Pixel Scroll 9/22 Several species of small, furry animals gathered together in a cave and scrolling with a pict

(1) Sasquan GoH and ISS astronaut Kjell Lindgren knows what day it is —

It’s Bilbo’s and Frodo’s birthday!

(2) But that’s not today’s only important birthday. Neil Gaiman and Amanda Palmer announced the arrival of their “humble bundle” —

He was born at 8:37 in the morning on September the 16th, which is, I am told, the commonest birthday in the US.  It was a long but rewarding labour. The name on his birth registration is Anthony, but mostly I call him Squeaker. He makes the best noises in the world, mostly squeaks and peeps and snuffles.

Amanda is an amazing mother. I am changing nappies (or diapers, if you are not English) and enjoying it much too much. This is wonderful.

(3) George R.R. Martin has something of his own to celebrate — “A New Record”:

For now, let it suffice to say that the Emmy looks very good in my TV room, and while it IS an honor just to be nominated (as I have been, six times before), it’s even cooler to win.

(4) Today in History:

1986 – The TV show “ALF” debuted on NBC.

2004 – The pilot episode of “Lost” aired.

(5) Run away! Run away! “Burger King’s Halloween Whopper will be its first intentionally frightening burger”:

We’ve seen a lot of scary fast food over the years but now Burger King is reportedly coming out with a new Whopper that’s intentionally frightening. Fast food blog Burger Lad seems to have obtained some leaked pictures of a special Halloween Whopper that will feature pitch-black buns. As you can see in the photo above, this does not look like an appetizing burger — it rather looks as though Burger King has slapped a slab of beef and some vegetables in between two large pieces of charcoal.

 

black-whopper

(6) I don’t like that grub, but I do like this garb!

(7) I’ve been waiting for this – Steve Davidson’s latest look at “The 1941 Retro Hugo Awards (Part 5 — Dramatic Presentation Short Form)”.

So far as radio plays go, there’s plenty to listen to, though again, many of the originals are simply not archived anywhere accessible.  Superman is an obvious choice;  an episode or two from Lux Radio or Mercury Theater may whet your appetite.  Don’t forget to check out the Blue Beetle too, as well as taking the opportunity to compare the Green Hornet’s radio appearances against the serial show.

(8) The “’Star Trek’ virtual tour will recreate every deck of the Enterprise” comes with a nice 12-minute animation.

You’ve probably seen a few attempts at recreating worlds in game engines, but never at this level of detail. Artist Jason B is working on the Enterprise-D Construction Project, an Unreal Engine-based virtual tour that aims to reproduce all 42 decks in the Enterprise from Star Trek: The Next Generation. While it’s not quite photorealistic, the attention to detail in this digital starship is already uncanny — the bridge, shuttle bay and other areas feel like lived-in spaces, just waiting for the crew to return. Jason is drawing on as much official material as he can to get things pixel-perfect, and he’s only taking creative liberties in those areas where there’s no canonical content.

 

(9) Mothership Zeta officially launches in October, but Editor Mur Lafferty, Fiction Editor Sunil Patel, Non-fiction Editor Karen Bovenmyer have posted sample Issue 0 at the website. The magazine will be a quarterly, “crammed with the best, most fun speculative fiction.” Read Issue 0 now, containing work from:

  • Ursula Vernon
  • Rhonda Eikamp
  • John Chu
  • Andrea G. Stewart
  • Elizabeth Hand
  • Bonnie Jo Stufflebeam

(Note: “Jackalope Wives” by Ursula Vernon originally ran in Apex Magazine in 2014.)

(10) The Star of the Guardians Indiegogo Campaign has raised over $20,000. Thanks to our contributors,we can now fund the conceptual artwork and the illustrated storyboard book. We can also ensure that all of our amazing perks will be delivered to all of our contributors.

The goal of the campaign is to raise $55,000.

Star of the Guardians

(11) Joe Haldeman is interviewed by Brian Merchant in “The Author of Our Best SF Military Novel Explains the Future of War”.

Now, it’s becoming closer to reality—3D printers may soon allow anyone with the right hardware to manufacture deadly weaponry at home. Obscene weapons are increasingly obscenely easy to find. “Once we have that access to abundant materials, and anyone can print out a hydrogen bomb, we’re about an hour away from total destruction,” he says. “We are just a hair’s thread away from a large disaster.” The future of war is distributed, in other words. But we are just as ill-equipped to deal with our violent impulses now as we were four decades ago, Haldeman says.

“I don’t think we’ve learned any fundamental thing about solving the problem. We’ve learned more about why people do seek violent solutions,” he says. “That doesn’t mean we have the social mechanism to address it.” His words resonate, depressingly, when you consider that the US now averages one mass shooting per day, and that the trend is only accelerating upwards.

“We have people who just go down to the K-mart and just buy ammunition, and they could kill a few dozen people before we can do anything,” he says. “[M]ore brute force is available to individuals, with no obvious improvement in the individual’s ability to responsibly apply that force. Or decide not to use it.” War, it seems, has been distributed.

Hence the forever warring, in smaller theaters.

(12) “Hear Radio Dramas of Isaac Asimov’s Foundation Trilogy & 7 Classic Asimov Stories” at Open Culture.

If you’re thinking that the epic scale of Asimov’s sprawling trilogy—one he explicitly modeled after Edward Gibbon’s multi-volume History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire—will prove impossible to realize on the screen, you may be right. On the other hand, Asimov’s prose has lent itself particularly well to an older dramatic medium: the radio play. As we noted in an earlier post on a popular 1973 BBC adaptation of the trilogy, Ender’s Game author Orson Scott Card once described the books as “all talk, no action.” This may sound like a disparagement, except, Card went on to say, “Asimov’s talk is action.”

(13) The supermoon lunar eclipse happens this weekend:

The supermoon lunar eclipse of 2015 will occur Sunday, Sept. 27, and is a confluence of three events: a full moon; a lunar eclipse, in which the Earth blocks the sun’s light from hitting the moon; and lunar perigee, when the moon is in the closest part of its orbit to Earth. The last time such a confluence happened was in 1982; there were just five instances of it in the 20th century. This time around, viewers looking from the Americas, Europe, Africa, western Asia and the eastern Pacific Ocean will have a chance to see the show.

(14) A new Mars exploration tool — “’Mars Trek’ Is Google Earth for the Red Planet” on Motherboard.

If you are one of the thousands of people who would like to start a new life on Mars, you might want to get an early start on scouting out some premium real estate options. Fortunately, NASA has created a new Google-Earth-style web app for the red planet, providing the Mars-eyed among us with a way to virtually explore their fantasy destinations in stunning detail.

“Working with our expert development team at [the Jet Propulsion Laboratory], we have just released our latest product, Mars Trek,” said NASA project manager Brian Day in a video about Mars Trek released today. According to Day, this “web-based portal allows mission planners, scientists, and the general public to explore the surface of Mars in great detail as seen through the eyes of a variety of instruments on a number of spacecraft.”

… Beyond these experiments, you can also calculate the trip time between two points on Mars, explore the adopted homes of NASA rovers and landers, and, if you are feeling really ambitious, 3D-print full sections of the online map. Day and his team also plan to add more features soon, including speculations about landing sites for future projects like the Mars 2020 rover.

 

[Thanks to Martin Morse Wooster, JJ, Will R., and John King Tarpinian for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day GSLamb.]

310 thoughts on “Pixel Scroll 9/22 Several species of small, furry animals gathered together in a cave and scrolling with a pict

  1. Congrats Jon and Cat!

    Brackets:

    Goblin Emperor

    Night Watch
    (I can’t decide on 2&3 here, so didn’t put them)

  2. 1. RAVEN KINGS, GOBLIN EMPERORS
    Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, Susanna Clarke

    2. DRAGONS, DEMONS, DESPOTS
    1. Night Watch, Terry Pratchett
    2. Paladin of Souls, Lois McMaster Bujold
    3. Tooth and Claw, Jo Walton

  3. 1. RAVEN KINGS, GOBLIN EMPERORS
    Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, Susanna Clarke
    The Goblin Emperor, Katherine Addison

    This actually lead to a lengthy and painful internal discussion

    2. DRAGONS, DEMONS, DESPOTS

    1. Night Watch, Terry Pratchett
    2. Paladin of Souls, Lois McMaster Bujold

  4. 1. RAVEN KINGS, GOBLIN EMPERORS
    Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, Susanna Clarke

    2. DRAGONS, DEMONS, DESPOTS
    Night Watch, Terry Pratchett

    Much pain. Can’t bear to talk about it. Just, there’s the votes. I need a drink.

  5. @Cheryl: You’re truly not the only one who didn’t love JS&MN, I’m another (I didn’t get wall-throwy, though). That damn prophecy, for one thing; just like almost any other prophecy, it’s a pointless shaggy-dog story.

  6. Vasha: @Cheryl: You’re truly not the only one who didn’t love JS&MN, I’m another (I didn’t get wall-throwy, though). That damn prophecy, for one thing; just like almost any other prophecy, it’s a pointless shaggy-dog story.

    I started JS&MN four years ago, as part of my quest to read all Hugo and Nebula nominees and winners. I read the first couple of chapters, and my reaction was essentially “WTF is this??? And how the hell did it get on the Hugo ballot, never mind actually winning?”

    I’m going to give it another try at some point, because I’ve seen a lot of people say that they loved it — but when I’ve got piles of books I know I want to read, forcing myself to pick it up again is something for which I’m not finding a lot of motivation.

  7. 21ST CENTURY FANTASY, ROUND FIVE

    1. RAVEN KINGS, GOBLIN EMPERORS
    Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, Susanna Clarke

    2. DRAGONS, DEMONS, DESPOTS
    Night Watch, Terry Pratchett
    And no preference after that

    Easy! Because all my other favourites got booted 🙁

    Edit for JJ: The only way I got far enough into JS&MN was that it was the only book I had available to me on a long-haul flight. Once it grabbed me, I finished the whole thing in a couple of days.

    But then again it may just not be for you.

  8. I had three people highly recommend JS&MN, so I kept trying to stick with it, hence the wall throwing. A lot of it is the language, but some of it is that I could never reach even a moment of suspension of disbelief and not many books can survive that.

    It has been reassuring to know I’m not alone in my despite.

  9. JS&MN tends to annoy me for about the first hundred pages.
    Then suddenly it totally works.
    I don’t think it’s a plot thing, I think it is just getting okay with the voice.
    (And, weirdly, it was also true the second reading.)

  10. Cheryl S.: It has been reassuring to know I’m not alone in my despite.

    I know — when I see all the love that’s being lavished on it by Filers, I keep wondering what the hell is wrong with me.

  11. I think JS&MN is marmite; quite a few of us didn’t like it or couldn’t be bothered to finish it, and everyone else appears to have loveloveloved it.
    Unlike Some People, however, I don’t think that just because we disagree on whether it’s a “work of genius” or a “why bother” that that means that people who disagree with me are lying about their taste.
    “It’s a good thing that tastes differ, or think of the oatmeal shortage.”

  12. Re the urge to chuck:

    Has this happened to you? You’re reading a new book, and you have a sudden desire to introduce Mr. Book to Mr. Wall. At high velocity. Is it the cardboard characters? The intrusive message? The pathetic world building? The wordy but unspecific setting? Perhaps it’s the plot hole big enough to sail interstellar dreadnoughts though in line abreast. Perhaps the eight deadly words “I don’t care what happens to these people” have come unbidden to your lips. Maybe it’s just pompous verbosity or excessive weapons porn.

    Traditionally, this is followed by the consoling thump of the book hitting the wall and a moment of healthy catharsis. But what if you are using an e-reader or, worse yet, your computer?

    Introducing ScapeBook™!

  13. Cally: I don’t think that just because we disagree on whether it’s a “work of genius” or a “why bother” that that means that people who disagree with me are lying about their taste.

    I do! I think they are all just saying they love it to drive me crazy and convince me that I’m insane! 😉

  14. 1. RAVEN KINGS, GOBLIN EMPERORS
    The Goblin Emperor, Katherine Addison
    I would be willing to accept Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell as a superior book in peoples’ minds, because it does some amazing things, it is astonishingly readable for a tome that length and a style that ornate, it’s even more clever about footnotes than Pratchett… and I just didn’t love the characters, and I found several events therein painfully frustrating, as people half-regularly shoot themselves, and their fellows, in the feet. By contrast, I felt a great fondness for Maia’s world, where kindness is genuinely a redeeming trait, and I felt it, too, was splendidly written, and new in some ways (and the ways it was not new were clearly in dialogue with those tropes rather than thoughtlessly incorporating them. )

    2. DRAGONS, DEMONS, DESPOTS
    2. Night Watch, Terry Pratchett
    1. Paladin of Souls, Lois McMaster Bujold
    3. Tooth and Claw, Jo Walton
    My copy of Tooth and Claw has been living on a friend’s bookshelf as it’s a book I love to press on people and beg they read. So for it to come in number three it a testament.

  15. 1. The Goblin Emperor

    2. Tooth and Claw at #1
    Abstain on the other two.

    And because it is still the 15th anniversary of when I Wed my love (Kevin Hogan, who has been known to post here), I will let cry our File 770 yawp: “Bridge of Birds!”

  16. Tough choices all around. But that’s only to be expected at this stage.

    First: Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell. Because I love Maia, but I love Stephen Black more.

    Second: 1. Paladin of Souls. 2. Tooth and Claw. 3. Night Watch.

  17. Cally, pleased send one case of forehead cloths soonest.

    1. RAVEN KINGS, GOBLIN EMPERORS
    Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, Susanna Clarke
    The Goblin Emperor, Katherine Addison

    screaming in agony

    2. DRAGONS, DEMONS, DESPOTS
    (3) Night Watch, Terry Pratchett
    (1) Paladin of Souls, Lois McMaster Bujold
    (2) Tooth and Claw, Jo Walton

    fainted dead away

  18. Jim Henley: The elitist clique is out of touch with the silent majority of you!

    Damn straight! I hereby announce

    The Sad Possums Campaign

    Because it is blindingly obvious that Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell only made the Hugo ballot and won because a Sekrit Kabal composed of a very small minority of people who didn’t actually like the book, but say that they did, because it advances their message of something something something, I am leading the charge of the Silent SuperMajority to have this book retroactively removed from the Hugo records, and Iain M. Banks’ The Algebraist will henceforth be declared the 2005 Hugo Best Novel winner.

    (Yes, I know that River of Gods by Ian McDonald got more votes, but that is also fiction which pushes the Sekrit Kabal’s heinous message, and besides, *I* the Silent SuperMajority likes The Algebraist better, anyway.)

    Rise up, O Silent SuperMajority of JS&MN haters, and help me to smite Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell off the Hugo record books! We shall hang by our tails and play dead until the Sekrit Kabal are forced to admit their foul deeds and acquiesce to a record change!!!

    (campaign logo is still at the printer’s)

  19. JJ on September 23, 2015 at 8:59 pm said:

    Jim Henley: The elitist clique is out of touch with the silent majority of you!

    Damn straight! I hereby announce

    The Sad Possums Campaign

    I assumed that ‘Sad Possums’ would be the name to get some Australian’s a Hugo but I see from the ‘hanging by their tails’ comment your possums are the North American variety.

    I fear though your campaign will invoke the wrath of the Raven King.

  20. Les votes:

    1. The Goblin Emperor, Katherine Addison

    2. (1) Paladin of Souls, Lois McMaster Bujold, (2) Night Watch, Terry Pratchett,

  21. I don’t think I qualify as silent, ever, but I like possums, so I’m in. I’m a bit worried over who will take on the job of announcing they’re one of the finest writers of their generation, because that’s apparently a thing when you rise up against the boot of Whatever (or whatever).

    ScapeBook™ is an idea of staggering genius. Putting my e-reader down with a pfffft of disgust isn’t nearly so satisfying as thwacking the wall.

  22. 1. RAVEN KINGS, GOBLIN EMPERORS
    Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, Susanna Clarke

    2. DRAGONS, DEMONS, DESPOTS
    Night Watch, Terry Pratchett

  23. RANKED votes!? How did I miss that? Obviously reading comprehension has been lost to encroaching senility.

    So change my rankings:

    1. RAVEN KINGS, GOBLIN EMPERORS
    The Goblin Emperor, Katherine Addison

    2. DRAGONS, DEMONS, DESPOTS

    1. Paladin of Souls, Lois McMaster Bujold
    2. Night Watch, Terry Pratchett
    3. Tooth and Claw, Jo Walton

  24. 1. Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, Susanna Clarke

    2. (1) Night Watch, Terry Pratchett
    (2) Tooth and Claw, Jo Walton

  25. JS&MN tends to annoy me for about the first hundred pages.
    Then suddenly it totally works.
    I don’t think it’s a plot thing, I think it is just getting okay with the voice.
    (And, weirdly, it was also true the second reading.)

    I had a very tough time with it the first time I tried it, and gave up about 100 pages in.

    The second try, I loved it. I think it was because I was prepared for the voice and the pacing, so I was expecting it to proceed like it did — and I found I not only appreciated what was there (as opposed to being frustrated that it wasn’t matching my previous expectations), but that it was one of my favorite books ever.

    I love it. So full of cranky, foolish, fallible people dealing with cranky, fallible magic. Like Austen’s work, it has affection for its characters, even as it shows them to have feet of clay.

    What a great book.

  26. 1. RAVEN KINGS, GOBLIN EMPERORS
    Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, Susanna Clarke
    The Goblin Emperor, Katherine Addison

    2. DRAGONS, DEMONS, DESPOTS
    Night Watch, Terry Pratchett
    Paladin of Souls, Lois McMaster Bujold

    Tooth and Claw, Jo Walton

    I know we can do a ranked vote, I just refuse to choose between the two.

  27. Camestros Felapton on September 23, 2015 at 9:08 pm said:

    JJ on September 23, 2015 at 8:59 pm said:

    Jim Henley: The elitist clique is out of touch with the silent majority of you!

    Damn straight! I hereby announce

    The Sad Possums Campaign

    I assumed that ‘Sad Possums’ would be the name to get some Australian’s a Hugo but I see from the ‘hanging by their tails’ comment your possums are the North American variety.

    I fear though your campaign will invoke the wrath of the Raven King.

    That’s why it’s Sad Possums. The Raven King will think they’re already dead when he sees them lying there, inertly sprawled.

  28. @Lauowolf: ROFL – I love “Filers of London”! Thanks for posting that. 😀

    I haven’t read enough of these final books (shocking) to vote. Though this reminds me, it may be a criminal offense that I haven’t read Walton’s Tooth and Claws, so I have to add this to the to-buy list, methinks . . . eek!

  29. I definitely intend to see the movie. There seem to be several London residents here. This sounds like it might make for an opportunity to … watch a movie in the company of strangers you’ve exchanged a few words with on the internet? Or something.

    I’m game.

  30. 1. RAVEN KINGS, GOBLIN EMPERORS
    Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, Susanna Clarke
    The Goblin Emperor, Katherine Addison

    Both of them were kind of boring. However, JS & MN had a much better beginning, so I’ll go for that one. It could have been really good if they cut out one third of the pages.

  31. I just finished The Traitor Baru Cormorant last night, and it was spectacular. Reading this . . . xvaq bs sryg yvxr orvat fgnoorq, ohg va n tbbq jnl? Vs gung znxrf frafr? V xrcg guvaxvat gb zlfrys “Ab, gung pna’g unir whfg unccrarq. Vg pna’g. VG PNA’G. Bxnl, fb gung jnf greevoyr, ohg V guvax V pna fgvyy cerqvpg ubj guvf jvyy raq . . . naq V JNF JEBAT BU QRNE TBQ AB UBJ PBHYQ GUNG UNCCRA AB AB AB”. V qba’g guvax V’ir ernpgrq yvxr guvf gb n obbx fvapr V svefg ernq N Fbat bs Vpr naq Sver—gung fbeg bs “snagnfl gebcrf qvpgngr K, ohg gur nhgube vf n ivpvbhf naq pnaal yvggyr onfgneq, fb teno lbhe xvggra cvpf, pnhfr lbh’yy arrq gurz nsgre frrvat jung guvf thl unf va fgber sbe lbh” glcr bs guvat.

    I must have read more bastard writers than you because I was never surprised. I am a bit meh about Baru, and I really wanted to like it.

  32. RAVEN KINGS, GOBLIN EMPERORS
    The Goblin Emperor, Katherine Addison

    Really loved TGE. Tried and could not get into Clarke. Same experience with the tv series, btw.

    No vote in the second category.

  33. @JJ

    Count me in as a supporter if Sad Possums! I haven’t read either of the other finalists you mentioned, so I’ll just vote for whatever you do. If you can’t trust a fellow opponent of JSMN, who can you trust?

  34. 1. The Goblin Emperor

    2. Night Watch

    Never saw what all the fuss was about Bujold.

    And, as LunarG says, a cheerfully inappropriate vote for Bridge of Birds. Happy Anniversary!

  35. Damn straight! I hereby announce

    The Sad Possums Campaign

    I agree there is a sekrit kabal. But Possums… Have you ever cleaned up after a possum caught in the humane pet trap you were trying to use to catch your runaway cat? Stinking, gross, hard to clean up. I’m just not sure I can join a group called sad possums could we do chittering squirrels instead?

    Edited to add: happy anniversary LunarG and Kevin

  36. 1. RAVEN KINGS, GOBLIN EMPERORS
    The Goblin Emperor, Katherine Addison
    Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, Susanna Clarke (This could well be coming down to “most recently read”, but my gut is giving it to TGE by a nose)

    2. DRAGONS, DEMONS, DESPOTS
    Tooth and Claw, Jo Walton
    Night Watch, Terry Pratchett
    Paladin of Souls, Lois McMaster Bujold

  37. Bracket-a, bracket-a, bracket-a.

    21ST CENTURY FANTASY, ROUND FIVE

    1. RAVEN KINGS, GOBLIN EMPERORS
    Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, Susanna Clarke
    The Goblin Emperor, Katherine Addison

    2. DRAGONS, DEMONS, DESPOTS
    3 Night Watch, Terry Pratchett
    2 Paladin of Souls, Lois McMaster Bujold
    1 Tooth and Claw, Jo Walton

  38. Tasha Turner: I’m just not sure I can join a group called sad possums could we do chittering squirrels instead?

    No, no — the whole point of possums is that we can play dead, and then blame it all on the Sekrit Kabal!

  39. 1. RAVEN KINGS, GOBLIN EMPERORS
    Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, Susanna Clarke

    2. DRAGONS, DEMONS, DESPOTS
    Night Watch, Terry Pratchett

  40. JJ
    Because it is blindingly obvious that Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell only made the Hugo ballot and won because a Sekrit Kabal composed of a very small minority of people who didn’t actually like the book, but say that they did, because it advances their message of something something something,

    No, no, there is no Sekrit Kabal.
    There is no conspiracy.
    I laugh little laughs, ha ha.
    See, nothing up this sleeve…

    It’s just, you try to read the book.
    Maybe you read about a hundred pages.
    And then you fall asleep, right by that big, big—
    Dd I say it was a really BIG? book.

    In the morning you look just the same, and no one can tell any difference.
    But somehow overnight you have become someone who loves JS&MN.

    Join us.

  41. 1. The Goblin Emperor, Katherine Addison
    Maia (and Csethiro) forever!

    2.
    1. Night Watch, Terry Pratchett
    2. Tooth and Claw, Jo Walton

  42. 1. RAVEN KINGS, GOBLIN EMPERORS
    Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, Susanna Clarke

    2. DRAGONS, DEMONS, DESPOTS
    1 Paladin of Souls, Lois McMaster Bujold
    2 Tooth and Claw, Jo Walton
    3 Night Watch, Terry Pratchett

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