2023 Dragon Award Winners

The 2023 Dragon Award winners were announced on September 3.

1. Best Science Fiction Novel

  • The Icarus Plot by Timothy Zahn

2. Best Fantasy Novel (Including Paranormal)

  • Witch King by Martha Wells

3. Best Young Adult / Middle Grade Novel

  • The Golden Enclaves by Naomi Novik

4. Best Alternate History Novel

  • Lost In Time by A.G. Riddle

5. Best Horror Novel

  • A House With Good Bones by T. Kingfisher

6. Best Illustrative Cover

  • Tower of Silence by Kurt Miller

7. Best Comic Book or Graphic Novel

  • Dune: House Harkonnen by Brian Herbert, Kevin J Anderson, Michael Shelfer

8. Best Science Fiction or Fantasy TV Series, TV or Internet

  • The Sandman, Netflix

9. Best Science Fiction or Fantasy Movie

  • Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves by Jonathan Goldstein, John Francis Daley

10. Best Digital Game

  • The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, Nintendo EPD

11. Best Tabletop Game

  • Magic the Gathering: The Lord of the Rings: Tales of Middle-earth, Wizards of the Coast

Also presented during the ceremony:

HANK REINHART FANDOM AWARD

  • Amanda Makepeace

JULIE AWARD

  • Marty Krofft

In 1998, Dragon Con established the Julie Award presented annually in tribute to the legendary Julie Schwartz. The Julie Award is bestowed for universal achievement spanning multiple genres, selected each year by our esteemed panel of industry professionals. The first recipient in 1998 was science fiction and fantasy Grandmaster Ray Bradbury.

2023 MIKE RESNICK MEMORIAL AWARD

For the best unpublished science fiction short story by a new author

  • “For the Great and Immortal” by Daniel Burnbridge (South Africa)

[Thanks to Ray Radlein for livetweeting the results!]

Scoring the 2023 Dragon Award Nominees

Dragon Awards trophies from 2016. Photo by Fran Wilde.

The 2023 Dragon Awards Ballot came out yesterday and collectively the nominees kept up the trend of becoming more organic year by year — books that are widely talked about, and some even up for other awards in the field — an impressive accomplishment in the face of award instructions that encourage writers to campaign (i.e., “it is perfectly acceptable for you to encourage your fans to vote for you.”)

SUPPORT FOR THE FINALISTS. The Dragon Awards never publish detailed voting statistics. Therefore, since the award was launched File 770 has looked at the number of Goodreads ratings received by the finalists as a means of exploring how extensive their fan bases might be.

The 2023 ballot maintains the trend of finalists being books that more readers are paying attention to, evident in the declining number of finalists that have microscopic totals of Goodreads ratings from readers. Here’s a year-by-year summary of the Dragon Award book finalists with fewer than 100 ratings as of the time the ballot came out:

2017 – 24
2018 – 11
2019 – 8
2021 – 3
2022 – 0
2023 — 2

(I didn’t research the numbers in 2020.)

TRIMMING THE BALLOT. This year’s ballot is shorter because last November the Dragon Award administrators announced they were reducing the number of award categories from 15 to 11 in 2023. Two book categories have been eliminated. Six game categories were consolidated into three. They also added a Best Illustrative Book Cover category.

Media Tie-In and Military Fantasy/Sci-Fi were cut from the ballot. The reason why may be guessed at from the numbers. Last year the five finalists in the Media-Tie in category included three that had less than 500 ratings on Goodreads — by that measure the weakest of all the book categories. Military Fantasy/Sci-Fi last year was weak in a different way. Its strongest finalist still had fewer than 5,000 Goodreads ratings, whereas every other book category (except Media Tie-in) had at least one finalist with over 30,000 ratings.

But did chopping those two categories result in a stronger ballot? Surprisingly, no.

In 2022 when there were 7 book categories and 40 finalists, only four of those books had fewer than 500 Goodreads ratings.

In 2023 with 5 categories and just 30 finalists, eight books have less than 500 Goodreads ratings.

THE INSIDE STATS. Here are the 2023 Dragon Awards finalists in the book categories with their dates of publication and the number of Goodreads ratings as of August 8.

1. Best Science Fiction Novel

RATINGSTITLE
23,280The Daughter of Doctor Moreau by Silvia Moreno-Garcia (7/22)
10,215Children of Memory by Adrian Tchaikovsky (1/23)
5,954Eversion by Alastair Reynolds (5/22)
4,243The Spare Man by Mary Robinette Kowal (10/22)
3,101Translation State by Ann Leckie (6/23)
402Neom by Lavie Tidhar (11/22)
312The Icarus Plot by Timothy Zahn (7/22)

2. Best Fantasy Novel (Including Paranormal)

RATINGSTITLE
121,718Babel by R. F. Kuang (8/22)
54,048Tress of the Emerald Sea by Brandon Sanderson (1/23)
32,500The Atlas Paradox by Olivie Blake (10/22)
6,192Witch King by Martha Wells (5/23)
519Tower of Silence by Larry Correia (4/23)
20Into the Vortex by Charles E. Gannon (3/23)

3. Best Young Adult / Middle Grade Novel

RATINGSTITLE
55,342The Golden Enclaves by Naomi Novik (9/22)
37,730Bloodmarked by Tracy Deonn (11/22)
16,998Foul Lady Fortune by Chloe Gong (9/22)
1,332Rust in the Root by Justina Ireland (9/22)
737Academy Arcanist by Shami Stovall (8/22)
472The Scratch Daughters by H. A. Clarke (10/22)

4. Best Alternate History Novel

RATINGSTITLE
14,500Lost In Time by A.G. Riddle (9/22)
786Hidden Voices by Dan Willis (9/22)
204Halcyon by Elliot Ackerman (4/23)
183The Mother by B.L. Blanchard (5/23)
68The Revolutionary War by Christopher G. Nuttall (1/23)

5. Best Horror Novel

RATINGSTITLE
43,231The Only One Left by Riley Sager (6/23)
13,746A House With Good Bones by T. Kingfisher (3/23)
7,036The Devil Takes You Home by Gabino Iglesias (8/22)
9,084The Pallbearers Club by Paul Tremblay (7/22)
1,830Reluctant Immortals by Gwendolyn Kiste (8/22)
390No Gods For Drowning by Hailey Piper (9/22)

P.S. HOW DID ARISTOPHANES’ SLATE PERFORM? The early lock Sad Puppies and their sympathizers had on the Dragon Award has faded with the years to their intense frustration.

In 2023 a Twitter/X user with 90K followers who goes by the handle Aristophanes claimed he was incensed that works like John Scalzi’s Kaiju Preservation Society became Dragon Award finalists. He called for people to band together and nominate all the works on his ticket. Thread starts here. Remember that people can only make one nomination in each award category; this screencap shows the works Aristophanes was pushing.

Did the masses follow his lead? Negatory, good buddy. Seven of Aristophanes’ picks failed to make the final ballot. And since Zahn and Correia have made the Dragon Awards ballot without help in past years you can hardly credit their appearances to his slate. The lined-out titles are the ones that didn’t make it.

1. Best Science Fiction Novel

The Icarus Plot by Timothy Zahn

2. Best Fantasy Novel (Including Paranormal)

Tower of Silence by Larry Correia

3. Best Young Adult / Middle Grade Novel

The Frugal Wizard’s Handbook for Surviving Medieval England by Brandon Sanderson and Robert E. Waters

4. Best Alternate History Novel

1637: The Transylvanian Decision by Eric Flint and Robert E. Waters

5. Best Horror Novel

Haunted by the Past by Simon R. Green

6. Best Illustrative Cover

Wraithbound by Jeff Brown

7. Best Comic Book or Graphic Novel

Isom by Eric D. July/Rippaverse Comics

8. Best Science Fiction or Fantasy TV Series, TV or Internet

Cyberpunk Edgerunners, Netflix

9. Best Science Fiction or Fantasy Movie

Puss in Boots: The Last Wish by Joel Crawford

10. Best Digital Game

Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun, Auroch Digital

11. Best Tabletop Game

Cat the Magic Game, Chenoweth Press

2023 Dragon Awards Ballot

The 2023 Dragon Awards Ballot was published on August 8. Registered voters should expect to receive notice by email.

To be eligible for the 2023 Dragon Awards the book, comic, game, movie, must have been released between July 1, 2022 and the close of the eligibility period, June 30, 2023, which accounts for the mix of nominees from last year and this year.

Most categories have six nominees, but Best Alternate History has only five, and Best Science Fiction Novel and Best Science Fiction or Fantasy TV Series has seven.

Recipients of the award will be announced at Dragon Con.

2023 Nominees

1. Best Science Fiction Novel

  • Eversion by Alastair Reynolds
  • The Spare Man by Mary Robinette Kowal
  • Children of Memory by Adrian Tchaikovsky
  • Translation State by Ann Leckie
  • Neom by Lavie Tidhar
  • The Daughter of Doctor Moreau by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
  • The Icarus Plot by Timothy Zahn

2. Best Fantasy Novel (Including Paranormal)

  • Witch King by Martha Wells
  • Tower of Silence by Larry Correia
  • Babel by R. F. Kuang
  • Tress of the Emerald Sea by Brandon Sanderson
  • Into the Vortex by Charles E. Gannon
  • The Atlas Paradox by Olivie Blake

3. Best Young Adult / Middle Grade Novel

  • The Golden Enclaves by Naomi Novik
  • The Scratch Daughters by H. A. Clarke
  • Rust in the Root by Justina Ireland
  • Academy Arcanist by Shami Stovall
  • Foul Lady Fortune by Chloe Gong
  • Bloodmarked by Tracy Deonn

4. Best Alternate History Novel

  • Lost In Time by A.G. Riddle
  • Hidden Voices by Dan Willis
  • Halcyon by Elliot Ackerman
  • The Mother by B.L. Blanchard
  • The Revolutionary War by Christopher G. Nuttall

5. Best Horror Novel

  • The Devil Takes You Home by Gabino Iglesias
  • Reluctant Immortals by Gwendolyn Kiste
  • A House With Good Bones by T. Kingfisher
  • No Gods For Drowning by Hailey Piper
  • The Pallbearers Club by Paul Tremblay
  • The Only One Left by Riley Sager

6. Best Illustrative Cover

  • Ashes of Man by Kieran Yanner
  • River of Ashes by Sam Shearon
  • But Not Broken by Cedar Sanderson
  • Titan Mage: Apocalypse by Jackson Tjota
  • Tower of Silence by Kurt Miller
  • Wraithbound by Jeff Brown

7. Best Comic Book or Graphic Novel

  • Dune: House Harkonnen by Brian Herbert, Kevin J Anderson, Michael Shelfer
  • Kaya by Wes Craig
  • Dawn of DC: Green Arrow by Joshua Williamson, Sean Izaakse
  • Wolverine by Benjamin Percy, Juan Jose Ryp
  • X-Men by Gerry Duggan, Joshua Cassara
  • Night Fever by Ed Brubaker, Sean Phillips, Jacob Phillips

8. Best Science Fiction or Fantasy TV Series, TV or Internet

  • Andor, Disney+
  • The Last of Us, HBO
  • The Sandman, Netflix
  • Strange New Worlds, Paramount+
  • The Mandalorian, Disney+
  • Picard, Paramount+
  • House of the Dragon, HBO

9. Best Science Fiction or Fantasy Movie

  • Avatar: The Way of Water by James Cameron
  • Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves by Jonathan Goldstein, John Francis Daley
  • Everything Everywhere All at Once by Daniel Kwan, Daniel Scheinert
  • Guardians of the Galaxy 3 by James Gunn
  • Puss in Boots: The Last Wish by Joel Crawford
  • Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse by Joaquim Dos Santos, Kemp Powers, Justin K. Thompson

10. Best Digital Game

  • Diablo IV, Blizzard Entertainment
  • Hogwarts Legacy, Avalanche Software
  • Star Wars Jedi: Survivor, Respawn Entertainment
  • The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, Nintendo EPD
  • Overwatch 2, Blizzard Entertainment
  • Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II, Infinity Ward

11. Best Tabletop Game

  • Frosthaven, Cephalofair Games
  • Earth, Inside Up Games
  • Magic the Gathering: The Lord of the Rings: Tales of Middle-earth, Wizards of the Coast
  • Dorfromantik – The Boardgame, Pegasus Spiele
  • Turing Machine, Scorpion Masque
  • Alien Role-playing Game: Heart of Darkness, Free League

[Thanks to Warren Belanger for the story.]

Pixel Scroll 7/18/23 I Only Came To Say I Must Be Scrolling

(1) LAST DAY TO NOMINATE FOR DRAGON AWARDS. Nominations are being taken for the 2023 Dragon Awards until July 19.

Need more information about what to put on your ballot? Red Panda Fraction has assembled a Dragon Awards 2023 Eligible Works spreadsheet in the format of Renay’s Hugo Awards Spreadsheet.

Bear in mind that voters are allowed to make only one nomination per category. However, that is somewhat offset by the Dragon Awards having six book categories. (But there are no short fiction categories). [Via Camestros Felapton.]

(2) SLOW BOAT. Aimee Ogden’s name is on the cover of F&SF but for the benefit of other writers she is calling them out about her story submission experience. Thread starts here. Here are some excerpts.

(3) PUBLISHING FACES MENTAL HEALTH ISSUES. The Guardian hears from all sectors that “’There’s an industry-wide mental health crisis’: authors and publishers on why the books sector needs to change”.

Author and publisher welfare has been a hot topic in the books industry of late. Publishing houses, trade unions and industry bodies have scrambled for solutions following a survey by the Bookseller in which debut authors reported overwhelmingly negative publication experiences: more than half of respondents said the process adversely affected their mental health. Now, a series of measures are being rolled out across the industry in response to these concerns.

This month, Anna Frame, communications director at the independent publisher Canongate, has confirmed the launch of two initiatives: an authors’ handbook in partnership with the Society of Authors (SoA) and a resource pack for publishers, in conjunction with English Pen. Canongate has also announced that it will publish fewer books so that it can dedicate more time to authors.

These measures follow news that the Orion publishing group will establish an academy for debut novelists with the aim of “demystifying the process and ensuring expectations are clear”. Meanwhile, the Publishers Publicity Circle (PPC) is launching free media training and crisis communications sessions for publishers….

(4) MAYBE WE DIDN’T MISS MUCH. What if Winnipeg was running the 2023 Worldcon instead of Chengdu? Well, they’re running the NASFiC this week and here’s the email Robert J. Sawyer’s wrote to Pemmi-Con’s head of programming which he posted on Facebook today.  

The NASFiC in Winnipeg begins tomorrow. Still no schedule on the website, no informationa about any signings, readings, or kaffeeklatsches, and no updated emails from programming about the time-zone screw-up on the personal panel lists they sent out.

Having to ferret out on my own what times they’ve actually got me scheduled, I’ve just sent this email to programming. Note for future cons: sending out all your programming emails from an email address that says “[email protected]” does NOT make communication easy…

And Sawyer continues from there, trying to get his schedule sorted.

The schedule’s not easy to find – you can’t go directly to it from the Pemmi-Con home page menu – but it looks like there is a schedule online: Schedule | Pemmi-Con.

(5) OP-ED. [Uncredited Item by Guest Author.] It is true that there are many sides to a story, and it is also true that western countries had been and some still do, have oppressive policies toward indigenous and other minority groups, and perhaps it is a stretch to call the camps in Xinjiang as concentration camps where the images of death camps and gas chambers immediately came to mind. However, it is indisputable that such camps exist, and simply calling them re-education camps lessens their intended purposes.

The fact is that the Chinese government is systematically erasing minority views and even languages. We don’t even have to look at Tibet or Xinjiang, but even in Han populated provinces such as Guangdong and the Hong Kong city, teaching and using the Cantonese language is being discouraged, and this is a Han Chinese dialect.

Political oppression is also real. Just a month ago, the Hong Kong government charged 8 democratic leaders for seditious activities:

They promise they will bring these people to “justice” regardless where they live and to the end of time.

At DisCon 3, during the last session before the Site Selection vote, the Chinese committee said “You can say whatever you want at the convention (without being prosecuted)”. How far will that truly go? What if a fan wears a “Democracy for Hong Kong” T-shirt? Note that I carefully said “Democracy” and not “Independence”. Will they be escorted to the airport immediately, or worse outcome, if they are a Chinese citizen?

(6) B5 ON BLU-RAY. J. Michael Straczynski told Facebook readers today that to celebrate B5’s 30th Anniversary, Babylon 5: The Complete Series will be released on Blu-Ray December 5, 2023. Pre-orders can be placed starting today.

…To address some of the obvious questions: I wasn’t directly involved with the release, so I don’t know much more than you do or what’s in the release/at the retail sites but I can add what little I do know: the release includes The Gathering (but not the movies or Crusade) because TG was our pilot (technically the first) episode, so it’s a legit part of the series which fits the title mandate; the other movies were separate, and Crusade is a completely different series, so it doesn’t belong in this box set.

This is essentially the same as the very nice 4:3 remaster done for HBO-Max, which matches the original broadcast, but putting it onto Blu-Ray increases the bitrate so it should look even better than it did there. WB wanted to include the commentaries but with everything else involved with this, it apparently wasn’t feasible (that’s the extent of what I was told, so I’ve no idea what that entails)….

…What matters most in all this is that after years of asking for a Blu-Ray release, which will make this show look more beautiful than it ever has before. Fans can now own the full series in pristine form on physical media without being held hostage by the whims of streamers. I’m very excited by this release, as it further assures the legacy of Babylon 5. Onward!

(7) AI-SPECIFIC CONTRACT LANGUAGE. Publishers Weekly reports “Illustration Agencies Introduce New AI-Specific Contract Clause”.

All ITSme Society illustration agencies will include a new clause in their client contracts protecting the rights of illustrators to their original illustrations from reproduction or other use for purposes of training and artificial intelligence models. The initiative was led by Kate Kendrick, global manager of Astound US Inc. Other participating agencies include Advocate Art, Artistique Int, Illo, and the Yeon Agency.

“We want to get ahead of the curve before there is a halt within the world of publishing—we support our actors and writers on strike, and we’d like to get ahead and not have it come to that for illustrators,” the agencies said in a statement. The clause, they continued, “states that the illustrator must give prior consent to permit the client/publisher to use technologies that are capable of generating works in the same style or genre as their work. Our aim is to get ahead of these advancing technologies and to protect the artists and their artwork against the use of AI/ML models.”

(8) TINGLE TALKS TO LITHUB. “Chuck Tingle on How Writing is Like Driving, Being an Autistic Artist, and More” at Literary Hub.

LH: Which non-literary piece of culture—film, tv show, painting, song—could you not imagine your life without?

CT: i would say my number one most important piece of art that i always return to, and thing that is probably most influential on my writing and my existence as a buckaroo, is probably STOP MAKING SENSE the talking heads live film, and also album that comes with it. that is probably chucks number one artistic touchstone even over any book.

first as an autistic buckaroo, that movie and the subtext around it is what made me proud to be autistic like david byrne. being on the spectrum was never a bad diagnosis for me it was ALWAYS just about the coolest thing someone could be because talking heads were the coolest band in the dang world. so watching that was a real big moment for me to think “wow, what a special tradition of artist i am walking in the steps of”

but even outside of that, i think the way the show is setup is just beautiful, and the songs they picked and the way those songs are presented. to me what is says is “there is so much more to art than the medium itself, there is all the other things around it.” art does not exist in a vacuum, so it is always funny to me when buds try to seperate it from the context of the time and place. bud the context is ALSO part of the artwork, and i think you can really see that in the way those songs are presented….

(9) BOX OFFICE IMPROBABLE. [Item by Mike Kennedy.] Despite a much better reception from the critics, the latest Mission Impossible movie has opened with figures extremely similar to the latest Indiana Jones flick. Both somewhat <looks over glasses> disappointing. Perhaps audience reception will echo the critics and MI7 will have more legs than IJ5. “’Mission Impossible 7’ Falls Short of Box Office Expectations” in Variety.

Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One” topped domestic box office charts while falling short of initial expectations. Tom Cruise’s latest blockbuster collected $56.2 million between Friday and Sunday, a lackluster start for a movie that cost nearly $300 million before marketing.

Heading into the weekend, Paramount and Skydance’s action-adventure was hoping to establish a new franchise record with $60 million or more. Instead, ticket sales landed behind 2018’s “Mission: Impossible – Fallout” ($61 million) and 2000’s “Mission: Impossible II” ($57.8 million), which remain as the top openings in the 27-year-old series.

(10) MEMORY LANE.

2017 [Written by Cat Eldridge from a choice by Mike Glyer.]

Fran Wilde has written five novels with latest being The Ship of Stolen WordsUpdraft, her first novel, won an Andre Norton Award, most excellent to do, also the Compton Crook Award, the Baltimore SF Society’s Best First Novel Award. Riverland also won the Andre Norton Award.

Did I also mention that she’s simply amazing at penning shorter works? I will do so now. She’s written around fifty stories, four poems and a considerable number of essays such as “A Recipe for Summoning Aliette de Bodard”. So our Beginning comes from one of these works, “Clearly Lettered in a Mostly Steady Hand” which appeared first in Uncanny.

It would be nominated for a Hugo at Worldcon 76 as well as a Nebula and a World Fantasy Award. It would win the Eugie Foster Memorial Award for Short Fiction.

And now a short but fascinating Beginning….

Entrance

There’s a ticket booth on my tongue.

Don’t look in my eyes, don’t plead curiosity, you won’t get anywhere with that. Try it and you’ll see your reflection in my sea-green gaze: your shadow sprinting through the heavy glass doors. You’ll smell a whiff of brine, perhaps something more volatile. You’ll be caught and held, while your likeness departs. You don’t want that.

No one wants to be pinned between an entrance and an exit, unless you’re part of the show.

Here’s what you do instead: drop your dime on the rose carpet, just there. Don’t pick it up. The carpet’s sticky. Don’t ask why. Stare at my lips, my hands clasped over my velvet skirts, what rests below that, and wait.

If you’re worthy, I’ll say the word. Your dime gets you a look and a souvenir. Your hands are beautiful, did you know that?

(11) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

  • Born July 18, 1913 Red Skelton. Comedian of the first order. The Red Skelton Hour ran for three hundred and thirty-eight episodes. I remember Freddie the Freeloader. He’s here because ISFDB says he wrote A Red Skelton in Your Closet which is also called Red Skelton’s Favorite Ghost Stories. He also has cameos in Around the World in Eighty Days and Those Magnificent Men in their Flying Machines, both of which I consider at least genre adjacent. (Died 1997.)
  • Born July 18, 1943 Charles Waugh, 80. Anthologist and author, whose anthology work up to 2013 numbered over two hundred titles (!), mostly done with Martin H. Greenberg but a handful done with other co-editors as Greenberg died in 2011. Name a subject and there’s likely an anthology on that subject that he had a hand in.  
  • Born July 18, 1956 Deborah Christian, 67. She’s an author and game designer who has designed and edited role-playing game materials for Dungeons & Dragons such as Tales of the Outer PlanesBestiary of Dragons and GiantsDragon Dawn, and Kara-Tur: The Eastern Realms.  She also writes fiction under the name Deborah Teramis Christian with genre novel such as The Truthsayer’s Apprentice and her latest, Splintegrate.
  • Born July 18, 1967 Paul Cornell, 56. Author of the Shadow Police series which is quite excellent as well as writing a lot of television scripts for Doctor Who including the stellar Tenth Doctor two part story “Human Nature“ and “The Family of Blood” with one of the best endings ever, Primieval and Robin Hood. He was part of the regular panel of the SF Squeecast podcast which won multiple Hugo Awards for best fancast. 
  • Born July 18, 1967 Vin Diesel, 56. His first genre role was as the delightful voice of The Iron Giant. He next shows playing Riddick in Pitch Black, the first in The Chronicles of Riddick franchise. He’s Hugo Cornelius Toorop in Babylon A.D. and he’s the fascinating if enigmatic voice of Groot in Guardians of the Galaxy and other MCU films. 
  • Born July 18, 1980 Kristen Bell, 43. Veronica Mars. Genre, well not really, but a lot of y’all watched it. She also voiced Jade Wilson in Teen Titans Go! To the Movies which I highly recommend as it’s highly meta. Really it is.
  • Born July 18, 1982 Priyanka Chopra, 41. Alex Parrish in Quantico, she became the first South Asian to headline an American network drama series. Is it genre? Maybe, maybe not, though it could fit very nicely into a Strossian Dark State. Some of her work in her native India such as The Legend of Drona and Love Story 2050 is genre as is Krrish 3, an Indian SF film she was in. She’s got a key role in the Matrix Resurrections film. No, I’m not saying what it is as some of you possibly haven’t seen it. 

(12) COMICS SECTION.

(13) DANGEROUS MEDIA. The New York Times reviews Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s novel Silver Nitrate: “The Dark Magic Wrought by a Nazi Occultist and a Doomed Horror Film”.

… Montserrat is a reclusive sound editor who’s caring for her sister, who has cancer. She has three loves: horror movies, her white Volkswagen and her childhood friend Tristán Abascal, a tall, handsome, washed-up actor. Montserrat is abrasive and nerdy; Tristán, “more Cantinflas than James Bond,” is smooth, but also a goof. When he reaches out to reconnect, it means he’s between relationships; this time he also needs to borrow her car.

The plot is set into motion only after a long conversation between the two friends and Abel Urueta, Tristán’s neighbor and a once-famous Mexican horror film director. Over whiskey, he talks about a production he never completed, “Beyond the Yellow Door,” which was co-written by Wilhelm Ewers, a Nazi occultist who believed that silver nitrate film was “a perfect medium for sealing spells.” But when Ewers died before “Beyond the Yellow Door” wrapped, his magic went haywire, destroying the highly flammable nitrate prints of the film, and inflicting a curse on the cast and crew.

Urueta, who has one last canister stashed in his freezer, has an idea: If Montserrat and Tristán help him finish the project, perhaps the curse could be lifted….

 (14) THE THREE LAWS. Behind a paywall in the Boston Globe, Jay Houlihan’s letter to the editor reminds readers “Author Isaac Asimov saw AI’s risks. Now we’re rapidly facing them down.”

Re “Dan Hendrycks wants to save us from an AI catastrophe. He’s not sure he’ll succeed.” (Ideas, July 9): The potential for catastrophic results from advanced technology is not a new idea. The science fiction writer Isaac Asimov identified and addressed the risk in a 1942 short story, through his Three Laws of Robotics: 1) A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm. 2) A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law. 3) A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law. Though it may have taken us 80 years to reach the point where this risk is on the near-term horizon, Asimov was nothing if not prescient. Much like climate change, we may be rapidly approaching a point with artificial intelligence where reverse is no longer an option.

(15) MORE ON ASIMOV. Wailin Wong just hosted an episode of The Indicator podcast on NPR about how Asimov’s Foundation series inspired fans to pursue careers in economics. “How Isaac Asimov’s ‘Foundation’ helped set two economists on their career path” on The Indicator from Planet Money at NPR.

When we talk about classic economic texts, you might think of something like Adam Smith’s “The Wealth of Nations.” But how about the Foundation series by Isaac Asimov?

One of the big ideas at the heart of this science fiction saga is that math can predict and shape the future. We hear from two economists who tell us how the ideas in Foundation helped set them on their career path.

(16) WHEN THE WORLD DISCOVERED TOLKIEN WROTE OTHER THINGS. “Talking Tolkien: On The Tolkien Reader” by Rich Horton at Black Gate.

The Tolkien Reader was first published in 1966 by Ballantine Books in the US; in response to the greatly expanding popularity of The Lord of the Rings, driven by the paperback editions from Ballantine (and the pirated edition from Ace.) This was an attempt to bring a varied sampling of his work to readers hungry for more. I read it myself in the early ’70s, after I read The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. As an introduction it reprints a piece Peter Beagle did for Holiday (perhaps at the instigation of Alfred Bester?) called “Tolkien’s Magic Ring”, which primarily discusses the Middle-Earth books.

It’s a good and varied collection throughout, and really does the job of showing a different side to Tolkien (though not THAT different!) from that seen in The Lord of the Rings. I’ll be looking at each of the sections separately, and slightly out of order, in that I think the best part by far is Tree and Leaf, which comes second in the book….

(17) SHELVES OF THE AGES. “Halls of Ancient Wisdom: 7 Remarkable Ancient Libraries” at Ancient Origins.

2.    The Library of Ashurbanipal – A King’s Passion Project

Much older than the library of Alexandria, Ashurbanipal was founded in Nineveh, Assyria in the 7th century BC. It was one of the earliest, and most remarkable libraries, in the ancient world and was named after its founder, King Ashurbanipal.

Built as part of the royal palace, this ancient library held an extensive collection of clay tablets written in the cuneiform script, the most widespread form of writing in the ancient Middle East. After the library’s destruction, it’s estimated around 30,000 of these tablets were salvaged, giving us an idea of just how significant this repository of knowledge was. 

King Ashurbanipal built the library to highlight his empire’s vast intellectual prowess. He was a leader who valued intellectualism and was renowned for his patronage of learning. The collection held texts from all the civilizations the Assyrians had interacted with, making it a melting pot of knowledge from ancient Mesopotamia, Sumer, Babylon, and beyond. Not just a storehouse of ancient knowledge, the library was a center for early scholarship and attracted scribes, scholars, and translators who studied and translated texts from different languages. 

Sadly, the library’s heyday was short-lived. It’s believed the library fell alongside Nineveh itself in 612 BC when it was raided by the Medes, Babylonians, and Scythians. The library’s ruins were discovered by Austen Henry Layard in 1849. Thankfully, the fires that were meant to destroy the tablets actually preserved them and now the majority of the library’s knowledge resides in the British Museum. 

(18) SCORN AND DEFIANCE; SLIGHT REGARD, CONTEMPT. Matt Berry and Peter Capaldi really let it rip in this episode of Letters Live.

Possibly one of our favourite letter exchanges ever, and at London’s Freemasons’ Hall back in 2016 Matt Berry and Peter Capaldi joined us to give an incredible, hilarious reading. In 1675, the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire instructed his army to attack a fortress belonging to the Zaporozhian Cossacks. They were quickly and heavily defeated. Rather than surrender, the Sultan then wrote to the Cossacks and demanded that they submit to him. This fiery exchange was the result.

(19) ISAAC ARTHUR. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] Isaac Arthur has had his ‘Sci-fi Sunday’ which this time looks at “Robots & Warfare”. Given the recent developments in AI this is timely. Isaac not only has a degree in physics, he also served with the US Army…

Robots play an ever greater role in every aspect of our lives, including the battlefield, but what will their role be in the wars of the future?

(20) VIDEO OF THE DAY. Ryan George’s video “90s Time Traveler Discovers Meta’s THREADS App” is a riot. (“I know a still from Blade Runner when I see one…”)

[Thanks to Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Mike Kennedy, Daniel Dern, Michael A. Burstein, Alec Nevala-Lee, Kathy Sullivan, Andrew Porter, John King Tarpinian, Chris Barkley, and Michael Toman for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Daniel Dern.]

Pixel Scroll 7/6/23 The Felix Felis Flattus Sat On The Mat

(1) DRAGON PRESERVATION SOCIETY? A Twitter user with 90K followers who goes by the handle Aristophanes claims to be incensed that works like John Scalzi’s Kaiju Preservation Society become Dragon Award finalists. As a remedy he is calling for people to band together and nominate all the works on his ticket. Can the Dragon Awards be saved? How would we know if they aren’t? Thread starts here.

The Dragon Award’s policy is to encourage people to campaign for fan support. Always has been. So this appeal violates no rule, written or otherwise. My only question about his list is — can it really be a Dragon Awards slate without a book by Declan Finn on it? This will be the first one without him I’ve ever seen!!

(2) FOUNDATION. Apple TV+ has released a second trailer for “Foundation — Season 2”.

More than a century after the Season 1 finale, tension mounts throughout the galaxy. As the Cleons unravel, a vengeful queen plots to destroy Empire from within. Hari, Gaal, and Salvor discover a colony of Mentalics with special abilities that threaten to alter psychohistory itself. Meanwhile, the Foundation and Empire are on a collision course for war with the fate of humanity in the balance.

(3) HOW MANY NAMES? Best Semiprozine finalist Strange Horizons tells how this year’s Hugo Administrator clawed back the progress SH had made in getting their full team listed. (They weren’t the only ones affected by the policy change, of course.) Thread starts here.

(4) JMS AT SDCC. “Babylon 5 Cast Set for San Diego Comic-Con 2023” reports the SDCC Unofficial Blog.

…While writer and series creator J. Michael Straczynski has been teasing for months that he will be at the convention with lots to talk about the new animated film, Babylon 5: The Road Home, we’ve got our first look at just what that appearance will likely entail.

The upcoming animated film continues the story of the 1990’s space opera series, as John Sheridan unexpectedly finds himself transported through multiple timelines and alternate realities in a quest to find his way back home. Most of the cast is returning for the film, including Bruce Boxleitner as John Sheridan, Claudia Christian as Susan Ivanova, Peter Jurasik as Londo Mollari, Bill Mumy as Lennier, Tracy Scoggins as Elizabeth Lochley and Patricia Tallman as Lyta Alexander.

Patricia Tallman revealed on Instagram that she will indeed be at the convention — and so will most of her castmates.

Bruce Boxleitner, Claudia Christian, Tracy Scoggins, and Patricia Tallman will be signing in the Sails Pavilion on Saturday, July 22 from 11am-12pm, which certainly ups the odds of a panel with cast in appearance.

Patricia Tallman will also be signing on her own from 2:30pm-7pm on both Thursday, July 20 and Friday, July 21, and fans can pre-order her Pleasure Thresholds, a Babylon 5 Memoir, for $30 (or $40 if you purchase at the con). Copies can be autographed and personalized…. 

(5) IO9 COLLIDES WITH THE UNPLEASANT FUTURE. “‘F*cking Dogsh*t’: G/O Media Editor Tears Into Management Over ‘Embarrassing’ AI-Generated Article ‘Riddled With Basic Errors’” at Mediate.

James Whitbrook, the deputy editor of G/O Media’s Gizmodo and its subsection io9, tore into management on Wednesday after the company published a “shoddily written” AI-generated article “riddled with basic errors.”

After it was revealed last week that G/O Media would begin rolling out articles generated by artificial intelligence, GMG Union — which represents many of the news outlets under G/O Media’s banner, including Gizmodo — protested the introduction of “computer-generated garbage” which “erodes trust in us as journalists, damages our brands, and threatens our jobs.”

Despite the protests of the union, however, G/O Media moved forward with its controversial decision this week.

“A Chronological List of Star Wars Movies & TV Shows” by “Gizmodo Bot” appeared on G/O Media’s tech and science news website on Wednesday, only to be swiftly ridiculed by social media users for messing up the chronological order of the franchise.

In a Twitter post, the deputy editor of the site revealed he had only been “informed approximately 10 minutes” before the article went live and that “no one at io9 played a part in its editing or publication.” In his own “personal comment,” Whitbrook added, “It’s fucking dogshit.”

Whitbrook also published the letter he sent to the management of G/O Media, which read:

“For 15 years, io9 has grown an audience that demands quality coverage of genre entertainment, from critical analysis, to insightful explainers, to accurate news and industry-shaping investigative reporting. These readers have grown io9 into one of the best performing desks at Gizmodo, G/O Media’s flagship site in terms of traffic, and they have done so by rigorously holding this team and the colleagues that came before us to a standard of expertise and accuracy that we have been proud to achieve. The article published on io9 today rejects the very standards this team holds itself to on a daily basis as critics and as reporters. It is shoddily written, it is riddled with basic errors; in closing the comments section off, it denies our readers, the lifeblood of this network, the chance to publicly hold us accountable, and to call this work exactly what it is: embarrassing, unpublishable, disrespectful of both the audience and the people who work here, and a blow to our authority and integrity. It is shameful that this work has been put to our audience and to our peers in the industry as a window to G/O’s future, and it is shameful that we as a team have had to spend an egregious amount of time away from our actual work to make it clear to you the unacceptable errors made in publishing this piece.”

(6) BURP! The Guardian, meanwhile, is there when “Authors file a lawsuit against OpenAI for unlawfully ‘ingesting’ their books”. One of them is Paul Tremblay.

Two authors have filed a lawsuit against OpenAI, the company behind the artificial intelligence tool ChatGPT, claiming that the organisation breached copyright law by “training” its model on novels without the permission of authors.

Mona Awad, whose books include Bunny and 13 Ways of Looking at a Fat Girl, and Paul Tremblay, author of The Cabin at the End of the World, filed the class action complaint to a San Francisco federal court last week.

ChatGPT allows users to ask questions and type commands into a chatbot and responds with text that resembles human language patterns. The model underlying ChatGPT is trained with data that is publicly available on the internet.

Yet, Awad and Tremblay believe their books, which are copyrighted, were unlawfully “ingested” and “used to train” ChatGPT because the chatbot generated “very accurate summaries” of the novels, according to the complaint. Sample summaries are included in the lawsuit as exhibits….

(7) MEMORY LANE.

2010 [Written by Cat Eldridge from a choice by Mike Glyer.]

Catherynne M. Valente’s an amazing individual. I’m proud to say that I’ve had coffee with her as she lives here in this city. And her writing is just as stellar as she is. 

No Hugos so far but she has won Otherwise and Mythopoeic Awards for The Orphan’s Tales: In the Night Garden (both Awards) and The Orphan’s Tales: In the Cities of Coin and Spice (Mythopoeic). She also has won an Andre Norton Award.

Her other great series is the Fairyland series centered around twelve year-old September. And that’s all I’m saying about this delightful affair. Our Beginning is from the debut novel, The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making. 

It was first published online on her site but she’s taken that down. The first print edition was by Feiwel and Friends thirteen years ago. It was an independent publisher that has since been acquired by Macmillan.

So here’s our Beginning…

EXEUNT ON A LEOPARD In Which a Girl Named September Is Spirited Off by Means of a Leopard, Learns the Rules of Fairyland, and Solves a Puzzle 

Once upon a time, a girl named September grew very tired indeed of her parents’ house, where she washed the same pink-and-yellow teacups and matching gravy boats every day, slept on the same embroidered pillow, and played with the same small and amiable dog. Because she had been born in May, and because she had a mole on her left cheek, and because her feet were very large and ungainly, the Green Wind took pity on her and flew to her window one evening just after her twelfth birthday. He was dressed in a green smoking jacket, and a green carriage-driver’s cloak, and green jodhpurs, and green snowshoes. It is very cold above the clouds in the shantytowns where the Six Winds live. 

“You seem an ill-tempered and irascible enough child,” said the Green Wind.

“How would you like to come away with me and ride upon the Leopard of Little Breezes and be delivered to the great sea, which borders Fairyland? I am afraid I cannot go in, as Harsh Airs are not allowed, but I should be happy to deposit you upon the Perverse and Perilous Sea.

“Oh, yes!” breathed September, who disapproved deeply of pink-and-yellow teacups and also of small and amiable dogs.

“Well, then, come and sit by me, and do not pull too harshly on my Leopard’s fur, as she bites.” 

September climbed out of her kitchen window, leaving a sink full of soapy pink-and-yellow teacups with leaves still clinging to their bottoms in portentous shapes. One of them looked a bit like her father in his long coffee-colored trench coat, gone away over the sea with a rifle and gleaming things on his hat. One of them looked a bit like her mother, bending over a stubborn airplane engine in her work overalls, her arm muscles bulging. One of them looked a bit like a squashed cabbage. The Green Wind held out his hand, snug in a green glove, and September took both his hands and a very deep breath. One of her shoes came loose as she hoisted herself over the sill, and this will be important later, so let us take a moment to bid farewell to her prim little mary jane with its brass buckle as it clatters onto the parquet floor. Good-bye, shoe! September will miss you soon.

(8) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

  • Born July 6, 1945 — Burt Ward, 78. Robin in that Batman series. He would reprise the role in voicing the character in The New Adventures of Batman and Legends of the Superheroes, and two recent animated films, Batman: Return of the Caped Crusaders and Batman vs. Two-Face. (Has anyone seen these?) The latter are the last work done by Adam West before his death. 
  • Born July 6, 1946 — Sylvester Stallone, 77. Although I think Stallone made a far less than perfect Dredd, I think the look and feel of the first film was spot on for the film which was something the second film, which had a perfect Dredd in Karl Urban, utterly lacked. And Demolition Man and him as Sergeant John Spartan were just perfect. 
  • Born July 6, 1950 — John Byrne, 73. A stellar comic book artist and writer. He’s done far too much to detail here so I’ll just single out that he scripted the first four issues of Hellboy: Seed of Destruction, was the writer and artist on the excellent Blood of the Demon from 1-17 and responsible for Spider-Man: Chapter One which took a great deal of flak. 
  • Born July 6, 1951 — Rick Sternbach, 72. Best-known for his work in the Trek verse starting with ST: TMP where he designed control panel layouts and signage for the Enterprise. He’s next hired for Next Gen where communicator badge, phasers, PADDs and tricorders are all based on his designs. These designs will also be used on DS9 and Voyager. He also pretty much designed every starship during that time from the Cardassian and Klingon to the Voyager itself. He would win the Best Professional Artist Hugo at SunCon and IguanaCon II.
  • Born July 6, 1951 — Geoffrey Rush, 72. First genre role is like the Mystery Men series which I’ll bet everyone has forgotten, followed by House on Haunted HillFinding Nemo and some other genre work as well with his major genre role being as Barbossa in the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise. And I’ll include his role in Shakespeare in Love as Philip Henslowe even if strictly speaking it’s not genre related as I really, really love that film. 
  • Born July 6, 1952 — Hilary Mantel. Though best remembered as the author of the Wolf Hall franchise, she’s actually written some genre fiction. The Mysterious Stranger involves supernatural occurrences in a small British town in the Fifties; and Beyond Black is about a psychic who sees more than she wants to. She also indulged in alternative history in the short story, “The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher – August 6th 1983”. (Died 2022.)
  • Born July 6, 1980 — Eva Green, 43. First crosses our paths in Casino Royale as Vesper Lynd followed by Serafina Pekkala in The Golden Compass, and then Angelique Bouchard Collins in Dark Shadows. Ava Lord in Sin City: A Dame to Kill For (weird films those definitely are) with a decided move sideways into being Miss Alma Peregrine for Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children. And she was Colette Marchant in Dumbo. She’s got two series roles to her credit, Morgan Pendragon in Camelot and Vanessa Ives in Penny Dreadful.

(9) TITAN COMICS GOODIES AT SDCC. The Titan Booth #5537 at San Diego Comic-Con 2023 will be the place to get some limited availability merchandise. Some of it looks pretty cute, like these pins.

  • Doctor Who: Thirteen Piece TARDIS Enamel Pin Collection

Titan Booth #5537 at SDCC 2023 is the only opportunity for US Doctor Who fans to buy this EXCLUSIVE Thirteen Piece TARDIS Enamel Pin Collection. Please note: this beautiful, one-of-a-kind TARDIS collection will be available from Titan Booth #5537 from Preview Night (Wednesday July 19th). Numbers are EXTREMELY LIMITED. First come, first served.

And there will be some collectible figures available, too.

  • Doctor Who: Fourteenth Doctor 3″ Kawaii TITAN Vinyl Figure
  • Doctor Who: Fourteenth Doctor 3″ Classic TITAN Vinyl Figure

David Tennant’s upcoming Fourteenth Doctor arrives in San Diego as a pair of separately-packaged, separately-available EXCLUSIVE 3” TITANS Vinyl Figures. Both releases (3” Kawaii Fourteenth Doctor and 3” Classic Fourteenth Doctor) are available from Titan Booth #5537.

  • My Hero Academia: Dabi 3″ Glow-In-The-Dark Kawaii TITAN Vinyl Figure
  • My Hero Academia: Shigaraki 3″ Glow-In-The-Dark Kawaii TITAN Vinyl Figure

My Hero Academia TITANS Viny Figures return to Titan Booth #5537 as a pair of separately-packaged, separately-available San Diego EXCLUSIVE 3” Kawaii TITANS Vinyl Figures. Both releases (Dabi and Shigaraki) feature Glow-In-The-Dark effects and are available from Titan Booth #5537.

(10) CARVING UP THE STREAMING MARKET. JustWatch has shared their graphs about the market shares of streaming services for the second quarter in 2023.

SVOD market shares in Q2 2023
Prime Video continues to hold down the streaming crown in the US with a 1% lead over global giant, Netflix. Major players: Max and Disney+ also face similar challenges with a 2% gap separating the two.

Market share development in 2023
Newly rebranded streaming giant: Max (formerly HBO Max) displays positive development, gaining +1%; Paramount+ also won with a +1% increase in shares. On the other hand, Disney+ and Hulu drop in shares, suffering -1% losses each.

(11) SURF’S UP. Nature reports “Monster gravitational waves spotted for first time”. “Using beacon stars called pulsars, a decades-long effort has found space-time ripples that are light years wide.”

Gravitational waves are back, and they’re bigger than ever.

After the historic first detection of the space-time rattles in 2015 using ground-based detectors, researchers could have now rediscovered Albert Einstein’s waves with an entirely different technique. The approach tracks changes in the distances between Earth and beacon stars in its Galactic neighbourhood called pulsars, which reveal how the space in between is stretched and squeezed by the passage of gravitational waves.

Whereas the original discovery spotted waves originating from the collision and merger of two star-sized black holes, the most likely source of the latest finding is the combined signal from many pairs of much larger black holes — millions or even billions of times the mass of the Sun — slowly orbiting each other in the hearts of distant galaxies. These waves are thousands of times stronger and longer than those found in 2015, with wavelengths of up to tens of light years. By contrast, the ripples detected since 2015 using a technique called interferometry are just tens or hundreds of kilometres long.

(12) VIDEO OF THE DAY. Ryan George shows the many advantages that would come our way “If We Stopped Using Numbers”

[Thanks to Andrew Porter, John King Tarpinian, Chris Barkley, Michael Toman, Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, and Mike Kennedy for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Jim Janney.]

Dragon Awards 2023 Eligible Works Spreadsheet

Nominations are being taken for the 2023 Dragon Awards until July 19.

Need more information about what to put on your ballot? Red Panda Fraction has assembled a Dragon Awards 2023 Eligible Works spreadsheet in the format of Renay’s Hugo Awards Spreadsheet.

They say, “There are a few categories that we did not have time to populate with possible nominees so I hope folks with more expertise in those categories can help out.”

Bear in mind that voters are allowed to make only one nomination per category. However, that is somewhat offset by the Dragon Awards having six book categories. (But there are no short fiction categories).

Pixel Scroll 4/13/23 Scrolling To Filezantium

(1) INFLUENCERS. TIME Magazine today posted “TIME100: The Most Influential People of 2023”. Listed actors, icons, and titans with genre connections include Ke Huy Quan, Pedro Pascal, Salman Rushdie, Angela Bassett, Bob Iger. And writer Neil Gaiman, whose tribute was written by actor James McAvoy:

What I admire most about Neil Gaiman is his belief in the necessity of storytelling: it’s something we need on a DNA level.

I first read a book by Neil when I was 14 years old. It was Good Omens, his brilliant 1990 collaboration with Terry Pratchett. Two decades later, I got the opportunity to star in the 2013 BBC radio adaptation of Neverwhere. I remember feeling so excited that I was being inducted into his sphere of influence—one that has only grown. It’s fantastic to see Neil’s work gain new fans, most recently with the Netflix adaptation of his award-winning comic-book series The Sandman.

Neil’s point of entry into the storytelling realm is darkly fantastical and occultish. The way he writes makes you feel like you’re being let in on a massive secret. His worlds are hidden, shrouded in mystery, yet they’re never that far removed from ours. They’re always just barely within your peripheral vision—under the street or in a dark building or at the end of a lane. He brings dreamscapes to life.

(2) PITCH: A CROSS BETWEEN SURVIVOR AND THE MARTIAN. Plus Shat! “Fox Orders ‘Stars on Mars’ Reality Show With William Shatner” reports Variety.

Fox has ordered the reality series “Stars on Mars,” a new celebrity unscripted series featuring “Star Trek” star William Shatner in a host-like role. The series, set to air this summer, will follow stars as they are suited up to live in a colony set up to simulate what it might be like to be an astronaut on Mars.

“Stars on Mars” premieres on Monday, June 5, at 8 p.m. on Fox. The show comes from Fremantle’s Eureka Productions. The idea centers on the celebrity contestants competing in the Mars-like surroundings until there is just one “celebronaut” left standing. Shatner will deliver tasks to the celebs as “Mission Control.”

… Shatner, in a quippy quote, added: “Thanks to lower gravity on Mars, you’ll weigh 62% less. Bad news: the air is unbreathable, so if you’re from LA, it’ll remind you of home.”

The show will open with the celebrities living together as they “live, eat, sleep, strategize, and bond with each other in the same space station,” according to the network.

Here’s more from the show description: “During their stay, they will be faced with authentic conditions that simulate life on Mars, and they must use their brains and brawn – or maybe just their stellar social skills – to outlast the competition and claim the title of brightest star in the galaxy. The celebrities will compete in missions and will vote to eliminate one of their crewmates each week, sending them back to Earth. Cue the intergalactic alliances and rivalries. ‘Stars on Mars’ will send these famous rookie space travelers where no one has gone before and reveal who has what it takes to survive life on ‘Mars.’”…

(3) IS THIS THE CRÈME DE LA CRÈME? Earlier this week the LA Times rolled out The Ultimate L.A. Bookshelf, devoting one of the shelves to 13 works of Speculative Fiction.

For our Ultimate L.A. Bookshelf, we asked writers with deep ties to the city to name their favorite Los Angeles books across eight categories or genres. Based on 95 responses, here are the 13 most essential works of speculative fiction, from Octavia Butler, Philip K. Dick, Aldous Huxley, Salvador Plascencia and many more….

Although these are all books, since two of them are collections of short fiction – Dangerous Visions (1967) and Speculative Los Angeles (2021) – it seems to me there should have been a way to get quintessential LA stories like Heinlein’s “And He Built A Crooked House”, and Niven’s “Inconstant Moon” into the mix. I’ll leave aside Bradbury’s “The Pedestrian” which doesn’t actually say what city it takes place in, though no one has ever had any doubt…

(4) CLI-FI CONTEST. Imagine 2200: Climate Fiction for Future Ancestors submissions will be accepted up to the June 13 deadline.

Imagine 2200 challenges entrants to write stories that help envision the next 180 years of climate progress. Whether built on abundance or adaptation, reform or a new understanding of survival, the contest celebrates stories that provide flickers of hope, even joy, and serve as a springboard for exploring how fiction can help create a better reality.

Stories will be judged by a panel of literary experts, including acclaimed authors Paolo Bacigalupi, Nalo Hopkinson, and Sam J. Miller. 

The winning writer will be awarded $3,000, with the second- and third-place winners receiving $2,000 and $1,000, respectively. Nine additional finalists will each receive $300. All winners and finalists’ stories will be published in an immersive collection on Grist’s website. 

Read more and find out how to submit a story here.

(5) FAN HISTORY ZOOM. Fanac.org’s program on “Researching (& Saving) Fan History” with Rob Hansen, Andy Hooper, Mark Olson and Joe Siclari can be viewed online April 22, 2023 beginning at 4 pm EDT, 1 pm PDT, 9 pm BST London, 6 am Sunday in Melbourne, AU. See the details in the poster. To get a link to the program, write to [email protected].

Past sessions are all available on Fanac.org’s YouTube channel

(6) NPR LEAVES TWITTER. AP News reported on April 12“NPR quits Elon Musk’s Twitter over ‘government-funded’ label”. They obviously meant it – NPR usually tweets prolifically every day, but there were no new tweets from NPR today, April 13.

National Public Radio is quitting Twitter after the social media platform owned by Elon Musk stamped NPR’s account with labels the news organization says are intended to undermine its credibility.

Twitter labeled NPR’s main account last week as “state-affiliated media, ” a term also used to identify media outlets controlled or heavily influenced by authoritarian governments, such as Russia and China. Twitter later changed the label to “government-funded media,” but to NPR — which relies on the government for a tiny fraction of its funding — it’s still misleading.

NPR said in a statement Wednesday that it “will no longer be active on Twitter because the platform is taking actions that undermine our credibility by falsely implying that we are not editorially independent.”…

(7) GATEWAY TO ORSON WELLES. [Item by Steve Vertlieb.] Celebrating the genius of this extraordinary artist with my published look at the turbulent life and career of Orson Welles, the fabulous, visionary film maker whose personal demons sadly overshadowed his staggering talent, and finally, tragically destroyed him.

Yet, in spite of his personal failings or, perhaps, because of them, Welles rose to become one of the most remarkable film makers of his, or any other generation.

From his groundbreaking first feature length motion picture Citizen Kane, regarded by many still as the greatest single film in motion picture history, to Touch Of Evil, his remarkable “Cinema Noir” tale of a squandered life and legacy corrupted by bribery and temptation, Welles remains one of the most extraordinary directors in the history of film.

His is a story of unwitting sabotaged achievement and haunting, incomparable genius.

Here, then, is “Xanadu: A Castle in the Clouds: The Life of Orson Welles” at The Thunderchild.

(8) OCTOTHORPE. Episode 81 of the Octothorpe podcast, “It Wasn’t an Interjection From the Room, It Was My Face”, is available.

Alison, Liz, John and Alison are live from Conversation! We talk about the convention, in a rather more haphazard way than normal. Art by the amazing Sue Mason.

(9) MORE WRITERS’ RESPONSES TO AI. The SFWA Blog has updated its webpage and now has over 50 SFWA members’ writing and thoughts on artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) applications and considerations. “SFWA Members Weigh in on AI & Machine Learning Applications & Considerations”. In case you looked at the original version, the additions are designated “NEW” to make them easy to find.

SFWA also focused attention on a video is now available from the AI/ML Media Advocacy Summit, a free online event last month that brought together experts and creators to discuss the creative community’s response to AI/ML media generators. SFWA Vice President John Murphy served as a panelist for the writers’ forum, along with moderator Donna Comeaux, Ed Hasbrouck of the National Writers Union, and Mary Rasenberger of the Authors Guild.

With our discipline specific panels we will be talking to a variety of individuals from across the creative industries including visual artists, voice actors, musicians, animators, photographers and writers on the different types of AI media generators and the unique challenges they pose.

(10) VIRGINIA NORWOOD (1927-2023). Physicist and inventor Virginia Norwood, who devised the scanner that has been used to map and study the earth from space for more than 50 years, died March 27. The New York Times obituary detailed the unexpected triumph of her contribution to the first Landsat.

…In the late 1960s, after NASA’s lunar missions sent back spectacular pictures of Earth, the director of the Geological Survey thought that photographs of the planet from space could help the agency manage land resources. The agency would partner with NASA, which would send satellites into space to take the pictures.

Ms. Norwood, who was part of an advanced design group in the space and communications division at Hughes, canvassed scientists who specialized in agriculture, meteorology, pollution and geology. She concluded that a scanner that recorded multiple spectra of light and energy, like one that had been used for local agricultural observations, could be modified for the planetary project that the Geological Survey and NASA had in mind.

The Geological Survey and NASA planned to use a giant three-camera system designed by RCA, based on television tube technology, that had been used to map the moon. The bulk of the 4,000-pound payload on NASA’s first Landsat satellite was reserved for the RCA equipment.

Ms. Norwood and Hughes were told that their multispectral scanner system, or M.S.S., could be included if it weighed no more than 100 pounds.

Ms. Norwood had to scale back her scanner to record just four bands of energy in the electromagnetic spectrum instead of seven, as she had planned. The scanner also had to be high precision. In her first design, each pixel represented 80 meters.

The device had a 9-by-13-inch mirror that banged back and forth noisily in the scanner 13 times a second. The scientists at the Geological Survey and NASA were skeptical.

A senior engineer from Hughes took the device out on a truck and drove around California to test it and convince the doubters that it would work. It did — spectacularly. Ms. Norwood hung one of the images, of Yosemite National Park’s Half Dome, on the wall of her house for the rest of her life.

The first Landsat blasted into space on July 23, 1972. Two days later, the scanner sent back the first images, of the Ouachita Mountains in Oklahoma; they were astounding. According to a 2021 article in MIT Technology Review, one geologist teared up. Another, who had been skeptical about the scanner, said, “I was so wrong about this. I’m not going to eat crow. Not big enough. I’m going to eat raven.”

The RCA system was supposed to be the primary recording instrument aboard the satellite, and the M.S.S. a secondary experiment.

“But once we looked at the data, the roles switched,” Stan Freden, the Landsat 1 project scientist, said in a NASA report.

The M.S.S. proved not only better, but also more reliable. Two weeks after liftoff, power surges in the RCA camera-based system endangered the satellite and the camera had to be shut down….

(11) MEMORY LANE.

1945[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

August Derleth’s “A Word From Dr. Lyndon Parker”

Sherlock Holmes pastiches must be almost as old as the stories themselves. The first credited one was sixteen years after the first Holmes story and was in Greek, Sherlock Holmes saving Mr. Venizelos (Ο Σέρλοκ Χολμς σώζων τον κ. Βενιζέλον).  Our Beginning tonight isn’t from a work that old as it’s taken from August Derleth’s In Re: Sherlock Holmes.

It came from the collection of short stories, In Re: Sherlock Holmes, first published seventy-eight years ago in the US by Mycroft & Moran which was an imprint of Arkham House. The imprint was in part created for these stories. Wise choice I’d say.

Pons, a Consulting Detective in the mold of Holmes, exists because Derleth desired so much to do Holmes stories after Doyle ceased that he wrote him and asked if he could. Doyle unsurprisingly said no. The Solar Pons name is supposedly syllabically similar to Sherlock Holmes. Huh.

I like them because Derleth is obviously a fanboy of Holmes and his detective. Pons isn’t Holmes but is what a fan would write if he was creating his own loving version of Holmes. 

And now for our very British Beginning…

A Word From Dr. Lyndon Parker

The way in which I first made the acquaintance of Mr. Solar Pons, who was destined to introduce me to many interesting adventures in crime detection, was exceedingly prosaic. Yet it was not without those elements suggestive of what was to come. Though it took place almost thirty years ago, the memory of that meeting is as clear in mind as if it had taken place yesterday.

I had been sitting for some time in a pub not far from Paddington Station, ruefully reflecting that the London to which I had returned after the first World War was not the city I had left, when a tall; thin gentleman wearing an Inverness cape and a rakish cap with a visor on it, strode casually into the place. I was struck at once by his appearance: the thin, almost feral face; the sharp, keen dark eyes with their heavy, but not bushy brows; the thin lips and the leanness of the face in general–all these things interested me both from a personal and a medical standpoint, and I looked up from the envelope upon which I had been writing to follow the fellow with my eyes across the floor to the bar.

A waiter, who was wiping tables next to me, noticed my interest and came over. “Sherlock Holmes’,” he said. “That’s who he is. The Sherlock Holmes of Praed Street,’ is what the papers call him. His real name’s Solar Pons. Ain’t much choice between the two, eh?” 

Pons had had a few words with the man behind the bar and now turned to look idly over the room. I looked away as I saw that his glance was about to fall on me, and I felt him examining me from head to toe. I felt, rather than saw, that he was walking over toward my table, and in a few moments he came to stand beside my bag on the floor next to my chair. 

“Fine color,” he said crisply. “Not long back from Africa, I see. “Two days.”

“Your scarab pin suggests Egypt and, if I’m not mistaken, the envelope on which you have been writing is one of Shepheard’s. From Cairo, then.” 

“On the ship Ishtar.” 

“At the East India Docks.” 

I looked up and he smiled genially. “But, really, you know, my dear fellow–London is not as bad as all that.” 

“I should not like to think so,” I answered him, without at once realizing that I had given him no clue to my thoughts. “Obviously you have been walking.”

(12) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

  • Born April 13, 1931 Beverly Cross. English playwright, librettist, and screenwriter. Yes librettist. He’s here because he wrote the screenplays for Sinbad and the Eye of the TigerJason and the Argonauts and Clash of the Titans. Not remotely genre related but worth mentioning, is that he worked uncredited on the script for Lawrence of Arabia although it is unknown if any of his material made it to the film we see. (Died 1998.)
  • Born April 13, 1943 Bill Pronzini, 80. Mystery writer whose Nameless Detective has one genre adventure in A Killing in Xanadu. Genre anthologist, often with Barry N Malzberg, covering such varied and wide-ranging themes as Bug-Eyed Monsters (with Malzberg), Arbor House Treasury of Horror and the Supernatural (with Greenberg and Malzberg) and Arbor House Necropolis. As Robert Hart Davis, he wrote “The Pillars of Salt Affair”, a Man from U.N.C.L.E. novella that ran in the The Man from U.N.C.L.E. Magazine.
  • Born April 13, 1950 Ron Perlman, 73. Hellboy in a total of five films including three animated films (Hellboy: Sword of StormsHellboy: Blood and Iron and the Redcap short which is elusive to find unfortunately). Still by far the best Hellboy. He’s got a very long association with the genre as his very first film was Quest for Fire in which he was Amoukar. The Ice Pirates and being Zeno was followed quickly by being Captain Soames in Sleepwalkers and Angel De La Guardia in the Mexican horror film Cronos. Several years later, I see he’s Boltar in Prince Valiant, followed by the hard SF of being Johnher in Alien Resurrection and Reman Viceroy in Star Trek: Nemesis. And I should note he was in Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them as Gnarlack, a goblin gangster if I read the Cliff Notes to that correctly. No, I’m not forgetting about his most amazing role of all, Vincent in Beauty and The Beast. (Having not rewatched for fear of the Suck Fairy having come down hard on it. So who has watched it lately?) At the time, I thought it was the most awesome practical makeup I’d ever seen. And the costume just made look him even still more amazing. 
  • Born April 13, 1951 Peter Davison, 72. The Fifth Doctor that I came to be very fond of. For twenty years now, he has reprised his role as the Fifth Doctor in myriad Doctor Who audio dramas for Big Finish. And he put a lot of gravitas into the voice of Mole he did for The Wind in the Willows animated special Mole’s Christmas. And let’s not forget he showed up in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy as the Dish of the Day. I’m going to note that I first saw him in Tristan Farnon in the BBC’s adaptation of James Herriot’s All Creatures Great and Small stories, a lovely role indeed. And I’m very fond of The Last Detective series where he played DC ‘Dangerous’ Davies. 
  • Born April 13, 1954 Michael Cassutt, 69. Producer, screenwriter, and author. His notable TV work includes work for the animated Dungeons & DragonsMax HeadroomThe Outer LimitsBeauty and The BeastSeaQuestFarscape, Eerie, Indiana and The Twilight Zone. He’s also written genre works including the Heaven’s Shadow series that was co-written with David S. Goyer. His latest piece of fiction was the “Aurora” novelette published in Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, March/April 2022. 
  • Born April 13, 1954 Glen Keane, 69. He’s responsible for all of the layout work on Star Trek: The Animated Series and also My Favorite Martians which I can’t say I recognize. As a character animator at Walt Disney Animation Studios, he worked on Aladdin, Beauty and the Beast, The Little Mermaid and Pocahontas
  • Born April 13, 1959 Brian Thomsen. Editor, writer and anthologist. He was founding editor of Warner Books’ Questar Science Fiction, and later served as managing fiction editor at TSR. He co-wrote the autobiography of Julius Schwartz. And yes I’ve actually read one of his anthologies, A Yuletide Universe, as I remember it from the cover art. (Died 2008.)
  • April 13, 1967 — Rogers Cadenhead, 56. This Filer is a computer book author and web publisher who served once as chairman of the RSS Advisory Board, a group that publishes the RSS 2.0 specification. Very, very impressive. He also gained infamy for claiming drudge.com before a certain muckraker could, and still holds on to it.

(13) COMICS SECTION.

(14) RIVERS OF LONDON. Titan Comics has revealed the covers for Here Be Dragons – the next phase of Rivers of London comics, set in the world of the bestselling novel series. For this upcoming series, comic series writers Ben Aaronovitch (Rivers of London) and Andrew Cartmel (The Vinyl Detective) are joined by BAFTA-nominated scriptwriter, and award-winning New York Times bestselling author James Swallow, with artwork by José María Beroy

This cover preview shows the first look at a dangerous monster at large above the streets of London. After a Met Police helicopter on night patrol is attacked by an unidentified aerial phenomena, the Met’s only sanctioned wizard, Peter Grant, and his mentor, Thomas Nightingale, are called to investigate.
 
Rivers of London: Here Be Dragons issue #1 (on sale in comic shops and digital July 12th, 2023) features covers by series artist José María Beroy, alongside David M. Buisan and V.V. Glass. 

(15) SMITHSONIAN OPEN ACCESS. “The Smithsonian Puts 4.5 Million High-Res Images Online and Into the Public Domain, Making Them Free to Use” at Open Culture. And more items are being added to Smithsonian Open Access all the time,

That vast repository of American history that is the Smithsonian Institution evolved from an organization founded in 1816 called the Columbian Institute for the Promotion of Arts and Sciences. Its mandate, the collection and dissemination of useful knowledge, now sounds very much of the nineteenth century — but then, so does its name. Columbia, the goddess-like symbolic personification of the United States of America, is seldom directly referenced today, having been superseded by Lady Liberty. Traits of both figures appear in the depiction on the nineteenth-century fireman’s hat above, about which you can learn more at Smithsonian Open Access, a digital archive that now contains some 4.5 million images.

Just for practice I searched “science fiction” and one of the images that returned was Octavia Butler’s typewriter.

This Olivetti Studio 46 Typewriter belonged to Octavia E. Butler (1947-2006), who wrote science fiction when few black writers did. Butler began writing at age 10 and eventually used a computer to compose, but noted, “I didn’t always. I wrote my first ten books on a manual typewriter of one kind or another….She [my mother] did day work; she made not very much money….here she had a daughter begging for a typewriter.” Butler’s blue typewriter dates to the 1970s….

(16) VONNEGUT SPEAKS. At Euronews:“Culture Re-View: Kurt Vonnegut’s five best quotes”.

…Over the following five decades, Vonnegut established himself as one of the most creative and humorous voices in science-fiction. Like an American Douglas Adams, his books would frequently deal with aliens, time travel, and metafiction, but always with the intent of getting to the heart of human nature itself….

The first example on their list is:

1. “We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.”

From Vonnegut’s third novel ‘Mother Night’, it’s a beautiful and quick summation of an appreciation of the stark importance as well as the flimsiness of human identity.

(17) DAY FOR KNIGHT. “’Game of Thrones’ Prequel Based on Dunk and Egg Books Series Order”TVLine has details.

Despite Game of Thrones author George R.R. Martin once plainly stating that HBO was not going to make a TV show out of his Dunk and Egg novellas, those characters will be central in A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms: The Hedge Knight, a Thrones prequel series that HBO greenlit Wednesday during Warner Bros. Discovery’s unveiling of its Max streaming service.

The series will be written and executive-produced by Martin and Ira Parker. Ryan Condal, who currently serves as House of the Dragon‘s showrunner, and Vince Gerardis also will be EPs.

“A century before the events of Game of Thrones, two unlikely heroes wandered Westeros,” the official logline reads. “A young, naive but courageous knight, Ser Duncan the Tall” (aka Dunk) “and his diminutive squire, Egg. Set in an age when the Targaryen line still holds the Iron Throne and the memory of the last dragon has not yet passed from living memory, great destinies, powerful foes and dangerous exploits all await these improbable and incomparable friends.”…

(18) A FROZEN FLAME. And if you’d like to see George R.R. Martin posing with his Dragon Award from last year, click on this link to his March 29 blog entry.

My thanks to all of the attendees of last year’s Dragoncon, and to all the Dragon Award voters who chose ELDEN RING as the best game of the year.   Like all my friends at From Software, I am thrilled that you enjoyed the play… as challenging as it can be.

(19) VIDEO OF THE DAY. PBS Space-Time’s Matt O’Dowd wonders “How Far Beyond Earth Could Humanity Expand?”

We humans have always been explorers. The great civilizations that have arisen across the world are owed to our restless ancestors. These days, there’s not much of Earth left to explore. But if we look up, there’s a whole universe out there waiting for us. Future generations may one day explore the cosmos and even settle entire other galaxies. But there is a hard limit to how much of the universe we can expand into. So, how big can humanity get?

[Thanks to Chris Barkley, Michael Toman, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Steve Vertlieb, Cat Eldridge, Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, and John King Tarpinian for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Soon Lee.]

Pixel Scroll 11/24/22 On The Avenue, Second-Fifth Avenue, The Filetographers Will Snap Us, And You’ll Find That You’re In The Pixelgravure

(1) TURKEY DAY. Following that overstuffed title it’s time to pay homage to another Thanksgiving tradition, one I’m sure you’ll immediately recognize.

(2) SIGNERS OF THE TIMES. “Bob Dylan Gets Tangled Up in Book Autograph Controversy” – the New York Times tells why.

Simon & Schuster sold 900 signed copies of the singer’s new essay collection, but superfans and internet sleuths noticed something wasn’t right with the autograph. Now the publisher is issuing refunds.

… So when Simon & Schuster, Dylan’s publisher, advertised limited-edition, hand-signed copies of the musician’s new collection of essays for $600 each, Bernstein was among 900 fans who went for one. Last week, he received his copy of “The Philosophy of Modern Song,” Dylan’s first collection of writings since he won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2016, with a letter of authenticity signed by Jonathan Karp, the publisher’s chief executive.

There was only one problem.

Karp’s signature “looked more legit than Bob’s,” Bernstein said.

Bernstein was one of hundreds of fans who sleuthed their way around social media, reaching the conclusion that the supposedly hand-signed books had not, in fact, been signed by Dylan.

“I got the nostalgia bug,” said Bernstein, who already owned an unsigned copy of the book, as well as a Kindle version and an audio version. He added, “If he touches this book — he wrote it, signed it — it feels like the soul of Bob Dylan is with me.”

Instead, many fans suggested that the “autographed” copies of the book had been signed by a machine….

(3) OCTOTHORPE. “Just Nearly Froze to Death”, Octothorpe episode 71, is ready for listeners.

John is on the Holodeck, Alison is in the past, and Liz is at school. We discuss what Alison got up to at Novacon before chatting about a few other bits and bobs. Listen here!

(4) SMACKAGE. “Stephen King, Elon Musk spar: MyPillow will be Twitter’s ‘only advertiser’” on MarketWatch.

That was master of horror and bestselling fiction writer Stephen King riffing on the parade of advertisers including GM, United Airlines and Audi pausing or scrapping their marketing on the social-media platform since Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk took over…. 

…This is perhaps why Musk responded to King’s most recent tweet about MyPillow with “Oh hi lol.” 

Musk followed up by asking, “Is My Pillow actually a great pillow? Now I’m curious.” 

(5) DRAGONS DEFENDED. In “Weber & Correia on the mil-SF Dragon Award” – Camestros Felapton delivers lengthy excerpts from the two authors’ remarks delivered in the wake of the Dragon Awards deleting the Military SF category. Weber tries to justify the decision to his grumpy fan base, and Larry Correia upbraids “the people who are nominally supposed to be on my side” for their “black pilled doom nonsense.” If you care what Weber and Correia think about the situation, this would be the place to find out.

(6) PUSH THE PANIC BUTTON! SF2 Concatenation, in an Autumn 2022 editorial headlined “The 2023 Worldcon in China may be cancelled! If, that is, the UN COP15 Convention on Biodiversity (CBD-COP15) changes are a portent”,  is volunteering the Winnipeg NASFiC as the backup plan.

The 2023 Worldcon in Chengdu China has had its problems, not least political controversy due to its Guests of Honours’ support for political aggression, namely: China’s Uyghur policy, Putin’s war on Ukraine and apparent tacit support (being willing to share a platform with those of such views) thereof respectively.  However, these are not  the reasons the event may be cancelled.  China has a strict ‘zero CoVID-19 policy that has meant that as soon as a number of cases are reported in a city, then that city is put into strict lockdown: this has already happened a number of times this year.  So, for instance, following discussions with China, on 21st June (2022) the United Nations announced that the CBD-COP15 meeting would no longer be held in Kumming, China, but be held instead 5th – 17th December (2022) in Montreal, Canada.  The risk of the CBD-COP running foul of, or even itself causing – with the international influx of thousands of participants – a mini CoVID outbreak so triggering, a strict lockdown in Kumming was real enough for the UN to make the change: it was considered a non-trivial risk….

Meanwhile, following the above being written in July-August following the UN CBD-COP15 change, at the beginning of September (2022) 25 million people in Chengdu, China, have been put in lockdown.  This is a portent if ever one should be needed, irrespective with what has already happened with the UN’s CBD-COP15.

The crew’s vision for rescuing the Hugo Awards is a little shortsighted — “The rest could be arranged by those regularly associated with WSFS governance (the World SF Society being the body under whose auspices the Hugo’s are organised)” – because WSFS is not an administrative body, it is the members of the seated Worldcons. There’s no WSFS management to pull the plug on Chengdu, or to take funds from them to pay for award trophies. That would take the Chengdu Worldcon’s cooperation. And consider that the minimum requirements for the Worldcon are far more modest than a UN convention. What if Chengdu fell back on doing a virtual Worldcon, like CoNZealand?

(7) MEMORY LANE.

1993 [By Cat Eldridge.] Tombstone 

The Old West has a significant impact upon the SFF genre, be it in video such as Star Trek’s “Spectre of the Gun”, Doctor Who’s “A Town Called Mercy”, The Wild Wild West series or, to note but two novels, Emma Bull’s Territory and Midori Snyder’s The Flight of Michael McBride

So I’m going to look at some of my favorite Westerns starting with the Tombstone which premiered twenty-nine years ago. 

It directed by George P. Cosmatos from a screenplay by Kevin Jarre. He was also the original director, but was replaced early in production.  It had three producers — James Jacks, Sean Daniel and Bob Misiorowski.

It quite possibly the most extraordinary cast ever assembled for a Western —  Kurt Russell, Val Kilmer and Sam Elliott in lead roles, and with Bill Paxton, Powers Boothe, Michael Biehn, and Dana Delany in supporting roles, as well as narration by Robert Mitchum. The Dana Delany appearance, though brief, I think was one of her best ever.

The film was screenwriter Kevin Jarre’s first job as director but he was overwhelmed by the job, failing to get needed shots and falling behind the shooting schedule. Biehn threaten to quit being his close friend but Russell talked him out of it.

I see no need for spoilers as likely you know the story as they really didn’t deviate that much from what has been told before. It’s how they told it that I find such a stellar story. Each of the principal characters is realized, a completely believable human being. And each is given enough lines to come to life in this story. If I had to single out one actor here in particular, it’d be Val Kilmer as the dying Doc Holliday. That is a performance for the ages. 

One of the actors gets much of the credit for what the final shooting script looks like. Russell worked endlessly with producer Jacks to ruthlessly cut to the bone Jarre’s originally vastly overblown script, deleting endless subplots and emphasizing the oh so important relationship between Wyatt and Doc. 

It is disputed to this day who directed the actual film. Russell claims that he and not Cosmatos did. He says that the latter was brought in as a “ghost director” because Russell did not want it to be known at the time that he was directing the film. 

Critics either really liked it or really, really hated it. The latter, all male I must note, thought it treated women badly. I didn’t. 

Box office wise, it was a fantastic success, making three times what it cost to produce. 

I’ve watched it at least a half dozen times. The Suck Fairy has equally enjoyed it each times she’s viewed it with me. She particularly liked the final scene with Kurt Russell as Wyatt Earp and Dana Delany as Josephine Marcus dancing in the snow in San Francisco. She does have a soft heart, you know.

(8) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

  • Born November 24, 1882 E. R. Eddison. Writer whose most well-known work by far is The Worm Ouroboros. It’s slightly connected to his much lesser known later Zimiamvian Trilogy. I’m reasonably that sure I’ve read The Worm Ouroboros but way too long ago to remember anything about it. Silverberg in the Millenium Fantasy Masterworks Series edition of this novel said he considered it to be “the greatest high fantasy of them all”. (Died 1945.)
  • Born November 24, 1907 Evangeline Walton. Her best-known work, the Mabinogion tetralogy, was written during the late 1930s and early 1940s, and her Theseus trilogy was produced during the late 1940s. It’s worth stressing Walton is best known for her four novels retelling the Welsh Mabinogi. She published her first volume in 1936 under the publisher’s title of The Virgin and the Swine which is inarguably a terrible title. Although receiving glowing praise from John Cowper Powys, the book sold quite awfully and none of the other novels in the series were published at that time. Granted a second chance by Ballantine’s Adult Fantasy series in 1970, it was reissued with a much better title of The Island of the Mighty. The other three volumes followed quickly. Witch House is an occult horror story set in New England and She Walks in Darkness which came out on Tachyon Press is genre as well. I think that is the extent of her genre work but I’d be delighted to be corrected. She has won a number of Awards including the Mythopoeic Award for Adult Literature, Best Novel along with The Fritz Leiber Fantasy Award, World Fantasy Award, Convention Award and the World Fantasy Award for Life Achievement. (Died 1996.) (JJ )
  • Born November 24, 1926 Forrest J Ackerman. It’s no wonder that he got a Hugo for #1 Fan Personality in 1953 and equally telling that when he was handed the trophy at Philcon II (by Asimov), he physically declined saying it should go to Ken Slater to whom the trophy was later given by the con committee. That’s a nice summation of him. You want more? As a literary agent, he represented some two hundred writers, and he served as agent of record for many long-lost authors, thereby allowing their work to be reprinted. Hell, he represented Ed Wood! He was a prolific writer, more than fifty stories to his credit, and he named Vampirella and wrote the origin story for her. His non-fiction writings are wonderful as well. I’ll just single out Forrest J Ackerman’s Worlds of Science FictionA Reference Guide to American Science Fiction Films and a work he did with Brad Linaweaver, Worlds of Tomorrow: The Amazing Universe of Science Fiction Art. Did I mention he collected everything? Well, he did. Just one location of his collection contained some three hundred thousand books, film, SF material objects and writings. The other was eighteen rooms in extent. Damn if anyone needed their own TARDIS, it was him. In his later years, he was a board member of the Seattle Science Fiction Museum and Hall of Fame who now have possession of many items of his collection. (Died 2008.)
  • Born November 24, 1948 Spider Robinson, 74. His first story, “The Guy with the Eyes,” was published in Analog (February 1973). It was set in a bar called Callahan’s Place, a setting for much of his later fiction.  His first published novel, Telempath in 1976 was an expansion of his Hugo award-winning novella “By Any Other Name”. The Stardance trilogy was co-written with his wife Jeanne Robinson; the first book won a Nebula. In 2004, he began working on a seven-page 1955 novel outline by the late Heinlein to expand it into a novel. The resulting novel would be called Variable Star. Who’s read it?
  • Born November 24, 1957 Denise Crosby, 65. Tasha Yar on Next Gen who got a meaningful death in “Yesterday’s Enterprise” after getting an earlier truly meaningless one. In other genre work, she was on The X-Files as a doctor who examined Agent Scully’s baby. And I really like it that she was in two Pink Panther films, Trail of the Pink Panther and Curse of the Pink Panther, as Denise, Bruno’s Moll. And she’s yet another Trek performer who’s popped doing what I call Trek video fanfic. She’s Dr. Jenna Yar in “Blood and Fire: Part 2”, an episode of the only season of Star Trek: New Voyages as Paramount was not amused. 
  • Born November 24, 1957 Jeff Noon, 65. Novelist and playwright. Prior to his relocation in 2000 to Brighton, his stories reflected in some way his native though not birth city of Manchester. The Vurt sequence whose first novel won the Arthur C. Clarke Award is a very odd riff off Alice in Wonderland that he describes as a sequel to those works. Noon was the winner of an Astounding Award for the Best New Science Fiction Writer.
  • Born November 24, 1957 John Zakour, 65. For sheer pulp pleasure, I wholeheartedly recommend his Zachary Nixon Johnson PI series which he co-wrote with Larry Ganem. Popcorn reading at its very best. It’s the only series of his I’ve read, anyone else read his other books? 
  • Born November 24, 1965 Shirley Henderson, 57. She was Moaning Myrtle in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets and Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. She was Ursula Blake in “Love & Monsters!”, a Tenth Doctor story, and played Susannah in Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story, a film that’s sf because of the metanarrative aspect.

(9) COMICS SECTION.

  • Eek! shows that even a successful experiment by a mad scientist can cause problems. (Or do they always?)
  • The Far Side shows the real reason they went extinct.

(10) I SEE BY YOUR OUTFIT. Radio Times is agog as “Doctor Who unveils new look at David Tennant as Fourteenth Doctor”.

…Fans were previously treated to a closer look at Tennant’s Fourteenth Doctor outfit at MCM Comic Con last month, where a special exhibit showed off the blue coat and white trainers that the Doctor will wear in the upcoming 60th anniversary episodes, which are set to air in 2023.

The exhibit also featured the striped jumper and green jacket worn by Catherine Tate, who will be reprising her role as the Doctor’s companion Donna Noble in the three specials….

(11) SHOCKWAVE WIDER. Nature shows how “Shock waves spark blazing light from black holes”.

Radiation from a jet of ultrafast particles powered by a supermassive black hole suggests that the particles are accelerated by shock waves propagating along the jet, making them shine with the brightness of 100 billion Suns!

Most of the 200 billion galaxies in the Universe are centred around enormous black holes that can weigh as much as one billion Suns. Many of these black holes are dormant, but some are still growing, devouring gas from their surroundings and releasing vast amounts of radiation. Even fewer of these active supermassive black holes are capable of launching powerful jets from their cores — ultrafast streams of particles that shine brightly, and can travel distances of up to 100 times the size of their own galaxy. But what provides the initial kick that enables these particles to release so much energy? Writing in Nature, Liodakis et al. report that the push comes from shock waves that are generated naturally…

[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, Chris Barkley, Andrew Porter, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Patrick McGuire, Michael Toman, Cat Eldridge, Mike Kennedy, and JJ for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Andrew (not Werdna).]

Dragon Award Reveals Category Changes for 2023

The Dragon Award administrators have announced they will reduce the number of award categories from last year’s 15 to 11 in 2023. Two categories will be eliminated, and six other categories will be doubled together, leaving three, however, they are also adding one brand new category.

The changes include:

Deleting the Media Tie-In and Military Fantasy/Sci-Fi categories;

Merging the following categories:

  • Comic Book and Graphic Novel will become one category, Best Comic Book or Graphic Novel;
  • PC/Console and Mobile Game have been combined into Best Digital Game;
  • Board Game and Miniatures/Role-playing/CCG Game will be merged into Best Tabletop Game.

Adding a category:

  • Best Illustrative Book Cover, which the administrators say will “more accurately reflect our roots and fandom in the Art community.”

Although the home page also announces that nominations are open for 2023 and they are accepting registrations to receive a ballot next August, neither function was working at the time this was written.  

2022 Dragon Awards

Dragon Awards. Photo by Sean CW Korsgaard.

The 2022 Dragon Awards winners were announced on September 4. (Thanks to Ray Radlein for livetweeting the results.)

1. Best Science Fiction Novel

  • Leviathan Falls by James S.A. Corey

2. Best Fantasy Novel (Including Paranormal)

  • Book of Night by Holly Black

3. Best Young Adult / Middle Grade Novel

  • A Dark and Starless Forest by Sarah Hollowell

4. Best Military Science Fiction or Fantasy Novel

  • A Call to Insurrection by David Weber, Timothy Zahn, Thomas Pope

5. Best Alternate History Novel

  • The Silver Bullets of Annie Oakley by Mercedes Lackey

6. Best Media Tie-In Novel

  • Star Wars: Thrawn Ascendancy: Lesser Evil by Timothy Zahn

7. Best Horror Novel

  • The Book of Accidents by Chuck Wendig

8. Best Comic Book

  • Immortal X-Men by Kieron Gillen, Mark Brooks

9. Best Graphic Novel

  • Dune: House Atreides Volume 2 by Brian Herbert, Kevin J. Anderson, Dev Pramanik

10. Best Science Fiction or Fantasy TV Series

  • Stranger Things, Netflix

11. Best Science Fiction or Fantasy Movie

  • Dune by Denis Villeneuve

12. Best Science Fiction or Fantasy PC / Console Game

  • Elden Ring, Bandai Namco Entertainment

13. Best Science Fiction or Fantasy Mobile Game

  • Diablo Immortal, Blizzard

14. Best Science Fiction or Fantasy Board Game

  • Star Wars Outer Rim: Unfinished Business, Fantasy Flight Games

15. Best Science Fiction or Fantasy Miniatures / Collectible Card / Role-Playing Game

  • Magic: The Gathering, Dungeons & Dragons: Adventures in the Forgotten Realms, Wizards of the Coast

Also presented at the ceremony:

2022 JULIE AWARD

  • Jim Starlin

In 1998, Dragon Con established the Julie Award presented annually in tribute to the legendary Julie Schwartz. The Julie Award is bestowed for universal achievement spanning multiple genres, selected each year by our esteemed panel of industry professionals. The first recipient in 1998 was science fiction and fantasy Grandmaster Ray Bradbury.

2022 HANK REINHARDT FANDOM AWARD

The recipient of the Hank Reinhardt Fandom Award, formerly the Georgia Fandom Award, is John Carrol.