(1) STOKER DEADLINE. Horror Writers Association Member Recommendations for the Bram Stoker Awards close on January 15, 2019 11:59 p.m. PST. Administrators warn that no recommendations will be accepted after the dates and times listed.
(2) NAILING DOWN THE DATE. The Minneapolis convention Convergence is moving to the Fourth of July, for reasons explained in a press release.
…As our community knows, the Convergence Events, Inc. Board of Directors has chosen to move CONvergence from the DoubleTree Bloomington to the Hyatt Regency Minneapolis starting with our twenty-first convention on July 4th – 7th, 2019.
Due to conditions outside of the Board of Directors’ control, this decision had to be made quickly in order to secure the location for the next five years. This has resulted in possible convention dates outside our normal convention dates. To do otherwise would have resulted in additional moves to other hotels, more extreme date changes, and/or limited convention space and events.
(3) JEMISIN HIGHLIGHT. The New York Times Magazine features “New Sentences: From N.K. Jemisin’s ‘The Ones Who Stay and Fight’”.
N.K. Jemisin’s story “The Ones Who Stay and Fight” takes place in a near-utopia in which everyone is equally valued. Some curious residents, however, cannot resist the urge to eavesdrop on a very different world — one in which inequality is rife and violence is widespread and justice does not prevail: our world. They listen to our radio and watch our TV and tap into our social media. In doing so, they glean information about our ways. This knowledge infects them like a virus. They know there will be severe consequences. And yet the information-gleaners, like info-gleaners everywhere, cannot bring themselves to stop.
(4) GAIMAN READING LE GUIN. Brain Pickings offers a feast of poetry: “Neil Gaiman Reads Ursula K. Le Guin’s Ode to Timelessness to His 100-Year-Old Cousin”.
When my good friend and fellow poetry lover Amanda Palmer asked me to send a poem for her husband, Neil Gaiman, to read to his 100-year-old cousin, Helen Fagin — the Holocaust survivor who composed that arresting letter to children about how books save lives — I chose a poem by one of Neil’s dear friends, Ursula K. Le Guin (October 21, 1929–January 22, 2018), found in her final poetry collection, So Far So Good (public library) — one of the loveliest books of 2018.
Amanda immortalized this sweet and rather profound moment in a short video, shared here with the kind permission of everyone involved:
(5) DIABETES RESEARCH AND EDUCATION FUNDRAISER. SFF writer Christopher Rowe is a Clarion West graduate, a SFWA member, and has been a finalist for the Hugo, Nebula, World Fantasy, Theodore Sturgeon, and Seiun Awards. He emailed: “I was recently (on December 10th, 2018) diagnosed with what was described to me as a ‘dangerously out of control’ case of Type 2 Diabetes. I’ve had to make a lot of life adjustments because of this, as you might imagine. One thing I’m doing is training for the 62-mile leg of the Kentucky edition of this year’s Tour de Cure, an annual fundraiser for the American Diabetes Association.”
Rowe’s Tour de Cure page adds:
I used to be an active road cyclist in and around Central Kentucky, riding from my home in downtown Lexington. But that was years ago, and my beautiful Lemond Tourmalet bicycle has been gathering dust in my workshop for too long to recount.
But I had already decided that 2019 would be the year I return to the road even before I received my diagnosis, and the commitment I have made to taking control of my condition, and to sustained, disciplined self-management through exercise, diet, and scrupulous attention to my healthcare team’s advice, including taking medications, dovetails perfectly with the Tour de Cure.Please consider making a donation to the American Diabetes Association’s crucial research and educational efforts through this webpage.
I have a ways to go before I’m in the physical shape I’ll need to be in to complete the Tour. We have a ways to go before any of us can rest easy about diabetes. But we’ll get there.
Rowe is already getting strong support from the sff community, and could use lots more: “Quite a few sf/fantasy folks–mainly writers and editors–have donated so far. My colleagues in George RR Martin’s Wild Cards Consortium have been especially generous, and there are more people whose names File 770 readers would recognize if they hadn’t chosen to donate anonymously. I have set myself quite a task with a goal of raising $10,000 by June 1st, but I believe I can do it.”
(6) GAME OF THRONES TEASER. A glimpse of Season 8 of Game of Thrones in “Crypts of Winterfell.”
(7) LASH OBIT. Comics creator Batton Lash died January 12 of brain cancer. He was 65. His wife, Jackie Estrada, said “He died in our home accompanied by friends, family, and caregivers. We have no plans for services yet, but at some point we will have celebrations of life in both San Diego and New York.”
Lash’s Wikipedia entry notes:
He is best known for the series Wolff and Byrd, Counselors of the Macabre (aka Supernatural Law), a comedic series about law partners specializing in cases dealing with archetypes from the horror genre, which ran as a strip in The National Law Journal, and as a stand-alone series of comic books and graphic novels. He received several awards for his work, including an Inkpot Award, an Independent Book Publishers Association’s Benjamin Franklin Award, an Eisner Award, and nominations for two Harvey Awards.
(8) TODAY IN HISTORY.
- January 13, 1930 — Mickey Mouse comic strip debuted in newspapers.
- January 13, 1957 — The Wham-O Company developed the first frisbee.
(9) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.
[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]
- Born January 13, 1933 – Ron Goulart, 86. First I must acknowledge that he is very prolific and uses many pseudonyms to wit Kenneth Robeson, Con Steffanson, Chad Calhoun, R.T. Edwards, Ian R. Jamieson, Josephine Kains, Jillian Kearny, Howard Lee, Zeke Masters, Frank S. Shawn, and Joseph Silva. (Eeek!) you did the see Doc Savage one in there, didn’t you? I’m reasonably sure that the I’ve read a lot of his fiction including the Flash Gordon series, his Avenger series, maybe a bit of the Vampirella novels, the Incredible Hulk definitely, not the Groucho Marx series though it sounds fun, and, well, damn he’s prolific. So what have you have read by him that you like?
- Born January 13, 1943 – Richard Moll, 76. Ahhh though I remember him best from Night Court that’s not genre, but I’ve found that he voiced Harvey Dent aka Two-Face on Batman: The Animated Series with other appearances on Buck Rogers in the 25th Century, Mork & Mindy, Fantasy Island, Jurassic: Stone Age, Headless Horseman, Scary Movie 2, The Flintstones and Metalstorm: The Destruction of Jared-Syn.
- Born January 13, 1945 – Joy Chant, 74. Chant is an odd case as she only wrote for a short period between 1970 and 1983 but she produced a brilliant fantasy trilogy, the House of Kendreth trilogy, consisting of Red Moon and Black Mountain, The Grey Mane of Morning and When Voiha Wakes. Her other main work, and it is without doubt truly brilliant, is The High Kings, illustrated lavishly by George Sharp and designed by David Larkin with editing by Ian and Betty Ballantine. It is intended as a reference work on the Arthurian legends and the Matter of Britain with her amazing retellings of the legends. I’ve got one reference to her writing Fantasy and Allegory in Literature for Young Readers but no cites for it elsewhere.
- Born January 13, 1947 – Peter Elson. Illustrator whose life was far too short as he died of a heart attack. If you were reading SF between the early seventies and the late eighties, it’s likely that you saw his astonishing artwork. I found him doing covers for the Sphere edition of Asimov’s Pebble in the Sky, a Mayflower edition of Leiber’s Swords Against Death and a Methuen edition in Canada on Zelazny’s To Die in Italbar, but a few of the several hundred covers he did. There’s an excellent website for him here: http://www.peterelson.co.uk/ (Died 1998.)
- Born January 13, 1952 – Jonathan R. Eller, 67. Scholar, Ray Bradbury specialist in this case. Two full length works, Becoming Ray Bradbury and Ray Bradbury Unbound, plus some thirty shorter works including “Textual Commentary (The Collected Stories of Ray Bradbury: A Critical Edition: Volume I: 1938-1943)” and “Annotations (Match to Flame: The Fictional Path to Fahrenheit 451)”. He interviewed Bradbury twice, once in Cemetery Dance #65, listed as being published in 2011.
- Born January 13, 1960 – Mark Chadbourn, 59. I’ve read his Age of Misrule series in which the Celtic Old Gods are returning in modern times and they’re not very nice. It’s followed by the Dark Age series which is just as well crafted. His two Hellboy novels are actually worth reading as well.
(10) BROADWAY FANDOM’S ANNUAL GATHERING. BroadwayCon was held this weekend (January 11-13) in New York City. Martin Morse Wooster looked into it and learned, “It’s like a fan con, with parties, a dealer’s room, cosplay, and getting autographs but it’s for theater geeks in Manhattan! So they have panels like ‘My Descent Into HAMILTON Fandom.’ I learned that fans of the musical Newsies are ‘Fansies.’ I think I would enjoy the ‘Shakespeare Lovers’ Meetup.’”
Wooster discovered this parallel fandom because Three on the Aisle,” a theater podcast he likes, did a live session there. He continues –
BroadwayCon is put on by Mischief Management and was co-founded by Melissa Anelli. She comes out of Harry Potter fandom and wrote Harry: A History, which I read and is an entertaining book if you want to read about really obsessed Harry Potter fans. Mischief Management’s other cons are Con of Thrones in Nashville for Game of Thrones fans and two LeakyCons for Harry Potter fans, which will be held this year in Dallas and Boston.
(11) WIN SOME, LOSE SOME. BBC says the end may be near: “Spektr-R: Russia’s only space telescope ‘not responding'”.
Russia’s only space radio telescope is no longer responding to commands from Earth, officials say.
Astro Space Centre chief Nikolai Kardashev said some of the Spektr-R satellite’s communication systems had stopped working.
But it was still transmitting scientific data, RIA Novosti news agency reports.
The telescope has been operational way beyond its expected five-year lifespan, Russia’s space agency Roskosmos says.
(12) STRUMMIN’ ON THE OLD BANJO. John Scalzi outlines his “Revenue Streams, 2018” for Whatever readers. Domestic and foreign sales, TV/movie options, speaking engagements, etc., and a little comic relief —
10. Download/Streaming payments on my music: Wait, what, now? Weirdly, it’s true! I have an album of music you can download or stream, and apparently people actually have or do, since the payments show up in my PayPal account. I made dozens of dollars with my music last year! Dozens!!!
(13) ON ANNIHLATION. Lessons from the Screenplay brings viewers “Annihilation — The Art of Self-Destruction.”
(14) SELF-PROPELLED MEALS ON WHEELS. Food & Wine enthuses about the “Fleets of Snack-Wielding Robots to Invade College Campuses”.
The days when hungry college students had to physically walk to the cafeteria (or the dorm room vending machine, or the corner convenience store) to get a snack are numbered. This week, PepsiCo unleashed a fleet of snack-wielding, self-driving robots across the University of the Pacific’s Stockton, California campus. If all goes well, college snack-bots could become a pretty common sight in the not-so-distant future.
…The robots were made in collaboration with Bay Area-based Robby Technologies, who say of their creations: “the size and dimensions evoke feelings of a small pet walking down the street.” They’re not wrong! According to a press release, the kinda-cute delivery-bots can travel over 20 miles on a single charge, and are outfitted with cameras and headlights that allow them to navigate in full darkness or rain. They’re also equipped with all-wheel drive, which lets them climb steep hills and handle curbs without tipping over.
[Thanks to Martin Morse Wooster, Cat Eldridge, JJ, Michael Toman, John King Tarpinian, Mike Kennedy, Chip Hitchcock, Carl Slaughter, and Andrew Porter for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Steve Davidson.]