Timothy Jaxon says, “Our cat Raven seems to like Dickens. I would have pegged him as a Poe aficionado…”
Photos of your felines (or whatever you’ve got!) resting on genre works are welcome. Send to mikeglyer (at) cs (dot) com
(1) BUILDING BETTER WORLDS. [Item by Olav Rokne.] In an essay for Bombay Lit Mag, Gautam Bhatia discusses the (sometimes-maligned) art of worldbuilding. It’s a thoughtful and nuanced piece that delves into the value of the worlds that SFF authors imagine, and how that works to elevate stories. It’s kind of a great article. “Weaving the Rainbow: Worldbuilding and Speculative Fiction”.
Stephen King recently tweeted “World-building is a phrase I really wish would be retired. Not only is it sloppy and lazy, it has become trite.” King’s slinging of the guns at the term “world-building” triggered a chorus of responses: smug nodding of the proverbial heads, passionate agreement, earnest disagreement, derision, mimicry, the works. One striking feature, though, was that some of his interlocutors seemed unable to agree about what one of the oldest tools in speculative fiction’s toolbox really was.
In a sense, this is unsurprising: the kernel of truth in King’s somewhat reductive tweet is that “world-building” has come to mean many things to many people. Of course, all fiction involves world-building: if nothing else, a character’s interior landscape – a staple feature of most fiction – is a world unto itself. Nonetheless, world-building in speculative fiction is special….
(2) A CREATOR WITH HEALTH ISSUES NEEDS SUPPORT. Kathleen David has written a new update to the Peter David GoFundMe, where donors so far have contributed $111,855 toward the $175,000 goal. Following a report about Peter’s medical challenges, which can be read at the link, Kathleen explains the compelling need for more help.
(3) RIGHTS. Writer Beware’s Victoria Strauss brings clarity in “Rights vs. Copyright: Untangling the Confusion”.
…But confusion about the difference between rights and copyright is common–not just among authors (one especially frequent misplaced fear is that granting rights to a publisher means you lose them forever), but among inexperienced publishers. If I had a dollar for every small press contract I’ve seen that hopelessly conflates rights and copyright (for instance, taking possession of copyright but reserving a variety of subsidiary rights to the author), my husband and I could treat ourselves to a very fancy dinner.
Some suggestions on how to untangle the confusion and protect yourself:
– First and foremost, understand copyright and the rights it gives you….
(4) SCHOLASTIC CONTROVERSY. “Amplification or Suppression? Author Maggie Tokuda-Hall Calls Out Edits Proposed by Scholastic” at Publishers Weekly.
Concerns about censorship at Scholastic’s Rising Voices Library, a diversity-focused provider of educational materials, arose on Wednesday after writer Maggie Tokuda-Hall was asked to revise an author’s note in her book about Japanese American incarceration during World War II. Tokuda-Hall spoke out against Scholastic’s request that she cut the words “virulent racism” from a sentence about the trauma caused by anti-Japanese American policies and that she eliminate a paragraph about racism’s broader legacy in America.
Scholastic’s actions sparked an immediate backlash on social media and an apology from the company.
,,, Tokuda-Hall’s uncompromising language was on Scholastic’s radar too. In a message to Tokuda-Hall, provided to PW by Scholastic, Rising Voices Library’s lead editor wrote, “We love this book! And we want everyone in the schools we serve to read it. However, our audience is comprised of elementary school-aged children and there are some details in the Author’s Note that, although eloquently stated, are too strongly worded for what most teachers would expect to share with their students. This could lead to teachers declining to use the book, which would be a shame. To that end we are requesting make an adjustment to the Authors Note. Our suggested change is attached.”
…On April 11, Tokuda-Hall blogged about the situation in a piece called “Scholastic, and a Faustian Bargain” illustrated with a screen-capture of the proposed edits. In her blog post, Tokuda-Hall expressed her complex emotional response to Rising Voices Library’s desire for inclusion and the contradictory request to delete the paragraph. She felt “put in a position where I had to choose between my career and my ethics” and expressed her fear that a principled stance “could scare off an editor who sees this and thinks I’m too difficult to work with—I have a book out on submission right now.”…
…As word of the controversy spread, Thursday afternoon Scholastic CEO Peter Warwick sent a message to all company employees acknowledging that Scholastic was mistaken in asking Tokuda-Hall to make edits. “This approach was wrong and not in keeping with Scholastic’s values. We don’t want to diminish or in any way minimize the racism that tragically persists against Asian-Americans,” the letter read.
Warwick added that Scholastic has contacted Candlewick to apologize to Tokuda-Hall and that the publisher hopes to continue on with the project. “It is our sincere hope that we can start this conversation over and still be able to share this important story about Ms. Tokuda-Hall’s grandparents, who met in a WWII Incarceration camp, with the author’s note unchanged,” Warwick wrote.
Meanwhile, an online petition protesting Scholastic’s action has garnered some 100 signatures from authors. The petition calls for Scholastic to publish Love in the Library as written and to publicly apologize to the author and illustrator.
(5) MEMORY LANE.
2005 – [Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]
Kit Reed was one of our most prolific writers of SFF, fantasy and even horror on occasion. She wrote Little Sisters of the Apocalypse, certainly one of the coolest titles ever for a novel.
Though nominated often including at Detention for Best New Author, she won no Awards alas.
Remember I said Kit was prolific? There were fifteen novels, ten collections and way more short fiction that I can count up. She edited one sort of anthology, Fat: A Big Book about a Broad Subject, and wrote a writers guide.
I’ve chosen the Beginning of the “Grand Opening” short story as it is a great example of her writing. It appeared first in her Dogs of Truth: New and Uncollected Stories collection, published eighteen years ago. It’s also in The Story Until Now: A Great Big Book of Stories, a collection of some thirty stories of hers that Wesleyan University Press did eight years later. Both are available from the usual suspects.
So here’s that Beginning…
It’s brilliant. The Bruneians have bought Yankee Stadium. The team went bust last year—it was the boredom. There’s nothing at issue in baseball, face it. Where’s the suspense? It’s only a game. Today we expect more from our entertainment: love and death, fire and blood. Lives at stake. Who wouldn’t get tired of going out to see people in the same old outfits going through the moves? Fans did, even the most committed ones. The times demand narrative. We do! If the Yankees can’t supply it, someone better will. The team failed and with it, commerce in the city: restaurants and hotels went under and with them all those providers who brought you baseball caps and Yankees mugs and diamonds and furs, filthy pictures and china Statues of Liberty and high end leather jackets that rich foreigners paid too much for because it’s important to travel but even more important to take something home. Like dominoes falling in a Japanese stadium, businesses went under, threatening the infrastructure, and the Sultan’s advisors saw the opportunity and pounced. Face it. Without the revenue from Brunei your metropolis would be a tent city in a parking lot. All praise to the Sultan.
Unlike the national imagination that stopped short at baseball, the Sultan had a dream. A vision that would beggar Kubla Khan. It’s enough to point to the models the Bruneians sent ahead to prepare us for the offer, and the projections they sent when we refused and they tripled it. Magnificent, even in the miniature it took the imperial architects weeks to complete. Imagine it now. Before the deal was even struck, advance teams took down the stands and leveled two miles surrounding for the armature and the diorama, as well as excavating for parking. While New Yorkers made a desperate last-minute pitch for all-American backers, crews moved in to complete UNIVERSE, the Bruneian Mall of the World, which opens tonight at the outskirts of the bankrupt city.
For months, UNIVERSION has telecast the preparations to a rapt audience of billions. We all watched the story unfold. Would UNIVERSE be done in time to save our bacon? Would we be among the first to see it? The suspense is unbearable and remember, we live for suspense.
We have been waiting for months for this day.
We don’t know it yet, but Ahmed Shah has been waiting all his life. Ah, but when the time is right we’ll see it on TV We have been watching from our homes and the luckiest of us are watching on the monitors lining the way in from the parking lots where we have been waiting for so long. When we first catch sight of Ahmed, it will be on TV. And the rest? Soon. We will see everything soon. The grand opening is almost upon us. It’s today.
We don’t know it yet, but Ahmed Shah has been waiting all his life.
(6) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.
[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]
(7) CAN LEX BE SAVED? Maybe not. “DC Kills Superman’s Biggest Foe in Mark Waid’s New Mature Readers Series” reports CBR.com.
…The publisher teased of the series, “Superman learns Lex Luthor is dying—and wants the Man of Steel to help him find the cure for whatever is causing his rapid decline. While the world wants to say good riddance to Luthor, Superman will go to the ends of the universe, through different dimensions, and across time to save his foe. But just why does he want to save the person who’s spent his life trying to destroy him? And will he even be able to find the solution?”…
(8) A SPACE BOOK WITH EXTRAS. At Dreams of Space, “The Solar System Pop-up Book (1978?)” may be all Greek to you, but the graphics are a lot of fun to look at.
My first Greek space book. This is a fun pop-up book I found recently. It is pretty basic but I really like space pop-up books for their design and impact
(9) ARE THERE NO WORKHOUSES? Steven Heller tells about “Dickensian Cool” and where to find it at PRINT Magazine.
Growing up reading Charles Dickens’ novels, I acquired a distaste for gruel (“Please, sir, I want some more”), a distrust of street urchins and a disgust for public beheadings. I did, however, learn to love the cadence of Dickens’ prose and exacting dialog, and a passion for Christmas past, present and future (“Are there no prisons? Are there no workhouses?”). I also was enthralled by the line engravings used to illustrate many Dickensian novels and stories. As an art director, when illustrators emulated the style, I was sympathetic and threw a few job crumbs their way. I’ve been called old fashioned for my preference of cross-hatched line drawings to vector-based minimalist flat color art, but Dickensian art continues to have relevance in its to-the-point style.
Dr. Michael John Goodman is also a fan, and he has put his website where his fandom is. He just launched the Charles Dickens Illustrated Gallery. It contains all the original illustrations from Charles Dickens’ novels, and is free to use for everyone to download, share, create, remix, research, teach or do whatever they like with. (If you find it useful, you may also like his previous project, the Victorian Illustrated Shakespeare Archive.) The Dickens gallery is a great resource… Ultimately, we’ve run through revivals of so many 20th-century methods and manners, it’s possible Victorian Punk is right around the corner….
(10) THESE SAMPLES AREN’T FREE. “Mars rocks await a ride to Earth — can NASA deliver?” asks Nature. “The stakes are high as the agency contemplates the technological and financial hurdles ahead for its sample-return mission.”
For decades, scientists who study Mars have watched in envy as spacecraft brought pieces of the Moon, chunks of asteroids and even samples of the solar wind to Earth to be studied. Now some of those researchers might finally be on track to receive rocks from the red planet — but only if NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA) can pull off a complex and daring mission….
(11) IT’S SUMMERTIME AT SF2 CONCATENATION. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] SF² Concatenation has just posted its summer edition.
v33(3) 2023.4.15 — New Columns & Articles for the Summer 2023
v33(3) 2023.4.15 — Science Fiction & Fantasy Book Reviews
v33(3) 2023.4.15 — Non-Fiction SF & Science Fact Book Reviews
(12) VIDEO OF THE DAY. FirstShowing.net introduces “’The Last Boy on Earth’ First Look Trailer”.
…Black Mandala has revealed a first look trailer for an indie sci-fi creation called The Last Boy on Earth, an anthology film with around eight segments in total to enjoy. There’s no final premiere date set yet, but it will be released sometime later in 2023. …
In a distant future, an enigmatic boy becomes the central figure in the search for a new hope. Who is this kid? Why is everyone looking for it? Sometimes it is better not to know certain answers…
[Thanks to Michael Toman, Cat Eldridge, Mike Kennedy, Olav Rokne, Danny Sichel, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Andrew Porter, John King Tarpinian, and Chris Barkley for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Cat Eldridge.]
(1) LOCUS REACHES CROWDFUNDING TARGET. The Locus Magazine Indiegogo appeal hit the target today. When I checked in they had exceeded their $75,000 goal and were at $78,571. Although today was the announced deadline, Locus has extended the appeal to the end of the year.
…But, wait, it’s not over yet! On advice from those that know, we are going to extend our campaign to the end of the year: if we hit $85k that will cover all of the expenses of the fundraiser and we will get the whole $75k. FTW!
Also, we really want to reach our Special Short Story Issue stretch goal!! At $85,000 we’ll dedicate one of our 2023 monthly issues to the art of short fiction, and already have Kelly Link, Usman T. Malik, and Ted Chiang lined up for a roundtable feature.
Oh, and (Jan-Erik Zandersson might want to cover his eyes here) Locus hitting its goal means John Scalzi is going to do a Christmas story.
(2) TRUMP’S BIG ANNOUNCEMENT. Former President Trump’s hyped “big announcement” would probably not be covered in today’s Scroll except that it proved to be the introduction of his “’official Donald Trump Digital Trading Card’ collection with a picture of himself in superhero costume, cape and ‘Trump Champion’ belt.” “’Losing the plot’: Trump mocked after announcing superhero card collection” at Yahoo!
… But when the announcement came on Thursday, Trump said he was merely offering supporters “limited edition cards featur[ing] amazing ART of my Life & Career”, which he promised would prove “very much like a baseball card but hopefully much more exciting”.
“GET YOUR CARDS NOW!” the 76-year-old former president commanded, above the picture of himself standing in a ring for boxing or wrestling, muscles rippling under a red leotard and wearing high blue boots emblazoned with “45” (his presidential number) and an American flag as a cape.
The cards, the declared candidate for the Republican nomination in 2024 said, cost “Only $99 each” and “would make a great Christmas gift”….
And how did the base react? We take you now to Jon Del Arroz’ reaction video titled “Trump HUMILIATES Himself With His New CRINGE Announcement. Make It STOP!”
“This is ridiculous. This reeks of an nft scam where you’re just like collecting these things that are not actually collectible. They’re digital pictures just like this one. Just take a screenshot friends and you’ll have it yourself. Let’s go to the website and check it out. All right. Collecttrumpcards.com here we go. [laughs] And it’s loading slow, too, how exciting. How exciting. Gosh this is so sad. I mean to me like a president doing this, somebody who is a 2024 Contender or kind of was. Uh, the site’s not even loading. Womp womp uh it is actually embarrassing. Like he he should not be stooping to this kind of thing, especially as like a big businessman or whatever. Like I mean you’d think that he’d have a better sort of business plan going forward to where he’s making real money. I mean this is like selling stupid trinkets that aren’t even actual trinkets, you don’t even get anything out of it, and it’s just kind of sad to watch. I think this is really the downfall of Trump when you’re doing a big announcement in all this and this is what you come out with….”
It’s my blog so I don’t have to run an image of Trump’s superhero card to illustrate this item. I think that’s a right guaranteed to me by the Constitution. Or the LA County sanitation code. Somewhere.
(3) MARLEY WAS DEAD. Open Culture invites you to “Hear Neil Gaiman Read A Christmas Carol Just Like Charles Dickens Read It”. (It’s an updated 2014 post.) The recording is here.
In Christmases past, we featured Charles Dickens’ hand-edited copy of his beloved 1843 novella A Christmas Carol. He did that hand editing for the purposes of giving public readings, a practice that, in his time, “was considered a desecration of one’s art and a lowering of one’s dignity.” That time, however, has gone, and many of the most prestigious writers alive today take the reading aloud of their own work to the level of art, or at least high entertainment, that Dickens must have suspected one could. Some writers even do a bang-up job of reading other writers’ work: modern master storyteller Neil Gaiman gave us a dose of that when we featured his recitation of Lewis Carroll’s “Jabberwocky” from memory. Today, however, comes the full meal: Gaiman’s telling of A Christmas Carol straight from that very Dickens-edited reading copy….
(4) HORROR HOSTESS. Via the Horror Writers Association blog, “Nuts and Bolts: Interview with Aurora Gorealis”. There’s a substantial excerpt at the link, however, only HWA members have access to the full article.
In the tradition of such sinister seductresses as Vampira and Elvira, Aurora Gorealis is a Baltimore-based horror host who weaves dark magic from a combination of campy movies, sassy attitude, and the occasional pun of dubious quality.
Since 2017, Aurora (aka: Melissa LaMartina) has been playing the character during “Shocktail Hour” at the Golden West Café in Baltimore, combining live comedy and screenings of off-the-wall classics such as “Phantom of the Paradise” and “House on Haunted Hill” (complete with William Castle-style gimmicks)….
(5) STONE THE PHONE. “‘Luddite’ Teens Don’t Want Your Likes” reports the New York Times.
…“Lots of us have read this book called ‘Into the Wild,’” said Lola Shub, a senior at Essex Street Academy, referring to Jon Krakauer’s 1996 nonfiction book about the nomad Chris McCandless, who died while trying to live off the land in the Alaskan wilderness. “We’ve all got this theory that we’re not just meant to be confined to buildings and work. And that guy was experiencing life. Real life. Social media and phones are not real life.”
“When I got my flip phone, things instantly changed,” Lola continued. “I started using my brain. It made me observe myself as a person. I’ve been trying to write a book, too. It’s like 12 pages now.”
Briefly, the club members discussed how the spreading of their Luddite gospel was going. Founded last year by another Murrow High School student, Logan Lane, the club is named after Ned Ludd, the folkloric 18th-century English textile worker who supposedly smashed up a mechanized loom, inspiring others to take up his name and riot against industrialization….
… “But that wasn’t enough,” she said. “So I put my phone in a box.”
For the first time, she experienced life in the city as a teenager without an iPhone. She borrowed novels from the library and read them alone in the park. She started admiring graffiti when she rode the subway, then fell in with some teens who taught her how to spray-paint in a freight train yard in Queens. And she began waking up without an alarm clock at 7 a.m., no longer falling asleep to the glow of her phone at midnight. Once, as she later wrote in a text titled the “Luddite Manifesto,” she fantasized about tossing her iPhone into the Gowanus Canal.
While Logan’s parents appreciated her metamorphosis, particularly that she was regularly coming home for dinner to recount her wanderings, they grew distressed that they couldn’t check in on their daughter on a Friday night. And after she conveniently lost the smartphone they had asked her to take to Paris for a summer abroad program, they were distraught. Eventually, they insisted that she at least start carrying a flip phone….
(6) THERE’S A LOT AT THE END OF GRAVITY’S RAINBOW. “Thomas Pynchon, Famously Private, Sells His Archive” – and the Huntington Library is its new home reports the New York Times.
For years, archival traces of the novelist Thomas Pynchon have been almost as rare as sightings of the man himself.
Only a handful of confirmed photos of him are known to exist. While letters by him sporadically pop up for sale, those that have surfaced in publicly accessible archives have tended to disappear from view just as quickly, following protests from the famously private author.
But now, the Huntington Library, Art Museum and Botanical Gardens in San Marino, Calif., has acquired Pynchon’s literary archive, promising to open a window into the mind and methods of an author whose dense, erudite, playfully postmodern and often extremely long novels like “Gravity’s Rainbow” (760 pages) and “Against the Day” (1,085) have inspired serious scholarship, cultish devotion and wild-eyed conspiracy theories.
The archive includes 48 boxes — 70 linear feet, in archivist-speak — of material dating from the late 1950s to the 2020s. There are typescripts and drafts of all his published books, from “V.” (1963) to “Bleeding Edge” (2013). And there are copious research notes on the many, many subjects (World War II rocketry, postal history, 18th-century surveying) touched on in his encyclopedic novels.
But for all its richness, those hoping for a more intimate view of the man who twice made a cheeky cameo on “The Simpsons” with a paper bag over his head may be out of luck.
The archive includes correspondence relating to the publishing process, the library said, but no private letters or other personal material. And no, there are no photographs of Pynchon either…..
(7) DEFENDING SANDMAN. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] Last night BBC Radio 4 Front Row arts programme had Neil Gaiman. Neil, apparently, has been getting a fair bit of criticism saying that Sandman is too woke what with non-binary characters and all. Neil thinks this strange as 30 years ago when Sandman first came out there was no problem. OK, so woke did not exist then, but Neil points out that nobody back then complained that Sandman was too PC.. “Neil Gaiman, China’s art censorship in Europe, Decline of the working class in the creative industries”.
(8) MEMORY LANE.
1995 — [By Cat Eldridge.] Winnie statues in the London Zoo
Yes, we already had a look at the Winnie the Pooh statue in White River, Ontario, but neither one of those statues is of him. Rather the examples today are of the bear that inspired A.A. Milne to create that marvelous bear.
The first, not at all surprisingly, stands close to the War Memorial.
This bronze statue, which is called the Winnie the bear and Lt. Colebourn Statue, was sculpted by Canadian artist William (Bill) Epp, and donated to London Zoo by the Canadian province of Manitoba. A copy of an identical statue in the Assiniboine Park Zoo, Winnipeg.
The plaque reads:
Winnie and Lt. Colebourn
by Bill Epp
presented by the people
of Manitoba
unveiled July 1995
But it’s not the only sculpture of Winnie you’ll find here in the London Zoo! There is another bronze of Winnie, shown as a young cub, by sculptor Lorne McKean. It was unveiled by Christopher Robin Milne in 1981. It is located near Animal Adventure right by the Blackburn Entrance.
McKean likes swans since two of her commissions have been them, Girl and A Swan and simply Swans. She also did a stellar Fox fountain with a bronze fox on a rock with water in Old Fox Yard, Stowmarket.
(9) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.
[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]
(10) A “KING KONG” BIRTHDAY CAKE. [Item by Steve Vertlieb.] For my 70th birthday (December 15th, 2015), dear friends Bruce and Ann Gearhart in Baltimore surprised me with the most wonderful celebratory cake I’ve ever been given.
“The Girl In The Hairy Paw,” edited and compiled by Ronald Gottesman and Harry M. Geduld, with wonderful cover art by Dave Willardson, was published by Avon Books in 1976 and featured, as its lead chapter, my lengthy essay on the making and production of the original “King Kong.” Its release was a significant benchmark in my life and career, as it was the first time that my work had ever been published in a book.
The opening chapter of this legendary volume was adapted from my series of articles comprising the cover story for the premiere issue of “The Monster Times” in 1972. This astonishing birthday sheet cake, replicating the book’s famous “King Kong” cover, thrilled me beyond words.
Carving into this wondrous pastry was delayed by a solid half hour while we all took pictures of it. It was simply too precious to deface. Fortunately, sanity eventually prevailed and this wondrous cake was ravenously devoured. Still, I wish that it might somehow have been preserved forever…. a delectable artifact commemorating my lifelong favorite film.
After seven years, the astonishing, childlike joy of having received this unforgettable gift brings a wondrous smile to my aging lips.
(11) TURKISH CARVINGS COULD BE FIRST COMIC STRIP. “Prehistoric carvings are oldest known story sequence” behind a paywall in Nature.
An 11,000-year-old carving in Turkey is the earliest known portrayal of a narrative scene. Archaeologists have uncovered other etched images in southeastern Turkey from the Neolithic period, which in the Near East stretched roughly from 10,000 bc to 7,000 bc and
includes the transition from nomadic life to settlements. But, unlike previously identified images, the latest discovery consists of two adjacent panels with a progressing storyline….
Although the Nature article is paywalled, the source journal article with numerous photos is available: “The Sayburç reliefs: a narrative scene from the Neolithic” at Cambridge Core.
(12) SF READER LITMUS TEST. [Item by Daniel Dern.] Having pre-registered as press for the rapidly-approaching CES (I’m not going IRL/F2F, but want some of the PR email barrage), Daniel Dern just got this:
Subject: CES to Feature FoodTech Sessions, Exhibits & More – Connect w/ Cultivated Meat CEO Panelist?
Dern asks/thinks (but did not reply with) this, to a mix of fellow tech journalists and Filers: Who else first quick-read this as a, with all due respect to SF writer Terry Bisson [1] ‘made-of-cultivated-meat’ panelist rather than the more likely meaning?
[1] http://www.terrybisson.com/theyre-made-out-of-meat-2/
(13) WITH ALICE. [Item by Daniel Dern.]It zooms through the skies with the greatest of ease! “Antimatter Could Travel Through Our Galaxy With Ease, Physicists Say” – Gizmodo has the story.
A team of physicists determined that enigmatic ‘antinuclei’ can travel across the universe without being absorbed by the interstellar medium. The finding suggests we may be able to identify antimatter that is produced by dark matter in deep space.
The physicists estimated the Milky Way’s so-called transparency to antihelium-3 nuclei—meaning, how permissive the galaxy’s interstellar medium is to antinuclei zipping through space.
“Our results show, for the first time on the basis of a direct absorption measurement, that antihelium-3 nuclei coming from as far as the centre of our Galaxy can reach near-Earth locations,” said ALICE physics coordinator Andrea Dainese, in a CERN release….
(14) WHY IT CRATERED. MLive takes you back to “Space World: The Michigan amusement park that never was”.
In the late 1970s, a Detroit-area aeronautical engineer who helped make NASA’S Apollo program possible dreamed up an amusement park called Space World. He hoped to build it on what was then farmland in Ypsilanti Township. He eventually broke ground on the park in nearby Huron Township, but down-to-earth troubles like high interest rates scrubbed the project.
(15) VIDEO OF THE DAY. From The Late Late Show With James Corden, “Avatar Ed: James Explains The First ‘Avatar’ To Kids”.
This group of schoolchildren is getting older, so it’s time they got… “the talk”. That is of course, the talk about what “Avatar” is and why they should care.
[Thanks to Andrew Porter, Michael Toman, Cat Eldridge, Daniel Dern, Steve Vertlieb, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Mike Kennedy, John King Tarpinian, and Chris Barkley for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Jon Meltzer.]
(1) NINE WORLDS. London’s Nine Worlds wrapped today, and the leadership has announced plans to move on:
Nine Worlds is beginning a process of reconstitution. This means that the current ownership will be dissolved, and the assets, liabilities and necessary data transferred to a new entity. The purpose of this is to a) ensure that its continued existence is sustainable and rewarding for those involved in it, and b) allow me (Dan) and the other shareholders to step away from the company and our responsibilities to it….
Why is this happening, and why now?
The current organising model is not sustainable for those on the organising side of it. A lot of people gain a lot from the event, but certain roles reliably cause harm to the people performing them or exploit them, and there’s a treadmill effect that leads to organisers carrying on until they burn out and / or do something that can’t be reconciled with continued involvement. I include myself in that: I’ve been working without choice and without pay for over two years now.
Additionally, the mix of cultures and people involved has embedded tensions that may benefit from a more concretely agreed purpose and identity. This has been causing issues from the event’s beginning, and while the intent to create a big platform that still kept high expectations of behaviour and support was positive, I’m not sure that the event will be able to meet a standard that’s acceptable to all those who attend and take part in organising, without being clearer who it’s for, what it stands for, and what people should expect, and letting people choose whether to engage in that knowledge.
And finally, I’ve invested a huge amount of time, money and my heart in Nine Worlds, but I’ve done so as a job, often working all the time for months at a time. My ’employer’ hasn’t paid me in years and imposes working conditions that would be illegal in any volunteering or employment context, and I’ve been wanting to move on for some time.
The reason I’m doing it right now is that I couldn’t do it two years ago, as an attempt to change the organisation in a different way three years ago failed hard, and necessitated an intervening two years of steady steering.
2016 put Nine Worlds Ltd far enough in debt that I couldn’t guarantee the end result of any process to reconstitute. We were reliant on future sales to cover the running cost of the current convention, and failure to transition (or attempting to close down) would result in the business failing and being unable to repay the future event sales to ticket holders.
I now have enough money to cover the shortfall without opening future ticket sales, and the event’s financial position has also improved, so I can start this process without trying to sell tickets for an undetermined event with unknown leadership to cover the gap.
(2) SPIDER TRACKS. Worldcon 76 is running a travel blog about one of the guests of honor — “The Worldcon 76 – Bound Peregrinations of Spider Robinson.” But the first entry sounds pretty disturbing.
Day 1: Victoria to Port Angeles
The trip began with a 4 AM call.
“Steph. I don’t think I’m gonna make it”
The Worldcon 76 Guest of Honour was white as a sheet and barely able to stand. It was my job to get him from Canada to San Jose in one piece and it was looking like the trip was going to be over before it began.
After six hours in the emergency room, we got the all clear and Spider finally got some needed sleep. Luckily so did I.
The spirit of Fandom and SF must have been watching over us, because when he woke up he was his old self and willing to try to make the trip after all. (I on the other hand was about ready to pass out from stress and worry).
(3) MCMOVIE. Ethan Alter, in the Yahoo! Entertainment story, “‘Mac and Me’ at 30: ‘Ronald McDonald’ remembers his infamous 1988 movie” notes that this is the 30th anniversary of Mac and Me, a cheesy ripoff of E.T. in which Ronald MacDonald teams up with alien “MAC” (or “Mysterious Alien Creature”.) Squire Fridell, who played Ronald MacDonald at the time, tells stories about the production and wishes that the Razzies had mailed him his award for Worst New Actor. Paul Rudd has a long-running gag on Conan where he promises an “exclusive new clip” from whatever movie he is promoting and then shows something from Mac and Me.
The trailer turned out to be a bit of a bait-and-switch, and not just because it made the movie look halfway entertaining. While Ronald presents himself as an equal co-star with the titular bug-eyed alien, his actual role in the Stewart Raffill-directed movie is little more than a glorified cameo.
(4) ASK THE PRIMATES. BBC profiles “Primate speech: How some species are ‘wired’ for talk” — since we don’t have soft tissues from our own ancestors, looking at evolution of speech by studying vocalization in existing species.
A new study has compared different primate species’ brains.
It revealed that primates with wider “vocal repertoires” had more of their brain dedicated to controlling their vocal apparatus.
That suggests that our own speaking skills may have evolved as our brains gradually rewired to control that apparatus, rather than purely because we’re smarter than non-human apes.
Humans and other primates have very similar vocal anatomy – in terms of their tongues and larynx. That’s the physical machinery in the throat which allows us to turn air into sound.
So, as lead researcher Dr Jacob Dunn from Anglia Ruskin University in Cambridge explained, it remains a mystery that only human primates can actually talk.
(5) SOMEHOW STILL HERE. In “Coral reefs ‘weathered dinosaur extinction'”, new studies say that corals go back 160Myrs, not just 60.
Corals may have teamed up with the microscopic algae which live inside them as much as 160 million years ago, according to new research.
The two organisms have a symbiotic relationship, meaning they need each other to survive.
But this partnership was previously thought to have developed about 60 million years ago.
The new findings suggest that reef algae may have weathered significant environmental changes over time.
This includes the mass extinction that wiped out most of the dinosaurs.
Algae’s resilience to temperature changes has been of concern to scientists recently, as warming events on the Great Barrier Reef have seen the coral “bleached” of its algae.
(6) TALK TO THE ANIMALS. How hot was it, Johnny? “Cows allowed to visit Swedish nudist beaches in heatwave”.
The government in southern Sweden have granted permission for cows to visit nudist beaches during the prolonged summer heatwave, despite complaints from locals, it’s reported.
According to The Local news website, nudists have been complaining to officials in provincial Smaland about livestock visiting their beaches, saying that their presence is “unhygienic and could pose a health risk”.
It says the roasting summer heat affecting much of continental Europe has led to drought throughout the country, and has meant that farmers have been struggling to feed their animals.
(7) TODAY IN HISTORY
(8) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS
(9) THE ICING ON THE CAKE.
Looks kinda like an @escapepodcast escape pod in space. Only edible. #Worldcon76 pic.twitter.com/jeNUCM8xpd
— Effie Seiberg (@effies) August 11, 2018
(10) NOTCONJOSE II. George R.R. Martin will be there: “Worldcon Time!”
I have cut way down on the number of cons I attend, due to the press of work, but there’s no way I’d miss a worldcon, by any name. I’ve only missed one in the last thirty years. Dragoncon and San Diego Comicon and GenCon and many other cons are now much bigger, but worldcon remains the original, and the best, the heart of the fannish community. Worldcon is like a family reunion. And yes, like any large family, we have our share of drunken uncles, loony cousins, and snot-nosed kids… but still, family is family. I’ll be there for the whole con. I hope to see many of you in SanJose. Worldcon is great time for getting together with old friends and making new ones.
(11) JUST ONE THING MISSING. Andrea discusses “Nexhuman by Francesco Verso” at Little Red Reviewer.
#sorrynotsorry, I’m going to give you a spoiler right out of the gate:
Nexhuman will offer you enough ideas and discussion topics and thought experiments to keep you busy for the next ten years. In fact, an entire Convention programming track could be built just around the questions and ideas in this book.
What Nexhuman does not offer is concrete answers to any of the questions that are brought up.
(12) FRESH OFF THE 1963 NEWSSTANDS. Galactic Journey’s John Boston finds a little gold-dust among the grit in the new issue of Amazing: “[August 12, 1963] WET BLANKET (the September 1963 Amazing)”.
But the issue opens with Poul Anderson’s Homo Aquaticus, illustrated on the cover by a swimmer with a menacing look and a more menacing trident, next to a nicely-rendered fish, in one of artist Lloyd Birmingham’s better moments. This is one of Anderson’s atmospheric stories, its mood dominated by Anglo-Saxon monosyllables. No, not those—I mean fate, guilt, doom, that sort of thing. The story’s tone is set in the first paragraph, in which the protagonist “thought he heard the distant blowing of a horn. It would begin low, with a pulse that quickened as the notes waxed, until the snarl broke in a brazen scream and sank sobbing away.”
This is rationalized as the wind in the cliffs, but we know better. The good (space)ship Golden Flyer and its crew have been sentenced to roam the galactic hinterlands after some of their number betrayed other ships of the Kith, a starfaring culture separated from planetary cultures by relativistic time dilation. Right now they’re looking at what used to be a colony planet, but all they see is ruins, until their encounter with the colony’s descendants, as given away by the title. In the end, doom and fate are tempered with rationality and mercy. Three stars, but towards the top of Anderson’s middling range.
(13) LECKIE LIKES THESE. Ann Leckie recommends three books in “Some things I’ve read recently” beginning with —
An Unkindness of Ghosts by Rivers Solomon
Look, you should just read this. Rivers is nominated for the Campbell (Not a Hugo) this year on the strength of this book. It would have been an entirely worthy Best Novel finalist, quite frankly. I was late to it partly because I have lots of things to read and very little time to do it in, and also because I was aware that it would be a difficult read–as in, full of violence and death and heartbreak. That’s all true. This is a fabulous book.
(14) A CONVERT. Ethan Mills of Examined Worlds says he now understands what the Stephenson hype was about: “Philoso-monks Save Some Worlds: Anathem by Neal Stephenson”.
A few times while reading this book, I tried to explain the basic premise to friends. The best I could do is something like this: weird monks on an alien planet or maybe another dimension talk about philosophy, science, and math. This does not in any way do it justice, of course, but it’s really hard to explain this novel.
Of course, for hard core Stephenson fans, the name on the cover is enough. And for philosophers such as myself, those weird alien philosophical monks are irresistible (which is why this novel made a lot of the lists of philosophers’ picks for best philosophical SF compiled by Eric Schwitzgebel). I wouldn’t be surprised if there are some other lovers of this book who sometimes dream about a life as a monastic entirely dedicated to intellectual pursuits, or who maybe just liked Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose. Others who might love this: people who love immersive world building and massive tomes that come with with a glossary (no maps here, but there are a few calcas – explanatory appendices for those who need even more nerdish detail). As I am at least an occasional member of all of the above groups, my love for this book is present in all nearby possible worlds.
(15) SAVED. Much truth in this.
https://twitter.com/joecarter/status/1027933726418841600
(16) BATWOMAN LEAVES TWITTER. Yahoo! Lifestyle reports “Ruby Rose Apparently Left Twitter Following Harassment over Her “Batwoman” Role”.
Ruby Rose has apparently removed her Twitter account after continued social media harassment that centered on her upcoming role as Batwoman.
As noted by SyFy, the Orange is the New Black star’s absence from Twitter was spotted by fans on August 11. Ruby also appeared to allude to a potential leave of the platform on Friday, August 10, tweeting: “Where on earth did ‘Ruby is not a lesbian therefore she can’t be Batwoman’ come from — has to be the funniest most ridiculous thing I’ve ever read. I came out at 12? And have for the past 5 years had to deal with ‘she’s too gay’ how do y’all flip it like that? I didn’t change.” Her account appears to have been removed soon after the tweet was made.
Ruby’s Instagram remains active, but SyFy reports that she seems to have limited what comments appear. Her last Instagram post was shared on August 10.
(17) DIOP TURNS OFF COMMENTING. Another actress facing toxic social media: “‘Titans’ Star Anna Diop Disables Instagram Comments” – ComicBook.com has the story.
The first trailer for Titans brought its cast into the spotlight this week, and it looks like that has had some major effects.
Anna Diop, who is set to play Koriand’r/Starfire on the DC Universe series, recently disabled comments on the vast majority of her Instagram posts. Her Instagram, which you can check out here, features only six photos that have been posted since May 11th. The latest post, where Diop announces that she has a role in Jordan Peele’s Us, is the only one that currently allows comments.
While it’s unknown exactly why Diop essentially cleaned house on her Instagram, some have speculated that it is due to the negative backlash from the first Titans trailer. The trailer, which debuted on Thursday, features several brief glimpses of Starfire using her powers, which have appeared to only continue the racist and sexist remarks surrounding Diop’s casting.
Earlier this year, a series of leaked set photos provided the first look at Diop and her co-stars in costume, which earned backlash for not being “comic accurate”. At the time, Diop actually used Instagram to fire back at the negativity, posting a passionate response to her followers.
(18) VIDEO OF THE DAY. In The New York Public Library’s Collections of Weird Objects on Vimeo, The New Yorker shows viewers some weird things that have ended up in the library’s collections, including a paw from one of Charles Dickens’s cats!
[Thanks to Chip Hitchcock, Karl-Johan Norén, John King Tarpinian, Cat Eldridge, JJ, Carl Slaughter, Martin Morse Wooster, Mike Kennedy, and Andrew Porter for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Rob Thornton.]
(1) CADIGAN NEWS. Congratulations to Pat Cadigan who told her Facebook followers today:
I am now allowed to say that I am writing both the novelisation for the forthcoming movie Alita: Battle Angel as well as the prequel novel, Iron City.
And this is why I’m in Deadline Hell.
That is all.
(2) STAR PEACE CORPS. In “Star Wars Without the Empire”, Camestros Felapton conducts an awesome thought experiment inspired by Paul Weimer’s tweet.
In post-war Germany, a version of Casablanca was produced, re-edited and with a new script for the dubbing, that had no Nazis in it. As you can imagine, given the role Nazis play in the plot, they had to do a lot of work.
I was wondering if you could do the same to Star Wars Episode 4 – remove the Empire…
Star Not Wars Because They Aren’t Having a War With Anybody: A New Hope
A spaceship has broken down. Princess Leia finds a robot on the ship and gives it something. The robot (R2D2) finds an escape pod with its friend (C3PO). They leave the ship. We don’t see the ship again. It probably had engine trouble or something. Maybe the robots have gone off to get some fuel from a service station.
The robots land in a desert. After an argument, they split up. Later they each get caught by tiny people.
Meanwhile, young Luke Skywalker is unhappy being a farmer and living with his uncle. He’d rather be…doing something else I suppose.
(3) MARK YOUR CALENDAR. The Vintage Paperback Show returns to Glendale, CA on March 18.
(4) ROBOT ON PATROL. Tech Crunch reports “Security robots are being used to ward off San Francisco’s homeless population”:
Is it worse if a robot instead of a human is used to deter the homeless from setting up camp outside places of business?
One such bot cop recently took over the outside of the San Francisco SPCA, an animal advocacy and pet adoption clinic in the city’s Mission district, to deter homeless people from hanging out there — causing some people to get very upset.
The article quotes this tweet from Brianna Wu:
I’m sorry for being so frank, but this absolutely disgusts me as someone that experienced homelessness.
Every time I travel to San Fran my heart breaks from seeing all the homelessness in a city with so much wealth and privilege.
FUND PROGRAMS TO HELP THE HOMELESS, FULL STOP. https://t.co/LaalT3XhTl
— Brianna Wu (@BriannaWu) December 12, 2017
The SPCA deployed a robot from security startup Knightscope to deter crime and vandalism on their campus.
And, according to both the S.F. SPCA and Knightscope, crime dropped after deploying the bot.
However, the K9 unit was patrolling several areas around the shop, including the sidewalk where humans walk, drawing the ire of pedestrians and advocacy group Walk SF, which previously introduced a bill to ban food delivery robots throughout the city.
“We’re seeing more types of robots on sidewalks and want to see the city getting ahead of this,” said Cathy DeLuca, Walk SF policy and program director, who also mentioned S.F. district 7 supervisor Norman Yee would be introducing legislation around sidewalk use permits for robots in the beginning of 2018.
Last week the city ordered the S.F. SPCA to stop using these security robots altogether or face a fine of $1,000 per day for operating in a public right of way without a permit.
The S.F. SPCA says it has since removed the robot and is working through a permitting process. It has already seen “two acts of vandalism” since the robot’s removal.
(5) THE DIAGNOSIS. Ted Chiang says “The Real Danger To Civilization Isn’t AI. It’s Runaway Capitalism” in an article for Buzzfeed.
…Speaking to Maureen Dowd for a Vanity Fair article published in April, Musk gave an example of an artificial intelligence that’s given the task of picking strawberries. It seems harmless enough, but as the AI redesigns itself to be more effective, it might decide that the best way to maximize its output would be to destroy civilization and convert the entire surface of the Earth into strawberry fields. Thus, in its pursuit of a seemingly innocuous goal, an AI could bring about the extinction of humanity purely as an unintended side effect.
This scenario sounds absurd to most people, yet there are a surprising number of technologists who think it illustrates a real danger. Why? Perhaps it’s because they’re already accustomed to entities that operate this way: Silicon Valley tech companies.
(6) CHEERS AND BOOS. Fanac.org has posted a 36-minute video of Robert A. Heinlein’s guest of honor speech at the 1976 Worldcon.
MidAmeriCon, the 34th World Science Fiction Convention, was held in Kansas City in 1976, with Robert A. Heinlein as Guest of Honor. With a warm introduction by Bob Tucker, this sometimes uncomfortable speech touches on Heinlein’s belief in the inevitability of atomic war and his belief that mankind will go to the stars. There are comments on Russia and China, the role of men, and more than a few very bad jokes. You will hear applause and you can hear disapproving boos. If you are one of “Heinlein’s Children”, or simply a reader of classic SF, this video is a rare opportunity to hear that legendary figure.
(More background about the booing is here.)
(7) UNCANNY DINOSAUR ISSUE. The submission window opens in March – read the pitch and complete details here: “Uncanny Magazine Dinosaur Special Issue Guidelines”.
As you may know if you followed the Uncanny Magazine Year 4 Kickstarter, Uncanny Magazine Issue 23 will be a Special Shared-Universe Dinosaur Issue! The planned solicited contributors are:
- Sam J. Miller
- Brooke Bolander
- Mari Ness
- A. Merc Rustad & Elsa Sjunneson-Henry
- JY Yang
- K.M. Szpara
- Nicasio Andres Reed
Do you want to join them? One of the stretch goals was adding two extra unsolicited stories to the issue! We will be open to submissions from March 1- March 15, 2018.
(8) CAPITOL TBR. Former congressman Steve Israel profiles members of Congress in the Washington Post about their favorite books of the year and found Rep. Ted Lieu of California enjoying the Nebula Awards anthology and Rep.Adam Schiff of California reading Pierce Brown’s Red Rising series — “A former congressman asked his old colleagues for book suggestions. Here’s their list.”
(9) TROLLING FOR CLICKS. At NBC News, Noah Berlatsky asks “Is Star Wars’ ‘The Last Jedi’ science fiction? It’s time to settle this age-old argument”. Will anybody take my bet that the argument will not be settled by his op-ed? Or maybe it will, by a kind of cinematic force majeure.
To figure out whether Star Wars is science fiction, you first need to figure out how to define the term — which is harder than you might think. Genres are notoriously difficult to pin down, which is why they spark so many arguments. Some country fans protested loudly when Beyoncé appeared at the Country Music Awards because she (supposedly) was not a country artist. Some critics similarly argued that Bob Dylan’s lyrics are not literature, though the Nobel committee disagreed.
Genre is a marker of quality and belonging, of seriousness and community. Science fiction in particular is often seen as more important or serious than fantasy, so it’s no wonder that there’s been some struggle over how to place the films. George Lucas himself declared that “Star Wars isn’t a science-fiction film, it’s a fantasy film and a space opera” in 2015. Others have also waded in over the years; Annalee Newitz included Star Wars in a list of 10 science-fiction works that are really fantasy at io9, while author Brian Clegg says Star Wars is only “low-grade science-fiction” — it’s not quite real science-fiction, so it’s not high quality.
(10) TODAY IN HISTORY
(11) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS
(12) COMICS SECTION.
(13) I HAVE A LITTLE LIST. SyFy Wire’s Swapna Krishna names these as “The 10 best sci-fi and fantasy books of 2017”. People get upset if I say I haven’t heard of all the books on a “best” list, so let me say I have heard of many of these.
(14) THE GHOST OF CHRISTMAS 2014. Everyone has their own way of celebrating the holidays. John King Tarpinian’s traditions include rewatching Thug Notes’ analysis of Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol.”
(15) THE BIG BUCKS. Speaking of stacks of cheddar — “Star Wars: The Last Jedi takes $450m on opening weekend”.
The movie dwarfed its nearest rival – the computer-animated comedy Ferdinand, which took $13m (£10m).
The total for The Last Jedi includes $220m (£165m) from box offices in the US and Canada, placing the film second in the all-time list for North America.
It trails behind the 2015 release Star Wars: The Force Awakens, which opened with a record-breaking $248m (£185m).
(16) BREATHLESS TAKE. Chuck Wendig launches his review with a long stretch of onomatopoeia: “The Last Jedi: A Mirror, Slowly Cracking”. And how often do you get a chance to use that word?
This will be less a review of The Last Jedi (Episode VIII) than it will be… my thoughts? An analysis? Me opening my head like a flip-top Pac-Men and seeing what globs of brain-goo I can grab and hastily smack into the screen?
Spoilers follow the noises, Wendig warns.
(17) WHAT’S BREWING IN SHORT FICTION. Nerds of a Feather’s Charles Payseur serves “THE MONTHLY ROUND – A Taster’s Guide to Speculative Short Fiction, 11/2017”.
So please, take seat. The flavors on tap this month are perfect for those looking to unwind by the fire, to shed a tear for those who have not made it this far, and to reaffirm a commitment to pushing forward, into a future that is not mired by the same harms and dangers as the past. Each pint today comes with a special side of memories and a tendril of shadow creeping just out of view. The only remedy is to drink deep, and share the moment with those you care about, and look for ways to escape the familiar cycles of hate, loss, and fear—together….
Tasting Flight – November 2017
“An Unexpected Boon” by S.B. Divya (Apex)
Notes: Pouring a dark brown rimmed with gold, the first sip is deep, subtle and smoky like dreams burning, only to reveal newer, sweeter tones underneath, a future still bright despite loss and danger.
Pairs with: Honey Bock
Review: Kalyani is a young (probably autistic) girl who experiences the world quite differently from the rest of her family. It’s something that Aruni, her older brother, finds quite difficult to handle, especially when his parents have left him in charge while they are away. For Kalyani, though, it’s the rest of the world that doesn’t make as much sense, that overflows with threats and dangers…
(18) ON STAGE. It’s live! “The Twilight Zone returns to spook theatergoers”.
In 1959, a groundbreaking TV series began in the USA. The Twilight Zone came to be regarded as a classic of science fiction for the small screen. Now the Almeida Theatre in London is taking eight episodes to make a Twilight Zone for the stage.
(19) YA. A dystopia? Why, that’s just another day in a teenaged life: “Why Teens Find The End Of The World So Appealing”.
“The hallmark of moving from childhood to adulthood is that you start to recognize that things aren’t black and white,” says Ostenson “and there’s a whole bunch of ethical grey area out there.”
Which makes dystopian fiction perfect for the developing adolescent brain, says Laurence Steinberg, a psychologist at Temple University.
“Their brains are very responsive to emotionally arousing stimuli,” he explains. During this time, there are so many new emotions and they are much stronger than those kids experienced when they were younger.
“When teenagers feel sad, what they often do it put themselves in situations where they feel even sadder,” Steinberg says. They listen to sad music — think emo! — they watch melodramatic TV shows. So dystopian novels fit right in, they have all that sadness plus big, emotional ideas: justice, fairness, loyalty and mortality.
This time in a kid’s life is often defined by acting out, but, Steinberg says, that’s a misguided interpretation of what’s happening. “It isn’t so much rebellion, but it is questioning.”
(20) BAD AIR. I remember breathing this stuff at the 2015 Worldcon: “California fires: Sentinel satellite tracks wildfire smoke plume”.
Europe’s new Sentinel-5P satellite has captured a dramatic image of the smoke billowing away from the devastating California wildfires.
It is a powerful demonstration of 5P’s ability to sense the atmosphere.
The plume is seen to sweep westwards out over the Pacific Ocean near Los Angeles and then turn north towards the State of Oregon.
(21) JDA. Jon Del Arroz shares his vision of the controversies he’s engaged in this year with BayCon, Scalzi, Cat Rambo, Chuck Wendig, and some guy who scrolls pixels in “It’s Better To Be My Friend #JDAYourFriend”.
…Where they all screwed up, is that I’m a competent writer who works hard. I’m a competent businessman who markets hard. I don’t take my ball and go home and I’m not deterred from speaking the truth by some threats or someone’s bully pulpit.
And now I’ve got a platform. It’s one a lot of people read on a daily basis. It’s only going to grow bigger in 2018. I’m a well-respected journalist, I’m a multiple-award nominated author with an avid readership. I’m winning. Readers and audiences like winners. Yet not one of these people has come forward and said “you know what, Jon, I shouldn’t have attacked you, let’s be friends.”
(22) TO SMELL THE TRUTH. Hugo-winning editor Gordon Van Gelder had a famous father, Dr. Richard Van Gelder, who tried to stump the panelists on the episode of game show To Tell The Truth aired March 13, 1961. The chairman of the Department of Mammals at the American Museum of Natural History, Van Gelder pere was specially touted as an expert on skunks. The real Van Gelder and two impostors appear at 17:00, and the truth is told right after the 23:00 mark.
[Thanks to Andrew Porter, JJ, John King Tarpinian, Chip Hitchcock, Carl Slaughter, Cat Eldridge, and Martin Morse Wooster for some of these stories, Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Daniel Dern.]
(1) ASSUAGING YOUR TBR GUILT. Fantasy-Faction’s Nicola Alter playfully advises about “Coping with Reading Guilt in 7 Easy Steps”.
Signs you might suffer from Reading Guilt of one form or another can include:
1. The pile of unread books on your shelf, be it virtual or real, makes you feel anxious every time you look at it.
2. You occasionally dust off that book your friend loaned you and pretend you are about to read it, knowing in your heart you are just preparing it to collect more nightstand dust.
3. The sight of a bookstore evokes complex feelings of longing and guilt.
4. The book-devouring speed of a well-read friend makes you irrationally envious.
5. The question, “have you read…” elicits an instinctual dread, because whatever it is, you’ve usually never read it.
6. When someone recommends a book to you, you smile and make enthusiastic noises to cover the sinking feeling in your stomach, because it’s just another to add to the endless list and you’ll probably never get around to reading it anyway.
7. You are so behind on that reading goal you set that it just serves to depress rather than motivate you.
8. You have a vague but pervasive feeling that you haven’t read enough of the “important” books.
9. The hunt for bookmarks depresses you, because you realise they are all wedged in half-finished books and you can’t bring yourself to remove them.
10. You participate in online “How many of these books have you read?” quizzes, even though you know the results will not cheer you up.Fortunately, Reading Guilt is a very treatable disorder, and if you are exhibiting these symptoms, you are not alone. Here are seven easy steps to help you cope with Reading Guilt, and prevent it from getting in the way of your bookly enjoyment….
(2) A CHEESY EVENT. The Harry Potter Festival that promised to “bring the magic” to Jefferson, WI last weekend has been roundly criticized as a dud: “Angry fans say organizers of Harry Potter Festival in Jefferson were unprepared”.
Some Harry Potter fans are cursing their decision to attend last weekend’s Harry Potter Festival USA in Jefferson, Wisconsin.
Fans says organizers promised an immersive experience but were instead unprepared for the crowds. City officials provided an estimate that around 35,000 attended the event on Saturday.
Here are some of the main criticisms circulating on the festival’s Facebook page: 1) Visitors say hidden costs were added on top of the price of admission 2) the effort put into decorations were at the level of a high school homecoming and 3) poor transportation planning caused long lines for shuttles.
…For hours people waited to get to certain attractions that have also been highly criticized online.
One person commented on the festival’s Facebook page “‘Hagrid’ ate breakfast without his wig and played on his phone the whole time and did not get up once for pictures. Very disappointing, especially for $20 per person!”
Another person wrote “Went to the ‘prison’ – where nothing was happening?! Empty tennis court? So extremely disappointed.”
Others say they wouldn’t make the drive to the again and regret doing it the first time.
“We traveled an hour and a half,” Maria Remillard of Elk Grove Village, Illinois said.
“And once we got there we were basically stuck there. The bus lines were hours long. I ended up walking back to the fairgrounds to pick up our car so I could go back and pick up my parents, my sister, and my daughter,” Remillard said.
“‘The Owlry’ was a small VFW hall with one stuffed animal and one girl signing letters for an extra fee,” Remillard said.
(3) SUBURBAN BLIGHT. Adweek highlights another scary ad: “Xfinity Adds Its Own Creepy 5-Minute Film to 2017’s Fright Fest of Longer Halloween Ads”. See the video at the link.
The Comcast cable brand just unveiled its own five-minute horror short, titled “The Neighborhood,” developed by Goodby Silverstein & Partners and written and directed by Dante Ariola of production company MJZ.
The tale concerns a spooky old mask, made out of a burlap sack, that seems to be making the rounds in one suburban neighborhood on Halloween. But those gifted with it quickly come to regret their mysterious new present.
(4) PULP ART BOOK. IDW Publishing has released “The Art of the Pulps: An Illustrated History” co-edited by Doug Ellis, Ed Hulse, and Robert Weinberg. Doug Ellis gives the background:
“The Art of the Pulps”, co-edited by myself, Ed Hulse and Robert Weinberg, came out earlier this week, on October 24 from IDW. For me, it was a long wait, but I think the final book was well worth it. Bob and I actually started preliminary work on the book back in January 2016, so it’s been nearly a two year project for me. Bob unfortunately passed away in late September 2016, just as we were about to start working on it in earnest, but fortunately Ed Hulse was willing to step in and help see the book through to its completion. I think Bob would have been very pleased with how it came out.
The book focuses on the colorful cover art of the pulps, along with a sampling of some black and white interior pulp art, containing roughly 460 images. But in addition to the images, there’s well over 50,000 words of text, written by some of the top experts in the pulp field. Besides contributions from the co-editors, we were fortunate enough to enlist the writing talents of (in alphabetical order): Mike Ashley (science fiction), Will Murray (hero), Michelle Nolan (sports), Laurie Powers (love), Tom Roberts (air and war), David Saunders (the great pulp artists), F. Paul Wilson (foreword) and John Wooley (detective). We think you’ll agree, if you read the book, that each did a bang-up job!
(5) DOWN THESE MEAN STREETS. Stevens Point author Patrick Rothfuss’ new show on Travel Channel, Myth or Monster, debuts with three showings this weekend on Travel Channel. Myth or Monster will first air 9 p.m. on Friday.
Rothfuss “dives into the past and consults with present-day eyewitnesses to expose the truth behind stories long believed to be sheer fantasy.”
The first episode is titled “Mothman:
Armed with new evidence of a modern-day sighting, acclaimed fantasy author Patrick Rothfuss investigates the local legend of an 8-foot-tall man-bird hybrid that has haunted a small West Virginia town for over 50 years.
(6) THE DICKENS YOU SAY. Alonso Duralde of The Wrap was disappointed: “‘The Man Who Invented Christmas’ Review: Scrooge’s Origin Story Ends Up a Bit of a Humbug”
The history of Christmas is a fascinating one, from the biblical account of Jesus’ birth, to the church’s moving of his birthdate so as to capitalize on the popularity of pagan holidays like Saturnalia and Yule, to the Puritans banning it as a feast of licentiousness, to the abundant, familial celebration we know today. Standiford touches upon all of this, and on how the immense popularity of “A Christmas Carol” changed the culture around the holiday, but screenwriter Susan Coyne (“Anne of Green Gables”) and director Bharat Nalluri (“Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day”) gloss right over it in a way that will leave most viewers befuddled by the film’s title.
While Dickens (played here by Dan Stevens) was a well-established writer by 1843, the author was in something of a slump before he decided to take a crack at writing a Christmas story. “Barnaby Rudge” and “Martin Chuzzlewit” were slow sellers, and his essays about his trip to America hadn’t flown off the shelves either; meanwhile, he and his family were grandly restoring a new house, and his constantly-in-debt father John (Jonathan Pryce) was one of many people in Dickens’ orbit with hands perpetually out.
(7) KING TUT. Someone apparently tutted at John Scalzi about his weekly photos of incoming ARCs and review copies.
I am delighted to highlight authors of all sorts in my stacks. Please encourage publishers to send books my way. All my info is on the site.
— John Scalzi (@scalzi) October 27, 2017
(8) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY BOYS
(9) LOOK OUT BELOW. Newsweek brings out Michael Rampino to answer the question: “Did Dark Matter Kill the Dinosaurs? How Mass Extinctions Are Linked With Universe’s Mystery Ingredient”.
… Over the last three decades, some scientists have found a good correlation of mass extinctions with impacts and massive volcanism. Curiously they have also turned up evidence that these events occur in a cycle of about 26 to 30 million years. This attracted the interest of astrophysicists, and several astronomical theories were proposed in which cosmic cycles affected Earth and life on the planet.
My own hypothesis linked the Earthly events to the motion of the solar system as it moves through the galaxy. Now, it seems that these geologic cycles may be a result of the interactions of our planet with mysterious dark matter.
How does dark matter affect our planet? Most dark matter can be found as huge haloes surrounding the disc-shaped spiral galaxies, like our own Milky Way. But in 2015 physicist Lisa Randall at Harvard, proposed that significant dark matter is concentrated along the central mid-plane of the galactic disk.
During the cyclic movement of the sun and planets through the galaxy, we pass through the mid-place about once every 30 million years. At these times, the dark matter concentrated there tugs on the myriad Oort cloud comments found at the edge of the solar system. This gravitational perturbation causes some of the loosely bound comets to fall into the zone of the inner planets, where some would collide with Earth, producing a roughly 30 million year cycle of impacts and associated mass extinctions. As a result, dark matter may have killed the dinosaurs.
(10) TREMONTAINE. At Fantasy Literature, Marion Deeds reviews the book version of Tremontaine Season One by Ellen Kushner, Alaya Dawn Johnson, Malinda Lo, Joel Derfner, Patty Bryant, Racheline Maltese and Paul Witcover — “Tremontaine Season One: Magic can’t always be re-created”.
The most interesting secondary character is Micah, a young county girl in the city, who is a math genius. Disguised as a boy, Micah is taken up by the university students because she has a gift for winning card games, and because she is a genius. Micah is a problematic character for some of the writers. She is neuro-atypical. In some of these novellas, Micah convinces me that she is somewhere on the autism spectrum. In the hands of others she reads more like an innocent, much younger girl (eleven or twelve). This wobbliness broke my suspension of disbelief. Beyond the problem of Micah’s characterization, tone in general is a problem, changing from episode to episode, and sometimes clashing with the previous chapter, as it does most noticeably in Episode Seven, “The Swan Ball.”
(11) THEY LOST HIM AT HELLO. Superversive SF’s Declan Finn says he was so offended by Star Trek: Discovery that he had already turned it off before they reached the part that was designed to offend him: “The STD That Will Never Go Viral”.
I gave up at the 40 minute mark. So, all of this is this is, of course, before I got to the stuff that was designed to offend me. I’m told there are gay, bisexual and other sexes all over the place, that the Klingons were supposed to be Trump supporters, that they use cussing but can’t say “God” on the show. Heck, I didn’t even get far enough into the episode to see “Michael” assault her captain, take over the ship in a mutiny specifically so she could commit an act of war on the Klingons… which happened.
But they never got a chance to appeal to my politics. They never got a chance to offend me. They never got a chance to make me angry. Because they never got me to care. Because this isn’t Star Trek. This is just a bad parody.
This is one STD that will never go viral.
(12) THE NOT RIGHT. Prager University produced a video, “What is the Alt-Right?” which briefly mentions Vox Day.
What is the alt-right? What is its worldview? How big is it? Michael Knowles, bestselling author and host of The Michael Knowles Show, took a deep dive into alt-right culture. Here’s what he learned.
When a reader of Vox Popoli brought it to Day’s attention he teed off on the site’s namesake.
I would have been shocked if Dennis Prager had anything positive to say about me. He’s a mediocre thinker and a mediocre writer whose columns on WND were lightweight, little trafficked, and almost entirely forgettable.
(13) ARISTOTLE! Speaking of Aristotle….Camestros Felapton has now reached Chapter 6 in his dissection of Vox Day’s SJWs Always Double Down: Anticipating the Thought Police.
“It is one of more than a dozen such tactics that I have observed SJWs utilizing over the past few year, and what is fascinating is how many of these tactics were first observed more than 2,400 years ago by one of Man’s greatest thinkers, Aristotle.”
Having said that, we don’t get an illustration of social media bait and report re-imagined for ancient Athens (which might have been interesting). I’d imagine the advice would be simple from Aristotle – if somebody is trying to bait you then don’t let them wind you up. There is an excellent example from Jesus in the New Testament dodging a “bait and report” when he is quizzed about paying taxes. Mind you I don’t think Vox reads the New Testament much, particularly not a section where his God implies that you should pay your taxes.
Anyway, put my side trip to Jesus aside, Vox is back with our friend Aristotle. This time rather than Aristotle’s Rhetoric, Vox wants us to look at The Organon and in particular the section called On Sophistical Refutations. “Sophistical” here referring to sophists – the quasi-professional arguers of stuff and/or Plato’s contemporary philosophers not in tune with the Socratic wing of thinking.
Aristotle lists 13 fallacies and Vox goes through them all to some extent. I’m going to look at them from a different direction…
(14) LET THERE BE LIGHTS. Tesla in real-world success: “Turns Power Back On At Children’s Hospital In Puerto Rico”.
Tesla has used its solar panels and batteries to restore reliable electricity at San Juan’s Hospital del Niño (Children’s Hospital), in what company founder Elon Musk calls “the first of many solar+battery Tesla projects going live in Puerto Rico.”
The project came about after Puerto Rico was hit by two devastating and powerful hurricanes in September, and Musk reached out about Tesla helping.
Musk’s company announced its success in getting the hospital’s power working again less than three weeks after Puerto Rico Gov. Ricardo Rossello tweeted on Oct. 6, “Great initial conversation with @elonmusk tonight. Teams are now talking; exploring opportunities.”
Tesla’s image of the project’s solar array, in a parking lot next to the hospital, has been liked more than 84,000 times since it was posted to Instagram Tuesday.
(15) SOFTCOVER SCARES. Rise of a genre? “These ‘Paperbacks From Hell’ Reflect The Real-Life Angst Of The 1970s”. NPR did an interview with Grady Hendrix who argues that “horror” was not a mainstream term before _Rosemary’s Baby, The Exorcist, et al.
On the appeal of horror paperbacks in the ’70s and ’80s
In the early ’70s, I think part of the appeal of these books is [that] they were written fast and without a lot of pretensions, and so in doing that, these authors were kind of capturing the time in which they were writing. And so you had in the early ’70s, late ’60s, all this fascination with the occult. Astrology was big, Time magazine had two covers that were like, “The New Age occult craze in America” and also there was a fear of our children — “What is this rock music and this LSD and this ‘Summer of Love’? Surely there must be a dark side there.”
And so these books really reflected a lot of where we were at the times and answered a lot of questions, and the answer to most of the questions was, “Yes, be very, very afraid of everything.” Jellyfish, mattresses, curtains, dogs, moths, caterpillars, children, dolls, clowns, puppets. But at least they were answers.
(16) NO RENDEZVOUS WITH THIS RAMA. Passing through: “Scientists Spot First Alien Space Rock In Our Solar System”.
It’s long been assumed that an interstellar object like this one should be out there, because giant planets in forming solar systems are thought to toss out bits of space crud that haven’t yet glommed into anything. But this is the first time scientists have actually found one.
The mysterious object is small — less than a quarter mile in diameter — and seems to have come from the general direction of the constellation Lyra, moving through interstellar space at 15.8 miles per second, or 56,880 miles per hour.
“The orbit is very convincing. It is going so fast that it clearly came from outside the solar system,” says Paul Chodas, manager of NASA’s Center for Near-Earth Object Studies at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. “It’s whipping around the Sun, it has already gone around the Sun, and it has actually gone past the Earth on its way out.”
(17) INSECURITY. The internet doesn’t know you’re a dog – or an AI: “AI Model Fundamentally Cracks CAPTCHAs, Scientists Say”.
A new model, described in research published today in Science, fundamentally breaks the CAPTCHA’s defenses by parsing the text more effectively than previous models with less training, George says.
He says that previous models trying to get machines to learn like humans have largely relied on a prevailing AI technique called deep learning.
“Deep learning is a technique where you have layers of neurons and you train those neurons to respond in a way that you decide,” he says. For example, you could train a machine to recognize the letters A and B by showing it hundreds of thousands of example images of each. Even then, it would have difficulty recognizing an A overlapping with a B unless it had been explicitly trained with that image.
(18) RUNAWAYS. Marvel’s Runaways will be on Hulu starting November 21.
(19) YOU HAD ONE JOB. Alien Invasion S.U.M. 1 official trailer.
[Thanks to JJ, Carl Slaughter, Cat Eldridge, Chip Hitchcock, Andrew Porter, Martin Morse Wooster, and John King Tarpinian for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Xtifr.]
(1) OUR LOCAL WATERING HOLE. It couldn’t be more perfectly named. I really need some Filers to scout out this place in Hollywood. the Scum & Villainy Cantina. They welcome not only Star Wars cosplayers, but also Trekkies, Marvel fans, and fans of Alf. Sci-fi trivia nights, intense lightsaber battles, and other antics provide entertainment.
The Scum and Villainy Cantina is nestled in the black hole of Hollywood, CA. We’re open to the public! Come in and get your geek on. All fandoms welcome. We feature themed drinks, food and games from all your favorite geek staples. Costumes always highly encouraged
(2) DEL TORO. Here’s what Guillermo del Toro told The Frame’s John Horn in his latest interview: “Guillermo del Toro’s ‘The Shape of Water’ brings the filmmaker to tears”.
On seeing ‘Creature from the Black Lagoon’ as a child:
In a strange way, “Creature” is an off-shoot of “King Kong.” And “King Kong” is an off-shoot of “Beauty and the Beast” and the fascination with gorillas in the 19th century … But what I loved about it — I was six years old, watching [“Creature”] on TV and three things awakened in me: one that I shall not disclose; the second one was, I thought it was the most beautiful image I’d ever seen. I had the Stendahl Syndrome moment, in which I was overwhelmed with beauty; and the third one I felt, I hope they end up together. And they didn’t … It took me 40-something years and 25 years as a filmmaker to correct that cinematic mistake.
On his adaptation of “Creature”:
That was the point of [“The Shape of Water”] for me: the celebration of otherness, which I think is very timely. Also, the idea that we are controlled by fear right now. We are divided by fear. I wanted to make a movie about love, which sounds disingenuous because right now cynicism sounds smarter.
(3) FILM REVIEW. The BBC’s Nicholas Barber gives the new del Toro five stars: “The Shape of Water is a new beauty-and-the-beast tale”.
If you want to know what to expect from The Shape of Water, just think of it as Amélie meets The Creature from the Black Lagoon – except that they also meet The Little Mermaid, some Hidden Figures and the inhabitants of La La Land. Oh, and they bump into James Bond, too. And then there are various characters from the Coen brothers’ back catalogue. That probably sounds like three or four meetings too many, but don’t worry – The Shape of Water is unmistakably a Guillermo del Toro film. Indeed, I’d be inclined to call it the Guillermo del Toro film: the fantasy masterpiece that blends all of his fondest obsessions into one sumptuous whole.
(4) SJW CREDENTIAL ALERT. We interrupt this newscast….
#Caturday time to assimilate….. #CatsOfTwitter #DrWho pic.twitter.com/upi7rAlAMA
— The Feline Philosopher=^..^=???????????????? (@ThePhilosopurr) September 2, 2017
(5) JUST PLAIN BILL. The LA Doctor Who convention Gallifrey One has pulled off a coup: “Pearl Mackie, Matt Lucas and David Bradley at Gallifrey One 2018”. The event takes place February 16-18 next year.
Gallifrey One is delighted to announce the confirmation today of three major headline guests for our 2018 convention, The 29 Voyages of Gallifrey One, taking place next February: Doctor Who Series 10 stars Pearl Mackie and Matt Lucas, and the new incarnation of the First Doctor himself, David Bradley.
(6) STAR WARS. Hear Craig Miller tell about his work “Marketing Star Wars in 1977” on the Blabba the Hutt podcast.
Today Jamie gets to combine his love for Star Wars, and his love for Marketing as he speaks with -Lucasfilm consultant on Marketing, Publicity and Licensing for Lucasfilm from 1977 – 1980, including the marketing for Star Wars: A New Hope in 1977 and The Empire Strikes Back in 1980.
How did Craig help build the profile of a film that should have been a complete failure? How did the Lucasfilm marketing team capture the imagination of film lovers in 1977?
Join us for a trip back in time with one of Lucasfilm’s hero’s Craig Miller.
(7) HELSINKI REMEMBERED. Tiffani Angus and Chris Butler have more to say about Worldcon 75 at the Milford SF Writers Blog. The excerpt is from Angus’ report.
I also spent time on the more mentally taxing side of volunteering by being on two panels and giving a paper. On the Friday, I was on Building Resistance, which was more about real-life than fictional situations. Later in the afternoon I participated in Two’s Company: Collaborative Genre Writing, which was an odd place for me as someone whose only collaborative genre project was my first novel—which took 10 years to write and hasn’t seen the light of day! Between those two panels I gave a paper/presentation with a rather attention-grabbing title: Where are the tampons? The Estrangement of Women’s Bodies in Apocalyptic and Post-Apocalyptic Fiction. Luckily, the audience forgave my zombie and menstrual-blood images and I received some very positive feedback and a lot of questions. Once things settle down a bit, I hope to be able to find a home for the piece. In between all of that, my colleague Dr Helen Marshall and I conducted audio interviews with several editors and authors to use as part of the distance-learning component of the MA in SFF that will start next spring at Anglia Ruskin University.
(8) CHARLES DICKENS. The Man Who Invented Christmas comes to theaters on November 22.
(9) TRIVIAL TRIVIA
The E. in Wile E. Coyote stands for Ethelbert.
(10) TODAY’S DAY
Read A Book Day
On Read a Book Day, it’s not compulsory to read a whole book but the day serves as inspiration to people to read a section of a book they particularly enjoyed, to read with children, to donate a book to a children’s school library, or to host a book reading party.
(11) TODAY IN HISTORY
(12) SIGNS OF THE APOCALYPSE. What comes after blonde stout(*)? Pink chocolate! Callebaut introduces naturally rosy form; will fans bite? The Bloomberg reporter hopelessly demands: “Don’t Call It Pink Chocolate”.
Barry Callebaut AG, the world’s largest cocoa processor, has come up with the first new natural color for chocolate since Nestle SA started making bars of white chocolate more than 80 years ago. While it has a pinkish hue and a fruity flavor, the Zurich-based company prefers to refer to it as “ruby chocolate.”
The new product may help boost sales in a struggling global chocolate market that producers hope has touched bottom. As Hershey cuts 15 percent of its staff and Nestle tries to sell its U.S. chocolate business, ruby chocolate raises the possibility that next Valentine’s Day may arrive with store shelves full of natural pink chocolate hearts.
(*) Chip Hitchcock remarks that blonde stout is “available at Yard House chain, at least in this area. Yes, it sounds strange — and it’s not perfectly blonde, actually a little murky — but it tastes like stout.” Now you know.
(13) WELL EXCUUUUUUSE ME! More whinging about US cultural imperialism. Do the Brits need something like that French academy that tells people to stop saying “hot dog”? “How Americanisms are killing the English language”.
Throughout the 19th Century, Engel contends, “the Americanisms that permeated the British language did so largely on merit, because they were more expressive, more euphonious, sharper and cleverer than their British counterparts”. What word-lover could resist the likes of ‘ornery’, ‘boondoggle’ or ‘scuttlebutt’? That long ago ceased to be the case, leaving us with words and phrases that reek of euphemism – ‘passing’ instead of dying – or that mock their user with meaninglessness, like the non-existent Rose Garden that political reporters decided No 10 had to have, just because the White House has one (it doesn’t exactly have one either, not in the strictest sense, but that’s a whole other story).
Call me a snob, but there’s also the fact that some American neologisms are just plain ungainly. I recently picked up a promising new American thriller to find ‘elevator’ used as a verb in the opening chapter. As in, Ahmed was ‘elevatoring’ towards the top of his profession in Manhattan.
Nowadays, no sphere of expression remains untouched. Students talk of campus and semesters. Magistrates, brainwashed by endless CSI reruns, ask barristers “Will counsel please approach the bench?” We uncheck boxes in a vain effort to avoid being inundated with junk mail that, when it arrives regardless, we move to trash…
(14) FOR RESIDENT ALIENS. The Guardian is touting this place: “Need more space? UFO-shaped home goes up for sale in New Zealand”.
A rare spaceship-shaped home has been put for sale in New Zealand, attracting international interest as sci-fi and architecture nerds scramble to secure a UFO abode by the sea.
Futuro houses were created in 1968 by Finnish architect Matti Suuronen as pre-fab, portable ski chalets. Shaped like an egg and constructed from fibreglass-reinforced polyester plastic the unusual houses became cult designs, with less than 100 ever produced.
“There is something magical about the shape of an egg, it’s smoothness and strength and the spaceship is like that; it is an iconic shape that attracts you to it,” says Juanita Clearwater, an architectural designer, who is selling her beloved Futuro.
(15) HISTORIC CAMERA. On the auction block is the “High Speed ‘Empireflex’ Camera Designed and Built by ILM” for The Empire Strikes Back (1980). Minimum bid: £100,000.
The high-speed ‘Empireflex’ VistaVision camera was designed and built by Industrial Light and Magic for Irvin Kershner’s Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back, and was used extensively on ILM productions for more than 20 years. The camera’s name references both the film for which it was built, and the reflex viewing system incorporated into the unit. It was the first reflex VistaVision camera ever built and was dubbed ‘one of ILM’s pride and joys’ by Cinefex magazine in 1980. After Star Wars: A New Hope, ILM sought to upgrade its equipment and manufactured some of the first new VistaVision cameras since the film format’s hey day during the 1950s. VistaVision, which is traditional 35mm turned on its side to create a larger image area, was originally conceived by Paramount as a response to television. ILM utilised it as the format of choice due to the need for a larger image area in photochemical effects work, where pieces of film were frequently copied several times.
(16) I FIND YOUR LACK OF FAITH DISTURBING. TV chef Gordon Ramsay’s best rants/insults have been synched up with Darth Vader’s scenes from the Star Wars movies. The maker found enough material for two videos —
[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, Martin Morse Wooster, Camestros Felapton, Carl Slaughter, Chip Hitchcock, and JJ for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Jayn.]
(1) YOUR ONE-MAN WIKI. Remember, Camestros Felapton is reading Infogalactic so you don’t have to – “Say, Camestros what’s your new fave Voxopedia page? [Update]”.
Why, I’m glad you asked that question, disembodied voice that writes the blogpost titles. My new favourite Voxopediapage is:
LIST OF ASIAN MEN’S INVENTIONS: …
And that’s not all – Elsewhere on Voxopedia more women have gone missing:
Kitty Joyner is the lead picture for ‘engineer’ on the Wikipedia page
Look, she has a slide rule and everything! Sadly her presence was just too confusing for the poor folks at Voxopedia. Maybe that big circular gizmo in the background didn’t look pi=4 enough. So, to prevent fainting and to protect sensitive dispositions, Joyner has been replaced by Oliver Heaviside.
Phew!
(2) BIG BRAIN THEOREM. TV Guide’s Liam Matthews ranks “The 11 Smartest People Who Have Appeared on The Big Bang Theory“.
The Big Bang Theory is a show about scientists, and it bolsters its academic credibility by bringing in guest stars from the world (galaxy?) of science to play themselves, as well as casting actors with graduate degrees to play characters on the show.
I’m not qualified to rank these guest stars on smarts, because I failed physics in high school. But as a professional clickbaiter, I am qualified to rank them based on how annoying I find their public persona. So without further ado, here are the 11 smartest people who have appeared on The Big Bang Theory, ranked from most to least annoying.
(3) KELLY FREAS. The Space:1970 blog posted “Kelly Freas STAR TREK Portfolio (1976)”.
In 1976, legendary science fiction illustrator, Frank Kelly Freas, published the Star Trek Portfolio, featuring gorgeous charcoal portraits of the officers of the U.S.S. Enterprise. Needless to say, it’s a highly-desired collectible these days.
JJ says, “I think that Spock bears a strong resemblance to Tommy Lee Jones! Of course, in 1976, Tommy Lee Jones looked like this…”
(4) VERBAL ENGINEER. Popular Science interviews Ken Liu:
In your Dandelion Dynasty series, you reimagine transportation, military hardware and the rest of the technological landscape in a style you’ve come to call “silkpunk.” How did you come up with that approach?
In creating the silkpunk aesthetic, I was influenced by the ideas of W. Brian Arthur, who articulates a vision of technology as a language. The task of the engineer is much like that of a poet in that the engineer must creatively combine existing elements of technology to solve novel problems, thereby devising artifacts that are new expressions in the technical language.
In the silkpunk world of my novels, this view of technology dominates. The vocabulary of the technology language relies on materials of historical importance to the people of East Asia and the Pacific islands: bamboo, shells, coral, paper, silk, feathers, sinew, etc. And the grammar of the language puts more emphasis on biomimetics?—?the airships regulate their lift by analogy with the swim bladders of fish, and the submarines move like whales through the water.
(5) FABULOUS OLD STUFF. Marcin Wichary recommends the Museu de la Tècnica de l’Empordà in Figueres, Spain.
AND THEN I SEE THIS. I don’t actually have a good photo, but the third floor is five rooms filled with HUNDREDS of typewriters. pic.twitter.com/X4SdYvMUq1
— Marcin Wichary (@mwichary) October 27, 2016
(6) WHERE’S THE BEEF? Episode 21 of Scott Edelman’s podcast Eating the Fantastic features Alyssa Wong and one of Kansas City’s famous barbecue joints.
Alyssa Wong
Listen in as we chow down on BBQ and talk about what franchise inspired her to write fanfic, the exciting moment when she first encountered a character who looked like her, where she hopes to be 10 years down the road, how she encountered Faceless Ghost Grandma, why she said, “I hate being bored and I don’t like rules,” and more.
(7) EUROCON LIVESTREAM. The 2016 Eurocon in Barcelona, Spain will be livestreamed on November 4, 5 and 6 — http://kosmopolis.cccb.org/bcneurocon/.
Their trilingual dictionary may come in handy —
(8) NAME THE YA AWARD. Lew Wolkoff of the Young Adult SF/F Award Committee asks fans to participate in their survey.
As you know, the World Science Fiction Society is in the process of creating a Campbell-like award for Best Young Adult Science Fiction or Fantasy Award. The motion passed at Kansas City and was passed on to Helsinki for, hopefully, final approval.
One of the matters that has yet to be settled is the name of the award. The Young Adult SF/F Award Committee is currently doing an online survey to get suggestions on what that name will be. This survey ends on November 15. The results will be tabulated, and a second survey of members of the World Science Fiction Society will be taken to get a recommended name (or names) for the 2017 Business Meeting.
Each year the World Science Fiction Society (WSFS) gives out the Hugo and Campbell awards at its annual convention, Worldcon. The awards highlight the best science fiction and fantasy works of the previous year, and they are presented for best novel, short story, graphic story, editor, artist, and a number of other categories. Thus far there has been no award to recognize young adult (YA) books.
In response to this, the Young Adult Award Committee was created to study the viability of an award recognizing excellence in YA science fiction and fantasy at Worldcon. WSFS has since supported the creation of an award for YA fiction, and the committee’s task now turns to naming it.
We are looking for an award name that is especially evocative. We hope to capture the transformative, transportational, and captivating power of books for young adults.
(9) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY GIRLS
(10) KEEPING YOUR UNIQUE VOICE. Credit where it is due – Dave Pascoe had a good column of writing advice today at Mad Genius Club.
One significant trick I learned from Dean Wesley Smith is focusing on a specific writing technique for a story. Make sure you get the sensory information into every page. Whether it’s a mention of the odors you characters smell, or the vivid colors around them (or drab, if that’s the way you roll, you dystopianist, you), or the moan of the chill wind between the weathered slats of the abandoned homestead in which your people are sheltering for the night, give the reader anchors for their imagination. And then, let the reader know the character’s reactions. That low moan, that sends a prickle up the spine of your hero, that recalls the hunting cat that terrified him as a child.
(11) TEXT TO SCREEN. Those who have been participating in the adaptation discussion here will want to eyeball Violette Malan’s “My Top Ten Novel-to-Movie Adaptations” at Black Gate.
I want to begin by saying that I’m making no judgments (well, hardly any) on which is the better version, the book or the movie. I’m only saying I thought the adaptations were good. Anyway, in no particular order, here are my top ten film adaptations (at least for this week) with the screenwriter, the source material, and the director identified.
The Princess Bride William Goldman from his own novel, directed by Rob Reiner I can’t think of anything new to say, at least not today, about what is probably my favourite movie of all time.
The Shawshank Redemption Frank Darabont adapted and directed from the Stephen King novella (Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption)
The single greatest change from novella to movie was casting the Red character as a black man. Whether that was done because they wanted Morgan Freeman, or whether it was done beforehand, I don’t think matters. A couple of other things were changed (the kid whose testimony could have freed Andy Duschesne wasn’t murdered in the original) but in each case it was done to underline some aspect of character or plot that the conciseness of screenwriting (see above) necessitated.
(12) A VIKING FUNERAL. Anne C. Perry witnesses “The Extinction Event: The Beginning of the End” at Pornokitsch.
Five years later, Jurassic has published almost fifty books. That’s thousands upon thousands of pages of stories by over a hundred authors, with art by a dozen artists, which have (so far) raised more than £8,000 for charity along the way, which is a hell of a history. Especially given that Jurassic London lost fully half of its staff after the first year, when one of the two of us (me!) leveraged her experience founding a small press to get a job in traditional publishing.
If, five years ago, we could have chosen how we’d end Jurassic, The Extinction Event is exactly what we would have wanted: it’s big, bold, brilliant and beautiful. It contains 33 stories, some from previous publications and some which are entirely original, and features new art from nine artists. In Extinction you’ll find apocalypse, bombast, lightning and lava. You’ll also fine joy and sorrow and laughter and misery, cowboys and werewolves and mummies and spaceships… and, for some reason, rather a lot of spiders.
(13) TUCKERIZING RAISES BONANZA. Monster Hunter Nation came through in a big way to help pay someone’s medical bills. Larry Correia reports:
Earlier this week I posted about taking donations to help out my buddy Mitch with his medical bills, and that we’d be taking donations in exchange for me using your name in a book.
So many of you jumped in that we had to close it the next day. We raised over $20,000 in a day and a half….
Logistically speaking, that many names is going to take me a long time and several books to work through. There are a few spots in Monster Hunter Siege I will be able to use for charity red shirts, but this is going to take years.
I tell you, once I run through these names, and I’m doing this again for some other cause several years down the road, I’m totally going to jack up the price on you guys. 🙂
The important thing is that you are awesome, and you did something amazing for a good man. Mitch is already using this money to pay bills. Once again the Monster Hunter Nation has come through. I love you guys.
(14) SCHADENFREUDE. If you like seeing someone dish it out, Michaele Jordan’s “MidAmeriCon II: Con Report” at Amazing Stories is for you. She flays the programming division, MidAmeriCon’s version of LonCon’s Fan Village, Dave Truesdale, and Charlie Lippincott.
This programming bias came back to bite them in the butt. When [Charles] Lippincott saw that MidAmericon II was planning a Star Wars day, he decided this was his chance to cash in. He prepared his own ‘MidAmericon II’ program. (We know he prepared it in advance because 4-page, 10 x 14, glossy fliers with full color illustrations do NOT happen overnight.) It was to be an all-day media event, hawking autographs ($50.00 apiece) and featuring talks, slideshows and Q&A (conflicting with numerous other con functions, including the masquerade, and again not free). He did NOT consult with the con about this program.
Having laid his plans, he proceeded to escalate his demands to MidAmericon II, demanding more money, more publicity, more perks, etc. (As I was working the press room, I saw some of his emails myself, and can personally verify that he took a high-handed ‘gimme-gimme’ approach to what we will laughingly call negotiations.) When the con failed to meet some of his new demands, he canceled on the day before the con.
He then proceeded to hold his own stream of events anyway, just across the street — without removing MidAmericon II’s name from his glossy flyer — while bad-mouthing the con at every opportunity. He stood by his plan to charge high prices for attendance at his events. I mean, really. Would YOU pay $50.00 for Charles Lippincott’s autograph? Or another $50.00 to see a slide show of scenes from movies you already know well?
Well, turnabout is fair play. The Lippincott counter-con was a disaster.
(15) THE BIRD. Why, no, Stubby, I didn’t know these authors were acquainted! “When Charles Dickens & Edgar Allan Poe Met, and Dickens’ Pet Raven Inspired Poe’s Poem ‘The Raven’”.
“There comes Poe with his raven,” wrote the poet James Russell Lowell in 1848, “like Barnaby Rudge, / Three-fifths of him genius and two-fifths sheer fudge.” Barnaby Rudge, as you may know, is a novel by Charles Dickens, published serially in 1841. Set during the anti-Catholic Gordon Riots of 1780, the book stands as Dickens’ first historical novel and a prelude of sorts to A Tale of Two Cities. But what, you may wonder, does it have to do with Poe and “his raven”?
… It chanced the following year the two literary greats would meet, when Poe learned of Dickens’ trip to the U.S.; he wrote to the novelist, and the two briefly exchanged letters (which you can read here). Along with Dickens on his six-month journey were his wife Catherine, his children, and Grip, his pet raven. When the two writers met in person, writes Lucinda Hawksley at the BBC, Poe “was enchanted to discover [Grip, the character] was based on Dickens’s own bird.”
(16) SANDERSON HITS JACKPOT. “DMG Nabs Rights to Brandon Sanderson’s ‘Cosmere’ Book Universe in Massive Deal” reports Variety.
DMG Entertainment has nabbed film and licensing rights to “Cosmere,” Brandon Sanderson’s acclaimed series of interconnected fantasy novels. The entertainment and media company has committed to spending $270 million, which will cover half of the money needed to back the first three movies made from Sanderson’s canon. That makes it one of the largest literary deals of the year. DMG beat out several interested parties for rights to the series. As part of the pact, insiders say Sanderson will receive a minimum guarantee on each film that is produced, as well as a rich backend, allowing the author to make millions.
[Thanks to JJ, John King Tarpinian, Hampus Eckerman, and Scott Edelman for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Steve Wright.]
The desk and chair Charles Dickens used while writing Great Expectations sold for £433,250 at auction in early June. It is the original of the desk shown in Filde’s drawing known as “The Empty Chair” and upon it were written Dickens’ last works.
When I looked at “The Empty Chair” I immediately wondered: How did Dickens ever get any work done in such a neat room? Impossible. Someone must have cleaned it up before they let the artist in. I don’t know any writer who could even begin to work in such a sanitized environment.
Certainly Dickens’ contemporary Mark Twain didn’t. Go to the interactive map of Mark Twain’s House. Click on the Third Floor “Billiard Room” to see where Samuel Clemens did Mark Twain’s work. Even now that it’s a museum, the curators haven’t forgotten to spread around some clutter to simulate the great man at work. (While you’re there, click on the First Floor “Entrance Hall” and look at the three-story spiral staircase. Legend holds that whoever seeks to be a writer should touch the staircase’s mahogany railing. Now wipe the fingerprint off of your monitor.)
Thanks to Google, it’s easy to find lots of photos of science fiction writers’ offices to illustrate the same point. A collection of links appears after the jump.