Starburst Brave New Words Award, Starburst Hero Award Winners Named

STARBURST Magazine announced the winners of their Starburst Brave New Words Award and the Starburst Hero Award for Literature on October 9. The awards were given as part of the opening programming for Octocon 2020: The National Irish Science Fiction Convention via their Twitch stream.

The Brave New Words Award winner is Nisi Shawl for her work on editing New Suns: Original Speculative Fiction by People of Color. The judges felt that “Nisi had brought together an astonishing collection that challenged the readers and opened them up to new perspectives and ideas. This is very much what the Brave New Words Award is about.”

Nisi Shawl

The award is special version of Starburst Magazine’s own Robotto award, a shiny metal robot.

The Starburst Hero Award for Literature went to Orbit Books Senior Commissioning Editor Jenni Hill. The award recognizes an outstanding contribution to genre literature by people who are “active in the industry and doing great work that helps change and improve the shape of genre literature.”

Jenni Hill

This year’s award is a leather shield, designed by Jez Hunt, a renowned leather worker who produces outstanding work for fantasy movies.

Both awards were announced online by the award-winning comedian John Robertson. The full video can be viewed below.

[Thanks to Ed Fortune for the story.]

Starburst Hero Award Launched

Starburst Magazine has created a new award, The Starburst Hero Award For Literature, “to be given to a member of the genre literature community who has gone above and beyond to serve the genre literature community.”

The inaugural award has been created by professional prop-maker Jez Hunt, who has produced armor and props for shows such as Cursed and the movie Tolkien. This year’s award will be a specially-designed shield, a fitting award for a hero.

The award will be announced as part of a ceremony at Octocon 2020, The National Irish Science Fiction Convention. The same ceremony will also announce the winner of Starburst Magazine’s prestigious Brave New Words Award.

The shortlist for the Brave New Words Award (which is an award for works considered Brave and New), is below.

  • Evan Winter — Rage of Dragons (Orbit Books)
  • Max Gladstone and Amal El-Mohtar — This is How You Lose the Time War (Jo Fletcher Books)
  • Tyler Hayes — The Imaginary Corpse (Angry Robot)
  • Sady Doyle — Dead Blondes and Bad Mothers (MHP Books)
  • Nisi Shawl — New Suns: Original Speculative Fiction by People of Color (Rebellion)
  • Tamsyn Muir — Gideon the Ninth (Tor)

The ceremony will include a panel from the Brave New Words Award judges and the actual award announcements will be made by comedian John Robertson, who is best known for his video game themed comedy show The Dark Room.

For more information on Octocon 2020, which is free and online this year, go here.

Brave New Words Award 2020 Announced

STARBURST Magazine has released the shortlist for its Brave New Words Award. The winner will be announced on July 11.

The nominees are:

STARBURST invited nominations from publishers and creators earlier this year.  The award goes to an individual, not a specific work. The magazine’s team actively sought out examples published in 2019 that most define a creator’s output. STARBURST editorial staff assembled the shortlist from roughly 100 entries, which included blog posts, comic books, short stories, screenplays, poetry, anthologies and novels. This was then discussed vigorously amongst the team at the Starburst International Film Festival in March.

STARBURST Magazine’s own Literary Editor, Ed Fortune, is the head judge.  He said “Blimey, it gets harder every year. Some very different entries this year, but we are very proud of this year’s short list and recommend any book on this list.”

The panel of judges for the Brave New Words Award includes genre critics and media professionals. The panel includes Urban Fantasy author Russell Smith, media expert Rebecca Derrick, book podcaster Jane Hanmer and book blogger Matt Cavanagh. Finally, we welcome narrative expert Professor Esther MacCallum-Stewart to the team.

A ceremony presenting the awards is planned to take place at Edge Lit 9, the UK’s premier annual indie book event. In 2020 the event will be held at the Derby Quad on the 11th and 12th of July. Guests will include John Gwynne and David Quantick. If the event cannot go ahead due to current circumstances, an online ceremony will replace it.

[Based on a press release.]

Brave New Words Award 2020 Launches

Starburst Magazine is taking submissions for the Brave New Words books prize works produced in 2019. The award ceremony will be at Edge Lit 9, the UK’s premiere indie book event.

In addition, Starburst has announced a second award, for special contributions to the genre literature community. The details of this separate award will be released later this month.

Edge Lit is an annual UK based genre event. It will be held at the Derby Quad, UK,  July 11-12. Guests include John Gwynne and David Quanitick.

Now in its third year, The Brave New Words Award is for someone who produces break-out literature that is new and bold. They are looking to highlight “exciting work that breaks new ground in the field of Cult Entertainment.”  Editors, writers, publishers, and bloggers can be nominated. A shortlist will be announced early 2020 and the winner will be announced in special ceremony at Edge Lit.

Previous winners include Tasha Suri, for her ground breaking novel Empire of Sand. In 2018, Margrét Helgadóttir won for her work as editor of Pacific Monsters, published by Fox Spirit Books. 

The panel of judges includes genre critics and media professionals. The head judge is Starburst Magazine’s Literary Editor, Ed Fortune. The judges are Urban Fantasy author Russell Smith,  media expert Rebecca Derrick , book podcaster Jane Hamner and book blogger Matt Cavanagh.

Nominations must be submitted by March 12, 2020. The guidelines for submitting to the long list are below.

There is no submission fee for the Brave New Words award, nor is there a limit on the number of titles that can be submitted.

Please bear in in mind that STARBURST is a magazine grounded in the field of Cult Entertainment and we are always highlighting indie and cutting-edge media.

The award goes to an individual, not a specific work, so we are looking for examples that most define the creators output.  We want full works: a complete novel or anthology or an example of the writer’s essays. For editors, we are looking specifically at works the editor has curated. We will require one copy of the work in physical or electronic form. If the work makes it to the shortlist, we may require an up to five additional copies. We prefer electronic submissions in all cases.

The work must have been published in the UK (or online) during 2019.

The email address is [email protected] (marked BNW Awards) and the address to send physical publications is:

BRAVE NEW WORDS AWARD SUBMISSIONS
c/o STARBURST Magazine
PO Box 4508
Manchester
M61 0GY

Physical submissions must be clearly marked as intended for the award – mark the package and include a note with each copy.

[Based on a press release.]

Brave New Words Award 2019

Starburst Magazine announced the Brave New Words Award 2019 winner at the Edge-Lit 8 genre literature event in Derby on July 13.

  • Tasha Suri – Empire of Sand (Orbit / Little Brown)

This year’s award judges were:  Urban Fantasy author Russell Smith, award-winning games designer Mikey Smith, communications expert Rebecca Derrick and genre literary community MVP Alasdair Stuart. Starburst Magazine’s own Literary Editor, Ed Fortune, is the head judge.

2019 Brave New Words Award Shortlist Announced

Starburst Magazine has announced the shortlist for its Brave New Words Award.  The winner will be announced at Edge Lit 2019.

The nominees are:

  • Aliya Whiteley – The Loosening Skin (Unsung Stories)
  • Tasha Suri – Empire of Sand (Orbit / Little Brown)
  • Rachel Armstrong – Origamy  (NewCon Press )
  • Claire North – 84K (Orbit / Little Brown)
  • Micah Yongo- Lost Gods  (Angry Robot)
  • Tade Thompson – Rosewater (Orbit / Little Brown)

Starburst invited nominations from publishers and creators in late 2018.  The award goes to an individual, not a specific work. The magazine’s team actively sought out examples published in 2018 that most define a creator’s output. Starburst editorial staff assembled the shortlist from over 100 entries, which included blog posts, comic books, short stories,screenplays, poetry, anthologies and novels.

This year’s panel of judges are:  Urban Fantasy author Russell Smith, award-winning games designer Mikey Smith, communications expert Rebecca Derrick and genre literary community MVP Alasdair Stuart. Starburst Magazine’s own Literary Editor, Ed Fortune, is the head judge. He said “This has been a very, very interesting year for genre with some truly amazing writing across the board. I know it was very difficult task to get down to six works. It’s a very exciting list this year, with some very strong voices.”

The ceremony will be held as part of Edge-Lit 8 genre literature event in Derby. Edge-Lit 8 runs on Saturday, July 13 at QUAD and gathers together a host of horror, crime, fantasy and science-fiction writing talent for a packed day of panels, readings, interviews, workshops and much more. Guests of Honor for this year are Anne Charnock, Aliette De Bodard Christopher Golden, Tim Lebbon, Sarah Lotz and Neil Spring, plus Special Guest Stephen Volk. For more information visit Edge-Lit 8.

[Based on a press release.]

Brave New Words Award 2017

Starburst Magazine announced its Brave New Words Award winner at the Starburst Media City Festival on March 17.

The award judges were: urban fantasy author Russell Smith, games designer Mikey Smith, “hardcore word nerd” Rebecca Derrick, and podcaster/author Alasdair Stuart.

[Thanks to Mark Hepworth for the story.]

Brave New Words Award 2017 Shortlist

Starburst Magazine has announced the shortlist for its Brave New Words Award:

The press release explains:

Starburst invited nominations from publishers and creators late 2017.  The award goes to an individual, not a specific work, so we were looking for examples published in 2017 that most define a creators output. Starburst editorial staff assembled the shortlist from over 100 entries, which included blog posts, short stories, screenplays, poetry, anthologies and novels.

The panel of judges are: Urban Fantasy author Russell Smith, award winning games designer Mikey Smith, hardcore word nerd Rebecca Derrick and genre literary community MVP Alasdair Stuart.

Starburst Magazine’s own Literary Editor, Ed Fortune, is the head judge.  He said “This is an exciting new award, and a welcome to addition to Starburst’s current line-up of accolades. Starburst is proud to support mainstream and indie creators. This list of nominees shows the wide breadth of talent out there. Choosing the winner will be very tough.”

The winner will be announced at the Starburst Media City Festival on March 17 in Salford, Manchester, England.  More details about the event can be found here.

Pixel Scroll 12/9/17 All Pixels Great And Small

(1) EVERYBODY’S TALKIN’. Fleen continues its epic roundups about the Patreon controversy and lists the alternatives:

The logic of the decision is, if not in my opinion sound, at least defensible, but Patreon didn’t trust its users enough to defend it. The (best reading) incompetent or (worst reading) dishonest way they treated their user base is a mark that will persist. Kickstarter is smart enough to keep to their plans for Drip, maybe speed things up by 10%, but they won’t rush to open the gates to all; they know that as the invites go ever wider (and when they’re ready, invites are no longer needed), creators that don’t trust Patreon any more will be waiting to shift. Ko-Fi, Venmo, Paypal, Tippeee, Flattr, Google Wallet, and other means of cash transfer are suddenly burning up the search engines.

(2) BOTTOM LINE. Three-time Hugo-winning professional artist Julie Dillon tweeted daggers at Patreon management. Jump onto the thread here:

(3) WITHOUT REPRESENTATION. Rose Lemberg compares the Patreon fee rollout with another fiasco:

(4) WHO VIEW. Here’s the newest Doctor Who Christmas Special trailer.

(5) BRAVE NEW WORDS AWARD CREATED. “Starburst Launches Brave New Words Book Prize”. Nominations are being accepted through the end of the year. Submission guidelines at the link.

STARBURST Magazine, the world’s premier platform for new and exciting genre media, is pleased to announce that it will now have a prize for genre-related writing. The award ceremony will be part of The STARBURST Media City Festival.

The Brave New Words award is for someone who produces break-out literature that is new and bold. We are looking to highlight exciting work that breaks new ground in the field of Cult Entertainment.  Editors, writers, publishers, and bloggers can be nominated. We are looking for works produced in 2017. A shortlist will be announced early 2018 and the winner will be announced at The STARBURST Media City Festival, at Salford Media City 16th – 18th March 2018.

The panel of judges will be announced soon.

(6) ECLECTIC WORKS. The Economist has posted a wide-ranging list of the “Books of the Year 2017” – two fiction titles are of genre interest.

Fiction

Lincoln in the Bardo. By George Saunders. Random House; 368 pages; $28. Bloomsbury; £18.99
Abraham Lincoln’s son dies young and enters a multi-chorus Buddhistic underworld. One of the year’s most original and electrifying novels.

Austral. By Paul McAuley. Gollancz; 288 pages; £14.99
A chase thriller set in late 21st-century Antarctica that combines elements of Jack London, J.G. Ballard and William Gibson. A significant contribution to writing about the anthropocene.

(7) MORE ON COMIC CON LITIGATION. Rob Salkowitz gives Forbes readers a pro-San-Diego spin on the verdict in “Jury Decides For San Diego Comic-Con In Trademark Suit”.

‘David vs. Goliath?’ Farr and Brandenburg also saw advantages in taking their case public, rallying fans to the idea that “comic con” belongs to everyone, not one particular institution. They ran a coordinated campaign on social media including promoted Facebook posts, marshalling an online army of supporters to comment, upvote and retweet their position and paint themselves as altruistic “Davids” standing up to the “Goliath” of SDCC, which is seen by some as the embodiment of commercialism and Hollywood hype.

It was disclosed in court proceedings that the two organizers voted themselves bonuses of $225,000 each as they were mounting a crowdfunding campaign to get fans to pony up for their legal defense. However, the comment threads on SLCC’s posted content indicated that the tactics were effective in mobilizing fan anger.

“Comic-Con is a Brand.” CCI, meanwhile, saved its best lines for the court. They asserted that Comic-Con was a brand recognized to apply exclusively to the San Diego show, and offered in evidence a survey showing that more than 70% of respondents agreed. The validity of the survey was called into question by SLCC attorneys during the trial but the jury appeared to accept it as proof.

“This is a brand that we must protect from these defendants and anyone else who seeks to exploit or hijack it,” Bjurstrom said.

SDCC’s lawyers also asserted the defendants knew this to be the case when they launched their own event, an assertion the jury apparently rejected in their deliberations regarding damages. In filings seeking summary judgment, Comic-Con produced emails and public statements by Farr and Brandenburg boasting of how they sought to “hijack” the media notoriety of SDCC to boost their own event, and settled on the name “comic con” expressly to leverage fan enthusiasm around the festival that draws upwards of 140,000 to San Diego each July and generates billions of media impressions and coverage during its 4-day run.

(8) PAUL WEIMER. Book Smugglers continue their own unique holiday season with “50th Anniversary of The Prisoner – Paul Weimer’s Smugglivus Celebration”.

The Prisoner is the story of an nameless British secret service agent, played by Patrick McGoohan. McGoohan was no stranger to playing spies and secret agents. McGoohan had previously played a British secret service agent, John Drake, in Danger Man. Patrick McGoohan, based on the strength of his performance in that show, had been offered the role of James Bond in Dr. No, but had turned it down. That would have been a rather strange thing if he had accepted, because the no-nonsense John Drake is erudite, thoughtful, not much of a lady chaser and quite different than James Bond in other aspects as well. Whilst filming The Prisoner, McGoohan would also get the role of a British secret agent in the Cold War spy thriller Ice Station Zebra. He also would be asked again, and to turn down again, James Bond, for Live and Let Die.

(9) MOSAIC AUTOBIOGRAPHY. The University of Oregon Libraries’ magazine Building Knowledge has compiled a first-person Ursula K. Le Guin biography [page 20, PDF file] “illustrated with her personal keepsakes, told (mostly) in her own, inimitable words” all drawn from the collections of the UO Libraries.

“If I can draw on the springs of ‘magic,’ it’s because I grew up in a good place, in a good time even though it was the Depression, with parents and siblings who didn’t put me down, who encouraged me to drink from the springs. I was encouraged by my father, by my mother. I was encouraged to be a woman, to be a writer, to be any damn thing I wanted to be.”

Jeffrey Smith sent a note with the link:

It’s a snowy day here in the east, so I’ve been going through the week’s mail. I just received the Fall 2017 issue of the University of Oregon Libraries’ magazine Building Knowledge, and started flipping through it before throwing it out, and found myself reading quite a bit of it. After enjoying the article on the book about Oregon’s marine invertebrates, I continued paging through and was surprised to see an article on Ursula Le Guin (page 20), with some great old family photos (many of which I had seen the last time I was out at UO) — there’s also one on the inside back cover. Then I turned the page and saw my own picture (bottom of page 24).

Guess I won’t be tossing this out after all.

(10) IAN WATSON. An Ian Watson interview at The Bloghole: “Space Marine! And an Interview with a Legend”.

Firstly, Space Marine, and the Inquisition trilogy which started with Draco, were the first “proper” novels set in the Warhammer 40k universe. I know it was a little while ago, but was there much input from Games Workshop at the time, or were you left to your own devices in terms of how you chose to interpret the setting?

[IAN WATSON] Go back quarter of a century and Mr Big was Bryan Ansell, Managing Director/Owner of GW who wanted to read “real” novels by “real” novelists set in his beloved Warhammer domains. As intermediary Bryan hired David Pringle, editor of Britain’s leading SF magazine Interzone, operating from Brighton as GW books. David had already recruited half a dozen authors who regularly contributed stories to Interzone, but no one would touch Warhammer 40K with a bargepole. So it fell to me to read Rogue Trader and many other encyclopedic publications which Nottingham HQ proceeded to send me, including printouts of nonfiction work-in-progress such as the manual of Necromunda, and much else. Bryan Ansell did send me quite a long letter lovingly detailing the sounds which 40K weaponry should make, so that I should be geared up sensually to describe combat. As far as I’m aware (though beware of false memory!) I was given no instructions at all regarding plot or characters and I simply made up the story, within the constraints of what I knew about the 40K universe. I toured the 40K universe, and after a few years the GW games designers decided that they disapproved of a broad approach, compared with single-action novels set on single worlds. (Those are more compatible with games, of course.)

(11) NEW LEADERSHIP FOR WADE CENTER. The Marion E. Wade Center of Wheaton College, Illinois is a major research collection of materials by and about seven British authors: Owen Barfield, G.K. Chesterton, C.S. Lewis, George MacDonald, Dorothy L. Sayers, J.R.R. Tolkien, and Charles Williams. The college has announced who the new directors of the Center will be: “Introducing Newly Named Wade Co-Directors Crystal and David C. Downing”.

Dr. Crystal Downing is currently Distinguished Professor of English and Film Studies at Messiah College, PA. She has published on a variety of topics, with much of her recent scholarship focused on the relationship between cultural theory and religious faith. Her first book, Writing Performances: The Stages of Dorothy L. Sayers (Palgrave Macmillan 2004) received an international award from the Dorothy L. Sayers Society in Cambridge, England in 2009. The thought of Sayers and C.S. Lewis is evident in Crystal’s next two books, How Postmodernism Serves (My) Faith (IVP Academic 2006) and Changing Signs of Truth (IVP Academic 2012). The success of her fourth book, Salvation from Cinema (Routledge 2016) has led to her current book project, The Wages of Cinema: Looking through the Lens of Dorothy L. Sayers. Crystal has received a number of teaching awards and was the recipient of the Clyde S. Kilby Research Grant for 2001 from the Wade Center.

Dr. David Downing currently serves as the R.W. Schlosser Professor of English at Elizabethtown College, PA. He has published widely on C.S. Lewis, including Planets in Peril: A Critical Study of C.S. Lewis’s Ransom Trilogy (UMass 1992), The Most Reluctant Convert: C.S. Lewis’s Journey to Faith (IVP 2002), which was awarded the Clyde S. Kilby Research Grant for 2000, Into the Region of Awe: Mysticism in C.S. Lewis (IVP 2005), and Into the Wardrobe: C.S. Lewis and the Narnia Chronicles (Jossey-Bass 2005)….

They follow Wade founder and first director Clyde S. Kilby (1965–1980), director Lyle W. Dorsett (1983–1990), and director Christopher W. Mitchell (1994–2013).

(12) TODAY IN HISTORY

  • December 9, 1983  — John Carpenter’s adaptation of Stephen King’s Christine premieres.

(13) MAKE THE KESSEL RUN IN 13 STEPS. You could make this. Disney Family has the recipe: “Nothing Says the Holidays Like a Millennium Falcon Gingerbread Starship”. The final step is —

Attach the cockpit (piece #3). Then start decorating the Millennium Falcon! Use frosting to outline the ship, add details, and attach cookies, chocolate wafers, peppermints, chocolates, and candies.

(14) THE GAME IS SLOW AFOOT. The Hollywood Reporter knows “Why ‘Game of Thrones’ Won’t Return Until 2019”.

At least one more full winter will pass until the winter of Westeros arrives one last time, as the final season of Thrones will not arrive until 2019. Production on the eighth and final season began in October and will reportedly run through August 2018 — a full year following the season seven finale, all but dashing any prospects for Thrones‘ arrival in the next calendar year.

“Our production people are trying to figure out a timeline for the shoot and how much time the special effects take,” HBO programming president Casey Bloys told The Hollywood Reporter over the summer about the long wait between seasons of Thrones. “The shooting is complicated enough — on different continents, with all the technical aspects — and the special effects are a whole other production period that we’re trying to figure out. That is a big factor in all of this.”

(15) VERSE ON THE WEB. Here’s the teaser trailer for Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse.

Enter a universe where more than one wears the mask. Watch the Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse trailer now, in theaters next Christmas

 

(16) DEL TORO DEL MAR. Now that it’s officially out, NPR’s Chris Klimek says  The Shape of Water is An Elegant Fable Of Starfish-Crossed Lubbers”.

The Shape of Water, the latest R-rated fairy tale from Mexican auteur Guillermo del Toro, offers a sense of what might spawn if those two Rimbaldi feature-creatures were to mate. The Spielbergian gentleness wins out, by a lot, making for a hybrid that’s just a little too cuddly to rate with The Devil’s Backbone or Pan’s Labyrinth, del Toro’s twin masterpieces. I wish his new film had spent at least a little time being frightening before it phased into aching and swooning; with its lush evocation of longing amid gleaming midcentury diners and cinemas and Cadillacs, SoW sometimes feels like The Carol of the Black Lagoon. But it’s a transporting, lovingly made specimen of escapism — if it’s possible for a movie that depicts a powerful creep blithely abusing women in the workplace to count as escapism — and easily the strongest of del Toro’s seven English-language features, though it spin-kicks less vampire butt than Blade II did. To place yourself in GDT’s hands, as he tells the type of story he tells better than anyone else, is a rich pleasure.

(17) BOUNCING MATILDA. Can you hear this GIF? BBC explores “Why some people can hear this silent gif”. “An optical illusion for the ears” –apparently not new, but it’s news again.

Dr DeBruine received more then 245,000 responses from people claiming to hear a sound accompanying the animation, with 70 per cent of respondents saying they could hear a thudding sound.

(18) DISSECTING ANOTHER HOLIDAY. Having vented about Thanksgiving in the first, John C. Wright’s second Dangeous column is: “It’s Not Just the Décor. Why the Left Truly Hates Christmas”.

In the culture of life, life is a gift from the hand of the Creator. It is not ours to decide to keep or to destroy. In the culture of life, your life is not your own.

This means your unborn daughter or your grandmother in the terminal ward can live, despite any pragmatic, dead-eyed, empty-hearted, cost-cutting reason to murder her.

That is the end goal of all of this. The end goal is a black mass where innocent life is sacrificed. Nothing is sacred but the whim of Caesar. No one prospers, but Moloch feeds.

Yes, strange as it sounds, that is what is at stake.

The War on Christmas is a war by the unhuman against the human.

(19) END GAME. Bob Byrne tells “the story of how TSR destroyed one of the greatest wargaming companies in history” in “Simulations Publications Inc: The TSR Incursion” at Black Gate.

The death blow came in 1982 and it would be delivered by Brian Blume, who initially looked like a white knight. Well, at least a moderately gray one. Wagner and SPI secured a $425,000 loan from TSR, secured by its assets and intellectual properties (uh oh!).

The majority of the loan was used to repay the venture capitalists, which eliminated that problem, but it was the modern day equivalent of getting an advance on your credit card to pay down the existing balance on another credit card. You still have to pay off that second credit card advance.

Only two weeks later, TSR called in the loan, which SPI had absolutely zero ability to pay back. TSR announced in March that it had “initiated a legal and economic chain of events” to buy SPI. Once it realized the company’s debt situation, it backed off of that and stated that TSR had acquired the company’s assets, but not its debts. I’m still not sure how TSR got away with that.

WOW! How can you look at it in any other light than that TSR lent the money so it could immediately foreclose on SPI and acquire all its games? I mean, yeesh.

(20) NEW ART EXHIBIT. Tove Jansson is profiled by Dominic Green in The New Criterion. “Adventures in Moominland”. “Tove Jansson” opened at the Dulwich Picture Gallery, London, on October 25, 2017 and remains on view through January 28, 2018.

It was a Swedish actress, Greta Garbo, who said she wanted to be alone, and a Swedish director, Ingmar Bergman, who documented what it felt like. It was, however, Tove Jansson (1914–2001), a Swedish-speaking Finn, who may have produced the most truthful record of the inner life of postwar Scandinavia. Best known in the English-speaking world as the illustrator of the Moomintroll comic strips, Jansson was also a painter, cartoonist, and writer of stories for children and adults. In Scandinavia, the breadth of her work is common knowledge. The Helsinki Art Museum contains a permanent Jansson gallery, and sends visitors out on a “Life Path of Tove” sculpture trail around her hometown. There is even a Moomin Museum in nearby Tampere, featuring the Moominhouse, a five-story doll’s house that Jansson built. And posthumously, the Moominlegend has incorporated Jansson’s complex and often unhappy private life.

“Tove Jansson,” now at London’s Dulwich Picture Gallery, is a comprehensive survey, and the first Jansson exhibition designed for a foreign audience

(21) LATE NIGHT LAST NIGHT. Lost ‘Star Wars’ Footage Of Luke Skywalker At The Cantina.

[Thanks to Andrew Porter, Diana Glyer, JJ, John King Tarpinian, Ed Fortune, Jeff Smith, Chip Hitchcock, Stephen Burridge, Carl Slaughter, Martin Morse Wooster, and Cat Eldridge for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Jack Lint.]