Tag Archives: Deimos

Pixel Scroll 4/25/23 Careful The Things You Scroll, Children Will Pixel

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(1) HUGO NOMINATIONS 101. For the benefit of people who haven’t had a lot of experience with the Hugos, Tarvalon has written “Demystifying the Hugo Award Nomination Process” at Reddit’s r/fantasy forum. And an interesting dialog between Tarvalon and Django Wexler continues in the comments.

… But because this is exactly the kind of nerd I am, I want to spend a little bit more time talking about the E Pluribus Hugo scoring system and its practical effects on crafting a nominating ballot. If you don’t care about the details, just nominate some things and let the math do what it does. If you’re curious, read on. And if you’re curious about the practical effects but not the voting mechanics, skip the next couple paragraphs and pick back up in the following section….

You’ll have to let us know how convincing you find Tarvalon’s ideas about how to do the most to help your favorites. (Another hat Tarvalon wears is being a judge in the Self-Published Science Fiction Book Competition.)

(2) VIEW THE ROSWELL AWARD CEREMONY. There will be a virtual celebration of the 2023 Roswell Award and New Suns Climate Fiction Award honorees on Sunday, May 21, 2023 at 11:00 a.m. Pacific. Free; Register here.

Free; Registration Required In an epic performance honoring planet Earth’s emerging sci-fi writers, celebrity guests deliver dramatic original short story readings! The Roswell Award and New Suns Climate Fiction Award: Virtual Readings & Honors recognizes outstanding new works of science fiction by emerging writers from across the United States and worldwide, including the winner of this year’s climate themed sci-fi story. This lively show will feature dramatic readings by celebrity guests (to be announced) from some of today’s hottest sci-fi and fantasy shows and movies. Following the readings, the authors will be honored for their writing.

(3) IT WILL HAVE TO DO. “John Scalzi says he has no other skills than writing” while answering the LA Times’ “Very Important Questions.”

Science fiction author John Scalzi stopped by the Los Angeles Times photo and video studio at the Festival of Books to tell us what his favorite kaiju is and answer other very important questions.

(4) NEWEST ADDITION TO TAFF EBOOKS. Jacq Monahan’s report of her 2012 Trans-Atlantic Fan Fund trip, Same Planet Different World, is now a free download at the TAFF Ebooks page. (Though don’t let that discourage you from making a little donation to the fund while you’re clicking.) Here’s an excerpt from Jacq’s arrival at Heathrow where she discovered that customs officials’ idea of “humor” is universal.  

…Instead he motioned me toward a chair and said we’d have to have a little interview because it was a different matter if I was going to be paid in some capacity to be in the UK. He started writing something down, and I started thinking in desperate expletives.

I learned later from someone in the know that if I was to be employed in the UK I had to have a “silver thing” in the back of my passport that showed I had the proper permission. It’s always good to know the technical term.

Once I understood that my words misled the agent (because his questions had misled me (she maintains) I interjected hastily, “No, no! I’m not working. I won a fan fund!” I then braced for the worst. How could I explain TAFF to a mundane? And a mundane official? And a mundane official with the keys to my British kingdom? I’d had a hard enough time trying to explain the fan fund to anyone, family or non-fan friend, employer – anyone. And now, here was bureaucracy standing firmly between me and clotted cream.

To my surprise he stopped writing and crossed out what he had already written. He believed me! I couldn’t believe me, my good luck, that is. But then, a warning. “I want you to know that I’ll be attending that convention, and if I see you working in any capacity, I’ll have you arrested!” I trotted away as quickly as possible and found a restroom. Relief was palpable in a few ways, and I used the plastic toothbrush to restore a smile….

(5) RESEARCHING FAN HISTORY. Fanac.org has made the videos available of its two-part “Researching Science Fiction FanHistory” Zoom panel.

  • Researching Science Fiction FanHistory (Pt1 of 2) – Rob Hansen, Andy Hooper, Mark Olson & Joe Siclari

The first fan history was written by Jack Speer in 1939, and the most recent is the crowd-sourced Fancyclopedia.org, updated as of yesterday. The fan historians on our panel each focus in a very different way on fan history…Rob Hansen, author of “Then: Science Fiction Fandom in the UK”, brings a UK centered perspective to global fandom, and Andy Hooper has deeply researched the first World Science Fiction convention, both publishing in the traditional way. 

Mark Olson and Joe Siclari are part of the FANAC Fan History project – Mark is chief editor of the crowd-sourced online Fancyclopedia.org, and Joe is the chairman behind the Fan History project, and in particular the driving force behind FANACs digital archive (FANAC.org)…

In this Part 1 video, the panelists talk about how they became interested in fandom and fan history in particular, and the different approaches they have taken to recording and interpreting fan history. You’ll hear about the creation of the first timeline of UK fan history, the nude figure with a dagger in each hand, and the tenuous but possible connection of fandom to the Zodiac killer. Perhaps most engrossing are the stories of contacts from non-fans, relatives of fans long gone. Some of these have no real understanding of what fandom was and is, but are seeking to learn about their relatives. There’s even an anecdote about Warren Fitzgerald, the African-American fan who was the founding president of the Scienceers, the first first regularly meeting sf fan club which was started in 1929.

Researching Science Fiction FanHistory (Pt2 of 2) – Rob Hansen, Andy Hooper, Mark Olson & Joe Siclari

In this Part 2 video, discussion ranges from academia to our panelists’ investigative techniques. When the primary resources are fanzines, researchers deal with first person accounts where “accuracy is not their primary virtue”, although how different that is from other histories is questionable. Unsurprisingly, panelists share stories and findings, more sometimes with each other than the audience.  Spoiler alert: John W. Campbell’s mother was not an identical twin!…Particularly interesting is a segment on the place of anecdote in fan history, and for those interested in learning more, there’s a “starter list” of readings. Audience Q&A forms the last portion of the recording, and with many of the audience experts in their own right, the questions (and answers) are first-rate.

I’m surprised to learn from a line in the announcement – “There’s even an anecdote about Warren Fitzgerald, the African-American fan who was the founding president of the Scienceers” – that the panel might be unaware of the extensive research some fans have done to put to the test Fitzgerald’s specific identification as an African-American. After I made the same assertion three years ago we had quite a donnybrook in the comments of the December 11, 2020 Scroll, and heard from people who have done a lot of research on Ancestry, through the census, etc.  

(6) WHAT’S UP WITH THE SOCIETY FOR CREATIVE ANACHRONISM? If you find the prospect of reading 42 pages of legal analysis about SCA kerfuffles irresistible, then “A Tale of 6 Sanctions” is for you. I did, of course, read it. Your mileage may vary. This is the introduction to the paper’s author:

In the SCA I am Aeron Harper, OL, OD, premier Society A&S Deputy for Historical Combat, and other awards and titles. My name is still on the society’s A&S rules for historical combat study, and on a number of kingdom’s C&T rules.

Mundanely, I am David Biggs, Attorney, U.S. Diplomat, and foreign policy advisor for the U.S. State Department. My day job includes interpreting, defining, and applying U.S. policies, which often involves ensuring they don’t contradict U.S. law. It also includes negotiating and implementing international agreements with foreign countries on behalf of the United States. I graduated from the University of Minnesota Law School, and was an editor on the Minnesota Law Review. All that to say, I know a little bit about researching, writing, interpreting, and applying laws and rules….

(7) HERE’S HOW IT PLAYS IN PEORIA. Public TV station WCBU is “Exploring the lost world of TV sci-fi in the 50s”.

“Twilight Zone” is often viewed as the first television series to showcase fantasy on the small screen. The Rod Serling program that ran from 1959 to 1964 is an oft-repeated TV classic with many memorable episodes but it wasn’t the first show to bring science fiction to television viewers.

“Captain Video and His Video Rangers” became the world’s first science fiction TV series when it went on the air in 1949 on the now defunct DuMont Television Network, said Alan Morton, author of “The Golden Age of Telefantasy,” a guide to sci-fi, fantasy and horror TV shows of the 1940s and 1950s.

Television was in its infancy in the 1950s with many of the earliest shows (like “Captain Video”) transmitted live. Most of these early sci-fi programs were aimed at kids, said Morton, citing entries such as “Tom Corbett, Space Cadet” (1950-55), “Space Patrol” (1950-55), “Captain Z-Ro” (1951-56) and “Rod Brown of the Rocket Rangers” (aired from 1953 to 1954 with a young Cliff Robertson as Ranger Rod Brown)….

(8) HARRY BELAFONTE (1927-2023). Singer Harry Belafonte died April 25 at the age of 96. His sff credis including guesting on The Muppets, and appearing in the Fifties doomsday film The World, the Flesh and the Devil, and the Nineties alternate America movie White Man’s Burden.

(9) MEMORY LANE.

1989 – [Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

Pat Murphy’s The City, Not Long After is a magical novel, one of those works that I reread regularly. 

Published thirty-four years ago by Doubleday, it’s set in San Francisco and much of the wonderfulness of the novel is indeed its setting (no spoiler there I’d say). Though the characters are interesting as well.

It was nominated for a Mythopoeic Fantasy Award.

And now our Beginning…

THE EARLY MORNING BREEZE BLEW through the vegetable garden in Union Square, shaking the leaves of the bean plants and the lacy carrot tops. The city of San Francisco was asleep. The city was dreaming.

In the Saint Francis Hotel, just off the Square, Danny-boy was dreaming of the color blue. With a paint roller on a long pole, he painted the sky. He had been at work for many hours. At least half of the expanse above him was smeared with paint of a thousand different shades: royal blue, navy, turquoise, baby blue, teal, the fragile hue of robins’ eggs, the treacherous blue-gray of the ocean at dusk. Toward the horizon, where Danny-boy’s roller had not yet reached, the blues faded to misty gray. But overhead, luminous colors swirled and flowed like the water in a river.

In the middle of the changing pattern, two patches of blue-gray coalesced. Bright eyes watched Danny-boy from the center of the sky. Dark blue shadows defined the angles of a face, the curves of a woman’s body. As Danny-boy stared upward, a young woman stepped out of the sky, looking more than a little confused.

The city slept, and its dreams drifted through the minds of its inhabitants, twisting and changing their thoughts.

“The man who called himself The Machine dozed on a narrow cot at the back of his workshop. In his dream, he was constructing an angel from objects he had gathered. The angel’s bones were pipes from the plumbing of an old Victorian mansion; its muscles were masses of copper wire, torn from the cables that ran beneath the city streets. On the angel’s massive wings, thousands of polished bottlecaps overlapped, making a pattern of scallops like the scales on a fish.

The Machine welded the last bottlecap to the wing and stepped back to admire his work. As he gazed up at the angel, he realized suddenly that his creation was not complete. Its chest was hollow: it had no heart.

“He heard footsteps and glanced behind him. A woman was walking toward him, carrying something in her cupped hands. He could not see what she carried, but he could hear the steady pounding of a heartbeat, keeping time with her footsteps.

“Dawn broke in the city: gray light shone on the gray stone buildings that surrounded the Civic Center Plaza. The statues on the facade of the public library showed signs of neglect. Over the years, pigeons had adorned the statues’ heads with streaks of white and deposited a clutter of feathers and broken nests at their feet.

In a tree that grew in the Plaza, a gray-muzzled monkey, one of the oldest of the troop that lived in the city, dreamed of the Himalayas. Icicles hanging from the eaves of a temple roof melted in the morning sun. Drops of falling water struck a bell, and the metal rang with a musical note. The water trickled away, whispering and crackling softly as it melted a path through the snow. The monkey stirred in its sleep. Changes were coming.

(10) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

  • Born April 25, 1897 — Fletcher Pratt. Pratt is best known for his collaborations with de Camp, the most well-known of which is the Harold Shea series which is collected as The Complete Enchanter. His solo fantasy novels The Well of the Unicorn and The Blue Star are also superb. Pratt established the literary dining club known as the Trap Door Spiders in 1944. The club would later fictionalized as the Black Widowers in a series of mystery stories by Asimov. Pratt would be fictionalized in one story, “To the Barest”, as the Widowers’ founder, Ralph Ottur. (Died 1956.)
  • Born April 25, 1907 — Michael Harrison. English writer of both detective and sff fiction. He wrote pastiches of Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes and Poe’s C. Auguste Dupin. His most remembered work is In the Footsteps of Sherlock Holmes, The London of Sherlock Holmes and The World of Sherlock Holmes. He was also a noted Sherlock Holmes scholar, being a member of both the Baker Street Irregulars of New York, and the Sherlock Holmes Society of London. He wrote three genre novels — The Bride of Frankenstein, Higher Things and The Brain. (Died 1991.)
  • Born April 25, 1915 — Mort Weisinger. Comic book editor best known for editing Superman during the Silver Age of comic books. He also served as story editor for the Adventures of Superman series. Before that he was one of the earliest active sf fans, working on fanzines like The Planet (1931) and The Time Traveller (1932) and attending the New York area fan club known as The Scienceers. (Died 1978.)
  • Born April 25, 1925 — Richard Deming. Ok, I think that all of the Man from U.N.C.L.E. novellas, or in this case the Girl from U.N.C.L.E. novellas, in the digest-sized Man from U.N.C.L.E. Magazine, were listed under the house name of Robert Hart Davis. Deming was only one of a very long list of writers (I know of Richard Curtis, Richard Deming, I. G. Edmonds, John Jakes, Frank Belknap Long, Dennis Lynds, Talmage Powell, Bill Pronzini, Charles Ventura and Harry Whittington) that were the writers who penned novellas in the twin U.N.C.L.E. series. (Died 1983.)
  • Born April 25, 1929 — Robert A. Collins. Scholar of science fiction who founded the International Conference for the Fantastic in the Arts. Editor of the Fantasy Newsletter & Fantasy Review from 1978 to 1987, and editor of the IAFA Newsletterfrom 1988 to 1993. Editor, The Scope of the Fantastic: Selected Essays from the First International Conference on the Fantastic in Literature and Film and Modes of the Fantastic: Selected Essays from the Twelfth Annual International Conference for the Fantastic in the Arts. (Died 2009.)
  • Born April 25, 1939 — Rex Miller. Horror writer with a hand in many pies, bloody ones at that. (Sorry couldn’t resist.) The Chaingang series featured Daniel Bunkowski, a half-ton killing-machine. Definitely genre. He contributed to some thirty anthologies including Hotter Blood: More Tales of Erotic Horror, Frankenstein: The Monster Wakes, Dick Tracy: The Secret Files and The Crow: Shattered Lives and Broken Dreams. The last are amazingly outstanding. (Died 2004.)
  • Born April 25, 1981 — Silvia Moreno-Garcia, 42. She’s the publisher of Innmouths Free Press, an imprint devoted to weird fiction. Not surprisingly, for the Press she co-edited with Paula R. Stiles the Historical Lovecraft and Future Lovecraft anthologies. She won a World Fantasy Award for the She Walks in Shadows anthology, also on Innsmouth Free Press. She was a finalist for the Nebula Award in the Best Novel category for her Gods of Jade and Shadow novel, which won a Sunburst and Ignyte Award. And finally with Lavie Tidhar, she edits the Jewish Mexican Literary Review. Not genre, but sort of genre adjacent. Canadian of Mexican descent.

(11) COMICS SECTION.

  • Bizarro shows what the medieval marketplace is calling for.  

(12) CLASSIC CARTOONS. StudyFinds ranks the “Best Cartoon Series Of All Time: Top 5 Cartoons Of All Time, According To Editors and Fans”. Looney Tunes is number one.

Cartoons and animated features have been delighting fans since the very beginnings of motion film. As a medium they allow creators to pull an audience into a realm of pure storytelling without limitations. Among all the beloved titles, it can be hard to choose a favorite. So, in the space of the small screen, we endeavor to ask the question, what are best cartoon series of all time?

A lot of nostalgia is associated with popping on your favorite kids’ movie. One recent article describes, “There’s something about watching your favorite animated film and seeing that Magic Kingdom logo that brings back some of the best childhood feelings and memories.” Although some people may automatically associate cartoons with children and humor, the best cartoons move past this stereotype to become a vehicle for storytelling. Slapstick, violence, and impossible situations are all the hallmarks of iconic animated shows….

(13) DUNE 2 TRAILER TEASE. “’Dune: Part Two’ Trailer Shows Timothee Chalamet Riding Giant Sandworm” – Variety saw the trailer at CinemaCon. When it hits YouTube we’ll link to it.

Timothée Chalamet has assumed his rightful place as Muad’Dib, prophet of the Fremen in the first trailer for “Dune: Part Two.”

“In the first movie Paul Atredis is a student…we really see Paul Atreides become a leader here,” Chalamet said at CinemaCon on Tuesday, teasing a first look at the sci-fi epic….

“Dune: Part Two,” which is produced by Legendary and Warner Bros., is set to be released on November 3, 2023. Warner Bros. showed the footage during its presentation to theater owners. It also shared footage and trailers from “Barbie,” “The Flash” and sequels to “Aquaman” and “The Nun.”

(14) READY FOR MY CLOSE-UP. From Nature, “First up-close images of Mars’s little-known moon Deimos”.

Images from the UAE’s Hope mission suggest that the moonlet’s composition is similar to that of the red planet’s surface.

The United Arab Emirates’ space probe Hope has taken the first high-resolution images of the farside of Mars’s moonlet Deimos. The observations add weight to the theory that Deimos formed together with Mars, rather than as an asteroid that was captured in the planet’s orbit, mission scientists say.

(15) MOON MISSION FAILS. Controllers could not regain contact after scheduled touchdown: “Commercial lunar lander presumed lost after historic moon landing attempt” at CNN.

A Japanese lunar lander, carrying a rover developed in the United Arab Emirates, attempted to find its footing on the moon’s surface Tuesday — and potentially mark the world’s first lunar landing for a commercially developed spacecraft. But flight controllers on the ground were not immediately able to regain contact, prompting the company to presume the spacecraft was lost.

The lander, built by Japanese firm Ispace, launched atop a SpaceX rocket from Cape Canaveral, Florida, on December 11. The spacecraft then made a three-month trek to enter orbit around the moon, which lies about 239,000 miles (383,000 kilometers) from Earth, using a low-energy trajectory. Overall, the journey took the lander about 870,000 miles (1.4 million kilometers) through space.

Touchdown was expected to occur Tuesday at 12:40 p.m. ET, which is Wednesday at 1:40 a.m. Japan Standard Time….

[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, Chris Barkley, Michael Toman, David Langford, Cat Eldridge, Mike Kennedy, and Andrew Porter for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Andrew (not Werdna).]

Pixel Scroll 3/6/20 Heavy Water, Holy Water, And Flit

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(1) AMAZING STORIES BUS STOP AD. Seen in New York City. Photo courtesy of von DImpleheimer.

(2) ON THE AIR. And the show is now with us. Steve Davidson’s post “Amazing Stories TV Show Debuts” (BEWARE SPOILERS) delivers this assessment:

…All in all – production values are what you would expect, the story is in line with the target the show has always sought (families watching and sharing together) and the theme is marginally SFnal, (though time travel afficianados will have plenty to talk about) and my overall conclusions are: time was not wasted watching this episode and we ought to stick with the show to see how it develops.

(3) IAFA SAYS IT MUST MEET TO SURVIVE. International Association for the Fantastic in the Arts 41 will be held March 18-21, however, the organizers are making some new options available: “ICFA 41: COVID-19, Cancellations, and Credits/Refunds”.

As a result of the ongoing uncertainty surrounding the news about COVID-19, the IAFA board would like to take this opportunity to issue an update on ICFA 41.

The conference will meet.

We have to meet certain guaranteed minimums for room occupancy, food and beverage expenditures, etc., specified in our contract with the hotel, or pay out of pocket. It is not an exaggeration to say that cancellation would jeopardize the very existence of the IAFA.

The first concern of the board members is members’ safety and well-being. We urge IAFA members to proactively research COVID-19 and consult status reports through reputable sources such as the World Health Organization (https://www.who.int/), the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (https://www.cdc.gov/), and the Florida department of health (http://www.floridahealth.gov/), whose websites are continually updated. We would also advise checking for updates with your travel provider and travel insurer.

…Because of the extraordinary circumstances, we are crediting registration for those who cancel as a result of the outbreak. This credit must be used within 2 years. We will provide refunds to people from countries under travel restrictions. Because we are required to have final numbers for rooms and meals to the hotel a week before the conference, we will provide credits or refunds only to people who cancel by 5p EST on March 9, 2020.

…The board is discussing a number of ways to make it possible for people not able to attend physically but who wish to have their work included in some way to do so. We will make an official announcement before the March 9 deadline.

More details at the link.

(4) FRANK HERBERT ON CORONAVIRUS. Or so the people tweeting it around have captioned this rewritten chart —

(5) PIXAR’S LATEST. Leonard Maltin applauds a new release: “Pixar Scores With Heartfelt ‘Onward’”.

Like the best Pixar and Disney animated films, this one supplies rooting interest in its heroes from the very start. We want them to succeed because we care about them and their quest. Who wouldn’t want to be reunited with a loved one, especially when his absence has left a void in their lives?

(6) SLOW START. NPR’s Glen Weldon reviews “‘Onward’: Timid Teen On A Mythic Quest For Elf-Assurance”.

In the opening minutes of Disney/Pixar’s Onward, we are met with various manifestations of loss.

There’s the film’s setting, a world where magic once flourished, and with it, pixies, unicorns, pegasi, elves, ogres, centaurs, mermaids — your standard-issue high-fantasy mythofaunic biome. But even here, in a gimmick the film leans into juuuuust enough, the Industrial Revolution arrived. As automation increased, magic faded. Elves still live in giant toadstools, but said toadstools are now rigidly apportioned into vast, Spielberg-suburban subdivisions and cul-de-sacs. Once-splendid unicorns have gone feral, raiding raid trash cans and hissing at passers-by like peculiarly horsey raccoons. If Middle-Earth had more strip-malls, it’d look something like this.

There’s also the loss experienced by the elf-family at the film’s center: mom Laurel (voiced by Julia Louis-Dreyfus) and her two sons — the younger, anxious Ian (voiced by Tom Holland) and his older, buff, RPG-obsessed brother Barley (Chris Pratt, squarely back in Andy Dwyer mode). It’s Ian’s 16th birthday, and he’s given a gift left to him by his late father, who passed away when Ian was too young to remember him: A wizard’s staff.

Finally, in these opening minutes, there’s still another feeling of loss that manifests in the viewer — that of lost opportunity.

The jokes are glib and smarmy, the family dynamics achingly familiar, and as we follow Ian to high school, his every encounter and interaction feels less Disney/Pixar and more Disney Channel — which is to say, too sweet, too cornball, too affected, too faux-contemporary. The average very young child in the audience won’t notice; the average parent will start checking the theater’s exits.

But!

On or about the 20-minute mark — not coincidentally, upon the arrival of a manticore called Corey, voiced by Octavia Spencer — the film seems to discover what it is: A testament to the remarkable degree of emotional expressiveness that Pixar’s character-animators can imbue into a story….

NPR hosts a 4-way discussion (audio, no transcript yet) here.

(7) PERSEVERANCE PLANS. BBC reports “Nasa 2020 robot rover to target Jezero ‘lake’ crater”.

The American space agency (Nasa) says it will send its 2020 Mars rover to a location known as Jezero Crater.

Nasa believes the rocks in this nearly 50km-wide bowl could conceivably hold a record of ancient life on the planet.

Satellite images of Jezero point to river water having once cut through its rim and flowed via a delta system into a big lake.

It is the kind of environment that might just have supported microbes some 3.5-3.9 billion years ago.

This was a period when Mars was much warmer and wetter than it is today.

What is so special about Jezero?

Evidence for the past presence of a lake is obviously a draw, but Ken Farley, the Nasa project scientist on the mission, said the delta traces were also a major attraction.

“A delta is extremely good at preserving bio-signatures – any evidence of life that might have existed in the lake water, or at the interface of the sediment and the lake water, or possibly things that lived in the headwaters region that were swept in by the river and deposited in the delta,” he told reporters.

Jezero’s multiple rock types, including clays and carbonates, have high potential to preserve the organic molecules that would hint at life’s bygone existence.

Narrated flythrough of planned route here.

(8) TODAY IN HISTORY.

  • March 6, 1936 — The “Income from Immigrants” episode of the Green Hornet radio show originated from WXYZ in Detroit. (It is also called “Ligget’s Citizenship Racket”.) The show was created by Fran Striker & George W. Trendle, and starred Al Hodge as the Green Hornet at this point, and Tokutaro Hayashi who had renamed Raymond Toyo by initial series director James Jewell. You can download the episode here.
  • March 6, 1938 — RKO first aired “The Bride of Death” with Orson Welles as  The Shadow. Welles prior to his War of The Worlds broadcast would play the role for thirty three episodes in 1937 and 1938 with Blue Coal being the sponsor. You can download it here.

(9) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

  • Born March 6, 1918 — Marjii Ellers. Longtime L.A. fan active in the LASFS. Her offices in the LASFS included Registrar and Scribe. She is known as well for her costumes at cons. Indeed, she received a Lifetime Achievement Award in 1990 from the International Costumers Guild. An avid fanzine publisher and writer, some of the fanzines she edited were Masqueraders’ Guide, More Lives Than One, Nexterday, One Equal Temper, Thousands of Thursdays, and Judges’ Guide. (Died 1999.)
  • Born March 6, 1928 — William F. Nolan, 92. Author of the long running Logan’s Run series (only the first was written with George Clayton Johnson). He started out in fandom in the Fifties publishing several zines including one dedicated to Bradbury. In May 2014, Nolan was presented with another Bram Stoker Award, for Superior Achievement in Nonfiction; this was for his collection about his late friend Ray Bradbury, called Nolan on Bradbury: Sixty Years of Writing about the Master of Science Fiction. He’s done far too much writing-wise for me to sum it him up. 
  • Born March 6, 1930 — Allison Hayes. She was Nancy Fowler Archer, the lead role, in The Attack of The 50 Foot Woman. Her first SF role was the year as Grace Thomas in The Unearthly. She’d be Donna in The Crawling Hand shortly thereafter. She died at age forty-seven from the result of injuries sustained from early on Foxfire, a mid Fifties Western that’s she’s actually in. That she made three SF films while in severe pain is amazing. (Died 1977.)
  • Born March 6, 1937 — Edward L. Ferman, 83. Editor and publisher who’s best known as the editor of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction from 1966 to 1991.  He also edited a zine I’ve not heard of, Venture Science Fiction Magazine, for two years 1969 – 1970). And, of course, he’s edited myriad anthologies that were assembled from F&SF
  • Born March 6, 1942 — Dorothy Hoobler, 78. Author with her husband, Thomas Hoobler, of the Samurai Detective series which is at least genre adjacent. More interestingly, they wrote a biography of Mary Shelley and her family called The Monsters: Mary Shelley and the Curse of Frankenstein which sounds absolutely fascinating. Note to ISFDB: no, it’s not a novel. Kindle has everything by them, alas Apple Books has only the biography.
  • Born March 6, 1957 — Ann VanderMeer, 63. Publisher and editor, and the second female editor of Weird Tales. As Fiction Editor of Weird Tales, she won a Hugo Award. In 2009 Weird Tales, edited by her and Stephen H. Segal, won a Hugo Award for Best Semiprozine. She is also the founder of The Silver Web magazine, a periodical devoted to experimental and avant-garde fantasy literature.
  • Born March 6, 1972 — K. J. Bishop, 48. Her first book, The Etched City, was nominated for a World Fantasy Award for Best Novel. It won the Ditmar Award.  She is a recipient of the Aurealis Award for best collection, That Book Your Mad Ancestor Wrote. Both works are available from the usual digital sources. 
  • Born March 6, 1979 — Rufus Hound, 41, Ok, I’ll admit it was his name that got him here. He also on the good fortune to appear as Sam Swift in “The Woman Who Lived”, easily one of the best Twelfth Doctor stories. He’s also played Toad in the world premiere of the musical, The Wind In The Willows in Plymouth, Salford and Southampton, as written by Julian Fellowes. 

(10) COMICS SECTION.

(11) BIERYOGA. [Item by Mike Kennedy.] If Worldcon, SMOFcon, etc. are looking for a new way to encourage fans to exercise at the con… well, it seems like a good fit for much of fandom. That said, notice the source of the article. — Funny or Die claims “‘Beer Yoga’ Is A Real Thing That Exists, Namaste”.

Although it’s impossible to predict exactly what the future holds, there are a couple things that are pretty much guaranteed to happen with each new year. First, we’re all going to make resolutions. Second, we’re all going to abandon those resolutions.

One of the most common goals we make for ourselves when January rolls around is hitting the gym more often, and that’s also one of the toughest things to stick with for more than a few months. Life gets in the way, gyms are far or expensive, and let’s be honest — working out sucks. Yeah, yeah, you get a rush of endorphins and you feel good afterward, but actually dragging your butt there and the entire process of exercising leave much to be desired. However, this year might be the year things change.

If you’re like everyone else on earth and struggle to hold fast to your New-Year-New-Me resolutions, look no further than Bieryoga….

(12) THE BINDING THAT TIES. NPR praises a documentary: “‘The Booksellers’ Speaks Volumes About Old Books And Those Who Love Them”.

As we hurtle closer to a time when little kids will look up from their tablets to inquire, “What was a book, Mommy?” much as they now ask, “What’s a record player?,” it may cheer you to learn, from a charming new documentary about bookselling, that while the middle-aged tend to play on Kindles these days, millennials are to be seen in droves reading print books on the New York subway. They’re probably also the ones ordering “vintage” turntables, and they may be driving the encouraging current renaissance of independent bookstores serving cappuccino on the side, to lure us back from Amazon.

The books being bought, sold and read there, though, are unlikely to be the kind found at the New York Book Fair in a gorgeous old building on the city’s Upper East Side: ancient tomes, some with curled and peeling pages, others gorgeously illuminated. The handlers of those books are the subject of D.W. Young’s beguiling film, The Booksellers, about the world of New York antiquarian book dealers. They’re a vanishing breed who, with some exceptions, regard their work more as consuming passion than as career.

(13) CREDENTIAL CAPTURE. Here’s a bizarre GIF – “Cat UFO Abduction”.

(14) FROZEN TWO. “Destination Uranus! Rare chance to reach ice giants excites scientists”. Tagline: A planetary alignment provides a window to visit Uranus and Neptune — but time is tight.

Momentum is building among planetary scientists to send a major mission to Uranus or Neptune — the most distant and least explored planets in the Solar System. Huge gaps remain in scientists’ knowledge of the blueish planets, known as the ice giants, which have been visited only once by a space probe. But the pressure is on to organize a mission in the next decade, because scientists want to take advantage of an approaching planetary alignment that would cut travel time.

(15) DON’T PANIC, I’LL BE BACK. Science Alert “Japan Is Sending a Lander to a Martian Moon, And It’ll Be Back by 2030”.

Sending a mission to moons of Mars has been on the wish list for mission planners and space enthusiasts for quite some time. For the past few years, however, a team of Japanese Space Agency (JAXA) engineers and scientists have been working on putting such a mission together.

Now, JAXA announced this week that the Martian Moon eXploration (MMX) mission has been greenlighted to move forward, with the goal of launching an orbiter, lander — and possibly a rover — with sample return capability in 2024.

For the past three years, MMX has been in what JAXA calls a Pre-Project phase, which focuses on research and analysis for potential missions, such as simulating landings to improve spacecraft design. Now that the mission has been moved to the development phase, the focus will be on moving ahead with the development of mission hardware and software.

(16) TRAILER TIME. Dreamworks Animation dropped a trailer for Trolls World Tour. In theaters April 2020.

Anna Kendrick and Justin Timberlake return in an all-star sequel to DreamWorks Animation’s 2016 musical hit: Trolls World Tour. In an adventure that will take them well beyond what they’ve known before, Poppy (Kendrick) and Branch (Timberlake) discover that they are but one of six different Troll tribes scattered over six different lands and devoted to six different kinds of music: Funk, Country, Techno, Classical, Pop and Rock. Their world is about to get a lot bigger and a whole lot louder.

[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, Mike Kennedy, Martin Morse Wooster, Chip Hitchcock, Cat Eldridge, Michael Tolan, JJ, and Andrew Porter for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Jeff Jones.]