Pixel Scroll 1/13/24 Doctor Who And The Scrolls Of Pixeldon

(1) USPS TO ISSUE D&D STAMPS. [Item by Daniel Dern.] “New DnD Stamps Celebrate Game’s 50th Anniversary | D&D News (dungeonsanddragonsfan.com) at Dungeons and Dragons Fanatics.

Over the years the Dungeons & Dragons brand has appeared in countless places, with everything from t-shirts and playing cards to video games and big screen Hollywood films. Now, the legendary RPG is coming to an envelope near you as a series of exclusive DnD stamps from the United States Postal Service (USPS) that are being released to commemorating the 50th anniversary of the legendary TTRPG.

So get ready to roll a saving throw versus shipping and handling, as we take a closer look at these unique collectibles.

The news also in also Item 1 of the USPS press release: “U.S. Postal Service Reveals Additional Stamps for 2024”.

Dern quips: “One of the USPS’s packaged sets will come with special dice that you can use when bringing D&D-stamped letters, packages, etc to a post office counter, for the opportunities including of free upgrade to a higher (faster) service delivery level; reduced total price (for packages, etc); even getting back 1 or 2x fresh stamps. (However, unlucky rolls can delay or fail delivery, damage your package, etc.)”

Additionally, when these stamps are used, the USPS is inserting phrases [1] to its (unofficial) [2] motto (which, I’m assuming, isn’t a guarantee):

…nor dragons, illithids, quicksand, vortexes, Balrogs, orcs, triffids, feral flat cats, time storms, falling space elevators, sandworms, Black Bolt sneezing, hamburglers, or dramatic readings by Harlan Ellison, [shall etc.]

[1] I’m not a D&Der, though continue to play NetHack, so I’m drawing from my more general sf/comics reading, etc.

[2] Which turns out to be older than I would have thought, per the USPS (“Postal Service Mission”, “About that motto”) and the Wikipedia.

(Editor’s note: File 770 reported about these stamps before, but Dern’s version is more fun.)

(2) NEXT ITEM ON THE AGENDA. “Dracula writer Bram Stoker revealed as a humble minute taker for actor charity” in the Guardian.

…The imagination of Bram Stoker gave life to one of literature’s most enduring terrors, Count Dracula. But the Irish-born writer’s mind was not only full of flapping cloaks, dripping fangs and creaking coffins. Stoker, it can now be confirmed, also had a strong vein, or shall we say streak, of bureaucratic efficiency running through his personality.

Researchers working for the Actors’ Benevolent Fund, the charity that supports actors and stage managers in need, have discovered that the minutes of its founding meeting, back in 1882, were taken by Stoker. It has now been confirmed that the handwriting matches documents held by the University of Bristol Theatre Collection, with images of the notes released this weekend….

(3) OLD SPARKY. Author Gareth L. Powell looks at the damage solar activity could wreak on terrestrial infrastructure in “Sci-Fi Eye: The wrong kind of sunshine” at The Engineer.

… When the charged particles from a coronal mass ejection hit the Earth’s atmosphere, they cause a geomagnetic storm that can disrupt radio transmissions and damage power lines. The most famous recorded example of this is the Carrington Event of 1859, which disabled the US telegraph network, causing fires and electric shocks. More recently, in 1989, a geomagnetic storm disrupted power distribution in Quebec and caused aurorae as far south as Texas.

If another large coronal mass ejection hit the Earth today, our satellites would most obviously be at risk, and the intense radio emissions and magnetic effects could disrupt our satellite-based communication, weather, and GPS networks. At the same time, the energetic ultraviolet radiation would heat the Earth’s atmosphere, causing it to expand and increase the drag on those satellites, shortening their orbital lifetimes.

A severe event could also knock out power and disrupt electronic hardware, perhaps even causing errors and data loss as charged particles flip ones to zeroes and vice versa.

According to New Scientist, the most powerful solar storm ever to have hit us may have occurred 14,300 years ago, leaving a huge spike in radioactive carbon in tree rings from the time. So far, evidence has been discovered for nine more of these ‘Miyake’ events. Should one occur today, it could destroy all our satellites and potentially disable energy grids for months….

(4) QUITE A HANDFUL. Lisa Tuttle reviews these five books for the Guardian’s “The best recent science fiction and fantasy – reviews roundup”: Three Eight One by Aliya Whiteley; The Glass Woman by Alice McIlroy; The Principle of Moments by Esmie Jikiemi-Pearson; The Knowing by Emma Hinds; Thirteen Ways to Kill Lulabelle Rock by Maud Woolf.

(5) NOT JUST “A VAST WASTELAND”. The Guardian reminds everyone about the television programs with the greatest impact on the UK: “From the Post Office scandal to nuclear attack: 13 TV shows that shook Britain”. Terry Pratchett featured in one of them.

The War Game (BBC, 1966)

Unusually among the most influential TV shows, Peter Watkins’ simulation of a nuclear attack on the UK – made at the peak of the cold war – was not shown for 19 years. BBC bosses feared it would show viewers the futility of preparations for armageddon and its physical reality: evaporating eyeballs, rats outnumbering people in the streets. Counterintuitively, the show’s banning – supposed to reduce mass panic – led Britons to suspect that atomic war must be even worse than they had thought….

Terry Pratchett: Choosing to Die (BBC Two, 2011)

A major debate of the next few years will surely be the right to elective death for the terminally ill. Celebrities recently joining this campaign – Esther Rantzen, Susan Hampshire – would acknowledge that they follow the brave trail of Terry Pratchett, the great fantasy novelist, who faced the harsh reality of death in an impeccable documentary in which he travelled to meet people intending to manage their exits and, with a terminal diagnosis of his own, examined the options. Because of Pratchett, this film will be seen as moving the dial on the question of self-determination….

(6) NASA NOT SCREWED AFTER ALL. [Item by Mike Kennedy.] After more than three months, NASA has finally managed to open the OSIRIS-Rex sample return cylinder from asteroid Bennu. They had to invent, and test, a new tool to safely remove a couple of screws as a workaround for the stuck top of the container. “NASA can finally touch the ‘rarest’ rocks on Earth” – and Mashable breathes a sigh of relief.  (Photos at the link.)

Two little screws almost ruined the ending of NASA‘s seven-year space journey to asteroid Bennu and back.

But after more than three months of trying to pry the lid off a can containing the bulk of rocks and dust from the asteroid, engineers have finally done it. To remove the stuck top, they made and tested new tools that could safely unscrew the fasteners without damaging the precious sample.

So far the science team has only seen grainy cell phone pictures of the sample, said Andrew Ryan, a co-investigator on the NASA mission, but better photos are expected next week….

(7) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

Born January 13, 1977 Orlando Bloom, 47. Speaking of The Lord of The Rings: The Fellowship of the Rings, let’s talk about Orlando Bloom who I think magnificently played  Legolas here and in the other five Jackson Tolkien films.  Mind you this is one of the reasons I didn’t watch The Hobbit films as he wasn’t in the novel, was he? 

So what else for genre work? Well there’s being Will Turner in the Pirates of the Caribbean film series. I’ve seen just the first but I immensely enjoyed it and thought he was quite good in it. 

Orlando Bloom in 2013.

Carnival Row which sounds like someone read Bill Willingham’s Fables and crossed it with a police procedural has him as Rycroft “Philo” Philostrate, an inspector of a Constabulary. It’s on Amazon, and I’d checking out.

He was the Duke of Buckingham in The Three Musketeers. Yes, I consider it genre. 

He was Tommy Hambleton was in Needle in a Timestack, script  by John Ridley from the Robert Silverberg story which first was published  in the June 1983 issue of Playboy.

He has a single mystery to his name, a Midsomer Murders, “Judgement Day” in which he plays Peter Drinkwater, a petty thief who gets murdered. I mention this because acting on that series is a coveted affair indeed in Britain. 

(8) COMICS SECTION.

  • Pickles discusses what C.S. Lewis used to call “chronological snobbery.”
  • Rhymes with Orange has a timely warning. (Get it?)
  • Tom Gauld depicts a whole range of people who show up at the library assistance desk.

(9) DEMANDING OUR ATTENTION. AV Club scores the publicity of our two Star ___ franchises in “Star Trek races to announce it’s getting a new movie too, okay?”

Although there’s been a fair amount of ink spilled, over the last few years, about the ways Disney’s Star Wars movie franchise kind of fell off a cliff in the immediate aftermath of The Rise Of Skywalker, it’s worth remember that Star Trek has had it a hell of a lot worse. Although Trek’s television fortunes are doing pretty great at the moment—four series and counting, mostly well-received, right now—the series has been in retreat at the box office for fully eight years at this point, after the under-performance of 2016’s Star Trek: Beyond. (To the point that franchise star Chris Pine—a Major Movie Star!—has said more than once than he has absolutely no clue whether he still has that job, for all that the official line is that “Star Trek 4” is still in “active development.”)

But in the wake of Star Wars making noises this week indicating that it’s getting back into the movie-making tauntaun saddle with a film based on its beloved Mandalorian characters, we guess Star Trek needed to remind everybody that it’s still out there, potentially dominating the box office, too. Per Deadline, Paramount has let it be known that it’s started working with J.J. Abrams’ Bad Robot on a new Star Trek movie, even poaching some talent from the competition by hiring Andor’s Toby Haynes to direct. (Seth Grahme-Smith is writing, although details about the plot/concept/etc. are, unsurprisingly, zilcho at the moment.)…

(10) ALIEN GOES HOLLYWOOD. The Business podcast brings listeners “’Fargo’ creator Noah Hawley on season 5 and adapting ‘Alien’ for TV” at KCRW.com. Here are the topics covered in the 11-minute program.

Fargo creator Noah Hawley’s FX anthology series is just wrapping up its fifth critically acclaimed season. He still has more ideas for the show, and in spite of the ongoing upheaval in Hollywood, Hawley says he believes gifted creators will always be able to tell their stories. 

“Every generation has its masterpieces. You know, we had masterpieces before the golden age of television, and we’ll have masterpieces afterwards. It’s our responsibility to make them and to trick these corporations into paying for us to make them, right?” Hawley says. 

The Emmy-winning writer also talks to Eric Deggans about his upcoming television adaptation of Ridley Scott’s Alien franchise, and explains why he thinks people are getting tired of densely plotted shows on TV — including season 4 of Fargo, which had 23 main characters. 

(11) WHAT HAPPENS TO A RABBIT IN PUBLIC DOMAIN. Animation World Network anticipates “Nostalgic Horror Flick ‘Oswald Down the Rabbit Hole’ to Begin Filming this Spring”.

Lilton Stewart III, award-winning American filmmaker and creator of November 11th Pictures, has teamed with producer Lucinda Bruce on Oswald Down the Rabbit Hole, a film that will capture the magic of iconic cartoon characters through the lens of horror. The feature, described as Who Framed Roger Rabbit meets Nightmare on Elm Street, is set to begin filming in Spring 2024, with an announcement teaser trailer releasing this month.

Oswald follows main character Art and some of his closest friends as they track down his long-lost family lineage. When they find his Great-Grandpa Oswald’s abandoned home, they are transported to a place lost in time, shrouded by dark Hollywood Magic. The group finds that they are not alone when the cartoon Rabbit, a dark entity, comes to life. Art and his friends must work together to escape their magical prison before the Rabbit gets to them first….

“Much like Pooh, Tigger, and Mickey Mouse, the Oswald character entered the public domain on January 1, 2023. Originally owned by Disney, control of the cartoon rabbit shifted to Universal in 1928, leading to the creation of Mickey Mouse to compensate for the loss. Nothing says ‘copyright expiration’ like a horror reimagining!”

(12) LOST CITIES ARE A SORT OF MINOR FANTASY AND SF TROPE. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.]  The front cover of this week’s Science journal has “Two thousand years of garden urbanism in the Upper Amazon”.

The urban core of the Sangay archaeological site shows artificial earthen platforms and dug streets distributed along the edge of the cliffs flanking the Upano River. Recent investigation revealed a dense system of pre-Hispanic urban centers in the Upano Valley of Amazonian Ecuador, in the eastern foothills of the Andes. This discovery changes the perception of the Amazon’s ancient human past.

The primary research is here:

When intact, the Amazonian forest is dense and difficult to penetrate, both on foot and with scanning technologies. Over the past several years, however, improved light detection and ranging scans have begun to penetrate the forest canopy, revealing previously unknown evidence of past Amazonian cultures. Rostain et al.describe evidence of such an agrarian Amazonian culture that began more than 2000 years ago. They describe more than 6,000 earthen platforms distributed in a geometic pattern connected by roads and intertwined with agricultural landscapes and river drainages in the Upano Valley. Previous efforts have described mounds and large monuments in Amazonia, but the complexity and extent of this development far surpasses these previous sites.

(13) A ROCKET WITH THE MUNCHIES. [Item by Mike Kennedy.] “Watch this rocket ‘eat’ its own body for fuel” at Popular Science. (“Ouroboros-3 Hybrid Autophage Rocket Engine Test (Composite)”.)

…Collaborators from the University of Glasgow say they have debuted the first successful, unsupported autophage (Latin for “self-eating”) rocket engine prototype. Revealed earlier this week during the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics SciTech Forum, the Ouroboros-3—named after the ancient Egyptian symbol of a snake eating its own tail—utilizes its own body as an additional fuel source. In a video of the tests, the Ouroboros-3 can be seen shrinking in length as its body is burned away during a simulated launch….

(14) FIND OUT WHAT YOU MISSED IN 2023. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] The Northern hemisphere’s academic year’s, spring edition of SF2 Concatenation is now up.


New , SF2 Concatenation has its spring* season edition. It includes the season’s full news page, with its Film News;  Television News;  Publishing News;  General Science News  and  Forthcoming SF Books from major British Isles SF imprints for the season, among much else.  Separately SF2 Concatenation has a couple of stand-alone articles and convention reports. Plus there is the usual tranche of stand-alone book reviews.  Something for every SF enthusiast and/or science bod.
* ‘Spring’ season here being the northern hemisphere, academic year spring.

In the news page mix SF2 Concatenation has its annual bit of fun with our selection of ‘Best SF’ books and films of the previous year, 2023.  This is also on SF2 Concatenation’s Best SF Books and Films archive, so you can see whether any of their previous years’ choices went on to win major SF awards. (Of course it is too early to see how our latest – 2023 – selection fares.)

Time to sit down at the PC, open the lap top or pad and explore the news page and its links to trailers and videos as well as science papers.

For details of / links to the new content, scroll down to beneath ‘Most recently added‘ below.

FORTHCOMING

Mid-March will see the first of the zine’s four ‘Best of Nature ‘Futures’ short, short SF stories of the year.  If you want to check out past stories in this series the Best of Nature ‘Futures’ archive is here.

Most recently added

v34(1) 2024.1.15 — New Columns & Articles for the Autumn 2024

v34(1) 2024.1.15 — Science Fiction & Fantasy Book Reviews

v34(1) 2023.1.15 — Non-Fiction SF & Science Fact Book Reviews

(15) VIDEO OF THE DAY. A forgotten classic: “ Snoopy’s Christmas vs. The Red Baron”.

[Thanks to, Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Steven French, Mike Kennedy, Kathy Sullivan, Andrew Porter, John King Tarpinian, and Chris Barkley for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Andrew (not Werdna).]

Pixel Scroll 2/1/22 Pixelled In The Scroll By A Chuck Tingle Pixel Scroll Title

(1) MAKING MAUS AVAILABLE. Shelf Awareness says one Tennessee bookseller is crowdfunding the means for local students to read Maus in the wake of a school board decision: “Tenn. Comic Shop’s Maus Fundraiser Garners $90K”.

After the McMinn County Board of Education in Tennessee voted to ban Art Spiegelman’s graphic novel Maus, about the Holocaust, from its eighth-grade curriculum last week, Nirvana Comics in Knoxville, Tenn., started a GoFundMe campaign to provide students with free copies of the graphic novel.

… The [Jewish Telegraphic Agency] reported that Penguin Random House negotiated a deal to sell 500 additional copies of Maus to Nirvana at a reduced price to give away to students. Actor Wil Wheaton shared Nirvana’s story on social media, and “that’s when it really, really exploded,” Davis said. 

The GoFundMe campaign opened on January 28 with a goal of $20,000; as of this morning it had raised more than $90,000, from more than 2,800 donors. Although Nirvana Comics initially had planned to provide copies to local students, they will now donate copies to students anywhere in the U.S.

Students can request a copy of Maus from the store on Facebook or Instagram.

(2) AFROFUTURISM IN LEGO. CNN Style invites you to “Meet the Ghanaian Canadian Lego sculptor building a Black universe”. (The Official LEGO Shop also has a feature on the same artist in “Celebrate Black Creators”.)

…In his “Building Black: Civilizations” series, Nimako reimagines medieval sub-Saharan African narratives. His “Kumbi Saleh 3020 CE” piece, which is made up of around 100,000 Lego bricks and can be found in the Aga Khan Museum in Toronto, is named after the capital city of a medieval Ghanaian kingdom. The artist explores medieval West Africa and reimagines what it would look like 1,000 years in the future.

Nimako hopes for an “inclusive future” that acknowledges the history of anti-Black racism and how “utterly disruptive” it is, and recognizes the role of Afrofuturism in allowing people to “envision a better world.”

“My wife always says, ‘all movements of resistance are rooted in that imagination.’ You have to imagine the freedom, the emancipation. You have to imagine this struggle being over. You have to project that in order to rise up, in order to resist. What else are you resisting for, if not for that Promised Land?” he said. “Even art is a form of resistance and it’s been used as a form of resistance for a very long time.”…

(3) BEST PUNISH THE WORLDCON HUGO. What do you think about “An Anti-Raytheon Protest Vote at This Year’s Hugos?” Doris V. Sutherland is working to make it happen.

…Before I should go on, I should mention that the practice of nominating short, emotive pieces like acceptance speeches or angry blog posts in Best Related Work — thereby taking spots that could have gone to longer works which took time, effort and research to construct and will better stand the test of time — is itself controversial. My views are conflicted. I would generally agree with this stance (my personal solution would be to split Best Related Work into long-form and short-form categories) but I have considerably stronger feelings about the deal with Raytheon. So, while I would like to see this Best Protest Vote practice to end, I don’t beleive that 2022 is the right year for it to end. I would like to see a Hugo ballot this year that includes an uncompromising renunciation of last year’s Raytheon sponsorship….

(4) LASFS HISTORY ZOOM. Fanac.org’s “Spring History Zoom” schedule is now up here. The first session is “Death Does Not Release You – LASFS Through the Years” with Craig Miller (M), Tim Kirk, Ken Rudolph and Bobbi Armbruster, on February 26, 2022, at 4:00 p.m. To RSVP, or find out more about the series, please send a note to [email protected].

LASFS is unique – in its history and impact on fandom. LASFS has a clubhouse, a long list of professional writers that have been members, and has had an incredibly active fan group over the decades. Los Angeles area fandom has produced innumerable fanzines, six Los Angeles Worldcons (and many other conventions). Join us for a session with our real world AND fannishly accomplished participants – convention runners (including a Worldcon chair), a noted fan and professional artist, and a fanzine editor, all past or present LASFS members – in conversation about Los Angeles fandom from the inside.

(5) A READY PLAYER. On Twitter, Ira Alexandre is ramping up the campaign to get the Worldcon to add a Best Video Game category. They foreshadow “a full-length, more detailed explanation” forthcoming on Lady Business. Thread starts here.

(6) PIECES OF EIGHT. Cora Buhlert posted a new Fancast Spotlight today, this time for Octothorpe, which is created by John Coxon, Alison Scott, and Liz Batty: “Fancast Spotlight: Octothorpe”

Alison: I have been wanting to do a podcast ever since the very beginning of podcasts, but it turns out that if you want to do a podcast, you have to find someone who’s daft enough to do the editing for you. Because otherwise podcasts don’t happen, do they? So if you want to run your own podcast the core thing you need is somebody who’s up for doing the editing.

Liz: I didn’t have any desire to be on a podcast, or to start a podcast, or really to do any work around a podcast. But John had asked me “Do you want to do a podcast?” and I said, “Maybe?” And then there was a coronavirus, and now I literally have nothing else that I need to be doing on a Sunday afternoon, so let’s do a podcast! And I am just constantly amazed that we have made it almost 50 episodes, and there appear to be at least ten people actually listening.

(7) KANE ADAPTATION ANNOUNCED.  [Item by Cora Buhlert.] According to The Hollywood Reporter, there is an adaptation of Karl Edward Wagner’s Kane novels and stories in the works: “Action Fantasy ‘Kane’ Adaptation in the Works From Vertigo”. Personally, I’d be happy if there was a decent print edition of the Kane novels and stories available again. Also, my inner pedant bristles at calling the Kane stories epic fantasy, because they’re sword and sorcery.

Kane is very able for producers Roy Lee, Andrew Trapani and Steven Schneider.

The trio has secured the adaptation rights to the long-sought-after series of Kane fantasy novels and short stories by cult fantasy author Karl Edward Wagner.

…Kane’s adventures take place in a visceral world steeped in ancient history, with bloody conflicts and dark mysteries. Wagner wove gothic horror elements into this pre-medieval landscape, taking Kane on fantastic sagas involving war, romance, triumph and tragedy.

(8) ONE READER’S APPROACH. Tika Viteri tells “How I’m Decolonizing My Sci-Fi Reading” at Book Riot.

… One of the ways I am working to decolonize my science fiction reading is to diversify it. White cisgender male authors are vastly over-represented in science fiction, and they come from the dominant gender and race of the English-speaking world, whether they are consciously buying into the narrative or not. A good way to mitigate that narrative is to read it from different perspectives, and those perspectives are usually written by authors who are either non-white and/or not male.

If you haven’t yet read the Binti trilogy of novellas by Nnedi Okorafor, it is an excellent place to start. As an author, she specifically identifies with Africanfuturism, which is a genre (along with Afrofuturism) that has been regularly blowing my mind since I was introduced to it. Our heroine, Binti, has been accepted at a prestigious university off-planet, but her journey is interrupted when her ship is attacked and she is the only survivor. The series handles interspecies biases, what it means to broker peace, and what happens when the fate of worlds rests on the shoulders of one young woman. Reviews are full of phrases like “ground-breaking” and “unique,” and I wholeheartedly agree….

Another of Viteri’s recent articles for Book Riot is “Literary Scandals: Who Was the Real-Life Dracula?”

… [Bram] Stoker famously kept to himself, editing his public image ruthlessly. In contrast to [Oscar] Wilde, and perhaps in reaction to what he perceived to be Wilde’s recklessness regarding his sexual exploits, he retreated farther and farther into the closet, going so far as to say in 1912 that all homosexuals should be locked up — a group that definitely, in retrospect, included himself.

(9) MEMORY LANE.

1971 [Item by Cat Eldridge] Fifty-one years ago at Noreascon where Robert Silverberg was Toastmaster and Clifford D. Simak (pro) and Harry Warner, Jr. (fan) were Guests of Honor with Tony Lewis as the Chair, Larry Niven won the Hugo for Best Novel for Ringworld. It was published by Ballantine Books in October of 1970. 

Other nominated workers were  Poul Anderson’s Tau Zero, Robert Silverberg’s Tower of Glass, Wilson Tucker‘s The Year of the Quiet Sun and Hal Clement’s Star Light

It would also win the Locus, Nebula and Ditmar Awards. Locus would later include Ringworld on its list of All-Time Best SF Novels before 1990.

Algis Budrys found it in his Galaxy Bookshelf column to be “excellent and entertaining, woven together very skillfully and proceeding at a pretty smooth pace.” 

It would spawn three sequel novels with The Ringworld Engineers nominated for a Hugo at Denvention Two which was the year Joan D. Vinge’s The Snow Queen won and a prequel series, Fleet of Worlds which was co-written with Edward M. Lerner. (I really like the latter.) One film and three series have been announced down the decades but none to date have been produced. Indeed Amazon announced this as a series along with Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash and Greg Rucka’s Lazarus five years ago but none got developed. 

(10) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

  • Born February 1, 1884 Yevgeny Zamyatin. Author of We, a dystopian novel. He also translated into into Russian a number of H.G. Wells works and some critics think We is at least part a polemic against the overly optimistic scientific socialism of Wells. The Wiki writer for the Yevgeny Zamyatin page claims that We directly inspired Nineteen Eighty-FourThe Dispossessed and Brave New World. No idea if this passes the straight face test. What do y’all think of this claim? (Died 1937.)
  • Born February 1, 1908 George Pal. Producer of Destination Moon (Retro Hugo at Millennium Philcon), When Worlds CollideThe War of the Worlds (which I love), Conquest of SpaceThe Time MachineAtlantis, the Lost ContinentTom ThumbThe Time MachineAtlantis, the Lost ContinentThe Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm7 Faces of Dr. Lao (another I love)and his last film being Doc Savage: The Man of Bronze which is not so great. Can we hold a George Pal film fest, pretty please? (Died 1980.)
  • Born February 1, 1942 Terry Jones. Member of Monty Python who was considered the originator of the program’s structure in which sketches flowed from one to the next without the use of punchlines. He made his directorial debut with Monty Python and the Holy Grail whichwas nominated for a Hugo at MidAmeriCon, which he co-directed with Gilliam, and also directed Life of Brian and The Meaning of Life. He also wrote an early draft of Jim Henson’s 1986 film Labyrinth, though little of that draft remains in the final version. Let’s not forget Lady Cottington’s Pressed Fairy Book by Brian Froud and him which won a Hugo at Intersection for Best Original Art Work. (Died 2020.)
  • Born February 1, 1942 Bibi Besch. Best remembered for portraying Dr. Carol Marcus on The Wrath of Khan. Genre wise, she’s also been in The Pack (horror), Meteor (SF), The Beast Within (more horror), Date with an Angel (romantic fantasy) and Tremors. She died much, much too young following a long battle with breast cancer. (Died 1996.)
  • Born February 1, 1946 Elisabeth Sladen. Certainly best known for her role as Sarah Jane Smith on Doctor Who. She was a regular cast member from 1973 to 1976, alongside the Third Doctor (Jon Pertwee) and Fourth Doctor (Tom Baker), and reprised her role down the years, both on the series and on its spin-offs, K-9 and Company (truly awfully done including K-9 himself) and The Sarah Jane Adventures (not bad at all). It’s not her actual first SF appearance, that honor goes to her being a character called  Sarah Collins in an episode of the Doomwatch series called “Say Knife, Fat Man”. The creators behind this series had created the cybermen concept for Doctor Who. (Died 2011.)
  • Born February 1, 1954 Bill Mumy, 68. He’s had a much longer career in the genre than even I knew. And I probably overlooked something. His first genre roles were at age seven on Twilight Zone, two episodes in the same season (Billy Bayles In “Long Distance Call” and Anthony Fremont in “Its A Good Life”). He makes make it a trifecta appearing a few years later again as Young Pip Phillips in “In Praise of Pip”.  Next for him he played an orphaned boy in an episode of Bewitched called “A Vision of Sugar Plums” and then Custer In “Whatever Became of Baby Custer?” on I Dream of Jeannie, a show he revisited a few years as Darrin the Boy in “Junior Executive”. Ahhh his most famous role is up next as Will Robinson in Lost in Space. It’s got to be thirty years since I’ve seen it but I still remember and like it quite a bit. He manages to show up next on The Munsters as Googie Miller in “Come Back Little Googie” and in Twilight Zone: The Movie In one of the bits as Tim. I saw the film but don’t remember him.He’s got a bunch of DC Comics and Marvel roles as well — Young General Fleming in Captain America, Roger Braintree on The Flash series and Tommy Puck on Superboy. He’s Lennier, one of the most fascinating and annoying characters in all of the Babylon 5 Universe. Enough said. I hadn’t realized it it but he showed up on Deep Space Nine as Kellin in the “The Siege of AR-558” episode. Lastly, and before our gracious Host starts grinding his teeth at the length of this Birthday entry, I see he’s got a cameo as Dr. Z. Smith in the new Lost in Space series. 
  • Born February 1, 1965 Brandon Lee. Lee started his career with a supporting role in Kung Fu: The Movie, but is obviously known for his breakthrough and fatal acting role as Eric Draven in The Crow, based on James O’Barr’s series. Y’ll know what happened to him so I’ll not go into that here except to say that’s it’s still happening and damn well shouldn’t be happening, should it? (Died 1993.)

(11) STAND BY FOR NEW. “DC is re-writing all of its major events since the ’80s with a stunning reveal in Justice League Incarnate #4”GamesRadar+ broadcasts the warning.

If you’ve read any of the big DC Comics superhero events from 1985’s Crisis on Infinite Earths to now, everything you know is about to change.

In February 1’s Justice League Incarnate #4, DC’s de facto chief writer Joshua Williamson and co-writer Dennis Culver have re-contextualized the major events in DC multiversal history from the ’80s to now. Although this Justice League Incarnate limited series has been a story unto itself, it continues to move pieces around on DC’s ‘big picture’ chessboard towards another Crisis-level event in the very near future.

Anything more we could say on Justice League Incarnate #4 would be spoilers, so…

(12) THE PANELS THROUGH TOMORROW. Jared Shurin has harnessed the power of modern computing to spew forth the commonest denominators in convention programming since the A-bomb went off. Thread starts here.

(13) MOST POPULAR VIEWS. While we’re waiting for someone to produce Sanctuary Moon, here’s what people are enjoying according to JustWatch.

Top 10 Sci-Fi Movies and TV Shows in the US in January (01.01.-31.01.22)

Rank*MoviesTV shows
1Ghostbusters: AfterlifeStation Eleven
2DuneA Discovery of Witches
3Free GuyResident Alien
4Spider-Man: HomecomingPeacemaker
5Spider-Man: Far From HomeThe Book of Boba Fett
6EternalsArchive 81
7Don’t Look UpGhosts
8The Amazing Spider-ManSnowpiercer
9Spider-ManThe Expanse
10Venom: Let There Be CarnageDoctor Who

*Based on JustWatch popularity score. Genre data is sourced from themoviedb.org

(14) LOOK OUT BELOW. “Nasa reveals how it will destroy International Space Station at the end of its life” reports MSN.com.

…The plan assumes that lifespan will come to an end in January 2031. But the work to do so could start a year or more in advance, when the International Space Station’s orbit starts to fall towards the Earth.

Because of the ISS’s vast size, it will not burn up in the atmosphere, and so its descent will have to be precisely controlled in order to be safe. Nasa hopes to do so by gradually manoeuvring the spacecraft so that it drops down to Earth.

Those manoeuvres will be done partly by using the propulsion built into the ISS, as well as by the vehicles that visit. Nasa says that it has already examined the visiting vehicles for whether they would be able to provide enough thrust to help with the de-orbit – and found that a number of them do, with work continuing to expand that list further.

Eventually, the track of the space station’s fall will be lined up so that the space station will fall towards what it calls the “South Pacific Oceanic Uninhabited Area”, or SPOUA. That area is known as the “oceanic pole of inaccessibility” since it is the part of Earth furthest from land – and it is so remote that often the closest human beings are the International Space Station’s astronauts as they float overhead.

Nasa will aim for a specific region known as “Point Nemo”, which is not only remote but almost entirely uninhabited….

(15) LOFTY CONCERNS. Here’s something else you don’t want to be under if it drops out of the sky. WIRED’s Rhett Allain is worried about “What Happens If a Space Elevator Breaks”.

…OK, back to the space elevator. If we can’t build a tower from the ground up, we can hang a 36,000-kilometer cable from an object that’s in a geostationary orbit. Boom: That’s the space elevator.

To get this to work, you would need a large mass in orbit—either a space station or a small asteroid. The mass has to be large so that it doesn’t get pulled out of orbit every time something climbs up the cable.

But perhaps now you can see the problem with a space elevator. Who wants to make a 36,000-kilometer-long cable? For a cable that long, even the strongest material, like kevlar, would have to be super thick to prevent it from breaking. Of course, thicker cables means more weight hanging down below, and that means the higher parts of the cable have to be even thicker to support the cable below. It’s a compounding problem that seems essentially impossible. The only hope for the future of space elevator construction is to figure out how to use some super strong and lightweight material like carbon nanotubes. Perhaps we will make this work someday, but that day is not today.

What About a Falling Elevator Cable?

In the first episode of Foundation, some people decide to set off explosives that separate the space elevator’s top station from the rest of the cable. The cable falls to the surface of the planet and does some real damage down there.

What would a falling space elevator cable look like in real life?….

(16) SHIELDS UP! Here’s a clip of what 2021’s Dune would look like with 1984 technology.  Which, if you’re as old as I am, you maybe thought you’d already seen. From the Corridor Crew.

(17) VIDEO OF THE DAY. [Item by Martin Morse Wooster.] In “Honest Trailers: The Witcher, Season 2,” the Screen Junkies say that there’s a lot of grunting and deep signs in season 2 of “The Witcher,” but characters are obsessed with how bad they smell (tying into that Old Spice ad!) and much of the series has “a plot line as boring as the phrase ‘elf migration crisis’ would imply.”  The narrator is bothered by the character growth in the show because “I haven’t grown since eighth grade!”

[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, Andrew Porter, Michael Toman, Rob Thornton, Soon Lee, N., Chris Barkley, Daniel Dern, Will R., Brian Z., Cora Buhlert, Cat Eldridge, Mike Kennedy, Martin Morse Wooster, and JJ for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Jon Meltzer.]

Pixel Scroll 10/29/18 Pixel Was The Doctor. The Croll’s Name Was Pixel’s Croll

(1) THE ORVILLE RETURNING. The second season of The Orville premieres December 30 on Fox.

THE ORVILLE is a live-action, one-hour space adventure series set 400 years in the future that follows The Orville, a mid-level exploratory spaceship. Its crew, both human and alien, face the wonders and dangers of outer space, while also dealing with the familiar, often humorous problems of everyday life.

 

(2) ABOUT TIME. TV Line says the farewell episode of Timeless will air on December 20: “Timeless Series Finale Gets Air Date, EPs Promise ‘Unforgettable Thrill Ride Through Past, Present and Future'”.

NBC is giving Timeless fans an early Christmas gift: The cancelled drama’s two-hour series finale will air on Thursday, Dec. 20 at 8/7, the network announced on Friday.

According to the press release, executive producers Eric Kripke, Shawn Ryan and Arika Lisanne Mittman are “promising fans an epic, unforgettable thrill ride through the past, present and future, with a healthy dose of Christmas spirit. Spread across three centuries and two continents, the finale will test Lucy, Wyatt and the entire Time Team like never before as they try to #SaveRufus, preserve history and put a stop to Rittenhouse once and for all.”

Returning cast members include Abigail Spencer, Matt Lanter, Malcolm Barrett, Goran Višnji?, Paterson Joseph, Sakina Jaffrey and Claudia Doumit

(3) KGB. Fantastic Fiction at KGB reading series hosts Ellen Datlow and Matthew Kressel present Leanna Renee Hieber and Cat Rambo on November 21:

  • Leanna Renee Hieber

Leanna Renee Hieber is an award-winning author, actress and playwright who has written twelve Gothic, ghostly Gaslamp Fantasy novels for Tor and Kensington Books such as the Strangely Beautiful series, The Eterna Files, the Magic Most Foul trilogy and The Spectral City series. Her work has been featured in many notable anthologies and translated into many languages. A veteran of stage and screen, Leanna works as a Manhattan ghost tour guide for Boroughs of the Dead. http://leannareneehieber.com

  • Cat Rambo

Cat Rambo is the author of two novels, the most recent of which is Hearts of Tabat, five collections, 200+ stories, several non-fiction works, and co-editor of one cookbook. A Nebula Award, World Fantasy Award, and Endeavour Award nominee, she is also a two-term President of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America and runs online school The Rambo Academy for Wayward Writers.

Things begin Wednesday, November 21st, 2018, 7 p.m. at KGB Bar, 85 East 4th Street (just off 2nd Ave, upstairs.) New York, NY.

(4) VAMPIRE RESEARCH. Bram Stoker marked up library books but these librarians aren’t upset. The Bookseller has the story — “London Library finds Bram Stoker’s source books”.

The London Library says it has located a number of the actual books used by Bram Stoker in researching his novel Dracula.

Stoker’s own notebooks list a wide range of the author’s sources for Dracula, including hundreds of references to individual lines and phrases in books that he considered relevant. A recent trawl of the London Library’s bookshelves has revealed that the Library has original copies of 26 of these books, and many of them carry detailed markings that closely match Stoker’s notebook references – whether crosses and underlinings against relevant paragraphs, or page turnings on key pages, or other notations – and which the library believes were made by Stoker himself.

…Philip Spedding, the library’s development director, and the man who uncovered the books’ annotations, commented: “Bram Stoker was a member of The London Library but until now we have had no indication whether or how he used our collection. Today’s discovery changes that and we can establish beyond reasonable doubt that numerous books still on our shelves are the very copies that he was using to help write and research his masterpiece.”

(5) HOW TO AMEND THE LAWS OF NATURE. Steven Sottong tells SFWA Blog readers why this job is not that bleepin’ easy in “Suspension of Disbelief”.

I’d even gotten as far as figuring out about gravity. If you accelerate at 1G for the first half of the voyage, turn the ship around and decelerate at 1G for the last half, you always have gravity and it’s always in the same direction. But if you stop accelerating at some point in the voyage, you end up with zero G which is highly disruptive. So if I can’t accelerate and decelerate the entire voyage, then all or part of the ship must spin to create an artificial gravity with centripetal force. Unfortunately, the direction of the artificial gravity is at right angles to the direction of acceleration, so you have to rotate all of the living quarters of the ship to keep the floor where floors normally go — a major pain. Additionally, I found out at a presentation at the 2018 WorldCon that centripetal force doesn’t behave like natural gravity, meaning I needed to adjust many of the scenes in the story.

(6) MYTHCON 50 GOHS. These are your guests of honor for Mythcon 50 in San Diego:

  • John Crowley will be our Author GOH (“Little, Big” – won the Mythopoeic Fantasy Award in 1982; “KA: Dar Oakley in the Ruin of Ymr” – won the Mythopoeic Fantasy Award this past summer, 2018).
  • Verlyn Flieger will be our Scholar GOH (“A Question of Time: J. R. R. Tolkien’s Road to Faerie”, “Tolkien’s Legendarium: Essays on The History of Middle-earth”, and “Green Suns and Faërie: Essays on J.R.R. Tolkien” – all winners of the Mythopoeic Scholarship Award for Inklings Studies – in 1998, 2005, and 2013).

(7) THRILLING TSUNDOKU TALES. By O. Westin —

(8) WHO COMIC BEGINS. Titan Comics’ Thirteenth Doctor comic series debuts November 7.

Taking control of the TARDIS for this regeneration is an amazing new team: Eisner-nominated writer Jody Houser (Stranger Things, Mother Panic, Faith, Spider-Man), illustrator Rachael Stott (Doctor Who, Motherlands), and colorist Enrica Angiolini (Warhammer 40,000).

(9) SCIENCE FICTION/DOUBLE FEATURE: Jason got caught in a bit of a time warp over at Featured Futures and only recently finished Summation: September 2018 with its lists of reviews and recommended readings:

Apologies for taking so long to finish what I read for this month. I ended up reading 90 stories of about 533K words. That netted fourteen noted stories (four recs), with Lightspeed’s special issue, Asimov’s, Analog, and Galaxy’s Edge contributing multiple tales.

But you don’t have to shiver with antici… pation for Summation: October 2018 as it’s been completed on time:

October was fairly light in both total and noted stories. Counting a couple of late September stories in the month’s first Wrap-Up, there were 37 of the former, weighing in at about 207K words, and a half-dozen of the latter at about 41K (with two recommendations of 7K). Somewhat unusually, Nature and CRES produced the recommended tales, with a science fantasy from Lightspeed and a trio of BCS fantasies from one of its anniversary issues getting the honorable mentions

(10) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge and JJ.]

  • Born October 29, 1906 – Fredric Brown, Writer who produced a handful of novels and a prodigious number of short works which have been translated into more than a dozen different languages, and are known for their use of humor and for the mastery of the “short-short” form. One of his stories, “Arena”, was the basis for an episode of the original Star Trek series. Four of his stories have been finalists for Retro Hugo Awards, and a collection of his stories translated into Spanish won a Premio Ignotus. He has been credited as an influence for a wide range of well-known SFF authors, from Philip K. Dick and Robert A. Heinlein to Neil Gaiman and Stephen King. In 2012 he was the recipient of the Cordwainer Smith Rediscovery Award. History records that he was an SJW with a Siamese cat named Ming Tah.
  • Born October 29, 1935 – Sheila Finch, 83, Writer and Linguist from England who emigrated to the U.S. in her early 20s. She won the Compton Crook Award for her first novel, Infinity’s Web. She is best known for her Guild of Xenolinguists series; one of its novellas, Reading the Bones, won a Nebula Award, and she is credited with coining the term “xenolinguist”, a title used for Uhura in the Star Trek reboot movies. She served as Vice-President of SFWA and Chair of their Grievance Committee for five years, is a founding member of the Asilomar Writers Consortium, and has been Guest of Honor at several conventions, including a Balticon.
  • Born October 29, 1938 – Ralph Bakshi, 80, Animator, Writer, and Director from Israel who started as a low-level animator at Terrytoons, studio of characters such as Heckle and Jeckle and Mighty Mouse. His first major break was as creative director for CBS on Mighty Mouse and the Mighty Heroes, fast-forwarding to Fritz the Cat (which may or may not be genre, but it’s got a talking cat). Genrewise, I’d say he’s most noted for the Hugo finalist Wizards which features voice work by Mark Hamill and for which the name was changed from War Wizards, so that it wouldn’t be confused with you-know-what film. Next up was the Hugo-nominated The Lord of the Rings, a very odd affair, followed by by Fire and Ice, a collaboration with Hugo-winning artists Frank Frazetta. Then came what I considered his finest work, the Mighty Mouse: The New Adventures series! He created the animated series Spicy City, which was SF noir with lots of sex and violence, and got cancelled after six episodes. Then there’s Cool World… His career work was recognized with an Annie Award for Distinguished Contribution to the Art of Animation.
  • Born October 29, 1941 – Hal W. Hall, 77, Librarian, Writer and Member of First Fandom who is best known for his nonfiction bibliographies and indexes of genre works. His Science Fiction and Fantasy Reference Index, 1985-1991 was computerized in 2000 and put online as the Science Fiction and Fantasy Research Database; it currently indexes more than 113,000 items about SF and fantasy. His work has been recognized with the Science Fiction Research Association’s Pilgrim Award and their Thomas D. Clareson Award, First Fandom’s Sam Moskowitz Archive Award, and the J. Lloyd Eaton Memorial Award, given by the UC-Riverside Eaton Collection’s foundation to honor contributions of lasting significance to the field.
  • Born October 29, 1954 – Paul Di Filippo, 64, Writer and Critic. Ciphers: A Post-Shannon Rock-n-Roll Mystery was his first work. He is, I’d say, an acquired taste. I like him; for first-time readers, I’d suggest The Steampunk Trilogy and go from there. His A Year in the Linear City was a finalist for Hugo Award for Best Novella, a World Fantasy Award, and the Sturgeon Award. He’s one of genre’s stellar reviewers, having reviewed at one time or another for Asimov’s Science Fiction, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Science Fiction Eye, The New York Review of Science Fiction, Interzone, Nova Express, and Science Fiction Weekly. His work has received numerous nominations for BSFA, Nebula, World Fantasy, Philip K. Dick, Tiptree, Sidewise, and Premio Ignotus Awards, and he has won a British Science Fiction Award and the Prix Imaginaire.
  • Born October 29, 1967 – Rufus Sewell, 51, Actor from England who is currently appearing as Reichsmarschall John Smith in The Man in The High Castle, which is loosely based on the 1962 novel of the same name by Philip K. Dick. He was the lead in Dark City, a film which is often compared to the Matrix films, but which actually preceded them. He’s also appeared in The Legend of Zorro, Arabian Nights, Hercules, Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, A Knight’s Tale, Mermaid Chronicles, The Illusionist, and the U.S. version of the TV series Eleventh Hour.
  • Born October 29, 1969 – Jason Chong, 49, Actor from Australia whose first genre appearance was in an episode of Time Trax; he has gone on to roles in the films See No Evil, The Forbidden Kingdom, The Pact, Guardians of the Tomb, Little Monsters, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and episodes of Farscape, The Lost World, Terra Nova, Marco Polo, Wolf Creek, and Bite Club.
  • Born October 29, 1971 – Winona Ryder, 47, Actor who has a long history in the genre starting with Beetlejuice, but also including Saturn-nominated roles in Edward Scissorhands, Bram Stoker’s Dracula, Alien: Resurrection, and the Hugo-nominated TV series Stranger Things, as well as parts in S1m0ne, A Scanner Darkly, Being John Malkovich, Black Swan, and the 2009 Star Trek reboot, as Spock’s mother.
  • Born October 29, 1972 – Gabrielle Union, 46, Actor who has solid genre creds with extended roles as Perri Reed in the new Night Stalker and as Zoey Andata in FlashForward, for which she was nominated for the NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama Series. She also played the Klingon officer N’Garen in the “Sons and Daughters” episode of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, had a guest part on The Others, and was nominated for a Saturn Award for her role in Cradle 2 the Grave.
  • Born October 29, 1977 – Ben Foster, 41, Musician and Composer from England, best known for his work on the Torchwood TV series (for which he received three BAFTA nominations) and as orchestrator for Murray Gold on the Hugo-winning Doctor Who; he has also worked on the series Thunderbirds Are Go, Sherlock, Mars, The Last Witch, and films including Poltergeist, The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor, and Prometheus.
  • Born October 29, 1985 – Janet Montgomery, 33, Actor from England who has had main roles on the TV series Salem and the TV version of DC Comics’ Human Target. She has also appeared in the films The Space Between Us, Black Swan, Dead Cert, The Hills Run Red, and Wrong Turn 3: Left for Dead, and in episodes of Black Mirror and Merlin.

(11) COMICS SECTION.

(12) WHERE NO TREK HAS GONE BEFORE. From Fansided we learn about the “Star Trek short from author Michael Chabon”.

Pulitzer Prize-winning author Michael Chabon. Chabon’s short, called Calypso, is set 1000 years after Discovery, meaning it’s set later down the Star Trek timeline than any film or TV show yet produced. There’s a new trailer for that, too:

 

(13) BEAUTY IS IN THE ABACUS OF THE BEHOLDER. [Item by Mike Kennedy.] Data visualization is probably as much art as science and the shortlists for the 2018 Kantar Information is Beautiful Awards support that. The lists include several items of potential genre & genre-adjacent interest. You’ll need to click the links below to get to the nominee page, then click through to the various creator’s websites to see the full visualizations.

A 3-D linked look the Marvel Cinematic Universe is one of the nominees in the Arts, Entertainment & Culture category. Also in that group is Fear and Loathing In Cinema Theatre: Our Favourite Genres and Emotions In IMDB Top 250. In the Science & Technology category, there’s an ambitious wrap-up of Satellites: 60 Years In Orbit. (Though some people may hesitate to go to the Russian host site to view this one.) For the astronomically inclined, Figures in the Sky looks at how constellations vary across a host of cultures. The Next Bechdel Test may already have been reported in File 770. Both those latter two are in the People, Languages & Identity category. YMMV on how many other of these nominees are genre-adjacent.

(14) TENTACLE TIME. National Geographic video shows where “World’s largest deep-sea octopus nursery discovered”.

Off the coast of Monterey, California, and some two miles below the surface of the Pacific Ocean, scientists piloting a remotely-operated submersible saw something no one has ever seen before.

Octopuses. Hundreds of them. Huddled on a rocky outcrop at the base of an underwater mountain.

“We went down the eastern flank of this small hill, and that’s when—boom—we just started seeing pockets of dozens here, dozens there, dozens everywhere,” says Chad King, chief scientist on the Exploration Vessel Nautilus.

All in all, King estimates that more than 1,000 octopuses known as Muusoctopus robustus were nestled among the rocks, most of which appeared to be inverted, or turned inside out. For this species, that inside-out pose is common among females that are brooding, or protecting their growing young. In some cases, the submersible’s camera could even spot tiny embryos cradled within their mothers’ arms.

(15) HALLOWEEN TREE. It’s Bradbury season at the Take Me To Your Reader podcast: “TMTYR Episode #70: This Movie is Woke! (The Halloween Tree)”.

Once, again, the Pavement Pounders are joined by Dr. Phil Nichols to discuss some Ray Bradbury. This time, it’s The Halloween Tree, the book, the television film, and the Colonial Radio Theater production.

(16) ON THE ROAD. Filmmaker John Carpenter’s Official Music Tour will take him all over Europe, but the last stop will be in Los Angeles.

(17) BARELY SFF ADJACENT. Slate presents “The 10 Commandments of Baby Halloween Costumes”. And a lot of the photos are of genre costumes!

There are almost no wrong answers. You don’t have to be especially creative. Tons of babies dress up as pumpkins, and guess what? Each and every one of them makes an excellent pumpkin. On the other end of the spectrum, if you want to do something weird or special, go for it! This Halloween will be one of the few your baby isn’t old enough to express any preferences of her own, so if you want to dress her as Lady Gaga in A Star Is Born or a Chippendale’s dancer, I say go for it.

(18) DUM VIVIMUS VIVAMUS. SYFY Wire has made note of Halloween yard art that pays homage to (spoiler alert) the demise of Spider-Man at the end of the latest Avengers movie (“Avengers: Infinity War fan Halloween display pays hilarious homage to the snap”).

Thanos’ finger snap at the end of Avengers: Infinity War sucked for pretty much everybody but the Mad Titan himself — and perhaps most of all for Peter Parker and Tony Stark. Stranded with a busted alien spacecraft on Thanos’ home planet and already left for dead, Stark has to watch as his superhero friends vaporize all around him one by one — including Spidey, who turns to ash right in Tony’s arms.

Just in time for Halloween, one MCU fan has used a little low-fi elbow grease, along with a ton of creative thinking, to commemorate what may be the movie’s most poignant moment. With nothing more than some pumpkins, a handful of leaves, and a couple of Marvel bits you can buy at the nearest big-box store, they’ve captured the tear-jerking moment of Peter’s sad goodbye, and the result — we have to admit — is way funnier than it probably should be.

[Thanks to JJ, John A Arkansawyer, Andrew Porter, Chip Hitchcock, Martin Morse Wooster, Mike Kennedy, Carl Slaughter, and Cat Eldridge for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Kip W.]

Where to Find the “Author’s Cut” of Vertlieb’s “Dracula In The Seventies: Prints Of Darkness”

By Steve Vertlieb: It was in 1997 that I first received a rather flattering telephone call from an editor in New York, asking if I’d be willing to participate in a new published anthology that he was compiling for Midnight Marquee Press. The book would assemble many genre writers of the period in a collaborative effort celebrating the “life,” and death of Bram Stoker’s literary creation Dracula in film.

The “editor,” whose name shall go unspoken here, said that he had grown up with my work in such publications as The Monster Times, and that he would be honored to include a chapter by me in the pages of his forthcoming book, which was to be called Dracula, The First Hundred Years. I was asked to write a somewhat light-hearted examination of the Dracula, and related vampire films, and television productions of the 1970’s. Prompted, perhaps, by his professed “love” for my work, I agreed, and began fabricating a new article for his publication.

I set about writing a lengthy new piece and, once finished, sent it off by mail to New York. I received a congratulatory telephone call from the “gentleman” in question shortly following its receipt, advising me that he was delighted with my work. He said that it was everything that he could have hoped for, and more, and that while many of his writers would need to be heavily edited, my work would be published essentially as I had written it.

Now, it’s normal for an editor to send each of his stable of writers the “proofs” of their edited work once completed, prior to publication, so that they might be gone over and approved for content. Months went by, however, without any further communication from the book’s editor. I’d begun hearing ominous rumblings from a number of writers, grumbling that their efforts had been heavily tampered with and changed, and that there was brewing trouble in “paradise.” I continued to rest easily, however, in the spoken assurance that my work would be published essentially as written.

When the book was at last published, however, I discovered to my horror that my work had been badly distorted, compromised, and truncated. Wherever I had spoken of actor Christopher Lee with affection and reverence, my text had been re-written to ridicule and attack him. Wherever I had spoken of actor Frank Langella with respect and admiration, my text had been re-written as would reflect the secret yearnings of a smitten school girl in drooling affection for her hero. Large chunks of my writing had been unceremoniously removed and altered, without either my knowledge or permission by an unscrupulous “editor” who had unkindly inserted his own cryptic observations and prejudice under my name and byline, shabbily using my personal reputation either to malign or revere the films and performances that he had either loved or loathed.

When I asked why he had done this to me, he replied that he thought that “it was funny.” Reviewers of the volume, who had taken offence to many of the cruel observations expressed supposedly by me, were harsh in their very personal criticism of my work. I set about composing a letter writing campaign to address these issues, stating rather forcefully that the offensive opinions determined objectionable were either edited, or added, after my work had been submitted, and neither with my knowledge or consent. Consequently, sales of the volume plummeted, and the editor complained that I had “murdered” his book.

In the twenty years since its publication, the title has come to be reviled by readers, and wholly disavowed by its unwitting publisher. In the decades that followed, I’d longed to have my work published in its entirety, and as originally conceived as written. Here, then, for the first time ever, and with the enthusiastic permission of Midnight Marquee Press, is the published premiere of my original work … “Dracula In The Seventies: Prints Of Darkness.”

Pixel Scroll 7/30/17 And Remember To Scroll Your Answers In The Form Of A Pixel

(1) AN AMAZING BOOK. So says James Bacon, who gives a rave review to Anthony Hewitt’s Joshua N’Gon – Last Prince of Alkebulahn on Forbidden Planet blog.

We journey forwards and back as we come to know what has occurred to Joshua and the man who wants to get him, Kanu, genius criminal who has found a way to recreate his memories. Kanu has been ostracised to London from Alkebulahn with his mind wiped, but has the help of ‘arachnobots’ and now he controls a huge armaments corporation which is a front for a sinister organisation The Black Axis. He comes across with some considerable strength and charisma, indeed in one moment where he speaks of making people uncomfortable because of ‘My ethnicity, my bearing and my outspokenness’ and although is an absolute villain, his story is nicely interwoven, as it is important to the back story that is Joshua’s heritage.

Its a cracking good read, this one.

It rockets on, the chapters are nice and short, and all the time there are adventures. Joshua is set tasks by his learned school teacher, at a very impressive school, and these end up involving explorations and inventing, taking part in extreme sports, or combative and challenging excitements, and soon we see that our team gets into some tights spots culminating in a wonderfully tense set of scenes.

This book has it all: a sinister, cloaked Black Airship, mechanised Mayhem, ancient elements with science fictional connections, alien technologies and black history, white pulsed energy blasts, portals, a robotic and somewhat intelligent drone called Ballz, super soakers turned into weapons that make water solid like a ball bearing until they strike an adversary, a visit to the British Museum, Notting Hill Carnival and to imaginative places that are portrayed with an element of brilliance. Music, food and language give strong cultural indicators, offering elements that I was not aware of before….

(2) CHOSEN WORDS. Nicholas Eskey of ComicsBeat “SDCC ’17: Interview: Author Karin Tidbeck Uncovers the Dreamlike Storyline of’ ‘Amatka’”.

Have you always planned on writing for an English-speaking market?

When I was nineteen, I worked in a science-fiction bookshop in Stockholm. There was, and still is, this magazine called “Locus,” which is the SFF industry’s main magazine, and I would read that during lunch break. And I had this revelation that “I wanted to be in here. I want to have my book reviewed in here. I want to have an interview here. And I want to be on the shelves in the book shop… in English.” The thing is, Sweden has a very small readership. It’s very difficult to get books published, it’s very difficult to sell books, it’s extremely difficult to sell speculative fiction. So, I realized that the market was so small that I had to switch languages, but I didn’t switch until I was in my early thirties.

Tell us a little about your book, “Amatka.”

Amatka is about humans colonizing a world where matter, physical matter, responds to language. It’s about what happens to society that tries to survive in such a world. What happens to the people who quite can’t find a place in it. So, it’s about reality, it’s about language, it’s about revolution, and it’s about love.

(3) SPACE SHOWER. Sci-Tech Universe says “Get Ready! The Brightest Meteor Shower in the Recorded Human History Is Happening” – and you’ll be able to see it.

There is going to be a meteor shower on 12th of August, 2017. According to astronomers this will be the brightest shower in the recorded human history. It will light up the night sky and some of these might even be visible during the day. This meteor shower is being considered as once in a lifetime opportunity as the next meteor shower of such kind will be after 96 years.

The Perseid meteor shower, one of the brighter meteor showers of the year, occurs every year between July 17 and August 24. The shower tends to peak around August 9-13.

(4) GO FEST, YOUNG FAN. The Verge reports “Niantic is delaying some of its European events after Chicago’s disastrous Pokémon Go Fest”.

Niantic Labs threw a big event in Chicago last weekend to celebrate the first year of Pokémon Go, only to run into cellular data congestion and server issues that made the game unplayable for many attendees. Now, the company has announced that it’s delaying several planned European events to ensure that trainers will be able to play the game.

In a blog post, Niantic said that its delaying two sets of events planned for Copenhagen and Prague (August 5) and Stockholm and Amsterdam (August 12), until later this fall. Several other planned events for Japan (August 14th), and France, Spain, and Germany (September 16th) are moving forward as scheduled.

The delay comes after Chicago’s Pokémon Go Fest got off to a disastrous start last week. Cellular service was spotty, and server issues prevented players from logging into the game. When Niantic CEO John Hanke took to the stage for his opening remarks, players booed him, and the company ultimately ended up offering refunds and $100 worth of Pokécoins to players. Last week, nearly two dozen attendees launched a class-action lawsuit against Niantic, aiming to recoup travel expenses.

(5) TODAY’S THING TO WORRY ABOUT. The Hugo Award Book Club declares there are “Too Many Sequels” up for the award. They make a colorable argument anyway.

It’s worth noting that the majority of this year’s Best Novel Hugo Award shortlist is comprised of books that are either the first part in a series, or the sequel to another work.

In fact, only one of the six novels on this year’s shortlist (All The Birds In The Sky) is a standalone work.

This is not the first time in recent memory that the shortlist has been dominated by sequels, prequels, or works in a shared universe. But it is part of a larger trend, and it’s one that worries us.

In the 1960s, 88 per cent of the Hugo shortlist was comprised of standalone novels. From 2001 to 2010, 56 per cent of Hugo shortlisted novels were standalone works. In the first seven years of this decade, the statistic has fallen to 27 per cent (ten of the 36 novels shortlisted).

(6) HARRYHAUSEN FILM ANNIVERSARY. Episode 15 of the Ray Harryhausen Podcast is the “20 Million Miles to Earth: 60th Anniversary Special”.

Join us for a celebration of Ray Harryhausen’s 1957 classic, ’20 Million Miles to Earth’. Our 15th episode sees Foundation trustee John Walsh and Collections Manager Connor Heaney discuss the adventures of the Ymir- one of Ray’s most beloved and sympathetic creations.

We then discuss the first exhibition of Ray Harryhausen material in the USA for several years, opening at the Science Museum Oklahoma from July through to December. We describe this incredible display with museum director Scott Henderson, alongside his own lifelong enthusiasm for Harryhausen films.

An exclusive interview follows, recorded on location at the Barbican Centre’s ‘Into the Unknown’ exhibition with Terry Marison. Terry was one of the suited Selenites in the 1964 classic ‘First Men in the Moon’, and discusses his experiences of being one of Ray Harryhausen’s living creatures!

(7) TODAY’S DAY

  • Paperback Book Day

How To Celebrate Paperback Book Day

The best way to celebrate Paperback Book Day is to curl up with your favorite paperback book. If it’s been a while since you’ve bought a proper book, this is your opportunity to do so. Get out there and find a copy of your favorite text, or even pass one on to another friend. Then, when you’ve hit all the used book stores and perused the shelves of the nearest book stores, it’s time to come on home and look over your collection. Paperback Book Day recalls all those rainy quiet days spent reading a book while the drips ran down the windowpane.

(8) TODAY IN HISTORY

  • July 30, 1971 — Apollo 15 landed on the Moon.
  • July 30, 1986 — Walt Disney’s Flight of the Navigator premiered on this day.
  • July 30, 1999 The Blair Witch Project, is released in U.S. theaters.

(9) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY TERMINATOR

  • Born July 30, 1947 — Arnold Schwarzenegger

(10) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY LURCH

  • Born July 30, 1948 – Actor Carel Struycken is born in The Hague, Netherlands. He is best known for playing the Giant in Twin Peaks, Mr. Homn in Star Trek: The Next Generation, and Lurch in three Addams Family films.

(11) WELLS AUTOGRAPHED. You can get a mighty good price on a beat-up old book…if H. G. Wells drew an original sketch in it — “First edition of HG Wells’ ‘The War of the Worlds’ doubles estimate at £11,000”.

A first bookform edition sold for £11,000 at Cheffins of Cambridge earlier this month was slightly foxed and stained, but on the front free endpaper Wells had signed and inscribed the book for Edmond Joseph Sullivan and added a tiny drawing of a moustachioed angel.

(12) ON THE ROCKS. The Guardian’s feature on shipwrecks ends with a Dracula reference — “Walking the Yorkshire coast: the shipwrecks and sea caves of Flamborough and beyond”.

The last stop in any shipwreck walk ought to be the evocative St Mary’s church in Whitby, where there is a memorial to the lifeboat tragedy of 1861… After visiting the church, head down the steps – known by all as the Dracula Steps – across the swing bridge and over to the pier itself, a fabulous piece of marine engineering.

From there, continue up the hill towards East Terrace. On a grassy bank you will find a park bench dedicated to Bram Stoker, who sat here and used a real shipwreck – that of a Russian vessel on the shore opposite – to create an imaginary one, that of the Demeter, and, of course, the most memorable shipwreck survivor of all time: Count Dracula himself.

(13) I STREAM, YOU STREAM. Another splintering of the dying network monolith… all 28 seasons of The Simpsons are now available on Vudu.

(14) NOVELLA TO TV. From Tor.com we learn: “Victor LaValle’s The Ballad of Black Tom in Development at AMC”.

AMC announced that Victor LaValle’s The Ballad of Black Tom is in development for television as part of their “scripts-to-series development model that puts the emphasis on the most important part of our strategy – outstanding writing, a commitment to worlds you’ve never seen on TV before, and rich character development.”

(15) NOBODY LIVES FOREVER. While conducting an interview for The Guardian, Alison Flood learned from “Robin Hobb: ‘Fantasy has become something you don’t have to be embarrassed about’”.

Good fantasy, Hobb believes, is about “lowering the threshold of disbelief so the reader can step right into the book and not feel blocked out by something that’s impossible or at first glance silly. And I think silly is more dangerous than impossible.”

It is also, as Martin knows so well, about not being afraid to draw the final curtain for your characters when the time comes. “Nobody gets to go on for ever. If you put a little magical umbrella over your characters and say ‘yes, we’re going to scare you a little bit but ultimately you know that at the end of the book everything is going to be much the same way it was when we started the story’, well then, why write the story, what’s the point?”

(16) ALIEN ADVENTURE. The Recall official trailer.

[Thanks to Carl Slaughter, Cat Eldridge, Andrew Porter, JJ, and John King Tarpinian for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Jack Lint.]

Pixel Scroll 10/29/16 Best Pixel Scroll Title Ever

(1) ORIGIN STORY. Paris Review kicked off a series of posts about the author of Dracula with “Something in the Blood, Part 1”.

To celebrate the spookiest of holidays, we’re publishing a selection of excerpts from David J. Skal’s Something in the Blood, a biography of Bram Stoker, published this month by Liveright. First up: the origins of Dracula.

There are many stories about how Bram Stoker came to write Dracula, but only some of them are true. According to his son, Stoker always claimed the inspiration for the book came from a nightmare induced by “a too-generous helping of dressed crab at supper”—a dab of blarney the writer enjoyed dishing out when asked, but no one took seriously (it may sound too much like Ebenezer Scrooge, famously dismissing Marley’s ghost as “an undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese”). But that hasn’t stopped the midnight snack of dressed crab from being served up as a matter of fact by countless people on countless occasions. While the nightmare aspect may well have some validity—Stoker’s notes at least suggest that the story might have had its genesis in a disturbing vision or reverie—it exemplifies the way truth, falsehood, and speculation have always conspired to distort Dracula scholarship. An unusually evocative piece of storytelling, Dracula has always excited more storytelling—both in endlessly embellished dramatizations and in the similarly ornamented accounts of its own birth process.

(2) SOFT OPENING. Quill & Quire previews the new Toronto Bar “Famous Last Words”.

For readers looking for a casual haunt to sit down with a good book and a drink (or writers looking for a few strong ounces of liquid creativity)‚ Toronto’s Junction neighbourhood [is] home to a literary-themed bar‚ slated to open Oct. 14. Famous Last Words – echoing CanLit legend Timothy Findley’s 1981 novel of the same name – will feature craft cocktails “with a literary twist‚” with book-inspired names like The English Patient‚ Cryptonomicon‚ The Perks of Being a Wallflower‚ and Fahrenheit 451.

The bar’s bookish decor includes a Scrabble-tile-topped bar‚ bookshelf wallpaper‚ washrooms for Jane Austens or Oscar Wildes‚ typewriters‚ and‚ of course‚ plenty of paperbacks to browse on a bar-spanning book wall.

(3) TAKING UP TIME. David Brin’s book recommendation post includes these playful words about Time Travel: A History, by science historian James Gleick.

This chapter does not mention the array of sneaky means by which we sci fi authors try to weasel our way around causality and temporal protection. One is the universe branching point. When Spock accidentally lures a vengeful Romulan to go back in time and destroy Planet Vulcan (in J.J. Abrams’s Star Trek flick) many fans consoled themselves that this is just a branching-off of a newborn parallel reality… that the older timeline still stands, where Shatner-Kirk and all the rest remain, along the original timeline, like a trellis for the new one to grow alongside.

Well, well, that’s an artistic representation of one of many ways that physicists (at least a few) think that paradoxes might be resolved. Speaking as both a physicist and a science fiction author, I must say that this very loose partnership is one of the most fun that our unique and marvelous civilization offers, during a unique and marvelous… time.

(4) FELINE FEST. For National Cat Day, Jeff Somers of the B&N Sci-Fi & Fantasy Blog has compiled “The 25 Best Cats in Sci-Fi & Fantasy”. (Not all of them are cats strictly speaking – for example, Aslan is on this list.)

Lying Cat in Saga, by Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples If you Google “lying cat” you’ll be rewarded with a slew of images of a fierce-looking cat saying the word “lying” in various tones—from vicious to interrogative. Lying cat can always tell if someone is deliberately lying, and thus is an invaluable companion to bounty hunter The Will in this remarkable comic series. More than just a very large cat that acts as a lie detector, Lying Cat is also a fierce warrior, and fiercely loyal. The fact that a cat that comes up to The Will’s shoulder was the runt of its litter should disturb you.

(5) DON’T YOU THINK SHE LOOKS TIRED? Fansided’s “Doctor Who Watch” uncovered scandalous facts in a candidate’s leaked emails — “Hillary Clinton Reportedly Calls Doctor Who ‘Boring Garbage’”

However, there is one email* that has come out that may truly signal the end of her hopes for the Presidency. Instead of being political in nature, or housing secret government information, this email discusses Doctor Who — or, rather, how she just does not appreciate the show, calling it “boring garbage” and feeling as though she is being left out on a joke that everyone else understands

…But to say that Doctor Who is boring garbage? Well, that crosses a line that few would dare to verbalize. In saying that, she has, in effect, removed the Whovian demographic from her voting population. Yes, she has a somewhat higher opinion of Sherlock, which has a great deal of overlap in terms of fandom, but to attack the Doctor?

(6) SAVE OUR STOTTIES. Fanhumorist and distinguished geezer Graham Charnock is in jeopardy of being denied access to an essential food group. He has launched a petition at Change.org

Greggs have ceased to sell ham and pease pudding stotties, a staple food of the Tyneside community. Let’s persuade them they are wrong that there is no demand.

Our goal is to reach 100 signatures and we need more support.

You can read more and sign the petition here.

And to reassure yourself this is not (entirely) a hoax, you can study up on Tyneside cuisine in this Chronicle article.

(7) ZACHERLE OBIT. Horror movie TV host John Zacherle died October 27 at the age of 98 reports the New York Times.

[He] played a crypt-dwelling undertaker with a booming graveyard laugh on stations in Philadelphia and New York in the late 1950s and early ’60s…

In 1953 he began appearing as characters on “Action in the Afternoon,” a live western series shot in a vacant lot behind the studios of WCAU. “The idea was to get somebody in trouble on Monday, and either get him out of trouble, shoot him or hang him by Friday,” he told The Daily News in 1959.

One of his recurring characters was an undertaker named Grimy James, whose frock coat came in handy when the station bought a collection of 52 old horror films from Universal. The station manager, reviewing his new acquisition, decided that most of the films were so bad, he would have to build a show around them to add entertainment value.

Mr. Zacherle put on the frock coat and, in October 1957, went to work as the host of “The Shock Theater” (later simply “Shock Theater”), bringing with him an endless supply of sight gags and ad-lib patter.

A rabid fan base developed. When the station held an open house, expecting about 1,500 viewers to turn up, 13,000 stormed the studio to meet the Cool Ghoul, as Mr. Zacherle was known.

(8) CONVENTION IN A SYNAGOGUE. The first Jewish Comic Con takes place in Brooklyn on November 13.

All it took was a Shabbat dinner between the President of Congregation Kol Israel, Fred Polaniecki, and comic book creator Fabrice Sapolsky. Together, they outlined the Jewish Comic Con – a place to explore how Jewish identity has influenced comics both on the page and behind the scenes. Featuring panel discussions, artist tables, and lots of shmoozing,…

Now, Congregation Kol Israel is proud to organize the first ever Comic Con in a synagogue, our synagogue!

(9) PLAID AND PROUD. A kilt reference in yesterday’s Scroll prompted John King Tarpinian to remind me about the local Pasadena specialty store Off Kilter Kilts.

Southern California’s only multi-brand modern kilt store is celebrating its first anniversary on August 27, 2016.

Kilters from across the region will be converging on the store to mark the occasion with owner J.T. Centonze and the rest of the OKK crew. With more than 800 kilts sold in the first year, Off Kilter Kilts has a lot to celebrate.

Off Kilter Kilts has become a regular sight at local Renaissance Faires, Highland Games, and Celtic Festivals. They can also be seen around Pasadena hosting Kilts and Drinks nights at local restaurants.

kilt-wearing-dog

(10) THE WINNER. Jonathan Maberry explains that the Canyon Crest Academy Writers Conference is the nation’s only absolutely free writers conference for teens. This year the conference inaugurated an award and named it after an author – him — the Jonathan Maberry Inspiring Teens Award. Then they turned around and made Maberry the first winner. Says  Maberry, “I’m insanely honored to be the recipient of an award that is named after me. Yeah…I know. That’s surreal.”

(11) HAM ON VINYL. Someone sent along a link to William Shatner Live, a 1977 spoken word album. With the assurance, “No, I’ve not listened to it.” I must confess I have honored that choice myself, beyond about the first 15 seconds of the YouTube recording listed below.

The Wikipedia article on the album includes the text of William Shatner’s explanation for doing this one-man show on stage.

If I were good, it would be the actor’s dream– but if it failed I would be alone. Alone up there with thousands of eyes peering at me — opera glasses raised for a closer look, and the unasked but heavily felt question “what’s he going to do?”

All this was going through my head as I learned the lines — all this was in front of my eyes as I lay down at night — and when the day came that I was to open at Texas A&M University I was filled with fear.

A very primitive fear — the fear of the actor. The nightmare that all actors have from time to time is appearing naked in front of an audience — not knowing the lines, not knowing the play — I was living the dream.

Thirty-five hundred people awaited me expectantly; the buzz of their voices reached me backstage, the lights dimmed, the M.C. announced my name and I walked out. The spotlight hit me like a physical force and I was on — oh muse, be with me know — I took a breath & started to speak…

 

[Thanks to Martin Morse Wooster, Andrew Porter, Cat Eldridge, Steven H Silver, David K.M. Klaus, and John King Tarpinian for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Jonathan Edelstein.]

Pixel Scroll 5/26/16 You Got Your Scroll In My Pixel Butter

(1) CAPTAIN SPOILED. At The Mary Sue “Comics Fans Respond to Captain America’s ‘Big Secret’”.

Um … whut? **SPOILERS FOR CAPTAIN AMERICA: STEVE ROGERS #1**

If you read the new Captain America: Steve Rogers #1 that came out today, you already know: Steve Rogers and his mother had been recruited by HYDRA when he was a boy, and he’s apparently been a secret operative for HYDRA this whole time. Again, I say: Uh … whut?

Apparently, issue #2 will give us a better idea of what actually happened with Cap, and how he’s managed to be a HYDRA operative for this long. Naturally, fans were unnerved, and Breevoort’s already started getting emails:

“The idea of Captain America means something very primal and very strong to the people of this nation, and they have a very visceral reaction when you get to something like that,” Brevoort explains. “You want people to feel and react to your story. So far, so good.”

Sure, you want them to feel and react to your story … but what exactly do you want them to feel? A good writer knows exactly what they want to say and evoke, and it isn’t just strong feels for the sake of strong feels.

Whatever writer Nick Spencer and the folks over at Marvel are trying to evoke, Captain America fans are not having it….

Actor Chris Evans doesn’t like it either.

(2) I SCREAM YOU SCREAM. Scott Edelman enjoys a serendipitous dinner with Maria Alexander in Episode 9 of his podcast Eating the Fantastic.

During the recent StokerCon in Las Vegas, I did what I always do during conventions—slip away as often as possible to chow down and catch up with friends. One of those meals took place in old-timey ice cream parlor Serendipity 3, and was recorded (as so many convention meals will be from now on) as an episode of Eating the Fantastic.

My dinner companion this time around was Maria Alexander, whose debut novel, Mr. Wicker, won the 2014 Bram Stoker Award for Superior Achievement in a First Novel. But in addition to being a novelist, Maria’s also a poet, screenwriter, games writer, swordswoman, and so much more—and I attempted to explore all those facets in this episode.

 

Maria Alexander

Maria Alexander

(3) HERE’S MY NUMBER AND A DIME. According to The Verge, “Samsung made a Batman-inspired Galaxy S7 Edge”, though it’s only for sale in a limited number of countries.

Samsung has made a Batman-inspired smartphone … really. In true ludicrous Samsung fashion, it’s called the Galaxy S7 Edge Injustice Edition, and it features the superhero’s logo in gold on the back. The device is commemorating the third anniversary of Injustice: Gods Among Us, and it’s being produced in partnership with Warner Bros. The package appears to include a Samsung Gear VR headset, as well as a real gold-plated Batarang and a rubber phone case modeled after Batman’s armor.

 

(4) UNDERSTANDING THE TINGLE. “Satirical erotica author Chuck Tingle’s massive troll of conservative sci-fi fans, explained” at Vox (the megasite, no relation to VD.)

Tingle announced that if he won his category, Quinn would accept the award on his author persona’s behalf. This was undoubtedly anathema to many members of the SFF community who overlap with Gamergate; Quinn is essentially Gamergate enemy number one, and one of the women who has experienced the most harassment at the hands of angry men on the internet.

And now TheRabidPuppies.com is the latest volley in Tingle’s game. Realizing the domain was up for grabs, Tingle snapped it right up.

Tingle didn’t just seize the opportunity and the sudden spike in attention to taunt the Puppies, though; he’s using the new website to drive traffic to three of the Puppies’ most reviled enemies and their projects:

  1. Quinn’s support network for online harassment victims, Crash Override
  2. Jemisin’s acclaimed novel The Fifth Season, which is currently nominated for the Hugo for Best Novel
  3. Fantasy writer Rachel Swirsky’s crowdfunding campaign to raise money for LGBTQ health resourcesTingle’s inclusion of Swirsky is significant. Her short story, “If You Were a Dinosaur, My Love,” is a surreal, jarring allegory for dealing with identity-motivated hate crime and violence. Its inclusion as a 2014 Hugo nominee was widely touted by the Sad/Rabid Puppies as being the ultimate example of how “SJWs” — the shorthand for “social justice warriors,” a derogatory term many in the “alt-right” use to refer to progressives and intersectional feminists — had invaded SFF culture.

(5) GRANDFEMMES FATALE. “Five Fantasy Grannies You Don’t Want To Fool With” at Suvudu.

Augusta Longbottom, J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter

You’ve got to be a bad-ass to stand up to the Death Eaters, and Augusta Longbottom isn’t anyone’s chump. She is stern and demanding, but she isn’t heartless, as her grandson Neville eventually learns.

(6) SHORT ORDERS. At the upcoming Bonhams/Turner Classic Movies Drawn to Film auction, says a Hollywood Reporter story, “’Snow White’: Rare Concept Art of Rejected Dwarfs to Be Auctioned”.

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937) was Disney’s first feature-length animated film and the animators worked to give each of the seven dwarfs a distinct personality. The concept sketches (see above) include such familiar ones as Doc, Grumpy, and Dopey, and the not so surprisingly dropped dwarfs, Deafy and Baldy. Other unused dwarf names included Jumpy, Wheezy, Tubby, and Sniffy. The estimate for the sketches is $3,500-$4,500.

(7) REAL ESTATE CLICKBAIT. Every so often there’s a speculative article like this – “Macmillan Publishers weighs leaving Flatiron Building for a new HQ”. (In 2009 there was a story that an Italian investor was going to turn the building into a hotel….) By implication, if Macmillan ever gives up the space, Tor Books will be moving to a new home —

Macmillan Publishers, the sole office tenant in the Flatiron Building, is considering relocating its headquarters when its lease expires in a few years.

Should that happen, it would give the property’s owners a blank slate to work with for the first time since the building was completed more than 100 years ago.

Macmillan, parent company to publishers like St. Martin’s Press and Henry Holt & Co., has been in the iconic tower in some shape or form for about half a century. Now, it occupies all of the office space — nearly 176,000 square feet — in the roughly 180,000-square-foot building at 175 Fifth Avenue.

The publisher’s longtime broker, Leon Manoff of Colliers International, said the company is considering all options for when its lease expires in a few years, including staying put or relocating elsewhere in Manhattan to a new, 150,000-square-foot headquarters.

Andrew Porter adds, “Admittedly the office space is constrained by the unique shape of the building. Doherty’s office is in the ‘prow’ of the building, with windows on the east, west, and north. Here’s my admittedly not well-lit photo of Doherty in his office:”

Tom Doherty in Flatiron office. Photo by and (c) Andrew Porter.

Tom Doherty in Flatiron office. Photo by and (c) Andrew Porter.

(8) RAMBO INTERVIEWED. Rachel Swirsky conducts a “Silly Interview with Cat Rambo Who Plays in the MUD”.

  1. Although you write stories in other venues, you have at least two persistent worlds. One is Tabat where your novel takes place. Can you talk about the world and how it came to be?

Tabat started with a game concept. A friend was working on a MUD (a text-based multi-player game) where each administrator would create their own city, and I decided to do a seaport. One of the cool things about the game engine was that you could add tags onto room, so there were bits of description that only appeared under certain conditions, including things like time of day, season, moon phase, tide, and so forth, including things like if the player was carrying a specific object or had particular spells on them.

I went nuts with it. I built a city where you smelled fish when the tide was high and the wind was coming from the south, and where the tiles of the great Moonway shifted in color depending on whether the moon was full or lean….

(9) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY BOY

  • Born May 26, 1913 – Peter Cushing

Peter Cushing

Peter Cushing

(10) TODAY IN HISTORY

  • May 26 is World Dracula Day in honor of the publication date of Bram Stoker’s Dracula in 1897.

(11) STAR TREK TOURIST TRAP. Dave’s Geeky Ideas recommends that the vacant Houston Astrodome be repurposed as a life-sized Deep Space Nine.

Right now the folks in Houston are trying to figure out what to do with the Astrodome, which has been sitting vacant for several years. Many plans for the dome have fallen by the wayside, including this multi-use approach which I really like. I’m going to throw my esteemed hat into the ring and declare that the Astrodome be converted into Deep Space Nine.

That’s right: a mega Star Trek tourist destination in the very city where the Space Program resides. This resort would look and feel like the space station seen in the show.

This is made possible by building the central hub and encircling promenade in the middle of the field, with three bridges that connect to the existing concourse in the Astrodome. The dome’s circular shape is quite handy here!

(12) MIXED MOTIVES. Andrew Liptak recalls the nomination of Hubbard’s Black Genesis in “Gaming the System: The 1987 Hugo Awards” at Kirkus Reviews.

Following the publication of Battlefield Earth, Bridge Publications had begun to heavily promote its author. Hubbard and his publisher were pointed in the direction of a flaw in the Hugo Award voting system, particularly by Charles Platt, a science fiction author and editor. In a 1983 issue of his publication, The Patchin Review, he plastered a banner on the front page: “Vote for L. Ron Hubbard!” In his introductory editorial, he lamented that the Best Novel Hugo was “merely a measure of how personally popular a writer is among a small clique of science-fiction fans.”

He also noted that there were things that fans could do to change this: “Hubbard is no hero to the people who usually vote for Hugos. If he won, would it bring about a reformation of the Hugo system, or even its abolition? There’s only one way to find out.”

He wrote to Hubbard and the Bridge, noting that “anyone may nominate and vote. All you have to do is become a supporting member of this year’s world Science Fiction Convention. You do not have to attend the convention itself.”

Hubbard and the Bridge seem to have followed this advice, either coming to this conclusion on their own, or through Platt’s suggestion. Hubbard had established a major story contest, Writers of the Future, and had begun heavily sponsoring science fiction conventions in the mid-1980s. Writing in a fanzine, David Langford authored an essay that described the efforts of the publisher, noting that “it seemed that a large number of fans had become similarly, cumulatively bothered by the grotesque scale of the L. RON HUBBARD promotions,” during the 1987 Conspiracy Convention. The organization had begun promoting the books and sponsoring covers to get Hubbard’s name out before readers.

(13) A HAPPILY DISSATISFIED CUSTOMER. Dr. Mauser claims credit for the Three-Stage Voting (3SV) idea but feels others who have embraced it lack his human touch.

The problem, and it’s a problem common to most folks of a particular political vein, is that they’re trying to counter human behavior with Mathematics. This never works. But the other problem is that they’re ignoring the SOURCE of the data they’re feeding into their formulae — the Fans. The Fans are an incredible resource, and a solution to their problem that they are afraid to make use of, because fans are a Wild Magic, and unpredictable, and hard to control. Math is Safe, math is predictable, but math can’t tell you what is good SF (The Cold Equations notwithstanding).

Even with the Three Stage Voting idea, they’re coming at it all wrong. Some proposals involve “Negative Voting” which they want as a way of getting a gang together to knock out entries they don’t like (They do love them some of that No Award veto power!). They propose empowering the administrators to add or remove entries, or even remove individual voters they don’t like. It’s like they still don’t trust the fans to vote the “right” way. And let’s not even think about the canned Medusa’s head of their mathematical Slate Detection dream, which they swear would NEVER generate a false positive….

(14) INFLATION STOPPED. The ISS expansion isn’t going smoothly. The BBC reports, “Flexi-space room expansion suspended”.

The deployment of a new, expandable “room” on the International Space Station was suspended on Thursday when it failed to open up as expected.

Astronaut Jeff Williams began inflating the module, but controllers eventually told him to stand down after 3.5 hours of extremely slow progress.

Installed in a compact form, the vessel is supposed to stretch to 4m in length with a volume of 16 cu m.

But as Williams squirted air into the module, it stretched only a few cm.

Engineers on the ground will now review the data with a view to resuming the expansion on Friday.

The Bigelow Expandable Activity Module is a demonstrator for the type of habitats that may be used to build future orbiting labs.

(15) ABIGAIL ON APOCALYPSE. If you’re looking for a nuanced review of X-Men: Apocalypse, Abigail Nussbaum delivers.

I promise, at some point I’ll go back to writing about things that aren’t superheroes.  Though that would require Hollywood to stop blasting superhero stories at us in such close succession (I haven’t even written anything about the second season of Daredevil, though you can get a sense of the existential despair it plunged me into from the thread starting at this tweet).  Coming at the end of that barrage, it’s perhaps understandable that the third (or sixth, or eighth) X-Men movie should be met with a muted, not to say exhausted, response.  And some of the reviews have gone further and been downright brutal.  I’m here to say that both of these reactions are unearned.  X-Men: Apocalypse is by no means a great movie, and it has some serious problems.  But I still found myself enjoying it a great deal more than any other work in this genre since Deadpool.  Perhaps this is simply the relief of a superhero story that is not about grim-faced men taking themselves very seriously, and which instead tells an unabashedly silly story in a totally committed way.  Or it might be because alongside the flaws, there are also things to praise in X-Men: Apocalypse, things that hardly any other superhero works are doing right now.

(16) 1975 HUGOS. Fanac.org has posted video of the AussieCon (1975) Hugo Awards Banquet on its new YouTube channel.

AussieCon, the 33rd Worldcon, was held in Melbourne, Australia in 1975. This video includes the Hugos Awards (presented by John Bangsund), the First Fandom Award, The Gandalf Award and the Big Heart Award. Bob Silverberg, Ben Bova, Fan Guests of Honor Susan Wood and Mike Glicksohn, Rusty Hevelin and others appear. Thanks to Kathi Overton for 2016 video editing.

 

[Thanks to Chip Hitchcock, Will R., Andrew Porter, David K.M. Klaus, and John King Tarpinian for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day RedWombat.]

Pixel Scroll 1/30/16 In Scrolladu Did Kubla Khan A Stately Pixel-Dome Decree

(1) SAG AWARDS. Genre productions were virtually absent from the 2016 Screen Actors Guild Awards except in the stunt work categories.

FILM:

Stunt Ensemble in a Motion Picture: “Mad Max”

TELEVISION:

Stunt Ensemble in a Comedy or Drama Series: “Game of Thrones”

(2) GUARDIANS SEQUEL.  “’Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2’: James Gunn Says He’s Cast the Villains and Star Lord’s Father” at Collider.

James Gunn is killing it on social media. The Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 director has made himself unusually accessible to fans, especially considering he’s at the helm of a massive franchise for a studio known for its secrecy. But Gunn can pull it off because he’s managed to find the fine line between satisfying fan curiosity without actually giving anything away.

 

(3) FLIPPING BATMEN. Adam-Troy Castro has a very funny idea for “Making Batman Say, ‘Uhhhhhh, What?’”.

You know what would be really, really grotesque?

Switching Batmen and their Gotham Cities.

Imagine plopping Adam West’s Batman down in the dark and corrupt Gotham of, among other creators, Frank Miller, where half the cops are on the take and all the villains are not just colorful lunatics but mass murderers; imagine him fighting, for instance, the Joker of Scott Snyder’s DEATH OF THE FAMILY, or the one played by Heath Ledger.

Conversely, imagine the grim and militaristic Batman of ALL-STAR BATMAN AND ROBIN in the Gotham of Lorenzo Semple Jr., where all the crimes are whimsical and campy and Commissioner Gordon has all the competence of a turtle lying on his back.

This would lead to some fun scenes.

FRANK MILLER BATMAN: “There’s nothing about you I can’t fix, Joker…with my hands…”

CESAR ROMERO JOKER (Disconcerted): “Umm, what?”

or

ADAM WEST BATMAN: “I’m just an ally of this fine city’s fine, upstanding police force!”

BURT WARD ROBIN: “Gosh, Batman! You’re right!”

JIM GORDON: (Disconcerted) “Ummm, what?”

And Castro continues…

(4) LE GUIN DOCUMENTARY SEEKS FUNDING. Worlds of UKL is doing fundraising for a prospective documentary about Ursula K. Le Guin.

Jayn, who sent the link, mischieviously swears, “I have no connection with the production beyond also thinking that Le Guin deserves a documentary about her (and possibly also a Nobel Prize for Literature and the throne of an Empress.)” Well, who doesn’t agree with that?

Director Arwen Curry wrote on Facebook about a Kickstarter appeal that begins soon.

As I announced a while back, the NEH recently awarded Worlds of Ursula K. Le Guin a major production grant. We’re so excited to finish filming and get into the edit room. But the NEH won’t release the funding until we raise the rest of the budget. On January 31, we will do a “soft launch” of a Kickstarter campaign, inviting friends and family to help support this important film. We hope to have a respectable sum when the press announces the campaign to the public on February 1. Can you help now by reaching out to your reading groups, your Facebook pages, and your best geek pals and asking them to ‘like” Worlds of Ursula K. Le Guin? Thank you!

(5) STOKER BUST. Neil Gaiman is supporting Bryan Moore’s campaign to have a bust of Bram Stoker created in time for World Dracula Day.

As we previously reported, noted sculptor Bryan Moore has launched a Kickstarter Campaign to help fund his latest project, a gorgeous bronze bust of DRACULA author Bram Stoker, a project formed in collusion with the Dublin Writer’s Museum and geared to tie into World Dracula Day on May 26th, 2016.

And now, author and dark visionary Neil Gaiman, the man behind such works as SANDMAN, CORALINE and AMERICAN GODS is among the project’s most famous backers.

“We’re incredibly grateful for Mr. Gaiman’s kindness and generosity” says Moore, the sculptor who has successfully crowdfunded efforts to place busts of H.P. Lovecraft at the Providence Athenaeum Library in Rhode Island and Edgar Allan Poe in Massachusetts at the Boston Public Library

With 10 days left, The Bram Stoker Bronze Bust Project has raised $7,270 of its $30,000 goal.

Bram Stoker bronze bust project poster COMP

(6) WOMEN HORROR WRITERS. A few days ago I linked to Nina Allan’s “Where Are We Going? Some Reflections on British Horror, Present and Future” at Strange Horizons, about another British horror anthology predominantly filled with male writers.

The anthology’s editor Mark Morris posted a response on Facebook. He begins with this argument:

Keeping with this morning’s theme of British horror, there’s an interesting article here on the state of British horror by Nina Allen, in which she raises, yet again, the subject of gender parity. With regard to THE 2ND SPECTRAL BOOK OF HORROR STORIES, I’d like to say this:

First of all, it’s not a ‘Best Of…’ anthology, as she claims, but an anthology of original horror fiction.

Secondly, she criticises the book – and by implication my editorship of it – by pointing out that of its nineteen stories only three are by women.

I’ll answer this observation by stating what I’ve stated several times before – for me, the most important thing when editing an anthology is to get the *best stories possible* for it. I don’t care whether those stories are by men or by women. I’m not driven by having to fulfil particular quotas as regards sex, race, level of fame or anything else. All I’m interested in is selecting the very best stories out of all the ones that are sent to me. And if the twenty best stories (in my opinion) were all written by men one year, or were all written by women, then those are the ones I would select. (And would no doubt be damned for it).

(7) TODAY IN HISTORY

  • January 30, 1933 — The Lone Ranger debuts on Detroit radio.
  • January 30, 1991 — Jonathan Demme’s The Silence of the Lambs premieres.

(8) NO DAY IN HISTORY, EVER. At Ancient Origins, which thrives on such things, an architect has presented a radical new theory about Stonehenge.

Could the prehistoric Stonehenge megaliths once have been the support for a wooden, two-storey roundhouse, a venue for feasting, speakers and musicians? That’s the theory of an English landscape architect who designed a small model of what she has in mind and is looking for money to build a 1:10 scale model of the structure.

Sarah Ewbank says the fact she is not an archaeologist has freed her from preconceived notions and allowed her to approach the matter in a fresh way.

 

(8) TODAY’S CHEERY SCIENTIFIC THEORY. More sound and therefore more depressing is Scientific American’s report about emerging evidence for a transmissible Alzheimer’s theory.

For the second time in four months, researchers have reported autopsy results that suggest Alzheimer’s disease might occasionally be transmitted to people during certain medical treatments—although scientists say that neither set of findings is conclusive.

The latest autopsies, described in the Swiss Medical Weekly on January 26, were conducted on the brains of seven people who died of the rare, brain-wasting Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease (CJD). Decades before their deaths, the individuals had all received surgical grafts of dura mater—the membrane that covers the brain and spinal cord. These grafts had been prepared from human cadavers and were contaminated with the prion protein that causes CJD.

…Neither study implies that Alzheimer’s disease could ever be transmitted through normal contact with caretakers or family members, the scientists emphasize. And no one uses cadaver-derived preparations in the clinic anymore. Synthetic growth hormone is used for growth disorders, and synthetic membranes are used for patching up in brain surgery.

(9) A FEW BRICKS MORE. “Beautiful LEGO: Wild!, a New Book Exploring Natural Brick Wonders” at This Colossal has a gallery of photos.

LEGO-based artist, author, and curator Mike Doyle (previously here and here) has collected another impressive set of LEGO masterpieces in his lastest book Beautiful LEGO: Wild! by No Starch Press, a book that explores natural wonders from undersea landscapes to a family of sea otters produced from over 3,500 LEGO pieces. Unlike Doyle’s last book which featured sculptures depicting sci-fi horrors and ghoulish nightmares, this book collects the works of several dozen artists who capture natural scenes from our planet’s Animal Kingdom and beyond.

One of Doyle’s own pieces that appears in the book is a new piece titled Appalachian Mountaintop Removal (2015), a work composed of more than 10,000 pieces that directly references the act outlined in its title. Mountaintop removal is a form of coal mining affecting the Appalachian Mountains that levels mountains, poisons aquifers, and damages surrounding wildlife indefinitely. You can learn how to help the destruction of these natural resources as well as view more of Doyle’s massive lego sculptures on his blog here.

 

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(10) GRRM ON HUGO NOMINATIONS. George R.R. Martin encourages people to nominate for the Hugos at Not A Blog.

What you nominate is, of course, entirely up to you.

But please, NOMINATE. I have been beating that same drum for a decade, and this year it behooves me to beat it even louder. Nominate the stuff that you enjoyed best last year. Let your own individual voice be heard.

Yes, I have recommended some stuff I liked, in older posts below. And I will be doing more of same in the near future. But remember, that’s just me saying, “hey, I liked this, you might like it too, take a look.” No one should ever nominate anything just because someone else tells them to.

(11) VOX DAY ON HUGO NOMINATIONS. On the other hand, Vox Day told Vox Popoli readers when they can expect his Rabid Puppy list.

The Rabid Puppy List of Recommendations That Is Most Certainly Not a Slate, Much Less a Direct Order From the Supreme Dark Lord of the Evil Legion of Evil will be posted in February.

(12) PREMATURE VICTORY PARADE. Meanwhile, Randy Henderson may have been up late scrying his crystal balls, judging by his post “Important Update: All the Awards I’m Going to Win in 2016!”

It’s award nomination time!  AND THANK GAWD, I don’t need to ask you fine folks to nominate or vote for me or anything, because I already know all the awards I’m going to win this year.  The people behind the people behind the scenes have told me I’m a shoe-in.  So here’s the list.  Don’t be jealous.

2016 Hugo for Best Novel Idea about Use of a Hugo: “Condom demonstration prop in sexual education class for cyborgs“, submitted by Randy Henderson, author of Finn Fancy Necromancy

And after that, he plans on winning every other award in the field….

[Thanks to Will R., Jayn, James H. Burns, and John King Tarpinian for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day ULTRAGOTHA.]