Tag Archives: City Tech Science Fiction Symposium

Pixel Scroll 11/26/23 Three Little Muah’Dib’s From Dune Are We

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(1) CITY TECH SF SYMPOSIUM. The Program and Registration for the 8th Annual City Tech Science Fiction Symposium on Science Fiction, Gender, and Sexuality will be held on Thursday, November 30, 2023 from 9:00 a.m.-5:00 p.m Eastern (GMT/UTC -5 hours) online via Zoom Webinar.

To participate in this free event, attendees will need to do these two things: (1) Signup for a free Zoom account here (if you don’t already have one), and (2) Register here to receive access instructions to the Zoom Webinar. Participants may register any time before or during the event!

For those who would like to watch the event without registering, you can join the YouTube Livestream here (click on the top-most video labeled “Live”).

One of the sessions will include these papers:

2:15-3:05pm:
Paper Session 4
Moderator -Leigh Gold
Omotoyosi Odukomaiya – Identity, Otherness and Alterity in Nnedi Okorafor’s Lagoon and Tade Thompson’s Rosewater
Nikki Paige Gallant – Romantic Disability Studies: The Female Cyborg in Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s “Christabel”
Jacob Adler – Speculative Fiction and the “Illusory Woman”
Jo Ann Oravec – You May Now Kiss the Robot: Human-Robot Marriages in Science Fiction Literature and Movies 

(2) TREASURED CHESTS. Adam Roberts begins by reminding readers how Robert E. Howard wrought the original Conan before dryly passing judgment on Robert Jordan’s continuation of the series and its infinite breast references. When Roberts says the “writing throughout is of the calibre one would expect from the author of The Wheel of Time” it is not meant as flattery. “Robert Jordan, ‘The Conan Chronicles: 2’ [‘Conan the Magnificent’ (1984); ‘Conan the Triumphant’ (1983); ‘Conan the Victorious’ (1984)”.

…Conan often swears by ‘Crom’, his god; but Crom is a much more Lovecraftian deity than (say) Thor or Ares:

“Conan’s gods were simple and understandable; Crom was their chief, and he lived on a great mountain, whence he sent forth dooms and death. It was useless to call on Crom, because he was a gloomy, savage god, and he hated weaklings. But he gave a man courage at birth, and the will and might to kill his enemies, which, in the Cimmerian’s mind, was all any god should be expected to do.” [Howard, ‘The Tower of the Elephant’ (1933)]

It is splendid, and it lifts the adventuring out of the banality wish-fulfilment. Going through the stories I was struck by how powerful and memorable they are.

+++

From, as they say, the sublime to the ridiculous. Having read Howard I was curious as to how his various continuers compared. They did not, constant reader, compare well….

(3) FACES SHOULD BE RED, NOT JUST THE PLANET. Ars Technica reviewer Chris Lee hears a discouraging word about colonizing Mars: “A City on Mars: Reality kills space settlement dreams”.

Let me start with the TLDR for A City on Mars. It is, essentially, 400 pages of “well, actually…,” but without the condescension, quite a bit of humor, and many, oh so many, details. Kelly and Zach Weinersmith started from the position of being space settlement enthusiasts. They thought they were going to write a light cheerleading book about how everything was going to be just awesome on Mars or the Moon or on a space station. Unfortunately for the Weinersmiths, they actually asked questions like “how would that work, exactly?” Apart from rocketry (e.g., the getting to space part), the answers were mostly optimistic handwaving combined with a kind of neo-manifest destiny ideology that might have given Andrew Jackson pause.

The Weinersmiths start with human biology and psychology, pass through technology, the law, and population viability and end with a kind of call to action. Under each of these sections, the Weinersmiths pose questions like: Can we thrive in space? reproduce in space? create habitats in space? The tour through all the things that aren’t actually known is shocking. No one has been conceived in low gravity, no fetuses have developed in low gravity, so we simply don’t know if there is a problem. Astronauts experience bone and muscle loss and no one knows how that plays out long term. Most importantly, do we really want to find this out by sending a few thousand people to Mars and hope it all just works out?

Then there are the problems of building a habitation and doing all the recycling. I was shocked to learn that no one really knows how to construct a long-term habitable settlement for either the Moon or Mars. Yes, there are lots of hand-wavy ideas about lava tubes and regolith shielding. But the details are just… not there. It reminds me of Europe’s dark days of depositing colonies on other people’s land. The stories of how unprepared the settlers were are sad, hilarious, and repetitive. And, now we learn that we are planning for at least one more sequel….

(4) NEGATORY GOOD BUDDY. Far Out Magazine found the tablets listing “Ayn Rand’s 13 commandments for making capitalist movies”. Every one starts with the word “Don’t”.

…An often-revered, equally maligned philosopher and unashamed champion of capitalism, Ayn Rand managed to weave her steadfast and forthcoming ideology into her works as an artistic writer. As a capitalist, Rand’s novels The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged mirrored her belief in individualism and the pursuit of material gain….

…When it came to creating pro-capitalist movies, Rand felt that there were specific criteria that directors and writers ought to stick to and in 1947, she wrote the ‘Screen Guide for Americans’, a pamphlet that was meant to heighten awareness in Hollywood studio producers of a growing pro-communist sentiment. 

“The purpose of the Communists in Hollywood,” she wrote, “Is not the production of political movies openly advocating Communism. Their purpose is to corrupt our moral premises by corrupting non-political movies — by introducing small, casual bits of propaganda into innocent stories — thus making people absorb the basic premises of Collectivism by indirection and implication.”…

The 13 commandments are at the link.

(5) WHO REMEMBERS. “’I made the Daily Mail incredibly angry’: stars share their Doctor Who moments – part five” in the Guardian.

Juno Dawson (writer of the Doctor Who: Redacted audio series, 2022 onwards)

When Tegan Jovanka leaves the Doctor, she tells him she can no longer witness the bodies piling up around them. “It’s stopped being fun, Doctor!”, she wails. I often apply that rule to my life, too. If it stops being fun, get out. Some 20 years later, Martha Jones chooses herself over a life of pining after the Doctor. She explains about her university friend’s unrequited love for their flatmate. Martha won’t repeat her pattern, and she gets out. It’s one of the most explicitly feminist moments in the show.”

(6) D.G. COMPTON (1930-2023). Sff writer D.G. Compton, winner of the 2021 Cordwainer Smith Rediscovery Award, died November 10 reports the Arrowhead SF Foundation.  

D.G. Compton

We received sad news today that David Guy Compton, who wrote as D. G. Compton, passed away this morning at the age of 93 where he had lived in Maine for many years. David was born in London, England in 1930 and moved to the US some years later.

We had the great pleasure of having David visit us in Milford for the Black Bear Film Festival the year DEATH WATCH, the 1979 Bertrand Tavernier film based on his book, THE CONTINIOUS KATHERINE MORTENHOE was featured on the main stage. It was a delightful and memorable weekend.

D. G. Compton was always writing, with his most recent novel, SO HERE’S OUR LEO, being published by Wildside Press in April of 2022. Besides THE CONTINIOUS KATHERINE MORTENHOE – an “author’s cut” of which was published by NYRB Classics in 2016 — his many wonderful titles include THE STEEL CROCODILE, FAREWELL EARTH’S BLISS, and SYNTHAJOY, as well as numerous crime novels written as Guy Compton and gothic romances as Frances Lynch. David was also an authority on stammering, writing a nonfiction book on the subject, STAMMERING: ITS NATURE, HISTORY, CAUSES AND CURES.

David was awarded the 2021 Cordwainer Smith Rediscovery Award and was also honored as the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association’s Author Emeritus in 2007. He is survived by his step son, Toby Savage and many friends. We will greatly miss him.

The best way you can honor David Compton is to go read one of his books.

(7) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

Born November 26, 1919 — Frederik Pohl. (Died 2013.) He’s one of those writers that I’ve always found I can depend upon for an excellent reading experience. So let’s take a look at him. Now keep in mind this is only about him as a writer, not as an editor.

Eighty-six years ago when he was just eighteen, “Elegy to a Dead Satellite: Luna”, a poem, was his published work in Amazing Stories in the October 1937 issue as Elton Andrews. His first piece of prose fiction was the first part of “Head Over Heels in Time” published in the Spaceways fanzine, February 1939.

Now let’s get to his novels. Looking him on ISFDB was interesting to say the least. I’ve reading him for around a half century now so naturally I didn’t remember everything that I’d read by him. 

I’ll confess that sometimes all I remember of a novels is the cover art but that then triggers enough to tell me if I liked it. And so it with Cuckoo series. Not bad at all they were. Speaking of their cover art, I’m particularly fond of the pulpish artwork for Wall Around A Star.

However the novels that defined him as a writer are those of the Heechee series. Yes, I’ve read the first three novels several times and enjoyed them immensely. Can we not talk about The Annals of the Heechee which I did read? Just once which was enough. 

And I’ve not read The Boy Who Would Live Forever, so opinions on it are hereby solicited. 

Gateway won a much deserved Hugo at IguanaCon II, as well as John W. Campbell Memorial Award and a Nebula.

Ahhh, Man Plus which was a nominated first a Hugo at SunCon, and won a Nebula. What an amazing novel it is. ISFDB lists a sequel, Mars Plus, which I had no idea existed until now. Who’s read it? 

The Space Merchants written with Cyril M. Kornbluth that first was published in Galaxy Science Fiction magazine as the serial Gravy Planet is truly great in a silly sort of way. It has a sequel, The Merchants’ War, I’ve managed to overlook all this time. There really is too much fiction out there. 

Let’s finish off with The Cool War which I think is one of his best novels — fascinating characters, near setting, great story.

No, I didn’t cover his short stories as there’s really no way to break them out and do them justice. If you like his short works, some of which have won Hugos, there’s been some thirty collections published so far. 

Bradbury and Pohl with the Red Planet. Photo by Terry Pace.

(8) COMICS SECTION.

(9) DISK JOCKEY. Far Out Magazine’s list of “The 10 best-selling DVDs of all time” is composed entirely of sf and fantasy films – though that’s not the common denominator that caught the writer’s eye.

…Understandably, the entire list is made up of children’s flicks, or, at the least, movies targeted at younger audiences, with Disney being behind half of the films on the list, including the three Pixar movies The Incredibles, Cars and Finding Nemo, which sold a grand total of 77,500,000 DVD copies. In addition, Disney was also behind the first two movies in the live-action Pirates of the Caribbean series, with the Johnny Depp-led films selling over 32 million copies. 

Elsewhere, there are two superhero movies on the list, one from Marvel and the other from DC. The 2008 Christopher Nolan film The Dark Knight sold 19,200,000 copies, just 300,000 under how many Sam Raimi and his team managed to shift for the Tobey Maguire-led Spider-Man film from 2002….

(10) ANIME EXPLORATIONS. Episode 14 of the Anime Explorations Podcast is up, and includes a Kumoricon 2023 Con Report. The podcast can be found here: “Anime Explorations Podcast: Episode 14: Tsukhime (2003)”.

(11) GONE WITH THE WIND. “‘We are heartbroken’: Coober Pedy loses its famous drive-in – but the opal town has plans for take two” reports the Guardian.

The closure of a drive-in rarely makes the news but Coober Pedy’s is no ordinary drive-in. Since it was built by volunteers in 1965 it has served as a meeting point for the remote opal mining community, itself immortalised on film in The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert and Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome. For decades miners turned up in their utes, still filled with mining equipment and gelignite. As beer was sold at the drive-in, the operators had to ban patrons from bringing along explosives.

But curtains have now closed on South Australia’s last drive-in after furious winds reaching almost 120km/h ripped through the town on 15 November, leaving the screen in tatters. More than half the panels and the underlying structure were ripped away by the wind.

“We are heartbroken as a community,” states the drive-in’s website….

(12) NOT TUNED IN. “Christopher Nolan names the genre he doesn’t ‘really get’” in Far Out Magazine. (Whew, I was worried for a second he might say sff, which would have really been disturbing after five Nebula Award nominations and a win for Inception.)

Yet, while Nolan is a considerable fan of all types of cinema, there is one genre he has admitted that he doesn’t “really get”, confessing that he has little love for the humble movie musical.

“I don’t really get musicals,” he told Scott Holleran, “I always used to say that I would do anything except musicals. Having said which, now that I have kids, I’m re-appraising that. There are a lot of films that [I saw] as a kid that I didn’t really remember as musicals. Like Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. I completely forgot that it was a musical. I watched it again a few weeks ago and I saw it in a different way. I think as a kid you just accept the groundwork of the film you’re seeing, you’re not judging it as a genre, and you’re much more open”…

(13) FIFTY YEARS OF ZINES. Gothamist reports on a new exhibit at the Brooklyn Museum called Copy Machine Manifestos: Artists Who Make Zines in “Zines are back: Brooklyn Museum exhibit looks at decades of artistry”.

…It includes more than 800 images from the world of zines from the 1970s to today, organized into categories like “The Punk Explosion” and “Critical Promiscuity.”…

…Zines actually began in the 1930s, in mimeograph form. They were the same: cheap, quick, ephemeral and usually self-made publications, but they were related to fan culture.

They started around science fiction fandom, then moved into comic book fandom, then ultimately, in the early ’70s, moved into rock fandom.

There are fan communities that are interested in certain comics or certain types of music.

Part of the ethos of these fanzines is that they’re very open to reader feedback and participation. They welcome correspondence, they welcome contributions, they welcome mentioning other types of zines….

(14) LOSCON FANZINE TABLE. Richard Man took these photos of the fanzine table at this weekend’s Loscon.

(15) VIDEO OF THE DAY. “Carrie Fisher Roasts George Lucas at AFI Life Achievement Award” in 2005. Four minutes in the fire and he’s well-done.

[Thanks to Andrew Porter, John King Tarpinian, Chris Barkley, Kathy Sullivan, Steven French, Alexander Case, Richard Man, Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, and Mike Kennedy for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Daniel Dern.]

2022 Analog Award For Emerging Black Voices

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Chana Kohl’s story is the winner of the 2022 Analog Award for Emerging Black Voices. The award was announced yesterday during the 7th Annual City Tech Science Fiction Symposium.

The other finalists were Christopher McLucas, Tonya Moore, and Kingsley Okpii.

The winning story will be purchased and published in Analog, and the author receives one year of monthly mentorship sessions. The finalists receive one mentorship session with Analog editors including a critique of their submission and a chance to ask questions about the field. 

[Thanks to Emily Hockaday for the story.]

Pixel Scroll 10/6/22 I’m Called Little Barlennan, Strong-Pincered Barlennan

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(1) BRIDGING WORLDS EDITOR Q&A. Insightful questions, great answers in “Hugo Book Club Blog: Interview with Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki, editor of Bridging Worlds”.

It strikes me that your previous anthology Dominion was extremely successful. It seems to me like it would be tempting to take the easy route and follow that up with something very similar. One of the things that impresses me about Bridging Worlds is that you’ve taken a risk. Could you speak to that risk? To the fact that you’re tackling new ground here?

[ODE] I consider myself a literary explorer. I want to enjoy and experience things across the entire gamut of the literary, starting with the speculative. That is why I am engaged in a wide range of activities like writing and editing, long and short fiction, non-fiction, slush reading, publishing, conrunning, organizing awards, presses, etc. Even in my fiction, you’ll notice this. O2 Arena my Nebula-winning story is mundane sci-fi as Geoff Ryman coined, where my Nommo-winning “Witching Hour” is fantasyish. “Mother’s Love, Father’s Place” is a historical fantasy and “Destiny Delayed” in Asimov’s and Galaxy’s Edge published this year is a genre blender. My latest story “The Magazine of Horror”, yet unpublished is epistolary, written as a series of letters between magazine editors and a submitter. 

My editing is the same. After Dominion, an original fiction anthology, I undertook to do the first-ever Year’s Best African Speculative Fiction anthology, a Hugo, Locus, WFA & BFA finalist. It was a reprint anthology. And next was Bridging Worlds, an original non-fiction anthology, then I edited several collections with Interstellar Flight Press before returning to editing original fiction with Sheree Renée Thomas and Zelda Knight again in Africa Risen. I believe in exploring, charting and discovering new courses, to challenge myself to growth as you cannot find without risk. Rather than stagnating on the capitalist, hollywoodish attitude of being safe and dying on the altar of ‘never change a winning formula.’ The truest wins, are yet undiscovered and continued progress and the ongoing growth of the genre hinges on going outside our comfort zones to find what’s different, new, needed.

(2) NOBEL PRIZE FOR LITERATURE. Annie Ernaux is the winner of the 2022 Nobel Prize for Literature, a French author cited “for the courage and clinical acuity with which she uncovers the roots, estrangements and collective restraints of personal memory.” The summaries of Ernaux’ major works do not indicate that any are genre, but you wanted to know who won, didn’t you?

(3) RELATED WORKS. Cora Buhlert’s new “Non-Fiction Spotlight” is for Rising Sun Reruns: Memories of Japanese TV Shows from Today’s Grown-up Kids, edited by Jim Beard.

SFF-related non-fiction is somewhat sidelined by the big genre awards, since the Nebulas have no non-fiction category and the Best Related Work Hugo category has become something of a grab bag of anything that doesn’t fit elsewhere. So why do you think SFF-related non-fiction is important?

[Jim Beard] Because of the width and breadth of SF and Fantasy in pop culture, and how we all as fans have connection points throughout it. I personally love coming across a non-fiction book on a subject I love, whether well-known or obscure, and while I myself am chugging away on doing my own publications, I can’t wait to see what other editors and publishers are doing. We’ve only scratched the surface of what can be discussed, debated, and delivered in SFF non-fiction.

(4) TROLLING TOMLINSON. The Daily Beast gives mainstream media attention to a story fans have been following for some time: “Internet Trolls Have Tormented Patrick Tomlinson for Years and He Can’t Stop Them”.

…Tomlinson and his wife have both been the victims of impersonators spoofing their email and social media accounts to send bigoted messages to colleagues and random people, prompting intensive cleanup efforts on the sci-fi writer’s behalf.

All the while, the author continues to receive dozens of insulting texts, voicemails, and emails on a daily basis from his nameless stalkers, some of whom even send pictures indicating they’re just outside his house.

Yet, as Tomlinson told The Daily Beast, the efforts they’ve taken to identify his harassers and potentially bring them to justice have not only come up empty but cost them tens of thousands of dollars in legal fees. All because a court recently found that the identity of the anonymous owner of the message board can remain hidden and thus cannot be subpoenaed to provide information about the identities of the users on their site.

Tomlinson’s plight is somewhat similar to that of trans Twitch streamer Clara Sorrenti, who has been the focus of a lengthy, vicious, anti-trans harassment campaign by users on the internet message board Kiwi Farms. In fact, Tomlinson himself was the target of a 1,400-page thread on the notoriously toxic online community, whose users single out specific individuals to stalk and harass….

…During this period of time, Tomlinson filed a court action attempting to subpoena Cloudflare in an effort to seek the identity of the anonymous blogger who runs the OnA Forums. Tomlinson’s lawyers argued that he needed the ability to depose the forum owner in order to learn the identities of dozens of anonymous users he sought to sue for posting defamatory statements about him on the site.

In September 2021, a California judge granted John Doe’s order to quash Tomlinson’s petition to subpoena Cloudflare to learn Doe’s identity, citing protections under Section 230 that allows for anonymity for those who passively engage on the internet.

…Besides quashing the subpoena, Judge Ethan P. Schulman also ordered Tomlinson to pay a mandatory amount of $23,739.25 in attorneys’ fees and costs.

(5) CITY TECH SF SYMPOSIUM. The Seventh Annual City Tech Science Fiction Symposium has put out a “Call for Papers: Science Fiction and the Archive”. The online event, sponsored by the School of Arts and Sciences at the New York City College of Technology, CUNY, will take place Tuesday, December 6, 2022 from 9:00AM-5:00PM Eastern.

Continuing the explorations and conversations of the previous two symposia on “Race” and “Access” respectively, this year’s City Tech Science Fiction Symposium is focused on the idea of the “Archive.” The potential of the SF Archive as an inclusive and celebratory concept is increasing, and we hope this symposium will be a space to facilitate its expansion through our conversations and collegial debate. Of course, an archive (little a) can refer to practical considerations of Library-based Special Collections like those in the City Tech Science Fiction Collection and others, including the collected materials, cataloging, and providing access. However, we are also thinking of the Archive (big A) in terms of canonicity, cultural preservation, reading lists, and bookstore shelfspace. These latter considerations raise questions about what does and doesn’t get included within what we might call the SF Archive as well as who does and doesn’t get a say in those selections. Therefore, the SF Archive is a broadly based concept that encompasses Libraries and Special Collections and the larger cultural space of fandom, social media, and the marketplace, all of which involve the exchange of cultural capital, influence by different forms of gatekeepers, and conversations on many levels by different readers about what SF should be valued, recognized, and saved. 

The SF Archive changes over time. Perhaps most exciting for the present are the many initiatives to excavate our shared cultural histories for SF that had been overlooked or forgotten but certainly deserving of inclusion, such those by writers of color, women, and LGBTQ+ persons; and efforts to bring global SF to wider audiences thanks to growing networks of readers and scholars versed in the original language of a text and those wanting to experience those stories through translation. 

The Symposium is also where Analog Science Fiction and Fact will announce the winner of their second Analog Award for Emerging Black Voices Award.

(6) CROWDSOURCED QUESTIONS FOR KEVIN SMITH. [Item by Cora Buhlert.] Readers of the Guardian interview director Kevin Smith. Of his works Dogma and Masters of the Universe: Revelation are explicitly genre, the rest is at the very least genre-adjacent: “Kevin Smith: ‘How are you going to get laid if you look like an old person?’”. The answer to the first question is really sad BTW, because Smith says he received so much harassment from toxic fanboys about Masters of the Universe: Revelation that he wouldn’t even want to do a Star Wars or Marvel movie, because he fears it would be worse.

 What was it like working with Alan Rickman in Dogma? CWilliams1955

Bliss. Alan Rickman, it turns out, was my friend. I was such a fan from the moment I saw him in Die Hard. I assumed we were just associates, but he stayed in touch the rest of his life. Whenever I was in England, he would call out of the blue and say – I can’t do the voice: “I know you’re here, it’s time to hang out.” He wasn’t just being professionally courteous because we made a movie together 20 years ago. I still can’t believe Alan Rickman actually liked me.

One of my favourite memories is when he came to one of my shows at the O2 in London and we drove back to town together. He said: “I’ve finally broken and bought an apartment in New York.” I said: “That’s excellent.” He said: “It’s not excellent, it’s in the same building as my friend Ralph.” I said: “Why is that bad?” And he said: “Ralph Fiennes. If the Harry Potter world found out that Snape and Voldemort live in the same building, they’d burn it to the ground!”

(7) MEMORY LANE.  

1962 – [By Cat Eldridge.] Sixty years ago, the very first novel in James White’s most exemplary Sector General series was published, Hospital Station. 

Now I wasn’t originally was going to do an essay on this series as I was about to do a UPN series about a human interstellar hospital series (and yes I’ll tell you about it next year) but I remember this series and yes I liked it a lot, so decided to essay it this time. Me, fickle? No. 

(That series, Mercy Point, was considered influenced by White’s series. It lasted seven episodes. No, I’ve not seen it.)

I think I was in University when I discovered the Ballantine Books paperback of the first novel  in a wonderful bookstore near the public library in the town near the University. (It had four used bookstores. Bliss!) I won’t say it was it was the cover that it attracted me as it wasn’t at all appealing, but the tag line of “the fabulous story of a hospital in the sky” did get my attention.  

It certainly didn’t disappoint. Hospital Station was quite amazing from beginning to end. It was the home of many strange creatures, including humans! 

As one reviewer so aptly put it, “Good-natured, high quality, pacifist SF that is ideal comfort food when looking to elevate your mood into the upper range of the happy scale.”  It was the antithesis of all the military SF in existence and I loved deeply it for being so. Humans and aliens not attacking each other, but working together instead. Oh how so very wonderful!

White was very good at envisioning both how humans would handle dealing with various aliens and those aliens themselves. One of the lasting advantages of text fiction over video fiction is it is easier to create in the mind’s eye an alien for the reader. And damn cheaper too! 

Some reviewers and readers have criticized the twelve novel series saying that as it went along its way that it got weaker, less interesting. Not for me, as I think it was perfectly fine right to the end, even the sometimes far too jokey The Galactic Gourmet. 

Okay, food in genre fiction is a tricky thing to do. Just look at Steven Brust’s Cowboy Feng’s Space Bar and Grille which is the only novel by him that I deeply loathe with all my heart. (Don’t worry, he knows that. He gets dark chocolate from me.)

One critic compared the setting to that of Deep Space Nine which I must say makes me go WTF? Yes it’s a station in outer space but that’s the only resemblance. A pacifist hospital versus a heavily armed station? Huh?

I’ve re-read some of the novels several times such as Hospital Station forty years on and the steel booted Suck Fairy stubbed her toe on the way to it and broke her leg. It’s just as fine now as it was way back then. 

The first three novels, Hospital Station, Star Surgeon and Major Operation are really a Meredith Moment from the usual suspects at twelve bucks.

White was a Guest of Honor of the L.A.con III Worldcon that Our Ever So Gracious Host chaired in 1996. 

(8) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

  • Born October 6, 1942 — Britt Ekland, 80. She starred in The Wicker Man as Willow MacGregor, and appeared as a Bond girl, Goodnight, in The Man with the Golden Gun. She was also Queen Nyleptha in King Solomon’s Treasure based off the H. Rider Haggard novels. 
  • Born October 6, 1946 — John C. Tibbetts, 76. A film critic, historian, author. He’s written such articles as “The Illustrating Man: The Screenplays of Ray Bradbury” and “Time on His Hands: The Fantasy Fiction of Jack Finney”. One of his two books is The Gothic Imagination: Conversations on Fantasy, Horror, and Science Fiction in the Media, the other being The Gothic Worlds of Peter Straub.
  • Born October 6, 1950 — David Brin, 72. Author of several series including Existence, the Postman novel, and the Uplift series which began with Sundiver, followed by Startide Rising, a most excellent book and a Hugo-winner at L.A. Con II (1984). I’ll admit that the book he co-wrote with Leah Wilson, King Kong Is Back! An Unauthorized Look at One Humongous Ape, tickles me to no end.
  • Born October 6, 1955 — Ellen Kushner, 67. If you’ve not read it, do so as her now sprawling Riverside series is amazing. I’m quite sure that I’ve read all of it. And during the High Holy Days, do be sure to read The Golden Dreydl as it’s quite wonderful. As it’s Autumn and this being when I read it, I’d be remiss not to recommend her Thomas the Rhymer novel which won both the World Fantasy Award and the Mythopoeic Award.
  • Born October 6, 1952 — Lorna Toolis. Librarian, editor, and fan Lorna was the head of the Merril Collection of Science Fiction, Speculation, and Fantasy at the Toronto Public Library from 1986-2017, a collection started in 1970 with a donation from Judith Merril. Toolis was a significant influence on the Canadian SF community, a founding member of SFCanada, who won an Aurora Award for co-editing Tesseracts 4 with Michael Skeet. (Died 2021.)
  • Born October 6, 1963 — Elisabeth Shue, 59. Best known as Jennifer, Marty McFly’s girlfriend, in Back to the Future Part II and Back to the Future Part III, she also had roles in Hollow Man and Piranha 3D. Really Piranha 3D? Let’s look that up on Rotten Tomatoes… The audience reviewers there gave it a twenty-two percent rating.

(9) COMICS SECTION.

(10) ACTING IN THE AGE OF CGI. [Item by Francis Hamit.] I trained as an actor when I was a Drama major.  A Method actor should be able to handle this. British-trained actors may have a harder time of it.  But this may explain why the performances in comic book movies are so uneven. “Does it really matter if Marvel’s stars act in a state of utter bewilderment?” in the Guardian.

Ewan McGregor revealed earlier this year that he spent virtually the entirety of filming for 2002’s Star Wars: Attack of the Clones wandering round a blue-screen studio talking to inanimate objects while portraying the young Obi-Wan Kenobi, an experience he clearly found disgruntling. “I spent a lot of time off on my own and on this planet with tall aliens, and of course, none of that was there,” he said during interviews for the recent Disney+ show that revived the Jedi knight. “For me, it was, like, a long time walking around blue sets speaking to tennis balls and sticks and it was just not what I was used to, and it was hard to make. Hopefully, we made it realistic and we did the best we could.”

In the early days of CGI film-making, actors regularly reported similar unease, but in recent years the problem seems to have diminished. This is probably down to the increased use of motion capture where actors can bounce off their fellow cast members in a more organic fashion….

(11) STAR POWER. [Item by Martin Morse Wooster.] In the Financial Times behind a paywall, Timmy Fisher discusses “When You Wish Upon A Star” from Pinocchio.

…The song was penned for Walt Disney’s original animated feature, with in-house composer Leigh Harline setting words by ex-Broadway lyricist Ned Washington.  That wistful version–a homage to the nursery rhyme ‘Star Light, Star Bright’–was perfectly suited for the crooning falsetto of Cliff Edwards, aka Ukulele Ike, a vaudeville star who voiced Jiminy Cricket and recorded abridged versions for the opening credits and the final scene….

Though Pinocchio initially struggled at the box office. ‘When You Wish’ was an instant hit:  a re-recording with Edwards and the Victor Young Orchestra jostled for attention among covers by Glenn Miller, Kate Smith, and Vera Lynn, as well as the movie soundtrack release.  Foreign-language versions such as the Swedish “Ser du Stjärnan I Det Blå” (“Do you see the star in blue”) soon popped up.  Even Nazi Germany succumbed.  According to Albert Speer, Hitler whistled it at the Palais de Chaillot overlooking a conquered Paris.

(12) THE DOC AND SPOCK. “Star Trek’s Leonard Nimoy nearly directed the Doctor Who TV movie” reports RadioTimes.

Having premiered just over 25 years ago to a mixed reception, the 1996 Doctor Who TV movie has slowly garnered an appreciation alongside a strong fandom for Paul McGann’s Eighth Doctor, who made a brief return appearance as part of the show’s 50th anniversary celebrations in 2013….

…While best known for his iconic role as Spock in Star Trek, Nimoy is no stranger to directing, having helmed Star Trek III and IV as well as Three Men and a Baby, which went on to become the highest-grossing film of 1987.

With an impressive track record not only with sci-fi fans but also at the box office, Nimoy might have seemed like a no-brainer to come on to direct. So, what happened?

“FOX did not want him to do it. They were concerned it looked very kitsch to go, ‘Aren’t we clever? We’ve got Spock from Star Trek directing.’”…

(13) YOU GOT TROUBLE, MY FRIEND. In the Washington Post, Michael Cavna says newspapers are slashing the space given to comic strips, with Lee Enterprises saying in its 77 dailies the comic strips will be cut to half a page.  Comic strip creators are scrambling to replace the lost income. “Is the print newspaper comics page in trouble?”

…And Patrick McDonnell, creator of the strip “Mutts,” which he says lost dozens of clients, underscores why comics are a popular staple of the newspaper, with readers developing long-term relationships with their favorite strips: “Over time, the characters are like family. Newspapers should consider this bond before they decide to make drastic changes.”…

(14) BOO! Alasdair Beckett-King sums up all haunted house movies in this clip from 2021.

(15) VIDEO OF THE DAY. [Item by Martin Morse Wooster.] In “Honest Game Trailers:  Metal:  Hellsinger,” Fandom Games says this game combines the thrill of blasting creatures with the throbbing beats of metal, with a different headbanging song on every level.  They say “We wonder what these guys could do with an actual budget,” but adds the key to success here is “just don’t expect to use any part of your brain that you can’t find on a lizard.  But sometimes smooth brain fun is the best kind of fun.”

[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, Andrew Porter, Chris Barkley, mark, Cora Buhlert, Francis Hamit, Michael Toman, Cat Eldridge, Mike Kennedy, Martin Morse Wooster, and JJ for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Daniel Dern & Sullivan.]

Pixel Scroll 12/10/21 That’s No Moon – It’s A Harsh Scrollstress

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(1) FOR US, THE LIVING. The announcement that Cowboy Bebop won’t get a second season prompted Ryan Proffer to start a “Save the live action cowboy bebop” petition at Change.org.

“For those people who want a second (or more) of the live action cowboy bebop. It wasn’t a direct copy of the anime but the world they put together was amazing and deserve a second season.”

It had almost reached its goal of a thousand signatures when checked this afternoon.

(2) ANALOG AWARD FOR EMERGING BLACK VOICES. Kedrick Brown’s story is the winner of the inaugural Analog Award for Emerging Black Voices reports Locus Online. The award was announced yesterday during the Sixth Annual City Tech Science Fiction Symposium. The other finalists were Yazeed Dezele, Erika Hardison, and Jermaine Martin. (Locus did not report the story titles.)

The winning story will be purchased and published in Analog, and the author receives one year of monthly mentorship sessions. The finalists receive one mentorship session with Analog editors including a critique of their submission and a chance to ask questions about the field. 

The members of the judging panel for 2021 were Steven Barnes, Nisi Shawl, Kim-Mei Kirtland, Trevor Quachri, and Emily Hockaday.

(3) CITY TECH SF SYMPOSIUM. Gillian Polack, who spoke at yesterday’s Symposium, presents an expanded version of her paper, “The Problem of Susan Australia, or, The Tyranny of Distance” in this video.

(4) SECOND FIFTH. John O’Neill analyzes “The Controversy over Nebula Awards Showcase 55, edited by Catherynne M. Valente” at Black Gate.

I’m hearing grousing about the latest Nebula Awards Showcase, edited by the distinguished Catherynne M. Valente.

This is the 55th volume in the long-running series, and the second to be published directly by SFWA, the Science Fiction Writers of America. As is customary, it contains the complete Nebula award-winning stories, as selected by that august body, as well as a tasty selection of the other nominees, as selected at the whim of the editor.

Well — not exactly. And that seems to be the crux of the problem. For the first time I can remember, the Nebula Awards Showcase contains only one of the winners from last year, A. T. Greenblatt’s short story “Give the Family My Love,” originally published in Clarkesworld. All the others — including the winners in novelette, novella, and novel category — are represented only by brief excerpts….

(5) AFROFUTURISM. At the SFWA Blog, Maurice Broaddus says adults “notoriously underestimate middle school students” and talks about “writing stories more through the lens of Black joy rather than Black trauma” in “Black Joy and Afrofuturism for Young Readers”.

…One way to define Afrofuturism is that it centers joy and hope. Black joy is the tenacity and audacity of Black culture. It exists outside and indifferent to the gaze of dominant culture. It recalls that Black people had life, history, and culture before, during, and outside of the dominant culture’s racial caste system. It basks in the beauty of what it means to be a people and a culture.

It is Black art that centers ourselves, who we are, who we could be, enjoying that totality without guilt….

(6) STATE LAWS TO AID LIBRARY ACCESS TO EBOOKS TARGETED BY PUBLISHERS GROUP SUIT. “AAP Sues to Block Maryland, New York Library E-book Laws” reports Publishers Weekly.

The Association of American Publishers filed suit December 9 to stop a new library e-book law in Maryland from taking effect on January 1, claiming that the law, which would require publishers who offer to license e-books to consumers in the state to also offer to license the works to libraries on “reasonable” terms, is unconstitutional and runs afoul of federal copyright law…

The Association of American Publishes explained the reasons for their suit in a statement on their website:

…“Maryland does not have the constitutional authority to create a shadow copyright act or to manipulate the value of intellectual property interests,” commented Maria A. Pallante, President and CEO of the Association of American Publishers and former head of the United States Copyright Office.  “It is unambiguous that the U.S. Copyright Act governs the disposition of literary works in commerce—and for that matter, all creative works of authorship.  We take this encroachment very seriously, as the threat that it is to a viable, independent publishing industry in the United States and to a borderless copyright economy.”  

The complaint, filed in federal court in Maryland, argues that the Maryland law is preempted by the United States Copyright Act, unconstitutionally interferes with interstate commerce, and violates the Constitution’s Due Process clause by mandating vague and unspecified licensing requirements….

(7) WALKING THE RED CARPETS OF MIDDLE-EARTH. Twenty years sure went by fast! Polygon says “The Lord of the Rings cast premiere photos are priceless 2001 nostalgia”. They’re really good photos in any event.

…The hype was already real by the time promotion for The Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring ramped up. In April 2000, the internet-exclusive trailer for Fellowship was downloaded from Apple Trailers 1.7 million times in its first 24 hours, breaking a record set by Star Wars: Episode I — The Phantom Menace. (Compare that, though, to the present-day record: Spider-Man: No Way Home’s first trailer, released in August and viewed 355.5 million times in the first 24 hours.) But by May 2001, the time had come to reassemble the fellowship … for many, many, many step-and-repeat red carpet opportunities.

Photographic evidence of the high-stakes press gauntlet for Fellowship suggests that Elijah Wood, Ian McKellen, Viggo Mortensen, Sean Astin, Billy Boyd, Dominic Monaghan, Sean Bean, Orlando Bloom, John Rhys-Davies, and Liv Tyler (bringing some much-needed femininity to the red carpet bro-out) had a decent time flying around the world to preach the blockbuster word…

(8) EATING THE FANTASTIC. Scott Edelman invites listeners to eavesdrop on a mid-’70s Marvel Bullpen reunion with Bob Budiansky in episode 160 of his Eating the Fantastic podcast.

Bob Budiansky

This episode’s guest, Bob Budiansky, is a old Marvel Bullpen pal… When I was working at mid-’70s Marvel Comics and decided I no longer wanted to edit their line of British reprint books, I got yet another SUNY Buffalo student and newspaper coworker, Jay Boyar, to take my place, and then when he moved on, he recommended Bob. And that serendipity is how his 20-year career at Marvel Comics was born.

Bob’s led a multifaceted comics career as a writer, artist, and editor. He’s written (among other things) The Avengers and all 33 issues of Sleepwalker, a character he co-created, plus most of Marvel’s run of The Transformers, for which he came up with the names of most of the original Transformers, including Megatron. In fact, his contributions to that franchise were so great that in 2010 he was inducted into the Transformers Hall of Fame.

…We discussed the vast differences between the hoops we each had to jump through to get hired back then, why the Skrulls were responsible for him liking DC better than Marvel as an early comics fan, the serendipitous day he attended a wedding and learned the origin of the Golden Age Green Lantern from its creator, why he stopped reading comics in high school … and how Conan the Barbarian got him started again, which Marvel Bullpen staffer saw his art portfolio and suggested he consider a different career, what it was like to witness the creation of Captain Britain, how got his first regular gig drawing covers for Ghost Rider, his five-year relationship developing 250 Transformers characters for Hasbro, and much more.

(9) EATING ONLY SOME OF THE FANTASTIC. The Offing posted G.G. Russey’s grimm but grotesquely funny “Hansel & Gretel: The Fully-Restored Vegan Version”.

… After three days of wandering, the hungry children came upon a gingerbread house mortared with frosting. Hansel rushed over to take a bite.

“Stop, Hansel! You can’t just eat a stranger’s house! It could contain animal products!”…

(10) TWO-PART HARMONY. Now on Fanac.org’s YouTube channel: Wrong Turns on the Wallaby Track: Australian SF Fandom 1936-60, Leigh Edmonds, Perry Middlemiss in 2 parts.

In this delightful Fan History Zoom (Dec 2021), historian Leigh Edmonds provides both context and details of Australian Science Fiction Fandom in the early days. Beginning with an introduction to Australian history of the period by Perry Middlemiss, the session entertainingly describes the important fans, and clubs from the beginnings in Sydney with a Science Fiction League branch, to the Futurian Society of Sydney and the Thursday night group. Leigh provides both entertaining and instructive insights, from the parallels to US fannish history, to the Australian group whose “main form of entertainment was feuding”, and the impact on science fiction readers of the Australian wartime embargo on the import of unnecessary items. He discusses the uniquely Australian barriers to becoming a professional writer in the field, the banning of Weird Tales on moral grounds and more….

Leigh Edmonds is an Australian historian, and honorary research fellow at the Collaborative Research Centre in Australian History (CRCAH) at Federation University in Ballarat, Australia. He is also a very long term science fiction fan. Perry Middlemiss is a fanwriter and editor as well as a former Worldcon chair.

Note: To begin Leigh had technical difficulties for the first 10 minutes so his portion begins after an excellent, but slightly long, introduction by Perry Middlemiss.

(11) CHRIS ACHILLEOS (1947-2021). Artist Chris Achilleos died December 6. His work has appeared in Heavy Metal, on book covers including series based on Conan the Barbarian, Doctor Who and Star Trek, as well as collections of his own work. Collections of his art include Amazona, Sirens, and Beauty and the Beast. Since 1990 he has mostly worked in designing fantasy trading cards as well as selling prints and original works of art.

(12) MEDIA BIRTHDAY.

2003 — [Item by Cat Eldridge.] Eighteen years ago, Big Fish premiered. It was directed by Tim Burton from the screenplay by John August which he did off of Daniel Wallace‘s Big Fish: A Novel of Mythic Proportions. The cast is, if I must say so myself, amazing: Ewan McGregor, Albert Finney, Billy Crudup, Jessica Lange, Helena Bonham, Carter Alison Lohman, Robert Guillaume,  Marion Cotillard, Steve Buscemi and Danny DeVito. Did critics like it? Generally quite so. ReelThoughts said of it, “Big Fish is a clever, smart fantasy that targets the child inside every adult without insulting the intelligence of either.” The box office was modest at best, making just under one hundred twenty-five million against seventy million in production costs not counting marketing. Audience reviewers at Rotten Tomatoes currently give it a most excellent rating of ninety percent. 

(13) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

  • Born December 10, 1815 — Ada Lovelace. Lovelace was the only legitimate child of poet Lord Byron and his wife Lady Byron. She was an English mathematician and writer, principally known for her work on Charles Babbage’s proposed mechanical general-purpose computer, the Analytical Engine. Genre usage includes Gibson and Sterling’s The Difference Engine, Stirling’s The Peshawar Lancers and Crowley’s Lord Byron’s Novel: The Evening Land. (Died 1852.) 
  • Born December 10, 1903 — Mary Norton. Author of The Borrowers which won the 1952 Carnegie Medal from the UK’s Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals recognizing the novel as the year’s outstanding children’s book by a British author. She would continue to write these novels for three decades. Hallmark turned one into a film in the early Seventies. Her novels The Magic Bed Knob; or, How to Become a Witch in Ten Easy Lessons which was nominated for a Retro Hugo at Dublin 2019, and Bonfires and Broomsticks would be adapted into the Disney film Bedknobs and Broomsticks in the same period. (Died 1992.)
  • Born December 10, 1927 — Anthony Coburn. Australian writer and producer who spent most of his career living and working in the U.K.  He was closely involved in the earliest days of Who to the extent that it’s believed it was his idea for the Doctor’s travelling companion, Susan, to be The Doctor’s granddaughter.  He wrote four scripts for the show, of which Only An Unearthly Child was used. His never produced “The Masters of Luxor” Who script was released by Big Finish Productions as adapted by Nigel Robinson. Titan Books has previously released it as a novel. (Died 1977.)
  • Born December 10, 1928 — John Colicos. You’ll remember him as being the first Klingon ever seen on Trek, Commander Kor in the “Errand of Mercy” episode. (He’d reprise that role as the 140-year-old Kor in three episodes of Deep Space Nine.) He’ll next show up as Count Baltar in the original Battlestar Galactica continuity throughout the series and film. He’ll even show up as the governor of Umakran in the Starlost episode “The Goddess Calabra”. He also played three roles on the original Mission: Impossible. (Died 2000.)
  • Born December 10, 1946 — Douglas Kenney. He co-founded National Lampoon in 1970 along with Henry Beard and Robert Hoffman. With Beard alone in 1969, he wrote Bored of the Rings. Kenney died after falling from a 35-foot cliff called the Hanapepe Lookout in Hawaii. It was ruled accidental. Chris Miller, co-writer of Animal House with him and Harold Ramis, paid homage to him by naming the main character in Multiplicity Doug Kinney, a variation on his name.  (Died 1980.)
  • Born December 10, 1953 — Janny Wurts, 68. Illustrator and writer.  She’s won three Chesley Awards, plus a HOMer Award for her Servant of the Empire novel. I strongly recommend the Empire trilogy that she co-authored with Raymond E. Feist, and her excellent That Way Lies Camelot collection was nominated for a BFA.
  • Born December 10, 1960 — Kenneth Branagh, 61. Branagh’s better genre work includes his roles as Victor Frankenstein in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and Gilderoy Lockhart in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. As a Director, I’m only seeing Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and Thor — anyone know of anything else genre related? Is Hercule Poirot genre adjacent? I think so. 
  • Born December 10, 1984 — Helen Oyeyemi, 37. I like it when a birthday results in my adding to my audiobook listening list. She’s resident in Prague now and her take on European folktales that surround her there is particularly sharp in Mr. Fox, which was nominated for an Otherwise Award, off that well known tale. And White is for Witching has all the makings of a damn fine haunted house story. Now one should not overlook her Icarus Girl, her first novel, which is fascinating. I’ve not encountered Gingerbread, her latest novel. 

(14) COMICS SECTION.

(15) WHAT IF? SPINOFF. Captain Carter, recently featured in Marvel Studios’ What If, will report for duty in her very own comic series this March. Jamie McKelvie will write the series and design the character’s brand-new look. McKelvie will be joined by rising star artist Marika Cresta, known for her recent work on Star Wars: Doctor Aphra.

The five-issue limited series introduces Captain Carter in an adventure that will find Peggy Carter as a woman out of time, facing the reappearance of an old foe in modern day and deciding what she stands for as the wielder of the shield. 

A reality where Agent Peggy Carter took the Super-Soldier Serum instead of Steve Rogers is turned upside down when the World War II hero is pulled from the ice where she was lost in action decades before. Peggy struggles to find her footing in a modern world that’s gotten a lot more complicated – cities are louder, technology is smarter and enemies wear friendly faces. Everyone with an agenda wants Captain Carter on their side, but what does Peggy want? And will she have time to figure it out when mysterious forces are already gunning for her?

(16) VOLUNTEER FOR DISCON III. Here is another reason to become a virtual volunteer for next week’s Worldcon.

(17) CARBON-BASED UNITS. The Guardian’s Daniel Aldana Cohen hopes Kim Stanley Robinson, author of Ministry for the Future, has the answer: “How will humanity endure the climate crisis? I asked an acclaimed sci-fi writer”.

…The first lesson of his books is obvious: climate is the story. Compared with the magnitude of the crisis, this year’s United Nations climate summit, Cop26, was a poorly planned pool party where half the guests were sweating in jeans, having forgotten their swimming suits. If you’re reading this, you probably know what climate science portends – and that nothing discussed in Glasgow was within rocket range of adequate. What Ministry and other Robinson books do is make us slow down the apocalyptic highlight reel, letting the story play in human time for years, decades, centuries. The screen doesn’t fade to black; instead we watch people keep dying, and coping, and struggling to shape a future – often gloriously.

I spoke to Robinson recently for an episode of the podcast The Dig. He told me that he wants leftists to set aside their differences, and put a “time stamp on [their] political view” that recognizes how urgent things are. Looking back from 2050 leaves little room for abstract idealism. Progressives need to form “a united front,” he told me. “It’s an all-hands-on-deck situation; species are going extinct and biomes are dying. The catastrophes are here and now, so we need to make political coalitions.”…

… Robinson’s elegant solution, as rendered in Ministry, is carbon quantitative easing. The idea is that central banks invent a new currency; to earn the carbon coins, institutions must show that they’re sucking excess carbon down from the sky….

(18) JEOPARDY! Andrew Porter witnessed tonight’s Jeopardy! contestants overlooking the author of Frankenstein.

Final Jeopardy: 19th Century British Authors.

Answer: She called herself “the daughter of two persons of distinguished literary celebrity” in an introduction to one of her novels.

Wrong questions: Who is George Elliot? and Who is Emily Bronte?

Correct question: Who is Mary Shelley?

(19) ENTERPRISING ARTIST. [Item by Ben Bird Person.] Artist Alain Gruetter did this piece based on Star Trek: Enterprise (2001-2005) featuring the Xindi-Aquatics and Xindi-Insectoids from their third season (2003-2004).

(20) IT WILL TAKE MORE THAN A BELL. Wings now, but pixels in the future. More than a dozen people, including William Shatner, are being awarded their astronaut wings by the US government, however, they may be among the last. “First on CNN: The US gives Bezos, Branson and Shatner their astronaut wings” at CNN.

…The Federal Aviation Administration will […] award Commercial Space Astronaut Wings to […] eight people who flew on Blue Origin’s New Shepherd spacecraft, three who flew on Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo, and to the four members of the SpaceX crew who spent three days in space in September, CNN has learned.

But the space tourism industry shouldn’t get used to this generous allocation of wings from the federal government. In a twist, the FAA has decided to end the entire Commercial Space Astronaut Wings program on January 1. After that, the FAA will simply list the names of everyone who flies above the 50-mile threshold, the US-recognized boundary of space, on a website….

(21) STICKY SUBJECT. CBR presents an extended look at Spider-Man and Doc Ock’s first fight from No Way Home.

Much to Peter Parker’s confusion, Otto Octavius appears on an overpass bridge and demands to know what has happened to his machine. When Peter doesn’t have any answers, Doctor Octopus begins throwing cars, endangering the lives of the civilians nearby.

(22) SECOND SERVING OF HEDGEHOG. Could Jim Carrey’s mustache here be the phoniest of all time?

(23) HALO THE SERIES. This first-look trailer for Halo was shown during The Game Awards last night. Halo the series will be streaming in 2022 on Paramount+.

Dramatizing an epic 26th-century conflict between humanity and an alien threat known as the Covenant, Halo the series will weave deeply drawn personal stories with action, adventure and a richly imagined vision of the future.

[Thanks to Martin Morse Wooster, JJ, John King Tarpinian, Mike Kayinsky, Ben Bird Person, Lise Andreasen, Jennifer Hawthorne, Chris Barkley, Jeffrey Smith, Andrew Porter, Michael Toman, Cat Eldridge, and Mike Kennedy for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Andrew (not Werdna), part of “The Hugo Pixel Scroll Winners” series.]

Pixel Scroll 11/25/21 I Just Took The Pixel Scroll Test Turns Out I’m 100% That File

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(1) BABY YODA ON PARADE. A helium-filled Grogu designed by the toy company Funko was in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade – the New York Times tells how that happened.

(2) CITY TECH SYMPOSIUM. The Sixth Annual City Tech Science Fiction Symposium at City Tech in New York will be held December 9. Read the full program and register to see the event on Zoom at this link. (For those who would like to watch the event without registering, watch the YouTube Livestream here.)

The Sixth Annual City Tech Science Fiction Symposium on Access and Science Fiction will be held on Thursday, December 9, 2021 from 9:00am-5:00pm online via Zoom Webinar.

To participate in this free event, attendees will need to (1) Signup for a free Zoom account here (if you don’t already have one), and (2) Register here to receive access instructions to the Zoom Webinar. Participants may register any time before or during the event!

Here are a couple of the program items:

2:30pm-3:55pm
Analog Writers Panel and the Analog Emerging Black Voices Award
Emily Hockaday – Moderator; Panelists: Alec Nevala-Lee, Marie Vibbert, Chelsea Obodoechina, Trevor Quachri

4:00pm-5:00pm
Keynote
“Writing Ourselves In: Teaching Writing and Science Fiction with Wikipedia”
Ximena Gallardo C. and Ann Matsuuchi
Wanett Clyde – Introduction and Moderator

(3) THE GALACTIC IMAGINARIUM FILM FESTIVAL TAKING SUBMISSIONS. The Galactic Imaginarium Film Festival from Dumbravita-Timis, Romania, is one of the few Sci-fi and Fantasy Film Festivals in Eastern Europe. The festival has film screening, conferences, debates and happenings in a hybrid format. The 2022 edition will have Jury Awards and Popular Awards, for five categories (Sci-Fi, Fantasy, Animation, Comedy/Parody and Documentary) for short and feature films.

The submission period is open now, for the above categories. Filmmakers and distributors are invited to submit their films using FilmFreeway platform at the address:  https://filmfreeway.com/TGIFF

(4) THE MILLENNIUM. F&SF columnist Joachim Boaz published his thousandth blog post for Science Fiction and Other Suspect Ruminations. In it, he reviews three stories by Melisa Michaels:

On May 31st, while perusing the indispensable list on The Internet Speculative Fiction Database, I came across an author unknown to me–Melisa Michaels (1946-2019) (bibliography). She’s best known for the five-volume Skyrider sequence (1985-1988) of space operas “depicting the growth into maturity of its eponymous female Starship-pilot protagonist” (SF Encyclopedia).

As I’m always willing to explore the work of authors new to me, I decided to review the first three of her six published SF short stories. Two of the three stories deal with my favorite SF topics–trauma and memory.”

Source: Short Story Reviews: Melisa Michaels’ “In the Country of the Blind, No One Can See” (1979), “I Have a Winter Reason” (1981), and “I Am Large, I Contain Multitudes” (1982)

(5) TWAIN’S THANKSGIVING. The Mark Twain House & Museum shared:

When asked what Twain was thankful for, he said…

“You ask me for a sentiment which shall state how much I have to be thankful for this time. For years it has been a rule with me not to expose my gratitude in print on Thanksgiving Day, but I wish to break the rule now and pour out my thankfulness; for there is more of it than I can contain without straining myself. I am thankful — thankful beyond words — that I had only $51,000 on deposit in the Knickerbocker Trust, instead of a million; for if I had had a million in that bucket shop, I should be nineteen times as sorry as I am now. Trusting this paean of joy will satisfy your requirement,

I am Yours truly,

Mark Twain.”

– letter to editor of New York World, 27 October 1907

They make up for it with a video about the Clemens family pets. (Warning: Mostly dogs, no matter what this intro says.)

The Cat in the Ruff is one of many cats who’ve graced the Mark Twain House over the years. Do you know how many cats Sam Clemens remembered having in his childhood home? Find out in the latest episode of Catching Up With The Clemenses.

(6) MIDDLE-EARTH AFTER ACTION REPORTS. [Item by Alan Baumler.] At A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry, Bret Deveraux has a long series of blog posts analyzing the Siege of Gondor (“The Siege of Gondor, Part I: Professionals Talk Logistics”) and Helm’s Deep (“The Battle of Helm’s Deep, Part I: Bargaining for Goods at Helm’s Gate”) in both the films and the books from the point of view of a historian.

It is a really good set of posts for both fantasy geeks and history geeks, in part because he knows his history and does a good job of explaining both the battlefield details and the broader historical background behind “medieval” warfare. (Tolkien understood that despair could destroy an army. He fought at the Somme). He also does a good job with some of the films’ reasons for changes, beyond the film-makers are dummies. (Doing a proper cavalry battle between Wargs and the Men of Rohan would cost too much, ruin the pacing of the film, and get some stuntmen hurt.) Those are my brief summaries, he does it much better.

 …But Saruman does not have a lot of experience. Théoden does. As Saruman himself notes, the house of Eorl has “fought many wars and assailed many who defied them” (TT, 218). Théoden himself had been a king even longer than Denethor had been steward (Théoden becomes king in 2980; Denethor becomes steward in 2984) and given what we know about the political situation, it is safe to assume he had some fighting to do even before he became king and much more afterwards. The film has Théoden say this, and at moments shows it on-screen in interesting ways, but the desire to insert some conflict between Théoden and Aragorn means that this characterization gets a bit muddled, as we’ll see. Nevertheless, it is clear that Théoden, in book and film, is an experienced and capable commander – he may lack the subtly and sophistication of Denethor (who, as an aside, I’d probably rate as the better pure tactician of the two, but the worse overall leader), but reliable workman-like generaling is often the best sort, and proves to be so here….

(7) NOT THROWIN’ AWAY MY SHOT. Continuing a theme, Fandom Entertainment obliges with this video comparing archers from three SFF franchises:  Legolas vs. Hawkeye vs. Katniss: “By The Numbers | Best Movie Archer”.

(8) IN THE BEGINNING. In “Michael Moorcock Interview – Elric of Melnibone”, Screen Rant takes the occasion of the 60th anniversary of a Moorcock character’s debut to let him reminisce.

Screen Rant: So you, and some of the formative figures, were just writing your own works. You weren’t trying to adhere to genre conventions, because there wasn’t really a genre to adhere to yet.

Michael Moorcock: Yeah, when I first started writing it, nobody knew what to call it at all. I mean, the publishers didn’t know what to call it. They thought that Tolkien was (writing about) a post-apocalyptic nuclear world. That’s the only way they could perceive an alternate world, in other words. And it was the same with Mervyn Peake… they’re all interpreted that way. The idea of putting ‘fantasy’ on a book meant usually meant that it was a children’s book. And if you put fantasy as the genre, they usually put ‘SF’ larger than ‘fantasy’ to show that it was what it was. So really, there really was nothing like an adult fantasy genre… Today’s experience is just totally different.

(9) BLAME THE DOCTOR! [Item by Olav Rokne.] Conservative UK politician Nick Fletcher provides the most baffling quote of the week, linking Jodie Whittaker’s work on Doctor Who to recent increases in crime. His logic is so tenuous and contrived it has to be heard to be believed. 

(10) TODAY IN ALTERNATE HISTORY. This happens to come from a movie, but Filers tell me they often get these kinds of wild dates in the drafts of their comments, too.

(11) MEMORY LANE.

1887 — One hundred thirty-four years ago, the very first Sherlock Holmes story was published this month in the December issue of Beeton’s Christmas Annual which came out a month ahead of the pub date. It was published sometime in November at a price of one shilling and sold out before Christmas. The other contents were Two Original Drawing Room Plays: “Food for Powder” by R. André, and “The Four-Leaved Shamrock” by C. J. Hamilton. 

A Study in Scarlet is one of only four full-length novels in the original canon. The story was originally titled A Tangled Skein and Doyle wanted royalties from Beeton’s Christmas Annual but settled for a twenty-five pound payment instead in return for the full rights to the novel. 

Bibliographic experts say this copy of Beeton’s Christmas Annual is “the most expensive magazine in the world,” with a copy selling for $156,000 at Sotheby’s in 2007 as only twelve copies are thought to currently exist. 

(12) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

  • Born November 25, 1920 — Ricardo Montalbán. Khan Noonien Singh and the first Mr. Rourke. Armando and Grandpa Valentin Avellan as well. I’m picking those as four most memorable roles he’s played and they just happen to all be genre in nature. Oh, and is Khan Noonien Singh the only occurrence of a non-crew character carrying over from the original series into the films? I suspect not but I can’t think of anyone who did. If there is, I’m sure one of you will tell me. (Died 2009.)
  • Born November 25, 1926 — Jeffrey Hunter. Best known for his role as the first Captain Christopher Pike in the original pilot episode of Star Trek and the later use of that material in “The Menagerie” episode which won a Hugo at NyCon 3.  Other genre work included Dimension 5, A Witch Without A Broom, Strange Portrait (never released, no print is known to exists), Alfred Hitchcock Hour, Journey into Fear and The Green Hornet. Hunter suffered an intracranial hemorrhage while walking down a three-stair set of steps at his home in Van Nuys, California. He died in-hospital despite brain surgery. (Died 1969.)
  • Born November 25, 1926 — Poul Anderson. My favorite ones by him? Orion Shall Rise for the mix of personal scale story with his usual grand political stories, and all of the Flandry and van Rijn stories. I also enjoy his Time Patrol stories as well, and the two Operation Luna tales are quite fun. Not to forget the ever so entertaining The Unicorn Trade that he wrote with his wife Karen. He was quite honored with seven Hugo Awards and three Nebula Awards. (Died 2001.)
  • Born November 25, 1947 — John Larroquette, 74. I think his best genre role is as Jenkins in The Librarians. He’s also had one-offs in Almost Human, The Twilight Zone, Chuck, Batman: The Animated Series and Fantasy Island. He’s uncredited but present in Tales from the Crypt presents Demon Knight, does voice acting in Green Lantern: First Flight, is the Klingon Maltz in The Search for Spock and the oddly named K.K.K. in Twilight Zone: The Movie. Did you know he was the narrator of two Texas Chainsaw Massacre films? 
  • Born November 25, 1950 — Alexis Wright, 71. A Waanyi (Aboriginal Australian) writer known for winning the Miles Franklin Award for her novel Carpentaria which might well be genre. She has one definitely genre novel, The Swan Game.
  • Born November 25, 1953 — Mark Frost, 68. He’s best known as a writer for Hill Street Blues (I know it’s not genre but superb nonetheless) and as the co-creator with David Lynch of Twin Peaks in which he’s been involved with in other roles as well. He had a hand in writing both of the not well regarded Fantastic Four films. He was also one of the Executive Producers of the very short lived All Souls series. 
  • Born November 25, 1953 – Michael “Orange Mike” Lowrey, 68. A fan, free citizen of the ImagiNation, husband, daddy, union leader, Esperantist, wearer of orange garments, Quaker, feminist, Irishman, Mac user, Wobbly, Hordesman, Wikipedian. He’s been active in fanzines (Vojo de Vivo) and apas, the N3F, mailing lists, Usenet, social media. Voted the 2020 TAFF delegate – trip postponed due to the pandemic. Frequent Filer! (OGH)
  • Born November 25, 1974 — Sarah Monette, 47. Under the pen name of Katherine Addison, she published The Goblin Emperor which garnered the Locus Award for Best Fantasy Novel and was nominated for the Nebula, Hugo and World Fantasy Awards. She won the Spectrum Award in 2003 for her short story “Three Letters from the Queen of Elfland”.  Her first two novels Mélusine and The Virtu are quite wonderful and I highly recommend her Iskryne series that she co-wrote with Elizabeth Bear. 
  • Born November 25, 1986 — Katie Cassidy, 35. Best remembered as Laurel Lance / Black Canary in the Arrowverse, primarily on Arrow but also Flash and Legends of Tomorrow. She was also Ruby on Supernatural, Patricia “Trish” Washington on Harper’s Island and Kris Fowles on A Nightmare on Elm Street.

(13) KURT VONNEGUT DOCUMENTARY. [Item by Olav Rokne.] The three of us (from the group I blog with) who saw the Kurt Vonnegut documentary Unstuck in Time were torn about it. That being said, I’d recommend it to every File770 person; there’s an awful lot of good in the documentary, lots of great moments, even if it sometimes doesn’t quite hold together. “Slipping on the stickiness of time” at the The Hugo Book Club Blog.

… Weide is too close to his subject to provide an unflinching look. But it also seems that he’s too much of a documentarian to lean into the personal. Both perspectives suffer for this, but one can also see why the movie took 40 years to make: it’s filled with incredible moments, and archival footage, and surprising snippets. With the amount of footage that Weide gathered in four decades, one can only imagine the riches that had to be left on the cutting room floor….

(14) PAIR OF CHAIRS. In Two Chairs Talking Episode 66, “Where great whales come sailing by”, Perry Middlemiss and David Grigg discuss recent news; David talks about “Bewilderment”, the best book he’s read all year; Perry reviews “Fathoms”, a magnificent book about whales; and he interviews prominent SF fan Justin Ackroyd.

Where great whales come sailing by,
Sail and sail, with unshut eye,
Round the world for ever and eye.

— Matthew Arnold, The Forsaken Merman

(15) THAT WAS FAST. This is sort of a How It Should Have Ended for Disney animated films: “Disney Movies With Quicker Endings Are Pretty Funny” at Pupperish. These cartoon cels are a hoot.

Disney characters are sometimes not that bright, they love to overcomplicate things and they just have to dramatize everything, which can be very infuriating, even if it is sometimes exciting. But of course, that’s what makes Disney’s storylines so magical and full of plot twists.

Every Disney movie features an evil protagonist that could have got the job over and done with quickly, rather than dragging it on. Or a Disney character who could have made even a single decision to speed up the plot.

In a world where Disney characters are a lot more logical and use common sense more often, the movies would end in less than two minutes. If you’ve ever wondered what that may look like, one Disney fan decided to depict it all artistically.

(16) A JWST OOPS. Ars Technica fills us in: “An ‘incident’ with the James Webb Space Telescope has occurred”.

A short update on the projected launch date of the $10 billion James Webb Space Telescope came out of NASA on Monday, and it wasn’t exactly a heart-warming missive.

The large, space-based telescope’s “no earlier than” launch date will slip from December 18 to at least December 22 after an “incident” occurred during processing operations at the launch site in Kourou, French Guiana. That is where the telescope will launch on an Ariane 5 rocket provided by the European Space Agency.

“Technicians were preparing to attach Webb to the launch vehicle adapter, which is used to integrate the observatory with the upper stage of the Ariane 5 rocket,” NASA said in a blog post. “A sudden, unplanned release of a clamp band—which secures Webb to the launch vehicle adapter—caused a vibration throughout the observatory.”

Let’s be honest, words like “incident,” “sudden,” and “vibration” are not the kinds of expressions one wants to hear about the handling of a delicate and virtually irreplaceable instrument like the Webb telescope. However, NASA, the European Space Agency, and the rocket’s operator, Arianespace, have a plan for moving forward….

(17) G AND ENKIDU. Tracen Wassily, a junior at Dillingham High School in Alaska, has turned the Epic of Gilgamesh into a rap reports Literary Hub.

According to KDLG, Public Radio for Alaska’s Bristol Bay, Wassily chose to produce a rap for his literature class, where the assignment was to write an essay, skit, or song on the topic of Gilgamesh. Though at first he didn’t like the Epic of Gilgamesh, Wassily got more excited when he started making beats. “Not even a day after—like, right after school, I got to work producing a beat, a good rhythm, like a fast-paced rhythm for what I’m going to be doing,” Wassily told KDLG. “Cause that’s what I’m most comfortable on.”

Here’s a slice:

g and enkidu on a quest for glory

slayin humbaba is the start of his story
our heroes make it to the gate
but before they serve h his fate
their knees begin to shake…

[Thanks Martin Morse Wooster, JJ, John King Tarpinian, Will R., Alan Baumler, Ben Bird Person, Olav Rokne, Darius Hupov, Jennifer Hawthorne, Andrew Porter, Michael Toman, Cat Eldridge, and Mike Kennedy, for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Nancy Sauer.]

Pixel Scroll 10/26/21 Big Pixel In Little Scroll

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(1) KRUGMAN’S RINGING ENDORSEMENT. “‘Dune’ Is the Movie We Always Wanted” says Paul Krugman.  After pausing to tell us why he hates Apple TV’s Foundation series, he tells why he loves the Villenueve Dune adaptation.

… Now on to “Dune.” The book is everything “Foundation” isn’t: There’s a glittering, hierarchical society wracked by intrigue and warfare, a young hero of noble birth who may be a prophesied Messiah, a sinister but alluring sisterhood of witches, fierce desert warriors and, of course, giant worms.

And yes, it’s fun. When I was a teenager, my friends and I would engage in mock combat in which the killing blow had to be delivered slowly to penetrate your opponent’s shield — which will make sense if you read the book or watch the movie.

What makes “Dune” more than an ordinary space opera are two things: its subtlety and the richness of its world-building.

Thus, the Bene Gesserit derive their power not from magic but from deep self-control, awareness and understanding of human psychology. The journey of Paul Atreides is heroic but morally ambiguous; he knows that if he succeeds, war and vast slaughter will follow.

And the world Herbert created is given depth by layers of cultural references. He borrowed from Islamic and Ayurvedic traditions, from European feudalism and more — “Dune” represents cultural appropriation on a, well, interstellar scale. It’s also deeply steeped in fairly serious ecological thinking…

(2) SILICON VOLLEY. Did you have any doubts? “’Dune: Part 2′ Officially Greenlit” reports Variety. But you have to wait ‘til 2023 to see it.

… Legendary Entertainment announced the news in a tweet on Tuesday, ensuring that the spice will continue to flow on screen. Warner Bros. will distribute the film and help finance it, though Legendary is the primary money behind the movie and owns the film rights to the book series. The film is expected to have an exclusive theatrical run, and Legendary will likely make that point iron-clad after “Dune” debuted simultaneously in theaters and on HBO Max last week. The unorthodox distribution pattern was a pandemic-era concession by Warner Bros., but one that caused an uproar when it was unveiled in 2020. “Dune: Part 2” will hit theaters on Oct. 20, 2023….

When interviewed by Variety at the Toronto Film Festival, Villeneuve said, “I wanted at the beginning to do the two parts simultaneously. For several reasons, it didn’t happen, and I agreed to the challenge of making part one and then wait to see if the movie rings enough enthusiasm… As I was doing the first part, I really put all my passion into it, in case it would be the only one. But I’m optimistic.”

(3) DISCON III BUSINESS MEETING DEADLINE. Meeting chair Kevin Standlee reminds all that the deadline for submitting proposals to the 2021 WSFS Business Meeting is November 16, 2021. Any two or more members of DisCon III (including supporting and virtual members) may sponsor new business. Submit proposals to [email protected]. See “A Guide to the WSFS Business Meeting at DisCon III” [PDF file] for more information about the WSFS Business Meeting.

Reports from committees of the Business Meeting and financial reports from Worldcon committees are also due by November 16, 2021. Send reports to [email protected].

(4) RED ALERT. Remember when you had half a year to do all your Hugo reading? Okay, now’s time to panic. DisCon III today posted a reminder that the Hugo voting deadline is just a few weeks away.

(5) 6TH ANNUAL CITY TECH SF SYMPOSIUM. The Sixth Annual City Tech Science Fiction Symposium on Access and SF has extended the submission deadline of its call for papers until October 29. See full guidelines at the link.

The Sixth Annual City Tech Science Fiction Symposium aims to explore the broad theme of “Access and SF” as a way to understand the relationship between access and SF, identify what’s at stake and for whom, foster alliances between those fighting for access, and discuss how improving access for some improves access for all.

The Sixth Annual City Tech Science Fiction Symposium is a virtual event that will be held online Thursday, December 9 from 9:00 a.m.-5:00 p.m. Eastern at CUNY in New York.

(6) HORROR TRIUMVIRATE Q&A. Goodreads invites fans to “Meet the Authors of Today’s Big Horror Novels”.

Stephen Graham Jones, author of My Heart Is a Chainsaw

GR: What’s your definition of a perfect horror novel?

SGJ: One that changes your daily behavior—makes you afraid of the shower, afraid of the dark, suspicious of the people in your life. One that leaves you no longer certain about yourself or the world you live in. A perfect horror novel is one you forget is a book at all. It’s one that lodges in your head and your heart as an experience, a little perturbation inside you that you only snag your thoughts on when alone. But when those thoughts start to seep blood, you place that cut to your mouth and drink. This is the nourishment you need, never mind how drained it leaves you feeling. Nothing’s for free.

Caitlin Starling, author of The Death of Jane Lawrence

GR: What’s your definition of a perfect horror novel?

CS:  I want to drown in atmosphere. That doesn’t mean I want only slow-moving horror but books that feel like the movies The Blackcoat’s Daughter or A Dark Song—something in that vein. I also want characters that I can live inside, that even if I question their decisions, I don’t just hate or want to suffer. It’s more fun for me to watch a character I enjoy struggle.

Grady Hendrix, author of The Final Girl Support Group

GR: What sparked the idea for your latest book?

GH: Growing up, I wasn’t allowed to see R-rated movies, so after Boy Scout meetings when our Scoutmaster took us to the gas station for snacks, I convinced him that I was allowed to buy issues of Fangoria with my snack money instead. I’d pore over Fango’s deeply detailed plot breakdowns and photo spreads so that I could pretend to have seen all these horror movies. The first one I remember was their feature on the opening of Friday the 13th Part 2, in which the final girl from Part 1, played by Adrienne King, gets murdered by Jason. The casual cruelty of that blew my mind. This woman had seen all her friends die, decapitated the killer, and survived, but she still couldn’t let her guard down. I always wanted to write her a happier ending.
(Fun fact: Adrienne King is the audiobook narrator for The Final Girl Support Group.)

(7) CLASSISM IN SESSION. In “The Potterization of Science Fiction”, The Hugo Book Club Blog decries a prevalent type of sff story, and the distortions it has wrought on the TV adaptation of Foundation.

…One of the fundamentally troubling assumptions behind the born-great protagonist is the anti-democratic idea that the lives of some people simply matter more than the lives of other people. If we accept that Harry Potter is destined to be the only one who can do the thing that’s important, then why should we care about the life of Ritchie Coote? Likewise, if Aragorn is destined for the throne then we have to accept that all other Men of Gondor would be incapable of managing the kingdom (let alone Women of Gondor). There is a direct link between the idea that one person can be born great, with the ideas that underpin racism, classism, and sexism. See also: the equally flawed “great man” theory….

(8) DEATH FROM ABOVE. In the latest episode of Phil Nichols and Colin Kuskie’s Science Fiction 101 podcast, “Fly Me To The Moon”, they review The Apollo Murders.

The author, Chris Hadfield, has flown on the Space Shuttle and on Soyuz, worked on the Russian Mir space station, and commanded the International Space Station. You can’t get more astronaut experience than that.

….If you’ve been tempted by The Apollo Murders, listen to our review to see if it’s the kind of thing that appeal to you. But do be warned: here there be spoilers!

(9) FRIENDLY LOCAL GAME STORE DOCUMENTARY. [Item by Olav Rokne.] Here’s a trailer for an interesting Kickstarter documentary about the largest independent games store on Earth. Now, I might be biased, since I worked there in the 1990s, but Sentry Box is great. One of the best SF book selections anywhere (Gord, the owner handed me my first copy of Lest Darkness Fall … and Steve Jackson and Judith Reeves-Stevens used to visit the store semi-regularly.) 

(10) MEMORY LANE.

1984 – Thirty-seven years ago, The Terminator said “I’ll be back” as the first in that franchise was released.  It was directed by James Cameron who wrote it along with Gale Anne Hurd who also produced it. (She would marry Cameron in 1985.) It starred Arnold Schwarzenegger, Michael Biehn and Linda Hamilton.  Almost all the critics at the time really liked it, though the New York Times thought there was way too much violence. You think? One critic at the time said it had, and I quote, “guns, guns and more guns.” Huh.  Audience reviewers at Rotten Tomatoes give it a very high score of eighty-nine percent. I was surprised that it did not get a Hugo nomination.

(11) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

  • Born October 26, 1942 — Bob Hoskins. I’ll insist his role as Eddie Valiant in Who Framed Roger Rabbit? is his finest genre role though I suppose Mario Mario in Super Mario Bros. could be said… Just kidding! He’s the Director of The Raggedy Rawney which he also had a role, a strange might be genre film, and he’s Smee in Hook as well. (Died 2014.)
  • Born October 26, 1954 — Jennifer Roberson, 67. Writer of of fantasy and historical romances. The Chronicles of the Cheysuli is her fantasy series about shapeshifters and their society, and the Sword-Dancer Saga is the desert based adventure series of sort, but the series I’ve enjoyed is her Sherwood duo-logy that consists of Lady of the Forest and Lady of Sherwood which tells the Robin Hood tale from the perspective of Marian. Her hobby, which consumes much of her time, is breeding and showing Cardigan Welsh Corgis. 
  • Born October 26, 1960 — Patrick Breen, 61. He’s Redgick, a Squid, a minor character that appeared in Men in Black. In beloved Galaxy Quest, he’s Quelled, a Thermian who forms a bond with Alexander Dane. It’s a wonderful role. And he has a recurring role as Larry Your-Waiter, a member of V.F.D. on A Series of Unfortunate Events series. 
  • Born October 26, 1962 — Faith Hunter, 59. Her longest running and most notable series to date is the Jane Yellowrock series though I’ve mixed feelings about the recent turn of events. She’s got a nifty SF series called Junkyard that’s been coming out on Audible first. Her only award to date is the Lifetime Achievement award to a science fiction professional given by DeepSouthCon. 
  • Born October 26, 1962 — Cary Elwes, 57. He’s in the ever-so-excellent Princess Bride which won a Hugo at Nolacon II as Westley / Dread Pirate Roberts / The Man in Black. He also shows up in Dr. Lawrence Gordon in the Saw franchise, and was cast as Larry Kline, Mayor of Hawkins, for the third season of Stranger Things. And no, that’s hardly all his genre roles. 
  • Born October 26, 1963 — Keith Topping, 58. It being the month of ghoulies, I’ve got another academic for you. He’s published Slayer: The Totally Cool Unofficial Guide to Buffy, Hollywood Vampire: An Expanded and Updated Unofficial and Unauthorised Guide to Angel, The Complete Slayer: An Unofficial and Unauthorised Guide to Every Episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and one and one for horror film fans in general, A Vault of Horror: A Book of 80 Great British Horror Movies from 1956-1974. He’s also written some novels in the Doctor Who universe, some with Martin Day, and written non-fiction works on the original Avengers, you know which ones I mean, with Martin Day also, and ST: TNG & DS9 and Stargate as well with Paul Cornell. 
  • Born October 26, 1971 — Jim Butcher, 50. I really don’t know how far I got in the the Dresden Files, at least though Proven Guilty, and I will go back to it eventually. Who here has read his other series, Codex Alera and Cinder Spires? I see he won a Dragon this year for his Battle Ground novel, the latest in the Dresden Files series.
  • Born October 26, 1973 — Seth MacFarlane, 48. Ok, I confess that I tried watching The Orville which he created and it just didn’t appeal to me. For those of you who are fans, why do you like it? I will admit that having it described as trying to be a better Trek ain’t helping. 

(12) COMICS SECTION.

  • Garfield shows we need some better way to handle giant robots. (I imagine Slim Pickens delivering the line in the comic.)

(13) DIOP WINS NEUSTADT. Boubacar Boris Diop is the 27th laureate of the Neustadt International Prize for Literature, which recognizes outstanding literary merit in literature worldwide. Diop is not a genre writer so far as I’m aware, but this major literary award news came out today.

Francophone writer Diop (b. 1946, Dakar, Senegal) is the author of many novels, plays and essays. He was awarded the Senegalese Republic Grand Prize in 1990 for Les Tambours de la mémoire as well as the Prix Tropiques for The Knight and His Shadow. His Doomi Golo was the first novel to be translated from Wolof into English. Toni Morrison called his novel Murambi: The Book of Bones “a miracle,” and the Zimbabwe International Book Fair listed it as one of the 100 best African books of the 20th century.

…The Neustadt Prize is the first international literary award of its scope to originate in the United States and is one of the very few international prizes for which poets, novelists and playwrights are equally eligible. Winners are awarded $50,000, a replica of an eagle feather cast in silver and a certificate.

Boubacar Boris Diop

(14) SCIENCE FICTION IS ALWAYS ABOUT THE PRESENT.  Ali Karjoo-Ravary’s article about the Dune novel and movie’s use of culture is much more nuanced than the headline Slate gives it: “Is HBO’s 2021 adaptation of Frank Herbert’s book a white savior narrative?”

…Part of this is also Herbert’s fault. By writing a story in which he intended to critique “Western man,” Herbert also centered Western man. Often when critiquing something, one falls into a binary that prevents the very third option that so many have been looking for since decolonization. Herbert’s greatest shortcoming can be seen in his analysis of T.E. Lawrence and the deification of leaders in an interview he gave in 1969. He said, “If Lawrence of Arabia had died at the crucial moment of the British … he would have been deified. And it would have been the most terrifying thing the British had ever encountered, because the Arabs would have swept that entire peninsula with that sort of force, because one of the things we’ve done in our society is exploited this power.”

Herbert’s shortcoming is not his idea that “Western man” seeks to exploit the deification of charismatic leaders but that Arabs (or any other non-Western) would fall easily for it. This notion, in fact, builds on a stereotype that motivated European powers to fund propaganda among Muslims during the world wars in the hope that they could provoke a global jihad against one another. Needless to say, that didn’t happen, because Islam isn’t a “warrior religion” whose followers are just waiting for the right trigger to go berserk. Islam’s followers are human and are as complicated and multifaceted as other humans. Herbert should have seen that more clearly….

(15) PILE THESE ON TOP OF MT. TBR. CrimeReads’ Rektok Ross recommends some compelling YA horror and sf novels: “9 YA Survival Thrillers To Get Your Heart Pounding This Fall”.

Life As We Knew It by Susan Beth Pfeffer

During a catastrophic natural disaster, high school sophomore Miranda takes shelter with her family in this heart-stopping thriller. After a meteor knocks the moon closer to earth, worldwide tsunamis demolish entire cities, earthquakes rock the world, and ash from volcanic explosions block out the sun. When the summer turns dark and wintery in northeastern Pennsylvania, Miranda, her two brothers, and their mother are forced to hideout in their sunroom, where they must survive solely on stockpiled food and limited water. Readers will find themselves completely riveted by this story of desperation in an unfamiliar world although there are small slivers of hope, too.

(16) UNCOVERED. Tenth Letter of the Alphabet, in “Inspiration: The Reflection”, compares Will Bradley’s 1894 art with the science fictional cover by Mike Hinge it inspired, published by the 1975 fanzine Algol. Editor Andrew Porter commented there —

…This issue was the first with a full color cover. Working with the artist, Mike Hinge, was a challenge. He was a stickler for details, even demanded that his copyright appear on the front cover, in the artwork! This was also the first issue with the covers printed on 10pt Kromecoate, so the image really bumped up.

I forgot to mention that Hinge also did interior artwork, for the Le Guin piece. Also, all the type on the cover, and the headlines inside was done using LetraSet, which I still have dozens of sheets of, though I haven’t used it in decades.

(17) TOCHI ONYEBUCHI AND NGHI VO. At Essence of Wonder with Gadi Evron, Nghi Vo and Tochi Onyebuchi joined Alan Bond and Karen Castelletti to talk about their 2021 Hugo Awards nominated works, Empress of Salt and Fortune and Riot Baby.

(18) FAMILY TREE. Joe Abercrombie’s response to Nina Melia’s tweet is, “Holy shit I’m Frodo in this metaphor?”

(19) THE WEED OF CRIME. In the Washington Post, Hannah Knowles says that federal prosecutors have charged Vinath Oudomzine for fraudulently obtaining a pandemic-related Small Businsss Administration loan. Prosecutors charge that Oudomosine spend $57,789 on a Pokemon card, which they did not identify. “Vinath Oudomsine used covid-19 business relief to buy a Pokémon card, federal prosecutors say”.

… On July 14, 2020, according to prosecutors, Oudomsine sought a loan for a business that he said had 10 employees and revenue of $235,000 over a year. The next month, court documents state, the SBA deposited $85,000 into a bank account in Oudomsine’s name.

Court filings give few details about the alleged Pokémon card purchase — such as which “Pocket Monster” it carried — simply stating that Oudomsine bought it “on or about” Jan. 8 of this year.

Collectible gaming cards can fetch big sums — this year, one unopened box of first-edition Pokémon cards sold for more than $400,000.…

(20) VIDEO OF THE DAY. [Item by Martin Morse Wooster.] In “Halloween Kills Pitch Meeting” on Screen Rant, which has spoilers, Ryan George says Michael Myers managers to escape from the cliffhanger of the previous Halloween movie, even though he’s “an eight-fingered 60-year-old with smoke inhalation.”  Also, Jamie Lee Curtis, despite her billing, is barely in the movie and about half the script is various characters saying, “Evil dies tonight!”

[Thanks to Cat Eldridge, Mike Kennedy, Martin Morse Wooster, JJ, Chris Barkley, Lise Andreasen, Jennifer Hawthorne, Rob Thornton, Michael J. Walsh, Dann, Gadi Evron, Daniel Dern, John King Tarpinian, Andrew Porter, and Michael Toman for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Danny Sichel.]