By Kevin Standlee: The WSFS Business Meeting was probably the shortest such meeting ever held, albeit not the smallest, despite fears of being able to achieve the quorum of 12 members of WSFS physically present. Because New Zealand isn’t in internal lockdown, members of CoNZealand who were in Wellington could attend the meeting were induced to do so by the provision of coffee/tea/snacks, and in the end apparently 23 people attended. That means their meeting had more people attending that were at the WSFS Business Meetings held at Nippon 2007 in Yokohama.
With none of the originally-announced WSFS Business Meeting staff able to attend M. Darusha Wehm agreed to act as Moderator (or “Emergency Holographic Chair” as I put it), working from a “script” supplied by Business Meeting Chair Kent Bloom. The intention was to deal quickly with the small number of things that couldn’t wait, and postpone everything else to next year.
Those people attending Virtual CoNZealand could follow a text description of the Business Meeting by Daniel Spector (who was attending) on the convention’s Discord at #major-events. This makes more sense than one might think, in that functionally, the Business Meeting is more like a small Event than a program item. People like me who are suffering from WSFS Withdrawal Syndrome (I’ve not missed a single session of any WSFS Business Meeting going back to 1989.) could at least follow along.
According to the descriptions from Daniel and the tweets from Soon Lee, shortly after a quroum was achieved, the Preliminary Business Meeting was called to order. It took four minutes to receive all reports, unanimously approve the Hugo Award eligibility extensions (see http://www.wsfs.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/2020-WSFS-agenda-20200714.pdf p.25), continue all existing ad hoc committees as currently constituted, adopt blanket debate times for everything, and adjourn the preliminary meeting so that people could attack the coffee/tea service.
When the Main Business Meeting convened ten minutes later, things went even faster. The Site Selection results (announced the previous day) were received and the ballots ordered destroyed, which is the technical point at which time the election is final, not that there was any chance of there being a protest. Question Time for conventions and bids was waived.
The meeting effectively postponed the ratification of all pending constitutional amendments for one year. (There is more than one way to do this, and we won’t know exactly which was was used until we see the recording/get the minutes, but one possible route would have been to unanimously agree to reject ratification of every proposal and then immediately pass all of those same items as new proposals, resetting their ratification clocks.) There was no new constitutional business.
Because the election of the Mark Protection Committee members is in the Standing Rules, not the Constitution, it can and was waived. This means that the three seats whose terms ended this year went vacant. The MPC will meet via Zoom (open to any attending CZ member; it’s listed in the Grenadine schedule) just before Closing Ceremonies. Per existing authority in the rules, the MPC plans on appointing the three people whose terms ended this year (John Coxon, Linda Deneroff, and Dave McCarty) to temporarily fill those three vacant seats until next year’s Business Meeting, where the BM will need to elect six people instead of the usual three, with three people being elected to two-year terms.
With all constitutional business resolved, the Main Business meeting adjourned, having lasted about two minutes. It is possible to get a lot of stuff done if every single person in the room agrees to it and does not raise an objection to it.
We acknowledge that we got some things wrong at the Hugo Awards Ceremony today, and through doing so have hurt members of our community.
We sincerely apologise for that hurt. We apologise for the mispronunciations of names, and any disrespect implied. Phonetic guidelines were made available to us, and we did not overcome the challenges we faced.
As Chairs, we accept full responsibility for this. The Chairs also made the decision to provide an agnostic platform for all the participants, and did not place restrictions on any speech or presentations.
The Chairs also extend our personal apology to Claire Rousseau for not including video in the introduction to the Best Fancast Award. Video is an important medium within the Fancast category and we regret its omission. It was not intentional, but it did cause hurt
The inside of Virgin Galactic’s space plane is like a space-age executive jet.
The seats recline to absorb the forces of acceleration toward space. Mood lighting shifts during each phase of the flight. Twelve windows — two for each of the six passengers, who have paid hundreds of thousands of dollars each for a seat — provide an impressive view of Earth and the darkness of space. Sixteen cameras will capture you floating. And the back of the cabin includes a big circular mirror so that you can watch yourself enjoying a few minutes escaping the effects of gravity.
Virgin Galactic will be offering short up-and-down trips to the edge of space, essentially like giant roller coaster rides with better views, in its space plane, SpaceShipTwo.
But how can the company unveil the fancy new interior of its space plane in the middle of a global pandemic when journalists are not able to gather for a fancy media event?
Modern technology provided an imaginative solution. Virgin Galactic sent Oculus virtual reality headsets as loaners to journalists so that they could chat with the designers of the cabin while walking through a computer-generated version of it — an experience of almost being there while being nowhere near there….
(2) REASONS FOR SITE SELECTION WRITE-INS. Yeah. No.
Confident the reason why Kirkjubaejarklaustur was a write in for Worldcon Site Selection was to make the @CoNZealand returning officer say Kirkjubaejarklaustur. Which of course means that I'll have to write in Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch next time
In a July 28 filing, the Internet Archive answered a copyright infringement lawsuit filed by four major publishers, asserting that its long-running book scanning and lending program is designed to fulfill the role of a traditional library in the digital age, and is protected by fair use.
“The Internet Archive does what libraries have always done: buy, collect, preserve, and share our common culture,” reads the IA’s preliminary statement to its answer, contending that its collection of roughly 1.3 million scans of mostly 20th century books, many of which are out of print, is a good faith and legal effort to “mirror traditional library lending online” via a process called Controlled Digital Lending (CDL).
“Contrary to the publishers’ accusations, the Internet Archive, and the hundreds of libraries and archives that support it, are not pirates or thieves,” the filing states. “They are librarians, striving to serve their patrons online just as they have done for centuries in the brick-and-mortar world. Copyright law does not stand in the way of libraries’ right to lend, and patrons’ right to borrow, the books that libraries own.”
The IA’s answer comes in response to a June 1 copyright infringement lawsuit filed in the Southern District of New York by Hachette, HarperCollins, John Wiley & Sons, and Penguin Random House, and coordinated by the Association of American Publishers….
(4) KGB READINGS. Fantastic Fiction at KGB reading series hosts Ellen Datlow and Matthew Kressel present Elizabeth Hand and Michael Libling in a YouTube livestreamed event on Wednesday, August 19 at 7 p.m. Eastern.
Elizabeth Hand
Elizabeth Hand is the author of sixteen multiple-award-winning novels and collections of short fiction including Curious Toys, Wylding Hall, and Generation Loss. The Book of Lamps and Banners, her fourth noir novel featuring punk provocateur and photographer Cass Neary, will be out this year. She divides her time between the Maine coast and North London.
Michael Libling
Michael Libling is a World Fantasy Award-nominated author whose short fiction has appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Asimov’s Science Fiction, Realms of Fantasy, Amazing Stories, and many others. His debut novel, Hollywood North: A Novel in Six Reels, was published in 2019. Michael is the father of three daughters and lives on Montreal’s West Island with his wife, Pat, and a big black dog named Piper.
(5) CEASELESS GIVEAWAY. Beneath Ceaseless Skies is running a giveaway of Marie Brennan’s upcoming book Driftwood. The rules and other details can be found here: “First Marie Brennan Driftwood Book Giveaway”
To enter the giveaway that’s in this very post, comment on this post (here) and tell us what your favorite Marie Brennan short story is. Whether a Driftwood story or one of her many other stories; whether published in BCS or elsewhere.
Your comment will enter you in a random drawing for the signed copy of Driftwood. This giveaway ends Wed. Aug. 12. (Full Rules are here, at the end of this post.)
(6) MEDIA BIRTHDAY.
July 31, 1930 — The Shadow first made his appearance as the narrator of the Detective Story Hour radio program which was intended to boost sales of Street & Smith’s monthly Detective Story Magazine. Harry Engman Charlot, a scriptwriter for the Detective Story Hour was responsible for the name. The Shadow would be developed into the character that we know a year later by Walter B. Gibson. (CE)
(7) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.
[Compiled by Cat Eldridge and John Hertz.]
Born July 31, 1807 – Clara de Chatelain. In her Child’s Own Book of Fairy Tales, two more, retold fifty classics and wrote a hundred forty. The Sedan Chair and Sir Wilfred’s Seven Flights comprises two for adults. Translated four hundred songs for music publishers e.g. Schott; tr. Cammarano’s Italian lyrics for Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor (whose protagonist is Scots). Wrote widely under “Leopold Wray” and other names. Friend of Victor Hugo. (Died 1876) [JH]
Born July 31, 1879 – Kenneth Morris. Ranked by Le Guin with Eddison, MacDonald, Tolkien as master 20th Century fantasy prose stylist. Three novels (this one published posthumously), forty shorter stories, sometimes under the Welsh form of his name Cenydd Morus. (Died 1937) [JH]
Born July 31, 1924 – Waldemar Kumming. Leading German fan for decades. Joined SFCD (Science Fiction Club Deutschland; note combined English-German name) 1956, chair 1962-1968. Fan Guest of Honour at Seacon ’84 – combining Eastercon 35 (U.K. nat’l con) + Eurocon 8. Published Munich_Round_Up with Walter Reinicke until WR died 1981, then alone until 2014; I was glad to contribute. Kurd_Laßwitz_Special Award for MRU and life achievement. Big Heart (our highest service award). Wolf von Witting’s appreciation here. (Died 2017) [JH]
Born July 31, 1928 – Allen Lang, 92. One novel (Wild and Outside, US baseball shortstop sent to civilize the planet Melon), a score of shorter stories translated into Dutch, French, German, Italian, most recently (“Fuel Me Once”) in the Jul-Aug 20 Analog. [JH]
Born July 31, 1929 – Lynne Reid Banks, 91. A dozen novels for us, forty other books including The L-Shaped Room. Children’s fantasy The Indian in the Cupboard, ten million copies sold; four sequels. Eight years teaching on a kibbutz (“not a Jew, but Jew-ish”). Barrie Award. “Writing for a living is a great life, if you don’t weaken.” Website here. [JH]
Born July 31, 1932 — Ted Cassidy. He’s best known for the role of Lurch on The Addams Family in the mid-1960s. if you’ve got a good ear, you’ll recall that he narrated The Incredible Hulk series. And he played the part of the android Ruk in the episode “What Are Little Girls Made Of?” on Trek, and provided the voices of the more strident version of Balok in the episode “The Corbomite Maneuver” and the Gorn in the episode “Arena”. In The Man from U.N.C.L.E. episode “The Napoleon’s Tomb Affair”, he was Edgar, who kidnapped, tortured, and repeatedly attempted to kill Napoleon and Illya. (Died 1979.) (CE)
Born July 31, 1935 –Dave Van Arnam. Seven novels (some with Ted White), translated into Dutch, Japanese, Spanish. Two anthologies (with Kris Neville, William Tenn). “How I Learned to Love Fandom” in NyCon 3 Program & Memory Book (25th Worldcon; DVA was co-chair). Co-founded, or something, APA-F. (Died 2002) [JH]
Born July 31, 1951 — Jo Bannister, 69. Though best-known as a most excellent British crime fiction novelist, she has three SF novels to her credit, all written in the early Eighties — The Matrix, The Winter Plain and A Cactus Garden. ISFDB lists one short story by her as genre, “Howler”, but I wasn’t at all aware that Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine printed genre fiction which is where it appeared first. (CE)
Born July 31, 1956 — Michael Biehn, 64. Best-known in genre circles as Sgt. Kyle Reese in The Terminator and Terminator 2: Judgment Day, Cpl. Dwayne Hicks in Aliens and Lt. Coffey in The Abyss. He was also The Sandman in a single episode of Logan’s Run. Though not even genre adjacent, he was Johnny Ringo in the magnitude Tombstone film. (CE)
Born July 31, 1959 — Kim Newman, 61. Though best-known For his Anno Dracula series, I’d like to single him out for his early work, Nightmare Movies: A critical history of the horror film, 1968–88, a very serious history of horror films. It was followed up with the equally great Wild West Movies: Or How the West Was Found, Won, Lost, Lied About, Filmed and Forgotten. He’s also a prolific genre writer and his first published novel, The Night Mayor, sounds very intriguing. (CE)
Born July 31, 1962 — Wesley Snipes, 58. The first actor to be Blade in the Blade film franchise where I thought he made the perfect Blade. (There’s a new Blade actor though their name escapes right now.) I also like him as Simon Phoenix in Demolition Man. (CE)
Born July 31, 1976 — John Joseph Adams, 44. Anthologist of whom I’m very fond of The Improbable Adventures of Sherlock Holmes and Dead Man’s Hand: An Anthology of the Weird West which he did. He was the Assistant Editor at The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction for nearly a decade, and he’s been editing both Lightspeed and Nightmare Magazine since the early part of this decade. (CE)
Born July 31, 1979 – B.J. Novak, 41. Author, actor, writer-director. Fifteen short stories ours in The New Yorker, Zoetrope, and collection One More Thing (it has 64 total; six weeks a NY Times Hardcover Fiction Best-Seller). For children The Book With No Pictures (also a best-seller; “a lot of the other one-star reviews are from people who object to speaking of a hippo named Boo Boo Butt”). [JH]
Today, 98% of international internet traffic is ferried around the world by subsea cables. A vast underwater network of cables crisscrossing the ocean makes it possible to share, search, send, and receive information around the world at the speed of light. In today’s day and age, as the ways that we work, play and connect are becoming increasingly digital, reliable connectivity is more important than ever before. That’s why we’re excited to announce a new subsea cable—Grace Hopper—which will run between the United States, the United Kingdom and Spain, providing better resilience for the network that underpins Google’s consumer and enterprise products.
Grace Hopper joins our other private subsea cables, Curie, Dunant and Equiano to connect far-flung continents along the ocean floor. Private subsea cables allow us to plan effectively for the future capacity needs of our customers and users around the world, and add a layer of security beyond what’s available over the public internet.
Once commissioned, the Grace Hopper cable will be one of the first new cables to connect the U.S. and U.K. since 2003, increasing capacity on this busy global crossroads and powering Google services like Meet, Gmail and Google Cloud. It also marks our first investment in a private subsea cable route to the U.K., and our first-ever route to Spain. The Spanish landing point will more tightly integrate the upcoming Google Cloud region in Madrid into our global infrastructure. The Grace Hopper cable will be equipped with 16 fiber pairs (32 fibers), a significant upgrade to the internet infrastructure connecting the U.S. with Europe. A contract to build the cable was signed earlier this year with Eatontown, N.J.-based subsea cable provider, SubCom, and the project is expected to be completed in 2022.
(11) MOVIE AMBIENCE. [Item by algorithm connoisseur Martin Morse Wooster.] The YouTube algorithm introduced me to a website called Ambient Worlds, whose creator has come up with Harry Potter Movie Ambience: “Hogsmeade Relaxing Music, Crowd Noise And Snow”, which is an hour of music from the Harry Potter movies mixed into background music for whatever you happen to be doing (in my case, writing, because I write with music or baseball in the background). I’ve never heard of such a thing.
Ambient Worlds has a Lord of the Rings background music video that’s three hours!
(12) VIDEO OF THE DAY. Nothing to do with sff, I just want to share my appreciation of this editing job!
[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, Nina Shepardson, Chip Hitchcock, JJ, John Hertz, Mike Kennedy, Cat Eldridge, Michael Toman, Martin Morse Wooster, and Andrew Porter for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Xtifr.]
Deputy Hugo Administrator Nicholas Whyte’s analysis is here.
2020 Hugo Awards
Best Novel
A Memory Called Empire by Arkady Martine (Tor; Tor UK)
Best Novella
This Is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone (Saga Press; Jo Fletcher Books)
Best Novelette
Emergency Skin by N.K. Jemisin ( Forward Collection (Amazon))
Best Short Story
“As the Last I May Know”,by S.L. Huang (Tor.com, 23 October 2019)
Best Series
The Expanse by James S. A. Corey (Orbit US; Orbit UK)
Best Related Work
“2019 John W. Campbell Award Acceptance Speech”, by Jeannette Ng
Best Graphic Story or Comic
LaGuardia, written by Nnedi Okorafor, art by Tana Ford, colours by James Devlin (Berger Books; Dark Horse)
Best Dramatic Presentation, Long Form
Good Omens, written by Neil Gaiman, directed by Douglas Mackinnon (Amazon Studios/BBC Studios/Narrativia/The Blank Corporation)
Best Dramatic Presentation, Short Form
The Good Place: “The Answer”, written by Daniel Schofield, directed by Valeria Migliassi Collins (Fremulon/3 Arts Entertainment/Universal Television)
Best Editor, Short Form
Ellen Datlow
Best Editor, Long Form
Navah Wolfe
Best Professional Artist
John Picacio
Best Semiprozine
Uncanny Magazine, editors-in-chief Lynne M. Thomas and Michael Damian Thomas, nonfiction/managing editor Michi Trota, managing editor Chimedum Ohaegbu, podcast producers Erika Ensign and Steven Schapansky
Best Fanzine
The Book Smugglers, editors Ana Grilo and Thea James
Best Fancast
Our Opinions Are Correct, presented by Annalee Newitz and Charlie Jane Anders
Best Fan Writer
Bogi Takács
Best Fan Artist
Elise Matthesen
Lodestar Award for Best Young Adult Book (not a Hugo)
Catfishing on CatNet by Naomi Kritzer (Tor Teen)
Astounding Award for Best New Writer, sponsored by Dell Magazines (not a Hugo)
Guest Post By Edmund Schluessel: Worldcon staff have once again policed and censored my Zoom background.
This morning starting around 9 a.m. New Zealand time I was observing the Interplanetary Immigration Project presentation. Early in the program item I noticed my video feed had been cut off by the meeting host. I immediately raised the issue with Programme Ops.
According to Programme Ops, my background was indeed policed and censored by Program staff. I asked why my video had been cut. Patrick Maher, Con Ops manager, told me in reply, “Same reason as before. I informed the Room Manager that we cannot do that because your background, whilst overtly political, is not in breach of the CoC. they then lifted the lock on your video.”
Two days ago, after the first incident, I had an e-mail conversation with Kelly Buehler, CoNZealand Business chair. Buehler apologized to me and assured me: “There is nothing wrong with your Zoom background, and I encourage you to use it as much as you like. […] I am clarifying with the staff that we do not police backgrounds unless they violate our Code of Conduct.” This new incident shows that that has not happened. While I appreciate that running a convention is difficult and complicated, it seems clear that at least some staff are either unequipped or unwilling to uphold the event’s own Code of Conduct and facilitate the open exchange of ideas and inspiration that’s the whole point of a convention.
What would I like to see as an outcome from this? Worldcon attendees changing their Zoom backgrounds is a first step. Beyond this:
* I would like to call upon the FSF community everywhere to learn about and become active in the Black Lives Matter movement and the movement against the persecution of Uyghurs in China. When I lived in the United States I was involved in Mass Action Against Police Brutality, which focuses on not just organizing demonstrations but anti-racist education in the greater Boston area. The Free Rahile campaign meanwhile advocates for a stop to the disappearances and arbitrary arrests and detentions of cultural figures and academics of the Uyghur population of China.
* The simple fact is, the United States runs mass detention camps with inhuman conditions to persecute migrants and people of color, while political activists are taken off the street by government agents in unmarked vans. The People’s Republic of China is carrying out a genocidal colonial project in Xinjiang with millions in forced labor, while state repression of the right to protest across the country intensifies. Conditions in both countries are getting worse. We should all reflect on the ethicality of sending FSF’s preeminent international event, one not owned by any one country, to places where even the most basic level of human dignity is so brazenly trampled on such a blatantly racist, violent basis. I call upon fans to build some more ethical alternative for 2023 to a Worldcon in either of these countries.
* Transgressiveness is not inherently good protest, but effective protest is inherently transgressive. Whatever you are doing to fight against injustice in your everyday life, ask yourself — is it pushing up against the comfort levels of those in power? Don’t just talk about inequity and injustice, but about structural oppression and the nature of justice. And whenever someone tells you wealth is the answer, talk about class, and where wealth really comes from.
Fandom is a show we watch together where we get to see a better world. The price of admission is our labor: we have to try to build that better world together.
(2) FAN FUNDS AUCTION. Alison Scott announced that today’s CoNZealand Fan Funds auction raised 2190$NZD for GUFF, TAFF, DUFF and FFANZ.
(3) YOU GOT YOUR POLITICS IN MY FICTION! This happened to a CoNZealand panel participant yesterday.
To be clear, the WSFS rules only prevent WSFS from using its resources to support political candidates or influence legislation. An individual member making a blanket statement doesn't break this rule in any way. It's equivalent to my wearing a t-shirt with a slogan on it. 2/5
— ????Edmund Schluessel???? (@spacecurves) July 29, 2020
Moreover "#CoNZealand is committed to working towards a decolonised, oppression-free society," says the Code of Conduct, so it's reasonable to think the CoC and I are on the same side of history. 3/5
— ????Edmund Schluessel???? (@spacecurves) July 29, 2020
— ????Edmund Schluessel???? (@spacecurves) July 29, 2020
We sincerely apologise. CoNZealand has an official policy of not policing backgrounds that are not in violation of our Code of Conduct. We have no issue with your Zoom background. The individual staff member acted independently and has since quit our staff.
Schluessel also reports getting dinged for having a Black Lives Matter background. Which is pretty bizarre, because there’s a Black Lives Matter banner in CoNZealand’s virtual Exhibit Hall, as seen in the screencap below. However, Schluessel says “CoNZealand has extended me a full apology, which I have accepted.”
(4) ROTSLER AWARD EXHIBIT. CoNZealand’s virtual exhibit hall includes many things, such as the Rotsler Award exhibit (membership required to access) with artwork from each year’s award winner. Click the link, select “Boldy Go,” select Exhibits, and once there, click on Displays. The Rotsler link is last on the bottom right.
(5) PLEASE UNSIGN THEM. When she saw her sff group’s name listed as a signer of the Open Letter to WSFS about the Saudi Arabia Worldcon bid, Fran Dowd, “Sofa” of the Sheffield Science Fiction and Fantasy society posted a denial on the group’s Facebook page.
I’d like to put it on record that I have no idea how this group appeared as a signatory to the Jeddah letter. Whatever our personal feelings might be, I would not expect anyone to sign such a statement on our behalf without consultation at the least.
I have spent this morning, when I would actually rather be at the current Worldcon, trying to spread the word. Apologies have been given to the NZ Chairs and to Kevin Standlee. Given the spread of social media, getting a retraction would be meaningless.
I apologise to any members of the group who have been dragged into this. If it is of any help, please point people to this statement.
Signed by me in my capacity as Chair When We Need One.
The 1945 Retro Hugo for Best Novelette goes to “City” by Clifford D. Simak. This isn’t a huge surprise, because the City cycle is well regarded, still in print and Clifford D. Simak was one of the best writers of the Golden Age. “City” is a pretty good story, too, though not the best City story of 1944 or even the best City novelette, because “Census”, which didn’t make the ballot, is better.
That said, this was not the category I wanted to see Simak win. In fact, I was hoping that C.L. Moore, either with or without Henry Kuttner, would win Best Novelette, because both “No Woman Born” (which finished second) and “The Children’s Hour” (which finished unfairly in sixth place) are great stories.
Though I’m glad that “Arena” by Fredric Brown was its “Genocide is good” message didn’t win, because I feared that it might.
(7) MORE OR LESS RETRO-HUGOS? Charles Stross thinks pausing the Retro-Hugos for about a quarter century might address some of the competing values now in conflict. Thread starts here.
Alasdair Stuart laments the Campbell and Lovecraft Retro wins. Thread starts here.
Like Campbell he's changed what we're able to see as good. Like Campbell, he's shifted the Overton Window of what's 'real' horror and like Campbell, he's holding onto it with a death grip.
The US space agency’s Perseverance robot has left Earth on a mission to try to detect life on Mars.
The one-tonne, six-wheeled rover was launched out of Florida by an Atlas rocket on a path to intercept the Red Planet in February next year.
When it lands, the Nasa robot will also gather rock and soil samples to be sent home later this decade.
Perseverance is the third mission despatched to Mars inside 11 days, after launches by the UAE and China.
Lift-off from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station occurred at 07:50 local time (12:50 BST; 11:50 GMT).
Nasa made this mission one of its absolute priorities when the coronavirus crisis struck, establishing special work practices to ensure Perseverance met its launch deadline.
“I’m not going to lie, it’s a challenge, it’s very stressful, but look – the teams made it happen and I’ll tell you, we could not be more proud of what this integrated team was able to pull off here, so it’s very, very exciting,” Administrator Jim Bridenstine told reporters.
…BRENDAN BYRNE, BYLINE: When the Perseverance rover lands on Mars in February, it will unpack a suite of scientific experiments to help uncover ancient signs of life on the red planet – high-tech cameras, spectrometers, sensors and…
ROGER WIENS: This is the voice of Roger Wiens speaking to you through the Mars microphone on SuperCam.
BYRNE: Roger Wiens is the principal investigator of the rover SuperCam, a slew of instruments, including a camera, laser and spectrometer, that will examine the rocks and soil of Mars for organic compounds, a hint that there might be further evidence of past life. Tucked away inside the SuperCam is the Mars microphone.
WIENS: And so it is there to listen to anything interesting, first of all, on Mars. And so we should hear wind sounds. We should hear sounds of the rover. We might hear things that we never expected to hear. And so that’s going to be interesting to find out.
BYRNE: The mic will also listen as Perseverance’s onboard laser blasts nearby rocks.
ADDIE DOVE: You might think we’re going to hear, like, pew pew, but we probably won’t.
BYRNE: University of Central Florida planetary scientist Addie Dove says the sounds of Martian rock blasts will help scientists determine if they might contain organic material, evidence of life on Mars. But it will actually sound more like this.
(SOUNDBITE OF ROCK BLASTS)
(10) JOSE SARAMAGO NEWS. [Item by Martin Morse Wooster.] In the July 24 Financial Times, Sarah Hemming discusses a new adaptation of Nobel Laureate Jose Saramago’s sf novel Blindness at the Donmar Warehouse in London (donmarwarehouse.com). Donmar’s director, Michael Longhurst says the production will be a hybrid of theatre and “sound installation” that will let the theatre hold four shows a day. I can’t tell from the review how much actual theatre there is in the production. The only Donmar production I’ve seen was an all-female Julius Caesar on PBS that had an impressive performance by Dame Harriet Walter as Brutus.
Lockdown has emphasised the importance of sound for many of us from that early experience of hearing birdsong in unusually quiet city centres, to a keener awareness, prompted by physical separation, of the way we listen. And several online drama offerings, such as Simon McBurney’s The Encounter and Sound&Fury’s wartime meditation Charlie Ward At Home, have used sophisticated recording to steep their homebound audiences in other worlds and prompt reflection.
Blindness, in a sense, builds on that (there will be a digital download for those unable to get to the theatre). So why attend in person? Longhurst suggests the very act of being in a space will change the quality of listening–and reflect the way we have all had individual journeys through the collective experience of lockdown. And while this is a one-off piece about a society in an epidemic, created for an industry in a pandemic, that physical presence marks a move towards full performance.
(11) MEDIA ANNIVERSARY.
July 1987 — Emma Bull’s War for The Oaks was published by Ace Books. This urban fantasy would get its own trailer courtesy of Will Shetterly who financed it instead of running for Governor. You’ll no doubt recognize many of the performers here. Decades later, it was scheduled to have a hardcover edition from Tor Books but it got canceled after the books were printed. And the music in War for The Oaks would later be done by Cats Laughing, a band that includes Emma Bull and other members of Minneapolis fandom.
(12) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.
[Compiled by Cat Eldridge and John Hertz.]
Born July 30, 1800 – Aleksandr Veltman. Order of St. Vladimir (bravery) while in the Russian army, eventually Director of the Museum of Armaments. Poetry praised by Pushkin, second wife’s novel praised by Gorky. The Wanderer in an imaginary journey parodies travel notes. Koshchei the Deathless parodies historical adventures. The Year 3448 is supposedly by Martin Zadek (who also finds his way into Pushkin and Zamyatin). The Forebears of Kalimeros has time-travel (by riding a hippogriff; “Kalimeros”, a nudge at Napoleon, is the Greek equivalent of Buonaparte) to meet Alexander and Aristotle. Tolstoy and Dostoevskyapplauded AV too. (Died 1870) [JH]
Born July 30, 1873 – Curtis Senf. Four dozen covers and hundreds of interiors for Weird Tales, after which what the Field Guide to Wild American Pulp Artists modestly calls “a more lucrative career as a commercial artist in the Chicago advertising industry”. Here is the Oct 27 WT; here is the Jan 30; here is the Mar 32. (Died 1949) [JH]
Born July 30, 1911 — Reginald Bretnor. Author of many genre short stories involving Ferdinand Feghoot, a comical figure indeed. It looks like all of these are available in digital form on iBooks and Kindle. He was a consummate SJW. He translated Les Chats, the first known book about cats which was written by Augustin Paradis de Moncrif in 1727. He also wrote myriad articles about cats, was of course a companion to cats, and considered himself to have a psychic connection to cats. Of course most of us do. (Did 1992.) (CE)
Born July 30, 1927 — Victor Wong. I remember him best as the Chinese sorcerer Egg Shen in John Carpenter’s Big Trouble in Little China. He was also The Old Man in The Golden Child, Walter Chang in Tremors, Dr. Wong in the “China Moon” episode of the Beauty and the Beast series and Lee Tzin-Soong in the “Fox Spirit” episode of Poltergeist: The Legacy. (Died 2001.) (CE)
Born July 30, 1947 – John Stith, 73. Eight novels, a dozen shorter stories, translated into French, German, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese, Russian. Wrote about John Kennedy (i.e. our JK; indeed John R.; 1945-2009) in 1992 (for the limited ed’n of “Nova in a Bottle” bound with “Encore”), interviewed by him in 1993 (SF Chronicle 164). Did his own cover for a reprinting of Death Tolls. [JH]
Born July 30, 1948 — Carel Struycken, 72. I remember him best as the gong ringing Mr. Holm on Next Gen, companion to Deanna Troi’s mother. He was also Lurch in The Addams Family, Addams Family Values and the Addams Family Reunion. He’s listed as being Fidel in The Witches of Eastwick but I’ll be damned if I remembered his role in that film. And he’s in Ewoks: The Battle for Endor which I’ve never seen… (CE)
Born July 30, 1961 — Laurence Fishburne, 59. In The Matrix films. His voice work as Thrax in Osmosis Jones on the other hand is outstanding as is his role as Bill Foster in Ant-Man. (CE)
Born July 30, 1966 — Jess Nevins, 54. Author of the superlative Encyclopedia of Fantastic Victorian and the equally great Heroes & Monsters: The Unofficial Companion to the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen which is far better than the film ever could be. I didn’t know he was an author ‘til now but he has two genre novels, The Road to Prester John and The Datong Incident. (CE)
Born July 30, 1967 – Ann Brashares, 53. Famous for The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants (that’s the U.S. meaning of “pants”, in this case a magical pair of blue jeans), a NY Times Best-Seller, and its sequels, films, companions. Two more novels for us, one other. Indies Choice Book Award, Quill Award. Philosophy major (yay!) at Barnard, 1989. [JH]
Born July 30, 1971 – Kristie Cook, 49. Nine novels, a dozen shorter stories (some with co-authors; publishes Havenwood Falls shared-world stories, some wholly by others). Loves cheese, chocolate, coffee, husband, sons, motorcycle. “No, I’m not crazy. I’m just a writer.” [JH]
Born July 30, 1974 – Jacek Dukaj, 46. Ten novels, half a dozen shorter stories, translated into Bulgarian, Czech, English (he’s a Pole), German, Hungarian, Italian, Macedonian, Russian, Slovak. Six Zajdel Awards. EU Prize for Literature. Another writer with a Philosophy degree, from Jagiellonian University even. His Culture.plpage (in English) is here. [JH]
Born July 30, 1975 — Cherie Priest, 45. Her southern gothic Eden Moore series is kickass good and Clockwork Universe series isa refreshing take on steampunk which has been turned into full cast audiobooks by GraphicAudio. I’ve not read Cheshire Red Reports novels so have no idea how they are. Anyone read these? (CE)
(13) NOW WITH MORE MASK. Ray’s playing it safe, I see. Incidentally, the Ray Bradbury Experience Museum is accepting RSVP’s here for entry during RBEM’s Ray Bradbury Centennial Celebration on August 22, 2020.
(14) OOPS. Marc Zicree has issued a video “Apology to the Science Fiction Writers of America,” for using their membership list to publicize Space Command.
(15) A DISSATISFIED CUSTOMER. And not only that, we line up for the opportunity!
I swear people who have never written a book or fixed a toilet won't tell a plumber how to do their job but they will tell an author how to write and sell books like they are goddamn Max Perkins I am sick of it.
— Matt Wallace is Updates Only (@MattFnWallace) July 30, 2020
(16) BACURAU. The Criterior Channel’s August lineup includes Bacurau on August 20, an exclusive streaming premiere, featuring an interview with directors Kleber Mendonça Filho and Juliano Dornelles.
A blistering sci-fi thriller streaked with antiracist and anticolonialist rage, the new film from Kleber Mendonça Filho, codirected with Juliano Dornelles, is an audacious, furiously entertaining model of genre art as a vehicle for political resistance. pic.twitter.com/BaRhWiLFnP
— Criterion Channel (@criterionchannl) July 30, 2020
… After all, who doesn’t periodically yearn to flee the nightmarish world we now live in? A persistent feeling of helplessness, frustration, anger and mild despair has emerged as the “New Normal” — which is one reason my recent reviews and essays tend to emphasize escapism, often into books from the past. A similar impulse lies behind the pruning of my basement hoard. Going through my many boxes, I am no longer the plaything of forces beyond my control. I have, to use a vogue term, agency. I alone decide which books to keep, which to let go.
However, making these decisions has turned out to be harder than I expected.
Here’s an example of what I mean. I’m fond of a slightly overwritten travel book called “A Time of Gifts” by English writer Patrick Leigh Fermor. It recounts in striking detail a walk across half of Europe undertaken by the young Leigh Fermor in 1933. Somehow, I possess four copies of this minor classic: a Penguin paperback that I read and marked up, an elegant Folio Society edition bought at the Friends of the Montgomery County Library bookstore, a later issue of the original John Murray hardback, and a first American edition in a very good dust jacket acquired for a bargain price at the Second Story Books warehouse. Given the space-saving principle of eliminating duplicates, I should keep just one copy. Which one?
You draw seven cards. You look at your hand. It would be perfect if you had that one card.
Too bad it costs $50. And your local game store is closed anyway.
Depending on where you lie on the nerd spectrum, you may or may not have heard of Magic: The Gathering. It’s a trading card game that’s been in production for almost three decades. Even if you haven’t heard of it or played it, you probably know someone who has. It’s one of the most popular trading card games of all time, and that isn’t an exaggeration; there are millions of Magic: The Gathering players worldwide.
…Before COVID-19 hit the Magic community, players packed into local game stores to sling spells and blow off steam. Now, as players move toward the online versions, there are additional financial hurdles to clear.
There’s a reason it’s called Magic: The Gathering. Most of the fun comes from squaring off against other players, catching the clandestine tells of your opponent as they draw powerful spells. Game stores across the country offer opportunities to play; they host tournaments, stock up on new cards and teach new wizards how to play.
But even if veteran players and shop owners welcome new Planeswalkers with open arms, how accessible is Magic: The Gathering?
Players can craft a variety of decks, and if they’re playing the more common formats of the game, a deck can cost anywhere from about $275 to $834 or more. Not only are full decks expensive, but so are individual cards. The card Thoughtseize, for instance, has a current value of around $25 per copy. If a deck contains four copies of a single card (the maximum), just that one card would bring the price of a deck up by $100. And there are much more expensive cards on the market.
…There is an online version of the game, but Magic Online isn’t cheap either. And while it isn’t as expensive as its cardboard counterpart, a player still has to buy new digital versions of physical cards they already own. On top of that, a Magic Online account costs $10 just to set up. And while a Magic veteran might jump at the opportunity to play online, a new player may feel less inclined to pay the fee when there are other online deck-building games, like Hearthstone, that are free to try.
In 2018, Magic’s publisher Wizards of the Coast released a free, digital version of the game called Magic: The Gathering Arena. It’s a more kid-friendly online option for new Planeswalkers, but it still has the same Magic charm for older players. Arena does include in-game purchases, but players can obtain better cards by grinding out a lot of games instead of spending extra money. And while Arena can be a great way to introduce a new player to the online format, if they don’t want to empty their wallets, they’ll have to get used to losing for a while.
[Thanks to John Hertz, N., Mike Kennedy, Martin Morse Wooster, JJ, Cat Eldridge, Michael Toman, Chip Hitchcock, John King Tarpinian, Jeffrey Smith, and Andrew Porter for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Jayn.]
Chicago has won the vote to host the 80th Worldcon, to be held September 1-5, 2022 (Labor Day Weekend in the U.S.).
CoNZealand Site Selection administrator Alan Stewart read off the vote tally during a Zoom meeting. There were 587 total ballots received. (Figures below recorded here by Goobergunch.)
Chicago – 517 Jeddah – 33 None of the Above – 6 Write-ins – 20 No Preference – 11 Invalid – 11 Spoiled – 1 Total With Preference 576 Needed to Elect (Majority) 289
JEDDAH IN 2026. After the results were announced, Yasser Bahjatt said his committee would now become a bid for 2026.
CHICON 8. The name of the 2022 con is Chicon 8. Helen Montgomery will chair.
The event will be held in the Hyatt Regency Chicago. Convention room rates will be $160/night sgl/dbl/tpl/quad.
(1) RED HOT RETRO-HUGOS. The 1945 Retro-Hugos were presented at CoNZealand today – see the winners here.
The full voting stats are online, and Deputy Hugo Awards Administrator Nicholas Whyte also has done a quick analysis of the results.
(2) PETITIONS AND PUBLISHING. Seanan McGuire has a quite interesting series of tweets inspired by social media petitions flogging certain authors to produce their next book now, in which she tries to open readers’ eyes about the traditional publishing process. Thread starts here.
Do people understand how many hands touch a traditionally published book? I finish a book. I send it to my "in-house" betas, the machete squad, all of whom are ALSO living through this pandemic. All of whom are also scared, and isolated, and having trouble focusing.
We have a schedule to stick to. If I send her the next Toby book (due in December) tomorrow, she's not going to prioritize it above every other client she has just because I'm special. I'm not special.
So my agent finally gets me her notes, and I process them, and send the book, finally, to my editor. To wait again. Because my editor also has clients in line ahead of me, and I'm still not special.
(3) ABOUT THE GUARDIAN’S “OPEN LETTER” COVERAGE. Chris Barkley posted his letter of complaint sent to The Guardian’s Reader Service about their article.
Hello,
I am writing to complain about Alison Flood’s article on the Saudi Arabian bid to hold the 2022 World Science Fiction Convention.
While Ms. Flood’s reporting was informative, it did lack ANY reaction directly from the current co-chairs of the current Worldcon in New Zealand (Kelly Buehler and Norman Cates) or any member of the Worldcon who could explain the function of the Constitution of the World Science Fiction Convention and how it relates to the multi-year bidding process works.
Nor had she any quotes or commentary from any other fans who could have offered additional information or insights about sf fandom.
It would be very much appreciated if she were to update this important story with more of these elements rather than the somewhat sensationalized version that was posted.
Chris M. Barkley Cincinnati, Ohio USA
I have worked in Worldcon Press Offices since 1983. In this day and age there is NO EXCUSE for sloppy reporting…
(4) TOASTMASTER WARMS UP THE AUDIENCE. George R.R. Martin previews the CoNZealand Hugo Ceremony in “Worldcon… Virtually” at Not A Blog.
…Anyway, here is how the Hugos are going to work… I have already pre-recorded all of my opening remarks, introductions of the guest presenters (we will have several), amusing (one hopes) anecdotes and bits of history, discussions of each category, and readings of the names of the finalists (in the cases where I am presenting myself, rather than throwing the ball to a guest presenter). ConNZealand has all those videos. The rest of it will be live streamed from my theatre in Santa Fe, the Jean Cocteau, where a member of worldcon’s tech team will be helping me Zoom. I will have the envelopes with the names of the winners sealed therein. I may actually have a Hugo to wave about.
So the drill will go like this: for each category, you will get a pre-recorded video of me as a lead-in. Then I will either read the finalists, so throw it to another presenter who will do the same. Most of their remarks are pre-recorded as well. Then back to me, this time live at the JCC, where I will rip open the envelope and announce the winner. Then we cut to the happy winner, somewhere in the world… assuming they are in front of their computers and know how to Zoom and all. (No, unlike the other major awards shows, we have no plans to show the fake smiles on the faces of the sad losers). The happy winner will make an acceptance speech, long or short as may be, that is entirely up to them. Then back to me… either live me at the JCC, or pre-recorded me for the next category.
And on and on, starting with the Lodestar and ending with Best Novel….
(5) CONZEALAND DAILY NEWZINE. Cruise Log has found a substitute for the Worldcon daily zine’s usual “warm body count” —
1400 people have logged into the CoNZealand discord server as of 09:00 Thursday morning!
The new collection of Peter Pan British Isles 50p coins have been developed in partnership with Great Ormond Street Hospital to celebrate 90 years since author, J.M. Barrie, gifted all future rights of the book to them.
The new set will be the first ever collection of its kind in the UK – but won’t be released by the Royal Mint and therefore won’t be entering circulation.
Prices start at £6.25, and for every coin sold, a donation will go directly to GOSH Charity to support the hospital’s most urgent needs: fund support services, pioneering research, equipment and refurbishment.
(7) DREAM FOUNDRY WRITING CONTEST. The Dream Foundry Writing Contest will be open for submissions from August 10 to October 11, 2020. Full guidelines here.
We’re looking for complete and finalized stories of speculative fiction of up to 10,000 words. This year, we’re proud to announce monetary prizes for 1st, 2nd, and 3rd places.
1st: $1000; 2nd: $500; 3rd: $200
There is no submission fee. All rights remain with the creators.
(8) MEDIA BIRTHDAY.
July 29, 1953 — George Pal’s adaptation of H.G. Wells’ The War Of The Worlds premiered in Atlantic City, New Jersey. It was directed by Byron Haskin from the screenplay by Barré Lyndon. It starred Gene Barry and Anne Robinson. It was narrated by Cedric Hardwicke. The film was both a critical and box office success earning back its budget in its first release. And it would win an Academy Award for Special Effects. Audience reviewers at Rotten Tomatoes currently give it a 71% rating.
(9) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.
[Compiled by Cat Eldridge and John Hertz.]
Born July 29, 1876 — Maria Ouspenskaya. In the Forties, she did a run of pulp films, to wit The Wolf Man, Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man and Tarzan and the Amazons. A decade or so earlier, she was in Beyond Tomorrow. (Died 1949.) (CE)
Born July 29, 1878 – Don Marquis. (name pronounced “mar-kwis”) At The Sun, New York, a column “The Sun Dial” 1912-1922; at The Herald Tribune, “The Tower” (later “The Lantern”); three novels; plays, poems, essays, sketches. Introduced, famously and of interest to us, a cockroach whose writings DM found in the typewriter next morning; the cockroach wrote by diving onto the keys, could not get capitals, and so is known as archy; in turn archy knew a cat, mehitabel; they, illustrated by George Herriman who meanwhile drew Krazy Kat, outcreated everything. (Died 1937) [JH]
Born July 29, 1888 — Farnsworth Wright. Editor of Weird Tales. editing an amazing 179 issues from November 1924–March 1940. Mike Ashley in EoSF says, “Wright developed WT from a relatively routine horror pulp magazine to create what has become a legend.” His own genre fiction is generally considered undistinguished. He also edited during the Thirties, Oriental Stories and The Magic Carpet. The work available digitally is a poem, “After Two Nights of the Ear-ache”. (Died 1940.) (CE)
Born July 29, 1907 — Melvin Belli. Sole genre role is that of Gorgan (also known as the “Friendly Angel”) in the Star Trek “And the Children Shall Lead” episode. Koenig objected to his playing this role believing the role should have gone to someone who was an actor. (Died 1996.) (CE)
Born July 29, 1927 — Jean E. Karl. She founded Atheneum Children’s Books, and she edited Ursula K Le Guin’s Earthsea sequence and Susan Cooper’s The Dark Is Rising sequence. As an author, she wrote three genre novels, Strange Tomorrow, Beloved Benjamin Is Waiting and But We Are Not of Earth, and a reasonable amount of short fiction, all of which is In the Clordian Sweep series. Nine of those stories are in The Turning Point collection. (Died 2000.) (CE)
Born July 29, 1939 — Curtis C. Smith, 81. Editor of Twentieth-Century Science-Fiction Writers, plus two genre biographies, Olaf Stapledon: A Bibliography with co-author Harvey J. Satty, and Welcome to the Revolution: The Literary Legacy of Mack Reynolds. Not active since the mid-Eighties as near as I can tell. (CE)
Born July 29, 1941 — David Warner, 79. Being Lysander in thatA Midsummer Night’s Dream was his first genre role. I’m going to do just highlights after that as he’s got far too extensive a genre history to list everything. So he’s been A Most Delightful Evil in Time Bandits, Jack the Ripper in Time After Time, Ed Dillinger / Sark In Tron, Father in The Company of Wolves, Chancellor Gorkon in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, The Creature in Frankenstein, voice of Ra’s al Ghul on Batman: The Animated Series and Abraham Van Helsing on Penny Dreadful. (CE)
Born July 29, 1945 – Sharon Creech, 74. First person to win both the Newbery & Carnegie Medals. Three novels for us, many more (two, for adults, under another name). Some verse, some prose. “While teaching literature I learned so much about writing”; Website here. [JH]
Born July 29, 1948 – John Harris, 72. Two hundred covers, as many interiors. Two artbooks. Chesley for Lifetime Achievement. Commissions for NASA, Royal Caribbean cruise ships, Philips, Shell. Here is Stand on Zanzibar. Here is The Ringworld Throne. Here is Ancillary Mercy. Here is The Best of Gregory Benford. [JH]
Born July 29, 1953 – David Lee Anderson, 67. A score of covers, half that many interiors. Lately Oklahoma landmarks and landscapes. Here is the Oct 93 Tomorrow. Here is A Glimpse of Splendor (collection). Here is ISS Repairs (Int’l Space Station). Here is Rioghain (“ree-ann”) from Afterwalker (D. Glaser dir.; in post-production as of Mar 2020). Website here. [JH]
Born July 29, 1956 – Chitra Divakaruni, Ph.D., 64. Five novels for us; much more. The Palace of Illusions, her re-telling of the Mahabharata from Drapaudi’s perspective, was an India best-seller for a year; here (Web archive) is an India Reads review whose author confesses having known the Mahabharata only from television. American Book Award, Light of India Award, Pushcart Prize, Ginsberg Poetry Prize. Website here. [JH]
Born July 29, 1969 – Forrest Aguirre, 51. Two novels, five dozen shorter stories in Apex, Asimov’s, Vasterien. Edited two Leviathan anthologies (one with Jeff Vandermeer; World Fantasy Award). Speaks Swahili. Collections, The Butterfly Artist, Fugue XXIX. Ranks Thank You, Jeeves above Gorky Park (agreed). Interview at SF Site here. [JH]
…However, I realised that the Google n-gram site would provide a neat empirical confirmation of Mars bias in popular culture. I did a search on Martians and Venusians, choosing the inhabitants rather than the planets to avoid hits about astronomy or the gods….
If you’ve ever wanted to build a real and working Windows 95 PC inside Minecraft, now is the time. A new VM Computers mod has been created for Minecraft that allows players to order computer parts from a satellite orbiting around a Minecraft world and build a computer that actually boots Windows 95 and a variety of other operating systems.
The mod uses VirtualBox, free and open-source virtual machine software, to run operating systems like Windows 95. Within Minecraft you simply place a PC case block and then use it to create virtual hard drives to install operating systems from ISO files….
I like a small book. I trust a small book. I appreciate a small book for all the things it doesn’t do, for all the stories it does not tell.
Big books? They’re dangerous in their excess. Bloated (often) with words they do not need and larded (often) with detail that no one asked for. You can slip into a big book and lose your way too easily. But a small book is intimate. Close. Every word it says matters. The writer of a small book knows that every page has to count.
Cherie Dimaline wrote a small book called Empire Of Wild. It isn’t small in pages (320, give or take) or in words (it has the normal amount), but it is tiny in consequence. In the scope and reach of the story it tells.
It is about Joan, who has lost her husband. And who means to get him back. That’s all. There are no worlds to be saved, no history to be altered. Joan’s actions, and the reverberations of those actions, are felt only close by. Her family, her community, the barrooms and living rooms and Walmart parking lots of the small towns around Georgian Bay, Ontario are the only places where her footsteps are felt. And that’s enough. That’s more than enough.
…Down in its bones, Empire Of Wild is a monster story. Mythic but not epic, swimming in Indigenous medicine, not magic. Calling it urban fantasy gives it a gloss it doesn’t possess. Magical realism implies something absurdist, asynchronous, and doesn’t speak to the way that the medicine of the Métis elders is woven into every breath and line.
Here, Dimaline uses the Métis legend of the rogarou to square her narrative architecture — to give weight and nightmares to Joan’s private hurt. The rogarou is the bogeyman that scares children home before it gets too dark outside. It makes Métis girls walk home in pairs. It keeps men from doing wrong by women, each other or the community. The rogarou is part man, part dog, a wolfman that makes itself through bad choices. And Joan believes in the rogarou because she’s seen one before. She knows the smell of one when it’s close — and with a cell phone, some salt bone, her aunt Ajean’s medicine and her chubby, mopey nephew Zeus by her side, she knows that she’s going to have to meet one, fight one, slay one to bring Victor back home.
The Marine Corps is moving ahead with plans to test a wearable robotic exoskeleton that conjures up images of that power-loader suit Ellen Ripley wore to take down a space monster in the movie “Aliens.”
By the end of the year, the service will have a Guardian XO Alpha full-body robotic exoskeleton that allows one person to do the work of four to 10 people, depending on the task. The wearable suit can do hours of physical labor that would otherwise be impossible for a Marine to do alone, lifting and moving up to 200 pounds of gear repeatedly for eight hours straight.
We’re all familiar with migration: Wildebeests gallop across Africa, Monarch butterflies flit across the Americas … but did you know that forests migrate, too?
In his new book The Journeys of Trees, science writer Zach St. George explores an agonizingly slow migration, as forests creep inch by inch to more hospitable places.
Individual trees, he writes, are rooted in one spot. But forests? Forests “are restless things.” As old trees die and new ones sprouts up, the forest is — ever so slightly — moving.
“The migration of a forest is just many trees sprouting in the same direction,” St. George writes. “Through the fossils that ancient forests left behind, scientists can track their movement over the eons. They shuffle back and forth across continents, sometimes following the same route more than once, like migrating birds or whales.”
The origin of the giant sarsen stones at Stonehenge has finally been discovered with the help of a missing piece of the site which was returned after 60 years.
A test of the metre-long core was matched with a geochemical study of the standing megaliths.
Archaeologists pinpointed the source of the stones to an area 15 miles (25km) north of the site near Marlborough.
English Heritage’s Susan Greaney said the discovery was “a real thrill”.
The seven-metre tall sarsens, which weigh about 20 tonnes, form all fifteen stones of Stonehenge’s central horseshoe, the uprights and lintels of the outer circle, as well as outlying stones.
…“Putting together a spacecraft to Mars and not making a mistake is hard no matter what,” said NASA deputy project manager Matt Wallace. “Trying to do it during the middle of a pandemic is a lot harder. Everyone told us we could not have come up with a better name than Perseverance.” (Wallace and others in this story spoke during or in videos presented at a virtual June press conference.)
Despite this seismic hurdle, the Mars 2020 rover is on track for a July 30 launch toward its seven-month, 314-million-mile journey to the Red Planet. Its two-year mission is to gather samples suggesting past microscopic life for subsequent retrieval and return to Earth, explore the 4-billion-year-old geology of the Jezero Crater landing site, and demonstrate technologies for future robotic and human exploration. The mission has cost $2.4 billion from development through launch, with another $300 million earmarked for operations and surface science.
Airbus-France will build the huge satellite that brings the first Martian rock samples back to Earth.
This material will be drilled on the Red Planet by the US space agency’s next rover, Perseverance, before being blasted into orbit by a rocket.
It’ll be the Airbus satellite’s job to grab the packaged samples and then ship them home.
The joint American-European project is expected to cost billions and take just over a decade to implement.
But scientists say it’s probably the best way to confirm whether life has ever existed on the Red Planet.
Any evidence is likely to be controversial and will need the powerful analytical tools only found in Earth laboratories to convince the doubters, the researchers argue.
Smart glasses company North has told customers that their $600 (£460) purchases will stop working in a few days’ time.
The Canadian company, recently purchased by Google, says its Focals glasses will cease functioning on Friday.
From then, owners will not be able to use “any features” of the glasses, or connect to the companion app.
But the company has also said it will automatically refund all customers.
It promised to send the purchase price back to the original payment method, and to contact those customers whose refunds it could not process.
At the end of June, North announced it was being acquired by Google, and would not release a planned second-generation device.
It also said it would “wind down” its first generation smart glasses, released last year.
(20) VIDEO OF THE DAY. [Item by Martin Morse Wooster.] The YouTube algorithm says I should watch “The Secret Every Tolkien Nerd Knows” by Diana Glyer. What do you think of the algorithm’s judgment?
[Thanks to Rich Lynch, JJ, John King Tarpinian, Daniel Dern, Chip Hitchcock, Martin Morse Wooster, Michael Toman, Mike Kennedy, Cat Eldridge, John Hertz, and Andrew Porter for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Cliff.]
The 2020 Sir Julius Vogel Awards winners were announced today at CoNZealand. The awards recognize excellence in science fiction, fantasy and horror by New Zealanders.
The winners were decided by a vote of the members of SFFANZ, the Science Fiction and Fantasy Association of New Zealand Inc. and of the national convention, which CoNZealand also is in 2020.
PROFESSIONAL AWARDS
Best Novel
The Dawnhounds by Sascha Stronach, Little Hook Press
Best Youth Novel
The Clockhill and the Thief by Gareth Ward, Walker Books Australia
Best Novella / Novelette
From a Shadow Grave by Andi C. Buchanan, Paper Road Press
Best Short Story
“A Shriek Across the Sky” by Casey Lucas, Sponge Magazine
Best Collected Work
Year’s Best Aotearoa New Zealand Science Fiction & Fantasy: Volume 1 edited by Marie Hodgkinson, Paper Road Press
Best Professional Artwork
Cover for Dragon Pearl created by Vivienne To
Best Professional Production/Publication
Swords: The Webcomic by Matthew Willis
Best Dramatic Presentation
Doctor Who: “The Elysian Blade” by David Bishop, BBC Audio
FAN AWARDS
Best Fan Artwork
Deet by Laya Rose
Best Fan Production/ Publication
Plant Life by Laya Rose
Best Fan Writing
“SITREP” by Alex Lindsay, A monthly column in Phoenixine
SPECIAL AWARDS
Best New Talent
Sascha Stronach
Services to Fandom
Grace Bridges
Grace Bridges chaired GeyserCon and does a great deal to support writers and artists both nationally and internationally. She represents NZ well on an international stage and encourages young creators to practice and pursue their own dreams. She plays well with others and is a good example of positive fandom.
Grace Bridges has been an integral member of New Zealand’s fan community for over a decade. A writer, graphic artist, cosplayer, publisher, editor, gamer, speaker, panellist, mentor, and strong community activist. Grace fully embraces her role as both a creator and a fan of science fiction and fantasy. Her formal roles include serving as chair of the GeyserCon National science fiction and fantasy convention in Rotorua in June 2019, as a member of the Core of SpecFicNZ for close to a decade (and President of the group for much of that), and as an active member of Young New Zealand Writers (promoting and developing young creatives in science fiction and fantasy) from 2017 onwards. She promotes New Zealand genre work and fandom both locally and internationally and advocates for a science fiction and fantasy community which encourages inclusiveness for all. Most of Grace’s spare time over the past ten years has been devoted to growing and supporting our fan community—usually while dressed as Capt. Kathryn Janeway or as your favourite TimeLord—making her a highly worthy recipient of this award.
Services to Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror
Melanie Harding-Shaw
Mel has been instrumental in bridging the gap between Kiwi SFF and Worldcon. She has organized a local group of Wellington writers across the SFF spectrum,including those who are familiar with Kiwi fandom and those who have historically worked in the literary scene. She is also coordinating Kiwi SFF participants at CoNZealand, both ensuring a wide variety of voices and encouraging those who might not otherwise attend to consider doing so. She is involved both with SpecFicNZ and the New Zealand Society of Authors to bring all authors of speculative work together to share knowledge and resources and celebrate Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror writing in Aotearoa.
