i am grateful!