Zack Be was named the winner of this year’s Jim Baen Memorial Short Story Award Contest for his story “Locus of Control.” The contest has been held annually since 2007 by Baen Books, in partnership with the National Space Society, to discover original stories celebrating optimistic, near-future space exploration.
FIRST PLACE
“Locus of Control” by Zack Be
SECOND PLACE
“Extraction” by Trent Guillory
THIRD PLACE
“Saving Gallivander” by William Paul Jones
Be, a Maryland resident, will be honored at the 2024 International Space Development Conference, in Los Angeles, CA, May 23-26, 2024. In addition to the award, his winning story will be published at Baen.com, paid professional rates, and Be will receive membership in the National Space Society.
Judges for the award were author and space scientist Les Johnson, and the editorial staff of Baen Books, and entries were judged anonymously.
[Based on a press release that wasn’t sent to File 770. Via Locus Magazine.]
What the Jim Baen Memorial Short Story Award looks like.
First launched in 2007, for the past 17 years the Jim Baen Memorial Award has been awarded to realistic hard science fiction about what can be achieved in space exploration in the next few decades, ranging from the colonization of Mars to asteroid mining, with a focus on hard science and optimism.
The contest occurs annually and looks for stories that demonstrate the positive aspects of space exploration and discovery.
The finalists for the 2024 Jim Baen Memorial Short Story Award are:
Entries for the eleventh annual Baen Fantasy Adventure Award contest are being taken now through April 30th, 2024 at 11:59 p.m. Eastern. Full guidelines at the link.
The winners will be officially announced during the Baen Traveling Roadshow at Dragon Con, which is scheduled for August 29-September 2, 2024 in Atlanta, Georgia.
Each entry is limited to an original short story in the English language of no more than 8,000 words, and only one entry per author. Complete guidelines here. Entries will be judged by Baen editors
The GRAND PRIZE winner will be published as the featured story on the Baen Books main website and paid at industry-standard rates for professional story submittals. The author will also receive an engraved award and a prize package containing $500 of free Baen Books.
SECOND place winner will receive a prize package containing $500 of free Baen Books.
THIRD place winner will receive a prize package containing $300 of free Baen Books.
Finalists will be announced no later than July 1, 2024
Winners will be notified no later than July 21, 2024.
Since its beginning the contest has received thousands of entries of fantasy stories from all over the globe.
David Drake in 1994. Photo by and (c) Andrew Porter.
[Thanks to Baen Books for this tribute.]
David Drake, the science fiction and fantasy writer often referred to as “the Dean of Military Science Fiction,” died December 10, 2023, in his home close to Pittsboro, North Carolina. He was 78.
The author or coauthor of over 80 books, he is best known for helping to establish the military science fiction subgenre. Drake’s writing after his Vietnam war experiences is credited with bringing a “grunt’s eye view” to the writing of military science fiction, centering the experience of the soldiers on the ground. His works made an indelible mark on the fields of science fiction and fantasy, and influenced the lives of many veterans and first responders for the better.
Born September 24, 1945, in Dubuque, Iowa, Drake graduated Phi Beta Kappa from the University of Iowa, majoring in history (with honors) and Latin—a subject which would prove a lifelong passion and inspiration for many of his works.
While studying law at Duke University, Drake was drafted into the U.S. Army, where he served as an enlisted interrogator with the 11th Armored Cavalry, the Blackhorse Regiment, in Vietnam and Cambodia. The experience was a defining one for Drake. He described his work—especially his early stories and novels—as a form of therapy, helping him deal with what he had seen during the war. Upon returning stateside and graduating law school, Drake served as assistant town attorney in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, for eight years before turning to writing full time.
David Drake at the 1987 Boskone. Photo by and (c) Andrew Porter.
His first book was the influential Hammer’s Slammers (1979), the first in a series of ten books, drawn largely from his own military experience. In addition to launching Drake’s literary career, the book also marked the beginning of Drake’s association with Jim Baen, which would continue until Baen’s death in 2006. Three of the stories in Hammer’s Slammers were bought by Baen as editor of Galaxy Magazine, and when Baen took over as science fiction editor at Ace Books, he contacted Drake’s agent, asking for additional stories to complete a collection. Drake would follow Baen to Tor and would become one of the first authors to sign with Baen Books when Jim Baen started the company in 1983. Drake’s relationship with Baen Books continued after the death of Jim Baen, with many more works including Drake’s final published novels, the Time of Heroes series.
In addition to the Hammer’s Slammers series, Drake’s work included the RCN series, which were influenced by Patrick O’Brian’s Aubrey–Maturin novels, the Belisarius series, the General series, and the Lord of the Isles series of fantasy novels, as well as the Old Nathan Appalachian stories and many standalone novels, including Starliner and Redliners, both cited by current Baen Books publisher and editor-in-chief, Toni Weisskopf, as personal favorites and exemplars of the best the science fiction genre has to offer. An anniversary edition of Redliners contains samples of the many positive reader responses to that work.
Drake was a collector of pulp magazines and an advocate for the stories that appeared in them. With his friend and fellow author Karl Edward Wagner, Drake founded Carcosa, a short-lived but legendary small press in the mold of Arkham House. With Jim Baen, he curated the Robert E. Howard Library for Baen Books and served as editor of almost a dozen collections of short fiction.
Drake often downplayed his contributions to the field but was honored by author/editor Mark L.Van Name and Baen Books with a tribute volume Onward, Drake! featuring appreciations and new stories influenced by his work. It was released in 2015, the same year Drake was named a special guest at the World Fantasy Convention.
Reflecting on his career in a newsletter to his readers earlier this year, Drake wrote, “I wouldn’t have become a writer if I weren’t a Nam vet. I’ve been asked if you can write military sf if you’ve never served. Of course you can, but I don’t know why you’d want to.”
After a series of health problems, Drake announced his retirement from novel writing in 2021.
He is survived by his wife Joanne (Kammiller) Drake; his son, Jonathan Drake, daughter-in-law April, and his grandson, Tristan Drake, all of Burlington, NC; and one sister, Diana Drake, and her partner David Handler of Old Lyme, CT.
“The Knight, The Witch, and The Farmboy” by C. H. Hung
“The Dreaded Song of Klau” by Jason Lairamore
“Silver Spears and Sea-Songs” by Wendy Nikel
“Fall From Grace” by Melissa Olthoff
“Once Given a Name” by Shami Stovall
Started in 2014, this is the tenth annual Baen Fantasy Adventure Award contest. The award honors stories that best exemplify the spirit of adventure, imagination, and great storytelling in a work of short fiction containing an element of the fantastic, whether epic fantasy, heroic fantasy, sword and sorcery, contemporary fantasy, or historical fantasy. The stories are judged anonymously.
The Grand Prize and Second and Third Place Winners will come from among these finalists.
Those winners will be announced during the Baen Travelling Roadshow at this year’s Dragon Con. Dragon Con will take place from August 31-September 4 in Atlanta, GA. The author of the Grand Prize story receives an award trophy, a prize box filled with Baen merchandise, and paid professional rates for first publication rights. The winning story also will be featured on Baen.com main webpage.
Sean CW Korsgaard, Assistant Editor & Media Relations for Baen Books, recently cast suspicion on SFWA’s 58th Nebula Awards finalists after zero works published by Baen Books made the ballot, offering as support what he claimed was a near-deadline screencap of the Nebula nomination voting tally for Novel showing a Baen author out in front.
Korsgaard expressed his doubts about the results in comments on a Facebook post by author M.A. Rothman who had written, “Well, one might ask, when was the last time any author published by Baen won this so-called award?”
However, Korsgaard’s screencap so strongly resembled the Nebula Awards Suggested Reading list compiled from members’ recommendations that File 770 asked SFWA if that’s what it really is. The Nebula Reading List has been public-facing since 2015 – with a parallel version visible only to members that also contains a tally of how many recommendations works have received.
Rebecca Gomez Farrell, SFWA Communications Director, confirmed the observation.
“The screenshot is from the member-facing version of the Nebula Suggested Reading List, which still shares the number of recommendations with SFWA members. We ask our members not to share internal information/discussions that take place in our online spaces. The screenshot is missing the language at the very top of the page (which is on our public-facing and internal lists) that reads in bold, ‘Please note this list is not the preliminary ballot or nomination tally and does not affect the Nebula Award nominations or final results in any way.’
“The numbers you are seeing on the ‘Total’ column only reflect the number of SFWA members who had recommended (not officially nominated) a work to their fellow members at the given time this internal screenshot was taken. The reading list and the nomination and final ballots are completely different systems.”
To recap, there are:
The reading recommendations, which anyone can see.
The reading recommendation list with a tally of how many members have recommended a work, which is only accessible to members. The screencap Korsgaard presented is from this members-only recommendations list.
Another completely separate system used to track members’ nominating votes.
If Korsgaard is really looking for “a piece I’m missing”, he can find it here.
Baen Books, in partnership with the National Space Society, has announced the 2023 finalists for the Jim Baen Memorial Short Story Award.
First launched in 2007, for the past 16 years the Jim Baen Memorial Award has been awarded to realistic hard science fiction about what can be achieved in space exploration in the next few decades, ranging from the colonization of Mars to asteroid mining, with a focus on hard science and optimism.
The finalists for the 2023 Jim Baen Memorial Short Story Award are:
Zack Be – Maryland, USA
J. M. Eno – New York, USA
Meghan Feldman – Texas, USA
William Paul Jones – California, USA
K. D. Julicher – Nevada, USA
Marshall J. Moore – Georgia, USA
Avery Parks – Texas, USA
Hûw Steer – London, UK
Rudy Vener – Connecticut, USA
Brad Zeiger – Oregon, USA
“The National Space Society and Baen Books applaud the role that science fiction plays in advancing real science and have teamed up to sponsor this short fiction contest in memory of Jim Baen, the founder of Baen Books,” said William Ledbetter, contest administrator. “It’s a wonderful opportunity for the winner to meet scientists and space advocates from around the world.”
Judges for the award were author and space scientist Les Johnson, and the editorial staff of Baen Books, and entries were judged anonymously. The contest occurs annually and looks for stories that demonstrate the positive aspects of space exploration and discovery.
Judge Les Johnson said, “Science fiction can entertain. Good science fiction can entertain and inspire. I was inspired to study physics in large part because as a teenager and young adult, I was reading good science fiction — these stories definitely fall into that category!”
According to Baen publisher Toni Weisskopf, one of the most exciting things about the contest over the past decade has been seeing submissions come from authors from nearly every continent.
“We launched this award with the goal of paying tribute to Jim Baen, and celebrating two of his great passions, space exploration and discovering new authors,” said Weisskopf. “It’s very encouraging to see people from around the world engaged and choosing to write positive stories about our future in space. This year, we had entries from twenty-one countries on five continents.”
This year’s winner will be honored at the 2023 International Space Development Conference, in Frisco, TX, May 25-28, 2023. In addition to the award, the winning story will be published at Baen.com, paid professional rates, and the author will receive membership in the National Space Society.
(1) ART AND THE ARTIST, SEPARABLE? J. P. Brammer’s ¡HOLA PAPI!column gets a letter from someone signed “The Monster” who says, ‘I Hate My Writing Group’.
… At that same meeting, I shared some details about the story I’m writing. It’s a horror story, so some bad things happen to good people. Sometimes the nice intern is going to get murdered by the satanic cult at the office. That’s just how it works. The feedback that I got was pretty weird, and a lot of it was about how I shouldn’t write something that encourages people to do bad things and how writing about that reflects on me. It felt like I was getting dressed down from my mom again after the first time she saw me in all black with eyeliner on. I just nodded and took some notes and didn’t share anything else.
This kind of thing seems to happen a lot with this group. I want to make sure I’m doing good and I’m a good person, and some of what they bring up is very valid, but a lot of it doesn’t feel like it’s offered with helpful intent….
Papi’s reply, in part —
…Incuriosity is thriving at the moment. People seem incredibly proud of publicly renouncing critical thinking in favor of asserting a frustratingly simplistic “thing good or thing bad” mind-set. I think this is due to a confluence of factors, many of them corporate. Identity has been so totally enmeshed with consumer habits that we’ve arrived at the misguided belief that the media we consume should perfectly align with our good politics or else it is evil and an endorsement of our enemies….
Roald Dahl, 2001 vs 2022 editions: In James and the Giant Peach, the Cloud-Men have become Cloud-People, Miss Sponge is no longer “the fat one”, Miss Spider’s head is no longer “black” and the Earthworm no longer has “lovely pink” skin but “lovely smooth skin”. pic.twitter.com/zd4A7uBUbA
(3) SCROOGE MCDUCK, TOO. The Walt Disney Company is removing a chapter from a Scrooge McDuck collection that has black caricatures “as part of its ongoing commitment to diversity and inclusion.”In “The Expurgated Life of Scrooge McDuck”, The Daily Cartoonist’s D. D. Degg associates the decision with the protested changes made to Roald Dahl.
Forget Roald Dahl, Dr. Seuss, even Mark Twain, now they are messing with a true classic of literature. Don Rosa’s The Life and Times of Uncle $crooge is having an entire chapter of his biography deleted….
In that chapter, Uncle Scrooge encounters Bombie the Zombie and Foola Zoola in Africa; both are black caricatures.
Bleeding Fool, not to be confused with Bleeding Cool even if that’s the hope, and which says its mission “may even include pushing back against what we deem as creeping political propaganda, or calling-out cringe-worthy, virtue-signaling that is becoming more and more prevalent in the market and in the medium these days”, also ran an article by Chris Braly who says:
…Obviously the depiction of the zombie is what bothers Disney’s woke-scolds, despite it arguably being less shocking than true life photos of Haitian voodoo priests and houngans that the BBC recently published….
Both articles published examples of the images being removed by Disney. Because of course they did.
(4) START THE BANDWAGON ROLLING. Rich Horton advocates for a potential SFWA Grand Master choice in this Facebook post:
… I’ve previously, in various posts and venues, advocated for the likes of John Crowley, Karen Joy Fowler, Christopher Priest, and M. John Harrison. And there are many further choices (Kim Stanley Robinson, Michael Bishop, Elizabeth Hand … and I could go on.) But today, I’d like to advocate for Nancy Kress. (Please note too that I’m only considering people of, er, a certain age — there are people like, say, N. K. Jemisin, who I consider to be certain Grand Masters — but they aren’t old enough yet. For reference, I believe the youngest person ever named Grand Master was 60 — perhaps that’s a nice round benchmark, though there are no formal rules.)
Nancy Kress turned 75 last month, so she is surely of an age at which she should be considered. She began publishing fiction with “The Earth Dwellers” in the December 1976 Galaxy, and her first novel, The Prince of Morning Bells, appeared in 1981. She has published about 25 novels, plus a Young Adult trilogy as by “Anna Kendall”, and well over a hundred short stories. She has won five Nebulas and two Hugos for her short fiction, and one Campbell Memorial Award for Best Novel; and her stories have been shortlisted for those awards countless times. (Not technically countless, but I’m too lazy to count them!)
But prolific publication and awards are hints of greatness, but not at all proof. The proof is in the reading. I’m tempted to argue that Nancy Kress proved herself a Grand Master with a single story, “Out of All Them Bright Stars” (F&SF, March 1985), which I think is one of the very best SF short stories of all time, about a waitress in a diner who serves an alien visitor, and her boss’s meanness and the alien’s niceness and, most of all, the waitress’s reaction to the whole situation, which is utterly heartbreaking. But of course she’s written many more brilliant stories — “Trinity”, “The Price of Oranges”, “And Wild for to Hold”, “Beggars in Spain”, “The Flowers of Aulit Prison”, “Steamship Soldier on the Information Front”, “End Game”, “Art of War”, “When Nano Came to Clifford Falls” … just to name a few….
Impersonation is an increasingly common tactic employed by the Philippines-based scams that have been taking up so much space on this blog for the past few years.
Impersonating literary agents. Impersonating publishers. Impersonating film producers, directors, and production companies. Impersonation scams extort anywhere from hundreds to tens of thousands of dollars from unwary writers, and damage the reputations of the individuals and companies whose names they falsely use.
A new impersonation scam doing the rounds appropriates the name of a famous bookseller: the Strand Bookstore in New York City.
As is typical with impersonation scams, first contact is via an email that uses a fake address (@thestrandbooks.org) and borrows the real website URL and the names of real people (in this case, current and former Strand staffers) in hopes of tricking the recipient into believing they are really being contacted by the Strand. The claim: the Strand wants to print and stock thousands of copies of your book and give you 80% of sales! All that’s needed to take advantage of this amazing offer is to “contribute” the cost of shipping and handling. The Strand will front the expense of printing….
In January of 2011 we started posting free short stories we thought might be of interest to Baen readers…. This is our compilation of short stories for 2022….
Flops by Michael Mersault The Barcadian Wild by Tim Akers Monsters in Our Midst by Wen Spencer Window on Samovar by D.J. Butler See the Fairville Oddity! by David Afsharirad Man on the Moon by Elaine Midcoh Trouble Is My Business by Mike Kupari Dark Angel by David Carrico On Cultivating a Chosen One by Christopher Baxter The Bloody Dentist by Jacob Holo Fire-breathing Dragon by Dan Koboldt Xmas at ESL1 by Wil McCarthy
China’s sci-fi industry experienced steady growth in 2021, with total revenue reaching 82.96 billion yuan ($12 billion), a 50.5% year-on-year increase, according to the 2022 report released at the 2023 annual conference of the China Science Fiction Research Center on Feb. 18.
The report analyzes the development of the industry in four major areas: reading, film and television, games, and merchandise. It was compiled by the China Science Fiction Research Center, a Beijing-based sci-fi think tank established in 2020, and the Research Center for Science and Human Imagination at the Southern University of Science and Technology.
The sci-fi publishing industry generated overall revenue of 2.7 billion yuan, up 15.4% year on year, while digital reading revenue rose to 1.01 billion yuan, up 34.7% year on year.
Meanwhile, the sci-fi film and television industry saw total revenue of 7.19 billion yuan, up 171.4% year on year, and the sci-fi game industry saw revenue of 67 billion yuan, up 39.6% year on year. The most impressive growth, however, was in the sci-fi derivative products industry, which achieved total revenue of 6.07 billion yuan, up 186.3% year on year.
“The level of accumulation, development, and transformation of original Chinese sci-fi intellectual properties continues to improve, and the market share keeps increasing,” remarked Wu Yan, a sci-fi writer, scholar, professor, and director of the Research Center for Science and Human Imagination at the Southern University of Science and Technology. Wu led the team responsible for compiling the report….
(8) MEMORY LANE.
1958 – [Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]
Fritz Leiber’s The Big Time won a Hugo at Solacon. If it hadn’t I’d have been damn disappointed as it’s one of the best novels ever written.
Now I’ll admit that it does read more like a theatre piece than novel which isn’t at all surprising as the setting and the way the novel is done is such that it could perfectly well make a play. I wouldn’t be surprised if fans at a Worldcon did this…
It was published originally in Galaxy Magazine’s March and April 1958 issues, illustrated by Virgil Finlay, and with the Ace Books edition coming out in 1961. It’s been in print ever since.
I like both reading and listening to it. The best audio version is narrated by Suzanne Tore. It also happens to be the only one that doesn’t cut chunks out of it. The version runs nearly five hours, some run two hours and change. Huh.
And here is the Beginning…
When shall we three meet again, In thunder, lightning, or in rain? When the hurlyburly’s done. When the battle’s lost and won.—Macbeth ENTER THREE HUSSARS
MY name is Greta Forzane. Twenty-nine and a party girl would describe me. I was born in Chicago, of Scandinavian parents, but now I operate chiefly outside space and time—not in Heaven or Hell, if there are such places, but not in the cosmos or universe you know either.
I am not as romantically entrancing as the immortal film star who also bears my first name, but I have a rough-and-ready charm of my own. I need it, for my job is to nurse back to health and kid back to sanity Soldiers badly roughed up in the biggest war going. This war is the Change War, a war of time travelers—in fact, our private name for being in this war is being on the Big Time. Our Soldiers fight by going back to change the past, or even ahead to change the future, in ways to help our side win the final victory a billion or more years from now. A long killing business, believe me.
You don’t know about the Change War, but it’s influencing your lives all the time and maybe you’ve had hints of it without realizing.
Have you ever worried about your memory, because it doesn’t seem to be bringing you exactly the same picture of the past from one day to the next? Have you ever been afraid that your personality was changing because of forces beyond your knowledge or control? Have you ever felt sure that sudden death was about to jump you from nowhere? Have you ever been scared of Ghosts—not the story-book kind, but the billions of beings who were once so real and strong it’s hard to believe they’ll just sleep harmlessly forever? Have you ever wondered about those things you may call devils or Demons—spirits able to range through all time and space, through the hot hearts of stars and the cold skeleton of space between the galaxies? Have you ever thought that the whole universe might be a crazy, mixed-up dream? If you have, you’ve had hints of the Change War.
How I got recruited into the Change War, how it’s conducted, what the two sides are, why you don’t consciously know about it, what I really think about it—you’ll learn in due course.
(9) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.
[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]
Born February 22, 1917 — Reed Crandall. Illustrator and penciller best known for the Forties Quality Comics‘ Blackhawk (later a DC property) and for stories in myriad EC Comics during the 1950s. In the late Sixties, he did the illustration work on King Features Syndicate’s King Comics comic-book version of the syndicate’s Flash Gordon strip. He’s been inducted into Will Eisner Award Hall of Fame. (Died 1982.)
Born February 22, 1925 — Edward Gorey. I’m reasonably sure that his animated introduction to the PBS series Mystery! was my first encounter with him. I will recommend Gorey Cats, The Haunted Tea-Cosy: A Dispirited and Distasteful Diversion for Christmas and The Doubtful Guest. Ok he’s not genre but he’s fun and delightfully weird. Oh, and do go read Elephant House: Or, the Home of Edward Gorey, with superb photographs and text by Kevin McDermott. (Died 2000.)
Born February 22, 1929 — James Hong, 94. Though not quite genre, he became known to audiences through starring in The New Adventures of Charlie Chan in the late Fifties. Genre wise, his first role was in Godzilla, King of the Monsters! voicing Ogata/Serizawa. He then pops up in The Satan Bug as Dr. Yang and next is seen playing Ho Lee in Destination Inner Space. You’ll no doubt recognize Colossus: The Forbin Project where he’s Dr. Chin but I’ll bet you’ve never heard of, oh wait you have, Blade Runner in which he’s Hannibal Chew and Big Trouble In Little China which I love in which he’s wizard David Lo Pan. It’s back to obscure films after that with next up being Shadowzone where he’s Dr. Van Fleet and Dragonfight where he’s Asawa. He’s next in The Shadow as Li Peng but I’ll be damned if I can remember his role and the same holds true for him as Che’tsai In Tank Girl too. He’s Mr. Wu in the very loose adaption of the classic The Day the Earth Stood Still.
Born February 22, 1930 — Edward Hoch. The lines between detective fiction and genre fiction can be awfully blurry at times. ISFDB listed him but I was damned if I could figure out why considering he’s known as a writer of detective fiction who wrote several novels and close to a thousand short stories. It was his Simon Ark character who was the protagonist of Hoch’s first published story and who was ultimately featured in thirty-nine of his stories that made him a genre writer as Ark is the cursed by God immortal doomed to wander forevermore and solved crimes. (Died 2008.)
Born February 22, 1937 — Joanna Russ. Is it fair to say she’s known as much for her feminist literary criticism as her SF writings? That The Female Man is her best-known work suggests my question really isn’t relevant. She was for a long time an influential reviewer for the Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction where I think it would fair to say that you knew clearly what she thought of a given work. (Died 2011.)
Born February 22, 1953 — Genny Dazzo, 70. She attended the first Star Trek Convention in New York. She was later involved in the local SF con, Lunacon. Moving out to LA, she was on the committee for all of the LA Worldcons as well as many Westercons, Loscons, and AnimeLA. Fan Guest of Honor at DeepSouthCon 31 and Loscon 27 (with husband Craig Miller).
Born February 22, 1956 — Philip Kerr.Though better known for his Bernie Gunther series of historical thrillers set in Germany and elsewhere during the 1930s, he wrote several genre friendly works. A Philosophical Investigation is set in a near future UK where it is possible to test for violent sociopathy and the consequences of that. The other is Children of the Lamp, a more upbeat YA series set in London involving djinns and rather obviously young children. (Died 2018.)
Born February 22, 1972 — Duane Swierczynski, 51. Though a mystery writer by trade, he’s also worked as a writer at both DC and Marvel on some very impressive projects. He did writing duties on the second volume of time traveling soldier Cable, penned the Birds of Prey as part of The New 52 relaunch and wrote an excellent Punisher one-off, “Force of Nature”.
Months after a final round of reply briefs was filed, a federal judge is now ready to hear oral arguments for summary judgment in a closely watched copyright case filed by four major publishers against the Internet Archive over its program to scan and lend library books.
In a brief order filed late last week, Judge John G. Koeltl set March 20 at 1 p.m. to hear arguments, which will be heard over the phone rather than in a Manhattan courtroom….
I first saw the art of Ed Emshwiller–though I didn’t know it was Ed Emshwiller–on the cover of William Hope Hodgson’s The House On The Borderland, a book described by a friend and kindred lover of weird writing as “a found manuscript, swine creatures and the swift passing of the universe…is the narrator sane or not?”
As a matter of fact, if you are keen to compile a list of strange stories and terrifying tales, see their list of suggestions in this oldie-but-goodie blog post.
I don’t know if I loved the book, but I was absolutely obsessed with the cover art. And I don’t know what your idea of fun looks like, but for me, I derive fantastic enjoyment in trying to figure out who creates the art that I love–whether that takes the form of hunting down the source of annoying uncredited artwork on Instagram or Facebook, or, in this case, tracking down the artist responsible for decade’s old marvelously lurid cover.
Sistah Scifi is an indie bookstore based in Oakland, California that wants to connect readers to sci-fi and fantasy titles authored by Black and Indigenous writers. To do this, they’ve started to place book vending machines in different cities….
The Terraformers is an endlessly fascinating, deeply thoughtful, provocative hard SF novel set in the deep future, some 60,000 years from now. It interrogates or speculates on intelligence, governance, animal rights (and the definition of animal!), public transit, and of course the process of terraforming. It’s also a sometimes frustrating novel, with a rather broken-backed plot (partly for good reasons), with plenty of built-in assumptions that invite argument, and with an ending that approaches deus ex machina. So what did I think over all? Gosh — you should read it, is what I think!…
Gary Furlong, a Texas-based audiobook narrator, had worried for a while that synthetic voices created by algorithms could steal work from artists like himself. Early this month, he felt his worst fears had been realized.
Furlong was among the narrators and authors who became outraged after learning of a clause in contracts between authors and leading audiobook distributor Findaway Voices, which gave Apple the right to “use audiobooks files for machine learning training and models.” Findaway was acquired by Spotify last June.
Some authors and narrators say they were not clearly informed about the clause and feared it may have allowed their work or voices to contribute to Apple’s development of synthetic voices for audiobooks. Apple launched its first books narrated by algorithms last month. “It was very disheartening,” says Furlong, who has narrated over 300 audiobooks and is one of more than a dozen narrators and authors who told WIRED of their concerns with Findaway’s agreement. “It feels like a violation to have our voices being used to train something for which the purpose is to take our place,” says Andy Garcia-Ruse, a narrator from Kansas City.
The dispute led to a reversal this week from Apple and Findaway, according to labor union SAG-AFTRA, which represents recording artists as well as actors and other creatives. An email to members seen by WIRED said that the two companies had agreed to immediately stop all “use of files for machine learning purposes” for union members affected and that the halt covers “all files dating back to the beginning of this practice.”…
(15) AIR APPARENT. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] An unprecedented glimpse of a distant planet reveals clues about how it might have formed is discussed in five primary research papers in this week’s Nature along with an article “JWST opens a window on exoplanet skies”. The planet is WASP-39b which is in the constellation Virgo, and is about 700 light-years from Earth.
The five teams of researchers used three different instruments on board James Webb Space Telescope — each with its own advantages and shortcomings — but reported largely complementary results on the atmospheric chemistry of WASP-39b, a hot exoplanet with a Saturn-like mass.
In all five investigations, the teams found that elements heavier than hydrogen and helium are more abundant in the atmosphere of WASP-39b than they are in the Sun, whereas the ratio of carbon to oxygen is lower than that of the Sun and commensurate with that of Saturn. These findings offer crucial information about the planet’s formation, the basic composition of its atmosphere and its potential to host life.
If we are now studying the atmospheres of exo-planets 700 light years away, then how long before we detect a bio-signature in an exoplanet’s atmosphere?
New observations of WASP-39b with the James Webb Space Telescope have provided a clearer picture of the exoplanet, showing the presence of sodium, potassium, water, carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide and sulfur dioxide in the planet’s atmosphere. This artist’s illustration also displays newly detected patches of clouds scattered across the planet. Credit: Melissa Weiss/Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian
[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, Chris Barkley, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Andrew Porter, Michael Toman, Cat Eldridge, and Mike Kennedy for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Jim Janney.]
Entries for the tenth annual Baen Fantasy Adventure Award contest are being taken now through April 30th, 2023 at 11:59 p.m. Eastern. Full guidelines at the link.
The winners will be officially announced during the Baen Traveling Roadshow at Dragon Con, which is scheduled for August 31-September 1, 2023, in Atlanta, Georgia.
Each entry is limited to an original short story in the English language of no more than 8,000 words, and only one entry per author. Complete guidelines here. Entries will be judged by Baen editors
The GRAND PRIZE winner will be published as the featured story on the Baen Books main website and paid at industry-standard rates for professional story submittals. The author will also receive an engraved award and a prize package containing $500 of free Baen Books.
SECOND place winner will receive a prize package containing $500 of free Baen Books.
THIRD place winner will receive a prize package containing $300 of free Baen Books.
Finalists will be announced no later than July 1, 2023
Winners will be notified no later than July 21, 2023.
Since its beginning the contest has received thousands of entries of fantasy stories from all over the globe.
(1) GATHERING NOMINATIONS. The BSFA Awards 2022: Longlist Nominations are open. According to their tweet anyone can suggest works. However, only BSFA members have a vote in the outcome.
(2) THE STARS MY QUESTIONATION. LearnedLeague has another SF-related quiz, this one written (“smithed” in LL parlance) by Filer Frasher Sherman. “Invasions From Outer Space: Film and TV” can be found here.
David Goldfarb says 1778 people played the quiz, which is a pretty good turnout for a One-Day.
(3) CALLS FOR HELP. Here are two GoFundMes for SFF writers who need help with medical expenses:
…However, this past week, the doctors found some worrying signs of endometrial cancer and have recommended a full hysterectomy, in addition to the other procedures. The recovery time required and the need to do reconstructive surgery means that I don’t expect to be able to work again for another 6 months to a year.
I was let go from my job when I had my surgery. Since then, my sister’s has been covering all our household expenses but we now find ourselves in a difficult situation.
…My medical costs are mounting with a minimum of two surgeries planned for the next six months and potentially as many as four. The results of my biopsy on November 25, will determine the next phase of my treatment. We’re already in debt and have liquidated our insurance policies to try to keep afloat.
So we’re asking for your help….
James A. Moore: “The Hits Keep Coming”. The appeal at the link contains the grim details, as related by its organizer, Christopher Golden.
…There will be time and many costs involved, but this GoFundMe is really meant only as a bridge to help Jim get to wherever they will end up next. It’s hard to fathom how anyone could endure a string of events like this, but Jim endures. Please help if you can, and if you can’t donate anything, please share with anyone you think will be able to do so….
Erewhon—established in 2018, which boasts a lineup of authors including C. L. Polk, E. Lily Yu, Benjamin Rosenbaum, and Cassandra Khaw—is now an imprint of Kensington. The acquisition includes Erewhon’s backlist as well as their titles coming out through 2024. Editorial oversight will continue under Erewhon Publisher Sarah Guan, with the rest of the Erewhon team also joining Kensington. Starting in 2023, Penguin Random House Publisher Services will begin distributing all of their books….
Erewhon was founded by Liz Gorinsky, who left in March to “pursue other projects”.
The Aliens Are Here: Extraterrestrial Visitors in American Cinema and Television looks at how movies and TV have portrayed Earth’s encounters with beings from other worlds. Each chapter takes a different topic — alien invaders, aliens as refugees, alien/Terran love stories, UFO abduction films, genre mashups — and looks at related films, themes and tropes. Then I spotlight one to three movies or TV shows relevant to the chapter topic. The alien monsters chapter, for instance, has The Thing From Another World, The Thing and The Andromeda Strain.
… As every historian, pro or amateur, knows, history repeats itself. That is, events happen in a cyclical pattern, over and over, in varying lengths of time. The story of history is a reminder even when we think that we’re learning from experience, that learning never seems to stick for more than a generation or two before dissipating into mist. Or, as I like to put it, history repeats itself because it knows we’re not listening. And it will get louder and louder until we do.
Which for the political scientist and pundit may be depressing as hell, but for the historical novelist it’s a candy store just waiting to be plundered. All that wild, wonderful detail you literally couldn’t make up without someone calling hijinks, actually happened….
(7) BAEN SALE. Baen Books’ Veteran’s Day November Ebook Sale is on. Click through for a list of Baen authors with military service and the titles of their ebooks being offered at a $1 discount. Sale ends November 30, 2022. Available wherever Baen Ebooks are sold.
(8) MEMORY LANE.
1934 — [By Cat Eldridge.] Ngaio Marsh’s A Man Lay Dead
I truly love country house mysteries. I truly do. There’s A. E. Milne’s The Red House Murder and Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot’s Christmas as novels and Gosford Park and Knives Out as the modern exemplars of it in films. And here we have a woman born and raised far from Britain, in New Zealand to be precise, with a country house murder.
Ngaio Marsh was born in 1895 Christchurch, New Zealand where she lived until 1928, when she went to London with friends on whom he would base the Lamprey family in the Surfeit of Lampreys novel, her tenth novel to feature Roderick Alleyn. Then after she spent time in both countries.
So let’s us talk about A Man Lay Dead which as I said is a country house murder. It is the first novel to feature Roderick Alleyn, and was first published in 1934 by Geoffrey Bles in London.
The plot concerns a murder committed during a detective game of murder at a weekend party in a country house. But she hasn’t really developed the character of Alleyn yet so another character is focused on.
WE ARE GOING TO TELL A STORY HERE, SO BEWARE!
A small group of guests at Sir Hubert Handesley’s estate including a man about town, several of his nieces, an art expert, a gossip reporter, and pay attention as Marsh makes sure you notice him, a butler of Russian ancestry.
The murder mystery game in which one of the guests is of course chosen to be the murderer and someone to be murdered by him or her. At the time of the murderer’s choice, he tells the victim they’re dead.
At that point, the lights go out, a loud bell rings, and then everyone comes back to together for yet more drinks and to piece together who did it. It is all intended to be a good hearted diversion, except that the corpse is very, very real.
Alleyn has his holiday with Troy to investigate a murder connected to a stolen chalice in the area, but he’s called when this murder occurs at uncle’s estate.
NO MORE STORY TO BE TOLD, SO COME BACK AND I’LL POUR VINTAGE BRANDY
Marsh had being reading a short story by Christie or Sayers, she forgots which, and wondered if she could write a mystery novel set in the Murder Game which was popular at English weekend parties. So she bought some composition books and set down to write.
Marsh regretted this novel immensely once she’d refined her writing skills in years to come. Joanne Drayton noted in Ngaio Marsh: Her life in crime that she would “cringe at the thought of her first novel with its barely plausible story line, shallow characterization and confined setting”.
It would later be adapted for the Inspector Alleyn Mysteries series, the Angela North character here was replaced by Agatha Troy who appears in later novels as Alleyn’s romantic interest and eventual wife.
It, like almost everything Marsh did, is of course available from the usual suspects.
(9) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.
[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]
Born November 3, 1921 — Charles Bronson. He didn’t do a lot of genre acting but I’ve got him in One Step Beyond as Yank Dawson in “The Last Round” and he’s in The Twilight Zone in “Two” as The Man opposite Elizabeth Montgomery as The Women. He was also in Master of The World which is based on the Verne novel Robur the Conqueror and its sequel Master of the World. (Died 2003.)
Born November 3, 1931 — Monica Vitti. She’s best remembered in the English-language movie-going world for her performance as the lead agent in Modesty Blaise. It‘s rather loosely based upon the Modesty Blaise strip by Peter O’Donnell, who co-wrote the original story upon which Evan Jones based his screenplay. (Died 2022.)
Born November 3, 1933 — Ken Berry. He’s receiving Birthday Honors for Disney’s The Cat from Outer Space in which he was Dr. Frank Wilson. No, the cat wasn’t Goose. Nice idea though. And he played seven different roles on the original Fantasy Island. Also, like pretty much everyone else. he was a guest performer on Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In. I know it’s not genre, I just find that amusing. (Died 2018.)
Born November 3, 1933 — Jeremy Brett. Still my favorite Holmes of all time. He played him in four Granada TV series from 1984 to 1994 in a total of 41 episodes. One source said he was cast as Bond at one point, but turned the part down, feeling that playing 007 would harm his career. Lazenby was cast instead. I can’t actually say it’s fact, but it is a great story. (Died 1995.)
Born November 3, 1933 — Aneta Corsaut. If you saw The Blob, the original Fifties version, she was Jane Martin. Her only other genre film work was as an uncredited tourist mother in Blazing Saddles. And unless I’m mistaken, she had no other genre series work at all though she was popular in Westerns. She is best remembered for playing Helen Crump on The Andy Griffith Show. (Died 1995.)
Born November 3, 1952 — Eileen Wilks, 70. Her principal genre series is the World of Lupi, a FBI procedural intertwined with shapeshifters, dragons and the multiverse. Highly entertaining, sometimes considered romance novels though I don’t consider them so. The audiobooks are amazing as well! I re- listened to several of them recently and the steel booted Suck Fairy saw her boots rust away.
Born November 3, 1956 — Kevin Murphy, 66. Best known as the voice and puppeteer of Tom Servo for nine years on the Mystery Science Theater 3000. He was also the writer for the show for eleven years. I’m surprised the series was never nominated for a Hugo in the Long Form or Shot Form. Does it not qualify?
Born November 3, 1963 — Brian Henson, 59. Can we all agree that The Happytime Murders should never have been done? Wash it out of your consciousness with Muppet Treasure Island or perhaps The Muppet Christmas Carol. If you want something darker, he was a puppeteer on The Witches, and the chief puppeteer on Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. And he voices Hoggle in Labyrinth.
(10) COMICS SECTION.
Tom Gauld extols the advantages of shopping at a haunted bookshop.
Black Panther 2 is imminent, but in many ways the extraordinary Neptune Frost is the real Afrofuturist deal: a transgressive socialist Wakanda with an exoskeleton of punk geopolitics bolted on. As well as a denunciation of the western techno-centric order, it’s a musical lesson in conscious collaboration between the developed and developing world that Hollywood could learn from – instead of just piggybacking on African aesthetics. Filmed in Rwanda but set in Burundi, the story was developed by US musician Saul Williams – drawing on material from his recent albums – and his Rwandan wife Anisia Uzeyman; they share the directorial credit…
By Christmas, 50 hardly used FV103 Spartan armoured personnel carriers (APCs), until recently the property of the British army, and currently in warehouses in secret locations across the UK, will arrive on the frontline in Ukraine’s war with Russia in time for the toughest winter conditions.
The transfer, the largest of such APCs to Ukraine, is not due to British munificence nor to procurement by the Ukrainian ministry of defence.
It is instead just the latest example of the extraordinary scale and indeed speed of the crowdfunding campaigns that have been powering the Ukrainian military since the early days of the war.
The fundraising appeal for the armoured vehicles – tagline “Grab them all” – had only been launched on Wednesday by the Serhiy Prytula charity foundation, named after its founder, a popular comedian and TV presenter with a sizeable online following….
(13) JEOPARDY! Unlike tonight’s Jeopardy! contestants, Andrew Porter recognized what the right response should be.
Final Jeopardy: Novel Locales
Answer: This place from a 1933 novel lies in the valley of the Blue Moon, below a peak called Karakal.
Wrong questions: What is the Big Valley?; What is Brigadoon?; What is Xanadu?
Right question: What is Shangri La?
(14) FELINES OF FAME. Can there be any doubt we want to know this? “The 10 Most Famous Cats In Animated TV Shows” according to CBR.com. (I can’t find any I would kick out, but I wish Top Cat was on the list.)
…From the earliest animations, where they were nothing more than silent presence, to the more modern takes, where they have plenty of sasses to share, these felines are more than the fond memories they give their fans. Most people likely have a fictional cat that they remember, and going back to watch the series they’re from can bring nostalgia and a ton of laughs….
(15) DON’T LET IT HANG YOU UP. Rory Cellan Jones explains how cell phones can for the first time take pictures in this 2001 clip from the BBC that dropped today.
(16) VIDEO OF THE DAY. [Item by Martin Morse Wooster.] In “Honest Game Trailers: Stardew Valley,” Fandom Games says this game is so soothing “it’s like Animal Crossing went to therapy.” But the game offers an escape by “having adventures you could never have in real life: owning your own home, forming meaningful relationships, and finding satisfaction in your work.” But if you’re tired of doing chores, head to the underground caves where you can slay demons and dinosaurs!
[Thanks to Michael Toman, Cat Eldridge, Mike Kennedy, Cora Buhlert, David Goldfarb, Martin Morse Wooster, JJ, John King Tarpinian, Chris Barkley, and Andrew Porter for some of these stories. Title debit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Jack Lint.]
