Usually the judges add two people to the Hall, but the number has been doubled this year as part of the Will Eisner centennial celebration – he would have turned 100 on March 6. The judges’ picks are —
Milt Gross (1895–1953)
Milton Gross began his cartooning career in 1915, producing a number of humorous newspaper strips. After serving in World War I, he went on to create strips like Frenchy, Banana Oil, and Help Wanted. His big break came with Gross Exaggerations, a weekly column of prose and cartoons. In 1926 Nize Baby, a book collection of some of these columns, appeared and was an instant hit. Under the same title, Gross began a Sunday page feature in 1927. Other books by Gross include Hiawatta Witt No Odder Poems, De Night In De Front From Chreesmas, Dunt Esk, and the pioneer wordless graphic novel He Done Her Wrong. In 1933, Gross was hired away from the New York World by newspaper tycoon William Randolph Hearst, for whom he produced such strips as Count Screwloose of Tooloose, Dave’s Delicatessen, Otto and Blotto, and That’s My Pop! Gross became a celebrity, famous for his cartooning, scriptwriting, radio shows, and columns.
H. G. Peter (1880–1958)
At age 61, Harry G. Peter began drawing Wonder Woman, collaborating with writer William Moulton Marston. Peter started with the Amazon’s first appearance in Sensation Comics in 1941 and continued drawing the feature for close to two decades. Wonder Woman #97, cover dated April 1958, was Peter’s last issue.
Antonio Prohías (1921–1998)
Antonio Prohías is best known for his 30 years of work with MAD magazine on his comic feature “Spy Vs. Spy,” which has been adapted into a series of animated shorts, several video games, a series of live-action television commercials, and a Sunday strip. Prohías’s two feuding spies stand among the handful of comics characters with an immediate, globally recognized iconic meaning. In the late 1940s Prohias began drawing cartoons for the prestigious Cuban newspaper El Mundo. His wordless material enjoyed international appeal, and by the late 1950s he was the president of the Association of Cuban Cartoonists. On May 1, 1960, just three days before Castro gained control of El Mundo and the rest of Cuba’s free press, Prohías fled Cuba for New York City.
Dori Seda (1950–1988)
Dori Seda was one of the pioneers of the autobiographical comics genre in underground comix. She started her career when she was hired by Last Gasp publisher Ron Turner to do the bookkeeping for the company. Her stories were published in several comics and anthologies, including Wimmen’s Comix, Rip-Off Comix, Tits ‘n Clits, and Weirdo. Dori’s only full-length solo book was Lonely Nights Comics. Her work is collected in Dori Stories (1999), which also includes memorial essays by friends. In 1988, Last Gasp established the Dori Seda Memorial Award for Women, whose first (and only) recipient was Carol Tyler.
The judges have also chosen 17 nominees from which voters will select another four people to go into the Hall of Fame this summer. These nominees are Peter Bagge, Howard Cruse, Steve Englehart, Justin Green, Roberta Gregory, Bill Griffith, Gilbert and Jaime Hernandez, Francoise Mouly, Jackie Ormes, George Pérez, P. Craig Russell, Posy Simmonds, Walt Simonson, Jim Starlin, Rumiko Takahashi, and Garry Trudeau.
Comic-Con International has announced the shortlist for the Will Eisner Comic Industry Awards 2017. The finalists were chosen by a panel of judges composed of Alan Campbell, Rob Clough, Jamie Newbold, Robert Moses Peaslee, Dawn Rutherford and Martha Thomases.
Topping the nominations is Sonny Liew’s The Art of Charlie Chan Hock Chye (Pantheon), originally published in Singapore. It is a history of Singapore from the 1950s to the present as told by a fictional cartoonist in a wide variety of styles reflecting the various time periods. It is nominated in 6 categories: Best Graphic Album–New, Best U.S. Edition of International Material–Asia, Best Writer/Artist, Best Coloring, Best Lettering, and Best Publication Design….
Besides Sonny Liew, the individual creator with the most nominations is writer Brian K. Vaughan, for Saga, Paper Girls, and We Stand on Guard. Nine creators have 3 nominations each: the previously mentioned Brubaker, Gauld, Phillips, Staples, Takeda, and Thompson, plus Tom Hart (Best Reality-Based Work and Best Writer/Artist for Rosalie Lightning, Best Graphic Album–Reprint for She’s Not Into Poetry), and Erica Henderson and Ryan North (Best Publication for Teens for Jughead and The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl, Best Humor Publication for Jughead).
The judges made two changes to the categories this year. They did not choose any nominees for Best Adaptation from Another Medium, so that category will not be on the ballot. And they divided what was previously Best Webcomic/Digital Comic into two categories, with nominees for webcomic comprising works produced originally to be viewed online, and nominees for digital comic comprising works that use a traditional comic book format available for viewing and/or download as PDFs or similar formats.
Best Short Story
“The Comics Wedding of the Century,” by Simon Hanselmann, in We Told You So:Comics as Art (Fantagraphics)
“The Dark Nothing,” by Jordan Crane, in Uptight #5 (Fantagraphics)
“Good Boy,” by Tom King and David Finch, in Batman Annual #1 (DC)
“Monday,” by W. Maxwell Prince and John Amor, in One Week in the Library (Image)
“Mostly Saturn,” by Michael DeForge, in Island Magazine #8 (Image)
“Shrine of the Monkey God!” by Kim Deitch, in Kramers Ergot 9 (Fantagraphics)
Best Single Issue/One-Shot
Babybel Wax Bodysuit, by Eric Kostiuk Williams (Retrofit/Big Planet)
Beasts of Burden: What the Cat Dragged In, by Evan Dorkin, Sarah Dyer, and Jill Thompson (Dark Horse)
Blammo #9, by Noah Van Sciver (Kilgore Books)
Criminal 10th Anniversary Special, by Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips (Image)
Sir Alfred #3, by Tim Hensley (Pigeon Press)
Your Black Friend, by Ben Passmore (Silver Sprocket)
Best Continuing Series
Astro City, by Kurt Busiek and Brent Anderson (Vertigo/DC)
Kill or Be Killed, by Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips (Image)
The Mighty Thor, by Jason Aaron and Russell Dauterman (Marvel)
Paper Girls, by Brian K. Vaughan and Cliff Chiang (Image)
Saga, by Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples (Image)
Best Limited Series
Archangel, by William Gibson, Michael St. John Smith, Butch Guice, and Tom Palmer (IDW)
Briggs Land, by Brian Wood and Mack Chater (Dark Horse)
Han Solo, by Marjorie Liu and Mark Brooks (Marvel)
Kim and Kim, by Magdalene Visaggio and Eva Cabrera (Black Mask)
The Vision, by Tom King and Gabriel Walta (Marvel)
We Stand on Guard, by Brian K. Vaughan and Steve Skroce (Image)
Best New Series
Black Hammer, by Jeff Lemire and Dean Ormston (Dark Horse)
Clean Room, by Gail Simone and Jon Davis-Hunt (Vertigo/DC)
Deathstroke: Rebirth, by Christopher Priest, Carlo Pagulayan, et al. (DC)
Faith, by Jody Houser, Pere Pérez, and Marguerite Sauvage (Valiant)
Mockingbird, by Chelsea Cain and Kate Niemczyk (Marvel)
Best Publication for Early Readers (up to age 8)
Ape and Armadillo Take Over the World, by James Sturm (Toon)
Burt’s Way Home, by John Martz (Koyama)
The Creeps, Book 2: The Trolls Will Feast! by Chris Schweizer (Abrams)
I’m Grumpy (My First Comics), by Jennifer L. Holm and Matthew Holm (Random
House Books for Young Readers)
Narwhal: Unicorn of the Sea, by Ben Clanton (Tundra)
Best Publication for Kids (ages 9-12)
The Drawing Lesson, by Mark Crilley (Ten Speed Press)
Ghosts, by Raina Telgemeier (Scholastic)
Hilda and the Stone Forest, by Luke Pearson (Flying Eye Books)
Rikki, adapted by Norm Harper and Matthew Foltz-Gray (Karate Petshop)
Science Comics: Dinosaurs, by MK Reed and Joe Flood (First Second)
Best Publication for Teens (ages 13-17)
Bad Machinery, vol. 5: The Case of the Fire Inside, by John Allison (Oni)
Batgirl, by Hope Larson and Rafael Albuquerque (DC)
Jughead, by Chip Zdarsky, Ryan North, Erica Henderson, and Derek Charm (Archie)
Monstress, by Marjorie Liu and Sana Takeda (Image)
Trish Trash: Roller Girl of Mars, by Jessica Abel (Papercutz/Super Genius)
The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl, by Ryan North and Erica Henderson (Marvel)
Best Humor Publication
The Further Fattening Adventures of Pudge, Girl Blimp, by Lee Marrs (Marrs Books)
Hot Dog Taste Test, by Lisa Hanawalt (Drawn & Quarterly)
Jughead, by Chip Zdarsky, Ryan North, Erica Henderson, and Derek Charm (Archie)
Man, I Hate Cursive, by Jim Benton (Andrews McMeel)
Yuge! 30 Years of Doonesbury on Trump, by G. B. Trudeau (Andrews McMeel)
Best Anthology
Baltic Comics Anthology š! #26: dADa, edited by David Schilter and Sanita Muizniece (kuš!)
Island Magazine, edited by Brandon Graham and Emma Rios (Image)
Kramers Ergot 9, edited by Sammy Harkham (Fantagraphics)
Love is Love, edited by Marc Andreyko (IDW/DC)
Spanish Fever: Stories by the New Spanish Cartoonists, edited by Santiago Garcia (Fantagraphics)
Best Reality-Based Work
Dark Night: A True Batman Story, by Paul Dini and Eduardo Risso (Vertigo/DC)
Glenn Gould: A Life Off Tempo, by Sandrine Revel (NBM)
March (Book Three), by John Lewis, Andrew Aydin, and Nate Powell (Top Shelf)
Rosalie Lightning: A Graphic Memoir, by Tom Hart (St. Martin’s)
Tetris: The Games People Play, by Box Brown (First Second)
Best Graphic Album—New
The Art of Charlie Chan Hock Chye, by Sonny Liew (Pantheon)
Black Dog: The Dreams of Paul Nash, by Dave McKean (Dark Horse)
Exits, by Daryl Seitchik (Koyama)
Mooncop, by Tom Gauld (Drawn & Quarterly)
Patience, by Daniel Clowes (Fantagraphics)
Wonder Woman: The True Amazon by Jill Thompson (DC Comics)
Best Graphic Album—Reprint
Demon, by Jason Shiga (First Second)
Incomplete Works, by Dylan Horrocks (Alternative)
Last Look, by Charles Burns (Pantheon)
Meat Cake Bible, by Dame Darcy (Fantagraphics)
Megg and Mog in Amsterdam and Other Stories, by Simon Hanselmann (Fantagraphics)
She’s Not into Poetry, by Tom Hart (Alternative)
Best U.S. Edition of International Material
Equinoxes, by Cyril Pedrosa, translated by Joe Johnson (NBM)
Irmina, by Barbara Yelin, translated by Michael Waaler (SelfMadeHero)
Love: The Lion, by Frédéric Brémaud and Federico Bertolucci (Magnetic)
Moebius Library: The World of Edena, by Jean “Moebius” Giraud et al. (Dark Horse)
Wrinkles, by Paco Roca, translated by Erica Mena (Fantagraphics)
Best U.S. Edition of International Material—Asia
The Art of Charlie Chan Hock Chye, by Sonny Liew (Pantheon)
Goodnight Punpun, vols. 1–4, by Inio Asano, translated by JN PRoductions (VIZ Media)
orange: The Complete Collection, vols. 1–2, by Ichigo Takano, translated by Amber Tamosaitis, adaptation by Shannon Fay (Seven Seas)
The Osamu Tezuka Story: A Life in Manga and Anime, by Toshio Ban and Tezuka Productions, translated by Frederik L. Schodt (Stone Bridge Press)
Princess Jellyfish, vols. 1–3 by Akiko Higashimura, translated by Sarah Alys Lindholm (Kodansha)
Wandering Island, vol. 1, by Kenji Tsuruta, translated by Dana Lewis (Dark Horse)
Best Archival Collection/Project—Strips (at least 20 years old)
Almost Completely Baxter: New and Selected Blurtings, by Glen Baxter (NYR Comics)
Barnaby, vol. 3, by Crockett Johnson, edited by Philip Nel and Eric Reynolds (Fantagraphics)
Chester Gould’s Dick Tracy, Colorful Cases of the 1930s, edited by Peter Maresca (Sunday Press)
The Realist Cartoons, edited by Paul Krassner and Ethan Persoff (Fantagraphics)
Walt & Skeezix 1931–1932, by Frank King, edited by Jeet Heer and Chris Ware (Drawn & Quarterly)
Best Archival Collection/Project—Comic Books (at least 20 Years Old)
The Complete Neat Stuff, by Peter Bagge, edited by Eric Reynolds (Fantagraphics)
The Complete Wimmen’s Comix, edited by Trina Robbins (Fantagraphics)
Fables and Funnies, by Walt Kelly, compiled by David W. Tosh (Dark Horse)
Trump: The Complete Collection, by Harvey Kurtzman et al., edited by Denis Kitchen and John Lind (Dark Horse)
U.S.S. Stevens: The Collected Stories, by Sam Glanzman, edited by Drew Ford (Dover)
Best Writer
Ed Brubaker, Criminal 10th Anniversary Special, Kill or Be Killed,Velvet (Image)
Kurt Busiek, Astro City (Vertigo/DC)
Chelsea Cain, Mockingbird (Marvel)
Max Landis, Green Valley (Image/Skybound), Superman: American Alien (DC)
Jeff Lemire, Black Hammer (Dark Horse); Descender, Plutona (Image); Bloodshot Reborn (Valiant)
Brian K. Vaughan, Paper Girls, Saga, We Stand On Guard (Image)
Best Writer/Artist
Jessica Abel, Trish Trash: Roller Girl of Mars (Papercutz/Super Genius)
Box Brown, Tetris: The Games People Play (First Second)
Tom Gauld, Mooncop (Drawn & Quarterly)
Tom Hart, Rosalie Lightning: A Graphic Memoir (St. Martin’s)
Sonny Liew, The Art of Charlie Chan Hock Chye (Pantheon)
Best Penciller/Inker or Penciller/Inker Team
Mark Brooks, Han Solo (Marvel)
Dan Mora, Klaus (BOOM!)
Greg Ruth, Indeh (Grand Central Publishing)
Francois Schuiten, The Theory of the Grain of Sand (IDW)
Fiona Staples, Saga (Image)
Brian Stelfreeze, Black Panther (Marvel)
Best Painter/Multimedia Artist (interior art)
Federico Bertolucci, Love: The Lion (Magnetic)
Brecht Evens, Panther (Drawn & Quarterly)
Manuele Fior, 5,000 km per Second (Fantagraphics)
Dave McKean, Black Dog (Dark Horse)
Sana Takeda, Monstress (Image)
Jill Thompson, Wonder Woman: The True Amazon (DC); Beasts of Burden: What the Cat Dragged In (Dark Horse)
Best Cover Artist (for multiple covers)
Mike Del Mundo, Avengers,Carnage, Mosaic, The Vision (Marvel)
David Mack, Abe Sapien, BPRD Hell on Earth, Fight Club 2, Hellboy and the BPRD 1953 (Dark Horse)
Sean Phillips, Criminal 10th Anniversary Special, Kill or Be Killed (Image)
Fiona Staples, Saga (Image)
Sana Takeda, Monstress (Image)
Best Coloring
Jean-Francois Beaulieu, Green Valley (Image/Skybound)
Elizabeth Breitweiser, Criminal 10th Anniversary Special, Kill or Be Killed,Velvet (Image); Outcastby Kirkman & Azaceta(Image/Skybound)
Sonny Liew, The Art of Charlie Chan Hock Chye (Pantheon)
Laura Martin, Wonder Woman (DC); Ragnorak (IDW); Black Panther (Marvel)
Matt Wilson, Cry Havoc,Paper Girls, The Wicked + The Divine (Image); Black Widow, The Mighty Thor, Star-Lord (Marvel)
Best Lettering
Dan Clowes, Patience (Fantagraphics)
Brecht Evens, Panther (Drawn & Quarterly)
Tom Gauld, Mooncop (Drawn & Quarterly)
Nick Hayes, Woody Guthrie (Abrams)
Todd Klein, Clean Room, Dark Night, Lucifer (Vertigo/DC); Black Hammer (Dark Horse)
Sonny Liew, The Art of Charlie Chan Hock Chye (Pantheon)
Best Comics-Related Periodical/Journalism
The A.V. Club comics coverage, including Comics Panel, Back Issues, and Big Issues, by Oliver Sava et al., www.avclub.com
Update 05/03/2017: Love is Love has been added in the “Best Anthology” category. Eisner Awards organizer Jackie Estrada said that the book was originally overlooked due to Amazon listing it as a January 2017 release, despite being on-sale with comic book retailers on December 28, 2016
I’m glad to be alive but I can’t help being a little nervous. I have now exceeded the original estimate of the time I had left. I’m not in any way surprised as it’s been obvious for a year that I would. And I still can’t help being a little nervous because, as the kids say, sh!t just got real. I knew I was going to do this. I never believed I was going to do anything else. But it’s no longer something in the future; now it’s put up or shut up: You’re on, kid––careful you don’t trip on your super-hero cape as you make your entrance.
Every day is still going to be a party. Every day is Anything-Can-Happen Day until further notice. Of course, every day is Anything-Can-Happen Day for everyone, not just me. Indeterminacy Are Us. But certain probabilities are a little higher for me and it’s the sort of thing that I can’t help being aware of, sometimes more so than other times.
In 2016, I saw a child die in the street. That’s not a metaphor. It was a violent crime that actually happened. I haven’t talked about it publicly for two reasons. The first reason was that it didn’t feel right to do so while his family and friends mourned. The second reason was that the event entered into a complex stream of events in my life that have been dramatically changing me. It wasn’t so much that I watched a death; it was that the death was framed by other experiences reacting together on my insides. And all those things took a while to fully catalyze.
Anabel Martinezused to be a director at Phoenix Comicon and she, as well as other folk, has been critical of Phoenix Comicon’s move to restricting volunteers to those who pay to be member of the Blue Ribbon Army fan society, of which Phoenix Comicon’s Matt Solberg is also a board member.
Martinez says –
Matt will always spin it when people voice concerns. My big critique that got me banned from a convention I love and adore? Being upset that volunteers have to pay for the privilege to volunteer now. He says I stepped down as a marketing director – that was a volunteer gig.
Solberg’s side of things is —
Since her dismissal in 2010 Ms. Martinez has pursued a vendetta against Phoenix Comicon, our staff, and myself. She has increasingly grown vindictive and bullying in her comments and actions. We made a business decision as a privately held company that we no longer need to tolerate her behavior by allowing her to participate within our event. I stand by the letter I sent her which she has posted to social media.
The ebook industry has undergone several transitions in the past few years, where authors have become increasingly victimized by e-pirates, vanity presses, and scams designed to keep writers from making money on their intellectual property. Earlier today, December 28, 2016, the industry hit a new low when longtime e-tailer All Romance E-Books (Are), LLC (with its non-romance genre partner Omni Lit) released a surprise notice to its authors and publishers. ARe’s CEO and owner, Lori James, announced that the retailer was closing its doors in three days’ time…
Because let’s be for real here. It’s not like ARe’s owners aren’t paying authors because they don’t have the money for the sales. They do have it. They banked all that cash and are now trying to keep it. And by hanging the threat of filing for bankruptcy out there, the company is attempting to threaten authors into agreeing legally to let them retain that money without future legal responsibility.
While that might be true, it’s probably not true – when businesses go under, the liquid assets generally have already gone into salaries and wages and any operating expenses needed to make the business appear viable up til the bitter end.
I’m running for the position of President. For four years, I was privileged to work with an extremely active and committed board, first as Secretary of SFWA and then as Vice President. I stepped down because I believe that new voices are vital to a service organization such as SFWA. But there are still things that I want to see accomplished, particularly trying to find affordable health care for our members. I feel that after five years off the board, the time is right to run again.
The base price of $1700 covers the full week of intensive seminars, writing exercises, and free writing time, plus meals, double-occupancy lodging on the ship, and a cruise to four different European destinations. (We have arranged for a hotel, breakfast, and transfer to the ship for $150, but staying there is optional.) Attendees will also be invited to attend live recordings of episodes of Hugo award-winning podcast Writing Excuses, hosted by Mary Robinette Kowal, Howard Tayler, and Dan Wells.
At sea. Seriously.
Desiree Burch, John Berlyne, Wesley Chu, Aliette de Bodard, Jasper Fforde, Ken Liu, Thomas Olde Heuvelt and Carsten Polzin will also participate.
(9) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY BOYS
Born January 1, 1929 — Suit actor Haruo Nakajima (Godzilla) is born in Japan.
Is Sherlock Holmes going soft? Benedict Cumberbatch explained to an audience of British grandees in London that his character has been on a journey of enlightenment over the past three seasons of “Sherlock,” and in season four, which premieres on New Year’s Day, audiences will see him humanized further, or as one journalist crudely put it: “He’s slightly less of a d**k.”
“He is becoming slightly more… well, in a very clear way… responsible for his actions,” Cumberbatch explained during an onstage discussion that followed a screening of “The Six Thatchers,” the opening episode of season four.
“But I think he understands that it’s a slow, slow process that began in the very first instance when he met John [Doctor Watson], who supplies the missing piece of that jigsaw that is him. That friendship, that partnership in crime, has been the humanizing element all the way through [the three seasons], and I think he is now becoming more of a human-being.”
(11) CLARKE CENTER. “The Hard Problem: An Audio Voyage”, Episode 3 of Into the Impossible, the podcast of the Arthur C. Clarke Center for the Human Imagination, features Kim Stanley Robinson, Adam Tinkle, and Marina Abramovic.
In winter of 2015, the Clarke Center produced a collaborative project with the performance artist Marina Abramovic and the science fiction author Kim Stanley Robinson.
The multi-day workshop cultivated a series of interactions between a story that Stan was writing about a multi-generational spaceship heading to another star, and the performance art gestures of Marina’s that are a journey into our inner self. We improvised readings and performance actions to find the ways in which these seemingly diametric experiences touched on the common idea of how we extend our sense of time and space from the moment to the eternal.
Out of this, we created an installation with multiple audio tracks, which was then further developed for the Venice Biennale. We also made a short film, which you can find below, and the audio tracks were mixed and choreographed by Adam Tinkle into the podcast.
(12) FISHER BID FAREWELL NEW ORLEANS STYLE. New Orleans’ Leijorettes and Chewbacchus krewes held a parade to honor Carrie Fisher.
[Thanks to Hampus Eckerman, JJ, David K.M.Klaus, and John King Tarpinian for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Mark-kitteh.]
A team of astronomers composed of P. Kervella (CNRS / U. de Chile / Paris Observatory / LESIA), F. Thévenin (Lagrande Laboratory, Côte d’Azur Observatory, France) and Christophe Lovis (Observatory of the University of Geneva, Switzerland) has demonstrated that Proxima, the nearest star to the Sun, is gravitationally bound to its neighbors Alpha Centauri A and B. The nearest stellar system to the Earth is therefore a triple star. Proxima is known to host the nearest exoplanet, a telluric planet orbiting in its habitable zone. This discovery implies that the four objects (Alpha Cen A, B, Proxima and Proxima b) share the same age of ~6 billion years.
Now as to that orbit — 550,000 years for a single revolution — things get interesting. One reason it has been important to firm up Proxima’s orbit is that while a bound star would have affected the development of the entire system, the question has until now been unresolved. Was Proxima Centauri actually bound to Centauri A and B, or could it simply be passing by, associated with A and B only by happenstance?
(2) THE REPRESSION INHERENT IN THE SYSTEM. YouTube’s Nostalgia Critic demands to know “Where’s the Fair Use”?
Square Egg Entertainment, the organisation behind Phoenix Comicon, today announced a sizeable change to its practice of staffing – and pooling volunteers for – their three annual events: Phoenix Comicon, Phoenix Comicon Fan Fest, and Keen Halloween. Square Egg will no longer be staffing these shows with hired hands, instead now filling those roles from the organising committee and paid membership of the Blue Ribbon Army (which originally started out as a fan group for PHXCC, and has subsequently become a social club with 501(c)(7) status).
Members of the Army have to be at least 18 years old and – here’s the kicker for a number of fiscally-minded volunteers – they also do have to become fully paid-up members of the fan group, with membership prices to join starting at $20 per year and going up to $100 per year. That’s right: you effectively have to now pay to become a Phoenix Comicon volunteer.
They just had to be here, as they’re cinematic legends when it comes to utterly failing at your job. Imperial Stormtroopers, as we’re told, are precise. The Empire has access to vast resources, so you’d think its military force would be well up to scratch. Stormtroopers even get a pretty good showing the first time we see them, managing to take over Princess Leia’s ship with only a few casualties. And then almost every time after that we see them, they’re getting destroyed like they put their helmets on backwards and their armor is made of tinfoil….
1. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
Back when Elon Musk was a moody teen growing up in Pretoria, South Africa, he went looking for the meaning of life in the work of grumpy philosophers. It didn’t help. Then he came upon The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, which taught him that the hardest part was to properly phrase the question but that once this was done the answer was easy. It changed his whole perspective.
Mortal man Beren and elf maiden Luthien Tinuviel (of the New Jersey Tinuviels) are forebears of the kings of Numenor and Gondor. Seeing as how the love story of Beren and Luthien echoes through the millennia in their great-great-many-times-great-grandchildren, it comes as no surprise that a similar fate awaits Aragorn and Arwen’s descendant, Snow White.
The family resemblance would only be uncannier if Steven Tyler cast her in inappropriately weird videos during her early teens.
At this point you may be thinking that we’re smoking too much of that pipe with Gandalf, but have you noticed Snow White’s rapport with the birds and beasts of the wild? The way they listen and respond to her?
Doesn’t this suggest a deep connection with nature, as someone with Elvish blood would have?
…[Our] 52 Most Anticipated Movies list is always a big hit because it operates under a simple premise: if you’re going to see one movie for every week of the new year (and you should), these are the ones on which we’d stake a claim. Because we spend a great deal of time thinking about upcoming movies and an even sadder amount of time researching them, we’re exactly the kind of people who are qualified to give out said advice. Qualified enough to say, with confidence, that these 52 movies are likely to be worth your time. They may not all turn out to be great, but they will be worth seeing and discussing throughout the year….
Beauty and the Beast (March 17)
Neil Miller: If we’re being honest?—?and we are at all times?—?Disney’s live-action parade of remakes is actually turning out to be a better idea in practice than it was on paper. Both Kenneth Branagh’s Cinderella and Jon Favreau’s The Jungle Book gave us an interesting take on their respective stories. Neither was the disaster that many, perhaps out of a dedication to an anti-remake stance, had predicted. This is what gives us further hope for Beauty and the Beast, the success of which will rest mostly on the shoulders of Disney’s live-action effects teams and Emma Watson, both of which have proven track records. Six weeks ago, Disney released a trailer that showed off both of these things in action. The Beast effects that cover up Dan Stevens’ handsome mug look good and Emma Watson looks right at home as Belle. We’re still not sure of those CGI housewear items with anamorphic features, but we’ll see how that pans out in the final product.
(9) REMEMBERING RICHARD ADAMS. In 1843 Magazine, Miranda Johnson, an environment correspondent for The Economist, discusses her grandfather Richard Adams, including how Adams’s experiences fighting in Operation Market Garden in World War II informed the battles in Watership Down, how her family all became characters in her grandfather’s novels, and what happened when Adams had lunch with Groucho Marx.
He also never forgot friends he made during his service. One in particular, Paddy Kavanagh, stuck with him for his fearless defence of the Oosterbeek perimeter as part of Operation Market Garden during September 1944. Paddy gave his life so that my grandpa’s platoon could escape. So my grandfather brought him back in the character of Bigwig in “Watership Down”, who stands alone to defend a tunnel in the rabbits’ new warren. Originally in the story, Bigwig also died. But my mother and aunt protested so much that my grandpa changed the tale. “We said nobody must die,” my aunt recalls, “except for Hazel, because it seemed an important part given his old age.”
(10) HOLLYWOOD MEMORIAL. ULTRAGOTHA found the story and JJ tracked down a photo —
Carrie Fisher doesn’t have a Star on the Walk of Fame, so fans appropriated a blank one and are leaving tributes. Including two cinnamon buns.
100% of the proceeds will be donated to bipolar disorder through the Brain and Behavior Research Foundation: https://bbrfoundation.org/
(12) TODAY IN HISTORY
December 30, 1816 — Percy Shelley and Mary Wollstonecraft were married.
(13) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY GIRLS
Born December 30, 1980 — Eliza Dushku
Born December 30, 1982 — Kristin Kreuk.
(14) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY BOY
Born December 30, 1865 – Rudyard Kipling
(15) PRINTS IN THE FORECOURT. Filmmaker Roger Corman, a former Worldcon GoH, has been immortalized in concrete at a slightly less well-known theater than you usually think of when it comes to this sort of thing —
Roger Corman may not be a household name, but among movie fans he’s a cult hero.
In October, a tribute was held at the Vista Theatre to celebrate his 62-year career.
The legendary filmmaker was immortalized October 12th in the cement of the Vista’s forecourt with a handprint ceremony, alongside those of Dark Shadows star Jonathan Frid; James Bond girl Honor Blackman; special effects pioneer Ray Harryhausen and Cassandra Peterson—also known as Elvira, Mistress of the Dark.
“I think it’s kind of fun that [my handprints] will be out there forever,” said Corman before burying his hands deep in a patch of cement on the edge of Sunset Drive.
Like in the Old West, the goal would be for the colony to become self-sustaining, the panel said. Once a colony could support itself, it would no longer need to rely on materials from Earth to survive. When asked if an organization on Earth could realistically hope to control what was happening on Mars, Davis said, “If they’re still getting their caloric intake from someplace else, yup, you can.” [Poll: Where Should Humanity Build Its First Space Colony?]
Gannon named the biggest challenge facing a colony that aimed to grow independent from the people back home: the supply of volatiles, particularly oxygen and water. The first explorers would need to find a way for colonists to harvest those on the new world, Gannon said.
“If you have to ship those to the colony, it will be both economically and physically dependent and probably never be profitable or really safe,” Gannon said.
Even if an underground colony relied on rocks to shield itself from deadly radiation, it would still need enough water for similar shielding during vehicular missions, he said, making ice harvesting crucial to the colony’s survival.
“There are plenty of other [challenges],” he said. “But this is the minimum ante for long-term self-supportability.”
On the top of Hawaii’s Mauna Kea mountain Thursday, astronomers will point the large Subaru Telescope toward a patch of sky near the constellation of Orion, looking for an extremely faint object moving slowly through space.
If they find what they’re looking for, it will be one of the most important astronomical discoveries in more than a century: a new planet in our solar system.
Technically, a new planet hasn’t been discovered since Neptune was spotted in 1846. Pluto, discovered in 1930, was demoted to “dwarf planet” a decade ago. If a new planet is found, it will be the new Planet Nine.
As a published author, people often ask me why I don’t self-publish. “Surely you’d make more money if you got to keep most of the profits rather than the publisher,” they say.
I’d rather share a cabin on a Disney cruise with Donald Trump than self-publish.
The rest of the article carries on in the same condescending tone which so aggravated Larry Correia that he stormed back from a self-imposed internet vacation to write a reply, “Fisking the HuffPo’s Snooty Rant About Self-Publishing” for Monster Hunter Nation. (Gough’s article is quoted in italics. Correia’s replies are bold. Of course they are…)
The problem with self-publishing is that it requires zero gatekeepers.
Nope. The problem with self-publishing is that there are so many competitors that the challenge is to differentiate yourself from the herd. Sure, lots of them are crap (I can say the same thing for tradpub too), but if you find a way to market yourself and get your quality product in front of the right market, then you can make quite a bit of money.
From what I’ve seen of it, self-publishing is an insult to the written word, the craft of writing, and the tradition of literature.
From what I’ve seen, I’d say the same thing about the Huffington Post.
As an editor, I’ve tackled trying to edit the very worst writing that people plan on self-publishing just because they can.
As an actual editor who gets paid for this stuff, that sentence reads like garbage.
I’m a horrible singer. But I like singing so let’s say I decide to take some singing lessons. A month later I go to my neighbor’s basement because he has recording equipment. I screech into his microphone and he cuts me a CD. I hire a designer to make a stylish CD cover. Voilà. I have a CD and am now just like all the other musicians with CDs.
Only you just described exactly how most real working bands got their start. Add a couple of kids with a guitar and drums, set up in your buddy’s garage, and start jamming. Eventually you will get good enough that you can book some local gigs, and if people like you, they will give you money for your stuff.
Except I’m not. Everyone knows I’m a tuneless clod but something about that CD validates me as a musician.
Nobody gives a crap about “validation”. Validation don’t pay the bills.
In media, the most striking thing I watched this year is actually from last year: it was the masterful Doctor Who episode “Heaven Sent”, a tour de force by Peter Capaldi that slowly starts making horrifying sense throughout its length (and that I actually paused and rewatched just to make sure it all hung together — it does and it’s even more impressive on a rewatch). I haven’t had time to consume things from this year: most of my watching has been old things, like Black Orphan (I can’t believe it took me this long to find out about it, it’s so good, and Tatiana Maslany is just amazing playing all the clones), and Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries, period mysteries featuring the awesome Phryne Fisher (and her amazing wardrobe).
In the 2016 Christmas Special, Moffat lays out a gentle Richard Curtis-like romantic comedy but about superheroes and alien brain parasites. No puzzles and an evil invasion plot from the bad guys that echoed both Watchmen and the Aliens of London episode from series 1 of the reboot. A wise choice that made for a funny and light episode.
The episode was not a deconstruction of the superhero genre but played the tropes simply and straight but also at a relatively shallow level. Primarily a play on the Clark Kent/Lois Lane, secret identity, romance angle but with an added play on romantic comedy trope of the woman who somehow can’t see the man she actually is looking for is standing right next to her.
(21) CAMESTROS IS A MARATHON NOT A SPRINT. Then he dashed out to see the new Star Wars movie – “Review: Rogue One”.
Well, that was fun in a Blake’s 7 sort of way.
What I liked about the film was it had a certain freedom to it. The story has one simple job: by the end of the plot, the plans for the Death Star have to be on a Rebel spaceship pursued by Darth Vader. How to get to point B is undetermined and indeed where point A is to start with nobody knows. Indeed, the film initially is a bit confused about where A is, flitting from one plane to another. However, after some initial rushing around the galaxy, the story comes together.
Felicity Jones as Jyn Erso, captures a nice sense of both bravado and cynicism as the daughter of the man who designed the Death Star. Her emotional journey isn’t complex but given the number of genre films in which people appear to act incomprehensibly it was nice to have a character whose motivations were personal and direct. Her shift from reluctant rebel to a leader of a commando force is shaped overtly and plausibly by plot events.
(23) CAN’T END TOO SOON. By then the year 2016 was just about done – and Camestros designed the most suitable container for its farewell journey.
[Thanks to JJ, Chip Hitchcock, Martin Morse Wooster, Mark-kitteh, Michael J. Walsh, David K.M. Klaus, and John King Tarpinian for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Kendall.]
The biggest news this year is that 49 women have received a record 61 nominations (compared to 44 last year) and are represented in 27 of the 30 categories. In fact, women make up the majority of nominees in seven categories: Best New Series, Best Publication for Early Readers, Best Publication for Kids, Best Adaptation from Another Medium, Best Graphic Album–Reprint, Best Coloring, and Best Academic/Scholarly Work. Those women with the most nominations are artists Colleen Coover (Bandette) and Joëlle Jones (Lady Killer, Brides of Helheim) with 3 each. An additional four women have 2 nominations each: Erica Henderson (penciller/inker, The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl, Jughead), Lucy Knisley (writer/artist, Displacement: A Travelogue), Marjorie Liu (writer, Monstress), and Sydney Padua (writer/artist, The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage).
Best Short Story
“Black Death in America,” by Tom King and John Paul Leon, in Vertigo Quarterly: Black (Vertigo/DC)
“Hand Me Down,” by Kristyna Baczynski, in 24 x 7 (Fanfare Presents)
Joëlle Jones, Lady Killer (Dark Horse), Brides of Helheim (Oni)
Nate Powell, March, Book Two (Top Shelf/IDW)
Best Painter/Multimedia Artist
Federico Bertolucci, Love: The Tiger and Love: The Fox (Magnetic Press)
Colleen Coover, Bandette (Monkeybrain)
Carita Lupattelli, Izuna (Humanoids)
Dustin Nguyen, Descender (Image)
Tony Sandoval, A Glance Backward (Magnetic Press)
Best Cover Artist
David Aja, Hawkeye, Karnak, Scarlet Witch (Marvel)
Rafael Albuquerque, Ei8ht (Dark Horse), Huck (Image)
Amanda Conner, Harley Quinn (DC)
Joëlle Jones, Lady Killer (Dark Horse), Brides of Helheim (Oni)
Ed Piskor, Hip-Hop Family Tree (Fantagraphics)
Best Coloring
Laura Allred, Lady Killer (Dark Horse); Silver Surfer (Marvel); Art OPS (Vertigo/DC)
Jordie Bellaire, The Autumnlands, Injection, Plutona, Pretty Deadly, The Surface, They’re Not Like Us, Zero (Image); The X-Files (IDW); The Massive (Dark Horse); Magneto,Vision (Marvel)
Elizabeth Breitwiser, The Fade Out,Criminal Magazine, Outcast, Velvet (Image)
John Rauch, The Beauty (Image); Batman: Arkham Knight, Earth 2: Society (DC); Runaways (Marvel)
Dave Stewart, Abe Sapien, BPRD Hell on Earth, Fight Club 2, Frankenstein Underground, Hellboy in Hell, Hellboy and the BPRD, (Dark Horse); Sandman: Overture, Twilight Children (Vertigo/DC), Captain America: White (Marvel), Space Dumplins (Scholastic Graphix)
Best Lettering
Derf Backderf, Trashed (Abrams)
Steve Dutro, Blood-C, Midnight Society, Plants vs Zombies (Dark Horse)
Lucy Knisley, Displacement (Fantagraphics)
Troy Little, Hunter S. Thompson’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (Top Shelf/IDW)
Kevin McCloskey, We Dig Worms! (TOON Books)
Best Comics-Related Periodical/Journalism
Alter Ego, edited by Roy Thomas (TwoMorrows)
Back Issue, edited by Michael Eury (TwoMorrows)
Comic Riffs blog by Michael Cavna, washingtonpost.com/news/comic-riffs/
Hogan’s Alley, edited by Tom Heintjes (Hogan’s Alley)
Jack Kirby Collector, edited by John Morrow (TwoMorrows)
Best Comics-Related Book
Harvey Kurtzman: The Man Who Created Mad and Revolutionized Humor in America, by Bill Schelly (Fantagraphics)
King of the Comics: One Hundred Years of King Features Syndicate, edited by Dean Mullaney (IDW/LOAC)
Only What’s Necessary: Charles M. Schulz and the Art of Peanuts, by Chip Kidd and Geoff Spear (Abrams ComicArts)
Out of Line: The Art of Jules Feiffer, by Martha Fay (Abrams ComicArts)
Will Eisner: Champion of the Graphic Novel, by Paul Levitz (Abrams ComicArts)
Best Academic/Scholarly Work
The Blacker the Ink: Constructions of Black Identity in Comics and Sequential Art, edited by Frances Gateward and John Jennings (Rutgers)
Boys Love Manga and Beyond: History, Culture, and Community in Japan, edited by Mark McLelland et al. (University Press of Mississippi)
Graphic Medicine Manifesto, by M. K. Czerwiec et al. (Penn State University Press)
Superheroes on World Screens, edited by Rayna Denison and Rachel Mizsei-Ward (University Press of Mississippi)
Unflattening, by Nick Sousanis (Harvard University Press)
Best Publication Design
Beyond the Surface, designed by Nicolas André, Sam Arthur, Alex Spiro, and Camille Pichon (Nobrow)
The Eternaut, designed by Tony Ong (Fantagraphics)
Eventually Everything Connects, designed by Loris Lora, Sam Arthur, Alex Spiro, and Camille Pichon (Nobrow)
King of the Comics: One Hundred Years of King Features Syndicate, designed by Dean Mullaney (IDW/LOAC)
Only What’s Necessary: Charles M. Schulz and the Art of Peanuts, designed by Chip Kidd (Abrams ComicArts)
Sandman Gallery Edition, designed by Graphitti Designs and Josh Beatman/Brainchild Studios (Graphitti Designs/DC)
Named for comics creator the Will Eisner, the awards are celebrating their 28th year of highlighting the best publications and creators in comics and graphic novels.
The 2016 Eisner Awards judging panel consists of journalist/reviewer Brian Doherty, comics writer/editor Danny Fingeroth, retailer Jason Grazulis (BSI Comics, Metairie, LA), librarian Jason M. Poole (Webster Public Library, Webster, NY), Comic-Con International board member Natalie Powell, and academic/scholar Carol Tilley (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign).
All professionals in the comic book industry are eligible to vote on the awards. The voting deadline is June 17. The winners will be announced on Friday, July 22 at Comic-Con International.
The actor, who is fast approaching the ripe old age of 80, has been speaking to Calibre magazine about his desire to be the next Time Lord after Peter Capaldi; he said:
‘I would love to play the Doctor, absolutely!’
Doctor Who fans may remember Blessed as King Ycarnos in 1986’s The Trial Of A Time Lord, where his character went on to marry the Sixth Doctor’s companion, Peri.
If Blessed were to become the next Doctor, he would be the oldest actor to do so, with some twenty years on current TARDIS pilot Capaldi.
(2) BEANS IN SPACE. Whereas the poster for the Australian competition referenced Mad Max: Fury Road, the “2016 Hungarian Aeropress Championship” post goes with a Star Wars icon.
Fast circulating rumours, perhaps with the assistance of a HyperDrive, are suggesting the coffee has been sourced by coffee’s home planet of Alderaan. Unfortunately these rumours have been denied by Ewoks on the forrest moon of Endor who have hand-picked all the rainforest alliance coffee. The variety of the coffee is mostly heirloom, sometimes also know as Degu(bah) and is famous for having very high midi-chorian levels, but low caffeine. The coffee was fermented and de-pulped in the now re-purposed garbage disposal units on the detention level of the Death Star. That’s enough lame Star Wars references for now i think…
Whispered about by hopeful collectors and scholars for decades, the manuscript of H.P. Lovecraft’s The Cancer of Superstition, commisssioned and co-written by magician Harry Houdini, has finally come to light. It was rather incredibly “discovered by a private collector among the records of a now-defunct magic shop,” according to Chicago’s Potter & Potter Auctions, which will auction the 31-page typewritten story on April 9.
A brief description of the manuscript is provided in the Potter & Potter auction catalog available for download here [PDF file]. The bidding will open at lucky $13,000….
It’s been a decade since science fiction writer Octavia Butler passed away.
The California native fell in love with storytelling as a kid at the Pasadena Library, and later grew up to be the only sci-fi writer to receive a MacArthur Genius Fellowship. She was also the first African American woman in the genre to achieve international fame.
According to her friend and fellow writer Steven Barnes, Butler anticipated the challenges of presenting black characters in her stories.
“In her early novels, they would put green people or aliens on the covers of her books,” Barnes said.
“Or blond, white women,” added Tananarive Due, also a friend of Butler’s.
As a teacher and another African American female author, Due knows firsthand how influential Butler’s work is.
“I wish I had discovered Octavia’s work when I was a learning writer,” Due said. “When I wrote my first novel, I had no idea whether or not there would be an audience for speculative fiction — speculative fiction being science fiction, fantasy or horror novel — with black characters, you know, not necessarily intended for black readers.”
Indiana Jones will return to the big screen on July 19, 2019, for a fifth epic adventure in the blockbuster series. Steven Spielberg, who directed all four previous films, will helm the as-yet-untitled project with star Harrison Ford reprising his iconic role. Franchise veterans Kathleen Kennedy and Frank Marshall will produce.
“Indiana Jones is one of the greatest heroes in cinematic history, and we can’t wait to bring him back to the screen in 2019,” said Alan Horn, Chairman, The Walt Disney Studios. “It’s rare to have such a perfect combination of director, producers, actor and role, and we couldn’t be more excited to embark on this adventure with Harrison and Steven.”
(6) GAVEL RAPPER. Kevin Standlee says a Business Meeting chair has “No Magic Bullets”. Nor any other kind, to be sure.
A couple of days ago, I got into a conversation on billroper‘s LJ about the “Heckler’s Veto” and that led to me thinking about something that had worried me about running the WSFS Business Meeting. After all, the entire meeting process, and parliamentary procedure itself, assumes that the people gathering actually are willing to play by the rules. If a significant number of the people showing up won’t play by the rules, the meeting will dissolve. It would be like a bunch of football players deciding during a match that they don’t like the rule book and that they can ignore the officials and do anything they want. There’s not a lot the officials can do in that case, other than leave.
I did give a lot of thought to this approaching the 2015 WSFS Business Meeting, what with doomsday scenarios of thousands of people overrunning the meeting and refusing to obey any rules and shouting down anything they didn’t like and generally causing chaos. I concluded that a meeting whose members refuse to follow their own rules is not a meeting, but a mob, and I’m not chairing a mob. Had such a thing happened, I would have ordered the meeting adjourned “at the call of the chair” and turned to the convention for help. The convention would then in turn have had to ask the convention security to clear the area, and potentially even call the police if non-members (including any people who had their memberships revoked) refused to leave on their own accord.
(7) TO HAL WITH IT. 2001 A Space Odyssey: A Look Behind the Future is a 1960s promotional film. The 10-minute color documentary includes production of props, revolving spaceship set, etc.
(8) CURRENT EVENTS. A much more recent sf film will also be the subject of a documentary: Secrets of The Force Awakens: A Cinematic Journey. It will be a bonus on the movie’s Blu-Ray disc, to be released April 5.
…This was not the week, however, that AI was born. This was the week that I realized that AI was born quite some time ago…..
It’s in the early years of human development where I think we can see the current state of AI being somewhere post-birth and yet pre-awareness. But the development of strong AI will have incredible advantages over the human acquisition of general intelligence. This arise from the modular nature of intelligence.
Our brains are not one big thinking engine; they are collections of hundreds of individual engines, each of which develop at different rates. What’s amazing about AI is that the learning does not need to be done twice for every module. When we build a chess-playing module, and a Go-playing module, and a Jeopardy-playing module, all of these can be “plugged in” to our general AI. Our baby girl is growing every day, and thousands of people are pouring billions of dollars of research into her education. We, the general public, are contributing with petabytes of data. It is already happening, and we won’t even recognize when our first daughter graduates into strong AI. Every day will be — as parents know — one small miracle added to the last, a succession of amazing little first steps that result in them going off to college and being their own person.
Each headline you read is us — as collective parents — gasping to our spouse at what our baby girl just did for the first time.
Google has already taught our daughter to drive a car. Amazon is doing amazing things with their Alexa device, creating the beginnings of the virtual assistant seen in Her. IBM is building the best medical mind the field has ever known. In the last five years, AI has taken strides that even the optimistic find startling. The next five years will see similar advances. And this progress will only accelerate, because we’re operating in the realm of Moore’s Law. We are building the tools that help us build faster tools, which help us build faster tools.
(10) IRENE LARSEN OBIT. Magic Castle co-founder Irene Larsen died February 25 reports Variety.
Irene Larsen, co-founder of the Academy of Magical Arts and the private clubhouse the Magic Castle, died unexpectedly on Thursday morning at her Los Angeles home. She was 79.
After she assisted her late husband William “Bill” Larsen Jr. in his various magic acts for years, the two launched the Magic Castle together in 1963. Larsen’s dedication to the role of ambassador of magic helped elevate the AMA to an internationally renowned and respected organization within the art’s community.
(11) WRITING WHILE WAITING FOR THE EMERGENCY. Amanda S. Green’s “Putting things into perspective” at Mad Genius Club demonstrates how a professional writer honors her real-life priorities — a friend’s health and her writing commitments .
…One of my oldest and dearest friends is facing a challenge the vast majority of us will only ever read about. She is going to need me with her as she faces this challenge. Even if she hadn’t asked, I would be there for her. Why? Because she has always been there for me and mine.
That’s what friends and family do. You rally around those you care about.
But, when you do, work is impacted.
I know that the next few weeks and months will see us waiting for the shoe to drop. In some ways, it will be like those last weeks of pregnancy. A bag will be packed, the gas tank filled and we will all be waiting for the phone to ring to tell us it is time to leave. No, not a bug-out, at least not in a Ringo-esque sort of way. This is the call to get to the hospital within a certain amount of time. The clock is ticking and it is very loud….
It has also meant changing what I have with me at any time. I’ve always had my phone and a small notepad squirreled away in my purse in case I needed to make a note about something. Smart phones are great for being able to use for dictation and look up things, etc. Now, however, the small purse — my preference — has been traded for a larger one. The smartphone and pad have been joined by my Surface Pro 3, stylus and charger. Why? Because the SP3 gives me everything my laptop does but at a fraction of the weight. The screen, while small, is still larger than my Android tablet and the keyboard is much better than the virtual keyboard on the Android. Add in the thumb drive with all my working files and I have my office on the go….
The result has been that I can and have been getting the job done despite the worry that is constantly there right now. I am working hard to not only meet the schedule I set for myself at the beginning of the year but to get ahead. I want that cushion for the day when we get the call telling us it is time to meet my friends at the hospital. I want to be able to be there for them and not worry about falling behind on “work”. I need to know that I am keeping with my schedule so the money can and will keep coming in. I need to know that, no matter what the time of day or day of the week, I am able to continue working without worry about where I happen to be….
(12) COMIC-CON HQ TO LAUNCH. San Diego’s Comic-Con International will brand a video-on-demand service.
Lionsgate and Comic-Con International will launch Comic-Con HQ, their newly-named fanboy streamer, on May 7, ahead of an official launch in June. The subscription video-on-demand service will have a soft launch in May, with an official bow to follow in June in the lead up to Comic-Con International: San Diego in July.
The ad-free streaming service will feature “an evolving slate of programming including original scripted and unscripted series, recurring daily and weekly entertainment commentary, plus unique access to a growing library of live and archival programming from their world-class events, a highly-curated selection of film and TV genre titles, and behind-the-scenes access and bonus features from genre titles that defy and define pop culture,” per the announcement.
Monday’s announcement disclosed that gaming personality Adam Sessler, former host of G4’s X-Play, will executive produce programs on comics, science and gaming, along with hosting his own interview series. Other formats being developed include a general pop culture news show, a late-night talk show, a weekly movie talk in partnership with Complex’s Collider and an all-female panel on pop culture from women’s perspectives.
(13) ONCE AROUND THE BLOCK. Mr. Sci-Fi has something to say about the Paramount/CBS suit against the maker of Axanar.
Sci-Fi Writer-Producer Marc Zicree discusses Paramount’s lawsuit against Star Trek Axanar and puts it in context with the long history of science fiction fan fiction and fan films — and suggests several possible win-win strategies for a successful outcome.
[Thanks to Will R., Steven Johnson, Andrew Porter, and John King Tarpinian for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Steve Davidson.]
Will Comic-Con stay in San Diego? No word yet, but there’s a lot of confusion among fans on what’s going on with the organization’s desire to expand their annual convention in San Diego. Comic-Con International made the unusual move today of putting out a statement regarding a ballot initiative that was drawn up by a group called Citizens Plan for San Diego that seems to be at odds with their own desires for a contiguous expansion along the waterfront. Signatures are being gathered for a ballot initiative to keep Comic-Con in San Diego albeit a different spot, and those collecting signatures are actually advertising the initiative with signs stating “Keep Comic-Con in San Diego….
“There is a lot of confusion about this matter so we felt it necessary to put out a statement to let people know that we are not a party to this, have not read the initiatives and it will have no bearing on our decision of whether we stay in San Diego,” Comic-Con spokesperson David Glanzer told Deadline. He said they have been getting a lot of calls about this and just wanted to set the record straight.
(2) THERE ARE NO BAD PRINCESSES. Check out the photos of what Hampus Eckerman likes to call Disney’s newest Princess at boingboing.
Sophie’s parents tapped their friend, Megan, to turn a Chewbacca doll into a Princess Chewbacca birthday cake, using the “Barbie cake” method, and making Sophie’s third birthday just the bestest.
Fan Randy Byers is recovering at home after undergoing brain surgery to remove a tumor. Byers will receive further diagnosis of his tumors and whether or not additional treatment will be needed, in about a week.
(4) Today In History
December 12, 1941 — On this day in 1941 The Wolf Man is unleashed in theaters. Did you know: the “wolf” that Larry Talbot fights with was Lon Chaney Jr.’s own German Shepherd.
He’s certainly not jolly, and you sure as hell had better not call him “Nick.” The St. Nicholas you’ll meet tonight is the genuine old-world artifact – the stern judge who oversaw a creaky old style of child-rearing the Germans call “gingerbread and whip.”
Of course Nicholas himself didn’t dirty his hands with whips. For that he had the Krampus. Today, every self-respecting hipster loves Krampus. But while your friends rhapsodize about the ersatz bubblegum Krampus of American comic books, TV, and monster fandom, tonight you’ll get a glimpse of the old devil in his original form – the Krampus of the ancient alpine “Nikolausspiel” or NICHOLAS PLAY, a folk theater production somewhat resembling England’s old Christmas mummers’ plays.
(6) SAFETY LAST. Great video — Samurai Smartphone Parade.
99% of people think using a smartphone while walking is dangerous.
73% of people have used a smartphone while walking.
THE WHEEL OF TIME COMPANION was a mammoth concordance of facts about the universe and characters of the late Robert Jordan’s epic fantasy series, edited and assembled by Harriet McDougal, Alan Romanczuk, and Maria Simons. It’s a labor of love, and everything one could possibly want to know about Jordan’s universe is in there.
Also
Felicia Day’s delightful look at her life, YOU’RE NEVER WEIRD ON THE INTERNET (Almost).
(8) VERHOEVEN’S STINKER. Jason Fuesting, in “Starship Troopers: Book vs. Movie” for Mad Genius Club, takes a movie we both dislike and, by applying his powers of persuasion, still finds grounds for disagreement.
Ultimately, Verhoeven takes a message needed badly by so many today, with their safe spaces and trigger warnings, and turns it into the film equivalent of those same children’s tantrums, a film so poorly written that only Mystery Science Theater 3000 could find use for it. A better director would have used Joe Haldeman’s “Forever War,” an excellent book in its own right. Haldeman makes all the points this film bobbled in “Forever War,” but using it would have meant going without all the Nazi imagery that Verhoeven is evidently fond of and not butchering an outstanding work in the process. Verhoeven’s film is surely satire, but I do not think he realizes the joke is on his side.
MST3K creator Joel Hodgson announces a celebrity-packed cameo list that includes Seinfeld, Hamill, Harris, Jack Black, Bill Hader and Joel McHale for the new series.
Fans also found out this week from Hodgson that the new MST3K writing team will include not only the cast, but also guest writers such as “Community” creator Dan Harmon and his “Rick & Morty” co-creator Justin Roiland. Others will include “The Muppet Show” writer Nell Scovell, “Ready Player One” author Ernie Cline, “The Name of the Wind” author Pat Rothfuss, musical comedy duo Paul and Storm, “Simpsons” writer Dana Gould, “The Book of Mormon” songwriter Robert Lopez and director of the next “Lego Movie” Rob Schrab.
(10) RETHINKING SUSAN PEVENSIE. E. Jade Lomax of Hark, the empty highways calling has written a set of thoughtful, heart-tugging parallax views about what happened after Narnia’s Susan returned to England.
…I want to read about Susan finishing out boarding school as a grown queen reigning from a teenaged girl’s body. School bullies and peer pressure from children and teachers who treat you like you’re less than sentient wouldn’t have the same impact. C’mon, Susan of the Horn, Susan who bested the DLF at archery, and rode a lion, and won wars, sitting in a school uniform with her eyebrows rising higher and higher as some old goon at the front of the room slams his fist on the lectern.
Susan living through WW2, huddling with her siblings, a young adult (again), a fighting queen and champion marksman kept from the action, until she finally storms out against screaming parents’ wishes and volunteers as a nurse on the front. She keeps a knife or two hidden under her clothes because when it comes down to it, they called her Gentle, but sometimes loving means fighting for what you care for.
She’ll apply to a women’s college on the East Coast, because she fell in love with America when her parents took her there before the war. She goes in majoring in Literature (her ability to decipher High Diction in historical texts is uncanny), but checks out every book she can on history, philosophy, political science. She sneaks into the boys’ school across town and borrows their books too. She was once responsible for a kingdom, roads and taxes and widows and crops and war. She grew from child to woman with that mantle of duty wrapped around her shoulders. Now, tossed here on this mundane land, forever forbidden from her true kingdom, Susan finds that she can give up Narnia but she cannot give up that responsibility. She looks around and thinks I could do this better….
Let’s talk about how, when the war ends, when the Pevensie children go back to London, Susan sees a young woman standing at the train platform, weeping, waving.
First, Susan thinks civilian; and second, she thinks not much older than me.
Third, Susan thinks Mother.
They surge off the train, into their parents’ arms, laughing, embracing. Around them, the train platform is full of reunions (in her life, trains will give so much to Susan, and take so much away).
But if The Force Awakens breaks the opening weekend record next weekend, it, like The Phantom Menace, will have to do it in a lot fewer theaters than expected. Walt Disney reported yesterday (according to the always trustworthy BoxOffice.com and Box Office Mojo) that Star Wars: The Force Awakens will be opening next week on around 3,900 screens in America.
That’s only the 11th biggest theater count in 2015 and nowhere close to the biggest theater count of all time. The biggest theatrical release in 2015 was the 4,301 screen release for Minions ($115 million debut weekend). The widest release of all time was for The Twilight Saga: Eclipse which debuted on July 4th weekend of 2010 in 4,468 theaters. There have been 62 releases debuting in more than 4,000 theaters. If you presume that the figure is closer to 3,900 versus 3,999 theaters next week, that puts the Walt Disney release at merely one of the 100 biggest releases ever, about on par with Spectre and The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug. Point being, Star Wars: The Force Awakens isn’t going to have anywhere closer to the widest theatrical release of all time.
(13) ‘TISN’T THE SEASON. A friend of mine *coff* *coff* wanted me to ask John Scalzi a favor, but after reading “On the Asking of Special Holiday Favors From Me” I’m going to tell my friend *coff* *coff* this is a bad time…
Folks: This week I’ve gotten no less than five requests from fans (or family/friends of fans) asking if I could do some particular special thing or another that would mean a lot to the fan for the holidays. Since there are several of these this week, and these sorts of requests are something I’ve had to juggle before, especially during the holidays, I’m posting this as a general note so people know it’s not personal. And that note is:
I really can’t….
[Thanks to Janice Gelb, John King Tarpinian, Michael J. Walsh, Martin Morse Wooster, Hampus Eckerman, and Brian Z. for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Daniel Dern.]
Michael D. C. Drout, an English professor at Wheaton College who edits an annual review of Tolkien’s works, is observing the situation from America. He said that those experts will be assessing the most complicated character in the English writer’s already complex world.
“I don’t think there’s any consensus that Gollum is evil,” Mr. Drout said in an interview. “He is the most tragic character in ‘The Lord of the Rings.’ ”
Middle Earth, the place where Gollum began his life as a creature named Sméagol, is full of complex characters and allegiances. But a single gold ring, forged with a dark lord’s evil powers, has the power to rule them all. Sméagol catches a glimpse of the ring, murders for it, and possesses it for centuries until it is mislaid and found by another hobbit. Sméagol struggles to redeem himself, but his obsessive bloodthirst for the ring wins out. He accidentally destroys himself and the ring, but also saves Middle Earth in the process. (It is the hobbit hero Frodo who gets most of the credit.)
“The context is this: Gollum accidentally, not intentionally, saves the entire world,” Mr. Drout said.
Mr. Drout said that no one would’ve appreciated the existential debate over Gollum more than the author who created him. Painfully and pitifully, Sméagol almost succeeds in overcoming his evil side, but fails. It is a scene that is said to have upset Mr. Tolkien to the point of tears as he wrote it, Mr. Drout said.
“He didn’t see him as irredeemably evil,” he said of Mr. Tolkien. “He saw him as someone who had been destroyed by this evil ring.”
Thousands of fans cheered and clicked pictures with their favorite comic characters Saturday at India’s annual comic book fest at a sprawling fairground in southeast New Delhi.
The fifth Delhi Comic Con had something for everyone who attended on this mild, wintry day. Die-hard fans came dressed as their favorite comic characters. Others crowded the more than 200 stalls selling comic books, graphic novels and merchandise on cartoon characters.
There was real live entertainment, as well.
Crowds of college students and young people cheered and roared as Kristian Nairn, best known for his role as Hodor in “Game of Thrones,” ascended a stage and addressed them. Nairn was mobbed as eager fans pushed to get themselves clicked with the star of the popular television series….
Indian mythological heroes, dressed in gaudy costumes with bejeweled crowns and sparkly clothes, added to the carnival atmosphere, ready to oblige fans with an autograph, a selfie or a photograph.
Indian comics have seen a revival in the last decade thanks to new funding and technologies for printing, animation, digitizing and distribution.
I know this movie by heart. In fact, while in my 20s and firmly in my barfly life-stage, several friends and I recreated the entire movie over pints at the pub. We didn’t miss a line. There are few cultural touchstones so firmly rooted in our global community as this one.
But I’m now looking at it with fresh eyes, and asking myself…is it really any good? Does it stand up to the test of time and the grey clouds of cynicism accumulated with age?
Largely, yes. Enthusiastically, yes. Are there things that I’ve noticed now, years later, both good and bad? Absolutely. Is it dated? Sure, but not as bad as you think. But ultimately, I think it works. The resonance it has in our culture is well deserved.
(4) STANDLEE ON SMOFCON. Kevin Standlee is running short notes on his LiveJournal about this year’s SMOFcon.
At 4 PM, I went to the panel about administering the Hugo Awards. A year ago, a panel on this subject would have been lucky to draw more audience than panelists. This year, it was standing-room-only. Had we two hours rather than one to discuss how the Hugo Awards are administered, we could have filled it.
After breakfast with Linda Deneroff, Mo Starkey, and John Sapienza, I went to the first panel of the morning, presented by Andrew Adams based on work that René Walling has done to accumulate available demographic information about Worldcon members. The slide above shows the memberships over time, attending and supporting, both in absolute numbers (line) and percentage (colored bars) for the 2015 Worldcon, showing how the numbers changed over time. (The upper line and the upper colored section are supporting members; the lower are attending.) Sasquan really was different. There were many more very interesting charts in this presentation, and you can see some of them if you click through the photo above, but Andrew said he’d publish the entire slide deck later and asked us not to keep taking photos.
How to Call Out Other Conventions. This was a discussion about how and whether you should point out other groups’ mistakes, particularly the most egregious ones that could poison your convention’s relationship with hotel facilities. I found it very interesting listening to the stories behind the panel title, but I was so sleepy that I couldn’t concentrate that well.
In less than three days, an outpouring of messages streamed in from astronauts around the world – eyewitnesses to profound changes to our planet they’ve seen first hand while in orbit. The messages were produced by members of the Association of Space Explorers (ASE), the professional association of flown astronauts, cosmonauts and taikonauts. ASE assists members to communicate their unique perspective of Earth to help stimulate humanity’s sense of responsibility for our home planet.
Also in the video was Wubbo Ockels, Ph.D. Space Shuttle, the first Dutch citizen in space, who said “Our Earth has Cancer and I have cancer too.” He was filmed the day before he died.
There are two places to lose focus. One: yourself sitting down to do the work. Two: inside the work as the work itself loses focus. I’ll tackle number one, as I think that was what was being asked.
Caveat: I believe most writing advice is only as valuable to someone as it works. In other words, I believe all writing advice is a hack to get you to a finished draft and help you find tricks to get there. You try something. If it works, it goes in your toolbox. If it doesn’t, you mark it as not currently effective and move on….
11) Don’t tell anyone about what you’re writing about before sitting down to do it
12) Tell someone how cool what you’re writing about is right before sitting down to do it
I really like this pair. Obviously the answer is to use the alternative that helps you. Larry Niven always perfected his story ideas by explaining them to select people before putting them on paper. In contrast, if I tell somebody an idea, then I never feel the need to actually do the writing…
Within the same fortnight that David Hartwell announced that the World Fantasy Award trophy would no longer be a bust of Lovecraft, but instead be the head of someone whose sole qualification to represent all of fantasy literature is her skin color, Liu Cixin, the first chinaman ever to win a Hugo Award has publicly spit in the face of those of us who voted for him….
That means that this man is gullible enough to believe either what his translator, or Tor Books, or the mainstream news told him, namely, that we who voted for him were motivated by race-hatred against non-Whites. So we voted for a non-White because his book was good, not because his skin color was correct. Because we treated the award as if it were for the merit of science fiction story telling, not as if it were a political award granted to whatever most helped the far Left. We ignored race. By Morlock logic, that makes us racist.
I realize, my dear readers, that if you read THREE BODY PROBLEM, and weighed its merits, and in your honest judgment you thought it was the best SF novel of the year, and your judgment does not matter because you are not the correct sort of people to have opinions.
Even though your opinion in this one case agreed with our Leftist insect Overlords, the mere fact that the opinion was your taints it.
You are wrongfans.
(8) COLLECTING HEINLEIN. Black Gate’s John ONeill compares the collectible paperback market for science fiction’s Big Three – Asimov, Clarke and Heinlein – and comes away surprised by the demand for Heinlein.
Whatever your opinion on their relative merits, it’s hard to argue against the fact that Heinlein has endured longer than Asimov and Clarke… and virtually any other Twentieth Century genre writer except H.P. Lovecraft, J.R.R. Tolkien, and Philip K. Dick. Much of his work is still in print in mass market paperback today.
Even more impressively, Heinlein has stayed popular and in print with virtually no help from the film industry. With the notable exception of 1997’s Starship Troopers (and the much lesser-known films The Puppet Masters, from 1994, and Predestination, 2014), Heinlein has endured chiefly on his own steam.
(9) MORLEY REMEMBERED. Available online now and for the next few weeks is the BBC 4 radio production 1977, about the creation of the soundtrack for Watership Down.
In 1977 the bestselling children’s novel Watership Down was made into an animated film. Malcolm Williamson, Master of the Queens music, had been hired as the film’s composer. But all was not well. Williamson, a notoriously difficult and complicated man, was under extreme pressure; it was the Queens jubilee year and he was over commissioned. When the film’s conductor, Marcus Dods, arrived looking for the film’s score he found to his horror that all that existed were two small sketches of music which amounted to no more than seven minutes of screen time. With an expensive orchestra and recording studio booked for the following week, the film’s future looked to be in jeopardy. In desperation he turned to the one person he knew could help; composer and arranger Angela Morley. But she, for her own reasons, was going to need some persuading…
Morley needed persuading because this would be her first high-profile composing job after transitioning to female. Morley later worked on other genre music projects, too, scoring for TV’s Wonder Woman, and assisting John Williams on several films including E.T.
(10) BULK SALES. Hey, John King Tarpinian saw rafts of these at his local CostCo and shot a photo.
George R. R. Martin’s A Game of Thrones Leather-Cloth Boxed Set fits that bill. It is a gorgeous representation of the bestselling series, perfect for that Game of Thrones fan in your life.
The books are not full-sized but instead of a traveling variety, easy to take with as well as looking beautiful on the shelf.
If you happen to be curious about what it would be like to see a movie on the Death Star, you don’t need to travel to a galaxy far, far away. You can just head to Omaha, Nebraska. The Alamo Drafthouse just opened a Star Wars-themed cineplex that’s absolutely astounding.
There’s a 10-foot replica of the Death Star in the front lobby, and from the looks if it, you can purchase tickets at an Imperial Command center.
(12) SISTERS. The new Tina Fey/Amy Poehler movie Sisters will be released on the same day as The Force Awakens. How will they fight for their audience share? With a Star Wars trailer of their own called “Sisters – The Farce Awakens.”
An establishing shot of the Pentagon took us to a room where National Security Agency dudes Aidy Bryant and Bobby Moynihan are interviewing the three participants in “the first verified alien abduction.” Cecily Strong and Gosling are all lah-dee-dah groovin’ on the cosmic beauty of the mind-expanding, I’ve-seen-God-and-all-the-colors-of-the-rainbow Kenny-G-type experience. Then there’s McKinnon, slumped in her chair in a K-Mart blouse and jeans, her hair a rat’s nest, cigarette in hand, relating a series of experiences that were much more, let’s say tactile, than teleological.
[Thanks to Petrea Mitchell, JJ, Brian Z., Andrew Porter, and John King Tarpinian for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day ULTRAGOTHA.]
Jorge Corona, artist of Feathers (Archaia), Goners (Image), and Teen Titans Go (DC)
Leila del Duca, artist of Shutter (Image)
Vanesa R. Del Rey, artist of Hit (BOOM! Studios)
GABO (Gabriel Bautista), artist of The Life After (Oni Press)
Greg Smallwood, artist of Moon Knight (Marvel) and Dream Thief (Dark Horse)
The Manning Award goes to a comics artist who, early in his or her career, shows a superior knowledge and ability in the art of creating comics. The award was created in 1982 and named for the artist known for his work on the Tarzan and Star Wars newspaper strips and the Magnus, Robot Fighter comic book. Manning also was a popular guest at early San Diego Comic-Cons.
The winner will be chosen by past Manning award winners and Russ Manning assistants and made public at the Eisner Awards ceremony on July 10 at Comic-Con International.
Don McGregor and the late John Stanley have been selected to receive the 2015 Bill Finger Award for Excellence in Comic Book Writing, which is given under the auspices of San Diego Comic-Con International. Each year the selection committee, chaired by Mark Evanier, selects two recipients, one living and one deceased.
Don McGregor began his career writing comic books with work for Warren (Creepy, Eerie) in 1971, and in 1972 he joined the editorial staff at Marvel Comics. Before long, he was writing for Marvel where his work became known for its unique voice. His runs with the character Black Panther in Jungle Action and on Killraven in Amazing Adventures drew strong fan response, as did his later efforts for other publishers: Detectives, Inc; Sabre, Nathaniel Dusk, and the acclaimed Ragamuffins. He also wrote Zorro both for comic books and comic strips.
McGregor will receive his award in a ceremony at Comic-Con on July 10.
John Stanley is best known for writing and occasionally drawing Little Lulu for Dell Comics from 1945 to 1959, turning Marge’s single-panel gag cartoon into a popular and hilarious series of stories and creating most of the supporting cast for Lulu’s world. His rich characterizations and humor made for a memorable series, and he applied those skills to other Dell and Gold Key comics, including Nancy and Sluggo, Melvin Monster, O.G. Whiz, and Thirteen (Going On Eighteen). As with his contemporary Carl Barks, Stanley’s work was almost completely anonymous, but avid fans unearthed the secret of who was doing that superb work. Stanley left comics for other work in the early seventies and passed away in 1993.
His Finger Award will be accepted by his son, James.
In addition to Evanier, the selection committee consists of Charles Kochman (executive editor at Harry N. Abrams, book publisher), comic book writer Kurt Busiek, artist/historian Jim Amash, cartoonist Scott Shaw!, and writer/editor Marv Wolfman.
The Bill Finger Award honors the memory of William Finger (1914–1974), the first writer of Batman. Many have called him the “unsung hero” of the character. The award was created in 2005 at the instigation of Jerry Robinson.
ilton Gross began his cartooning career in 1915, producing a number of humorous newspaper strips. After serving in World War I, he went on to create strips like Frenchy, Banana Oil, and Help Wanted. His big break came with Gross Exaggerations, a weekly column of prose and cartoons. In 1926 Nize Baby, a book collection of some of these columns, appeared and was an instant hit. Under the same title, Gross began a Sunday page feature in 1927. Other books by Gross include Hiawatta Witt No Odder Poems, De Night In De Front From Chreesmas, Dunt Esk, and the pioneer wordless graphic novel He Done Her Wrong. In 1933, Gross was hired away from the New York World by newspaper tycoon William Randolph Hearst, for whom he produced such strips as Count Screwloose of Tooloose, Dave’s Delicatessen, Otto and Blotto, and That’s My Pop! Gross became a celebrity, famous for his cartooning, scriptwriting, radio shows, and columns.
H. G. Peter (1880–1958)
Antonio Prohías is best known for his 30 years of work with MAD magazine on his comic feature “Spy Vs. Spy,” which has been adapted into a series of animated shorts, several video games, a series of live-action television commercials, and a Sunday strip. Prohías’s two feuding spies stand among the handful of comics characters with an immediate, globally recognized iconic meaning. In the late 1940s Prohias began drawing cartoons for the prestigious Cuban newspaper El Mundo. His wordless material enjoyed international appeal, and by the late 1950s he was the president of the Association of Cuban Cartoonists. On May 1, 1960, just three days before Castro gained control of El Mundo and the rest of Cuba’s free press, Prohías fled Cuba for New York City.
Dori Seda was one of the pioneers of the autobiographical comics genre in underground comix. She started her career when she was hired by Last Gasp publisher Ron Turner to do the bookkeeping for the company. Her stories were published in several comics and anthologies, including Wimmen’s Comix, Rip-Off Comix, Tits ‘n Clits, and Weirdo. Dori’s only full-length solo book was Lonely Nights Comics. Her work is collected in Dori Stories (1999), which also includes memorial essays by friends. In 1988, Last Gasp established the Dori Seda Memorial Award for Women, whose first (and only) recipient was Carol Tyler.
