Pixel Scroll 11/12/23 Baby Pixels Are Ever So Adorable Wrapped In Their Scrolls While Being Loved By Filers One And All

(1) PLAY ALONG AT HOME. [Item by Dann.] One of those question/surveys was running around on X the other day.  This one seemed a bit more interesting to me.  Filers might find this an interesting game to play as well.

Omitting collected works, who are the top 5 authors in your library by number of books on your shelves?

Stephen King ~15
E.E. Knight ~12
Christopher Nuttall 11
Dave Duncan 11
Miles Cameron 9

I included both physical and ebooks in my count.  Most of my Stephen King and E.E. Knight books were physical, so I don’t have an accurate count close to hand.

After considering it a little longer, I would probably have to include Piers Anthony on the list.  I owned a whole stack of his books before I figured out that some of his content was a little…erm…troubling.  And I wouldn’t want to drop Miles Cameron off of the list in favor of Piers.

If shared universes with multiple authors are included, then Dragonlance would easily make it into the top five.  Sorry, Miles.  That one would bump you off.

What are your top 5 authors of books you own?

(2) EYEWITNESS TO THE ENDEAVOUR AWARD. Thanks to Ruth Sachter for sharing this photo of Sara A. Mueller accepting the Endeavour Award at OryCon on November 10.

Sara A. Mueller

(3) THE SHAPE OF WESTERCON TO COME. Kevin Standlee has written up two very different proposals for dealing with “The Future of Westercon” – one is a clean death, the other continues the con in a changed format.

As I hope most people following me know, Westercon has fallen on hard times. While Tonopah was successful and fun for most of the 158 people who attended, it was affected by COVID and by BayCon moving its dates onto the 4th of July Weekend, apparently just ignoring that Tonopah’s Westercon existing. The 2021 SeaTac and 2023 Anaheim Westercons dissolved, handing in their franchises to LASFS (which owns the Westercon service mark), and LASFS held both Westercons 73 and 75 in conjunction with Loscon. We once again this year have no bids filed to host the two-years-hence Westercon, although anyone could show up before the voting ends on the Friday evening of Loscon 49/Westercon 75. Assuming that doesn’t happen, the Westercon 75 Business Meeting at Loscon 49 will have to decide what to do about site selection. However, I tend to think that before that, the meeting needs to give some thought to the future of Westercon.

It appears to me that there are two scenarios: Retire Westercon or make some changes to given a chance to restart, perhaps in a different form. I therefore have prepared a Google doc with two scenarios. You should be able to read this document without needing a Google account.

Scenario 1 is to Retire Westercon, and is simply a motion to repeal the Westercon bylaws.

Scenario 2 makes five separate changes to the Westercon Bylaws to disconnect it from the US Independence Day Weekend (even loosely), removes the Westercon zone restrictions (but retains the 104°W longitude eastern boundary in North America), and changes all of the hard-coded dates to dates relative to the date of the administering Westercon. This would at least allow in theory Westercon to be awarded to various conventions in Western North America who wanted to host it, or also allow “independent” Westercons to be organized.

(4) ZOOMING INTO FANHISTORY. Fanac.org has announced four upcoming Fan History Zoom sessions coordinated by webmaster Edie Stern. The first session on the list is:

APAs Everywhere

Fred Lerner, Christina Lake, Amy Thomson and Tom Whitmore

December 9, 2023 – 2PM EST, 11AM PST and 7PM London GMT

Since the first FAPA mailing in 1937, APAs have been a part of fannish life. There are topic specific apas, local apas, general interest apas, convention committee apas, letter substitutes and doubtless many more. Our panelists, all long time APA members, talk about their experiences with APA life: Why did you join the APA(s)? Did you APA live up to your expectations and why? Tell us about the APAs you’ve been part of, and tell us what makes them unique. (You can tell us about APAs you weren’t part of too!) Talk about the way the members of the APA related to each other, and the nature of that community. Compare the experience of an online community like LiveJournal or Facebook with your APA experience. The Cult was called the “13 Nastiest Bastards in Fandom”. Was it? What feels different about womens’ APAs? Are APAs now obsolete? Would you join a new APA today?

To attend, please send a note to [email protected]

The following three sessions will be:

  • January 20, 2024 – 2PM EST, 11AM PST and 7PM London GMT – An Interview with Joe Green
  • February 17, 2024 – 7PM EST, 11 AM Feb 18 Melbourne AEDT – Wrong Turns on the Wallaby Track Part 2, with Leigh Edmonds and Perry Middlemiss
  • March 16, 2024 – 3PM EDT, 2PM CDT, 7PM London (GMT) – The Women Fen Don’t See – Claire Brialey, Kate Heffner, and Leah Zeldes Smith

(5) WHEN SILENCE IS NOT GOLDEN. Deadline has the quotes: “’Coyote vs Acme’ Composer Slams Warner Bros Over Pic’s Axing; Director ‘Devastated’”.

Coyote vs. Acme composer Steven Price has blasted the David Zaslav cost-cutting Warner Bros Discovery administration for axing the Looney Tunes hybrid live-action animated film.

Price, who won an original score Oscar for Warner Bros. tentpole Gravity in 2014 took to X to say “Had a lot of fun scoring Coyote Vs Acme. As no-one will be able to hear it now, due to bizarre anti-art studio financial shenanigans I will never understand, here is a bit of behind the scenes footage of our “Meep Meep” Roadrunner choir, with apologies to Tchaikovsky…

(6) PICK SIX. Guardian critic Lisa Tuttle’s “The best recent science fiction, fantasy and horror – reviews roundup” is devoted to The Scandalous Confessions of Lydia Bennet, Witch by Melinda Taub; Mothtown by Caroline Hardaker; Saturnalia by Stephanie Feldman; Writing the Future, edited by Dan Coxon and Richard V Hirst; and She’s a Killer by Kirsten McDougall.

(7) GOLDSMITHS PRIZE. The winner of the 2023 Goldsmiths Prize is Benjamin Myers’ Cuddy, a novel that incorporates poetry, prose, play, diary and real historical accounts, to retell the story of the hermit St. Cuthbert, the unofficial patron saint of the North of England. The Goldsmiths Prize “celebrates fiction at its most novel.”

(8) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

  • Born November 12, 1917 Dahlov Ipcar. Though primarily an artist and you really should go visit her website, she wrote three amazing young adult novels between 1969 and 1978 which are The Warlock of Night, The Queen of Spells and A Dark Horn Blowing. She lived but thirty miles north of here and I was privileged to meet her a few times. Lovely lady! (Died 2017.)
  • Born November 12, 1929 Michael Ende. German author best known for The Neverending Story which is far better than the film. Momo, or the strange story of the time-thieves is a charming if strange novel worth your time. The rest of his children’s literature has been translated from German into English mostly by small specialist presses down the years. Unlike The Neverending Story and Momo, which I’ve encountered, I’ve not read any of these. (Died 1995.)
  • Born November 12, 1943 Wallace Shawn, 80. Probably best remembered as the ferengi Grand Nagus Zek on Deep Space Nine, a role he only played seven times. He was also Vizzini in the beloved Princess Bride, and he played Dr. Elliott Coleye in the My Favorite Martian film. He also was the voice of Rex in the Toy Story franchise. SFE notes that all of his plays were at least loosely genre and one of them, “The Fever”, was filmed. So yes, he’s a writer as well. 
  • Born November 12, 1945 Michael Bishop, 78 . David Pringle included his Who Made Stevie Crye? novel in Modern Fantasy: The 100 Best Novels, An English-Language Selection, 1946-1987, high praise indeed. Though slightly dated feeling now, I’m fond of his Urban Nucleus of Atlanta series. And Philip K. Dick is Dead, Alas is simply amazing.
  • Born November 12, 1964 Eric Nylund, 59. His best work I think is  Jack Potter/Signal sequence of  Signal to Noise and A Signal Shattered, though the Gods Quintet in my humble opinion tries but fails to venture into Amber Chronicles greatness. 
  • Born November 12, 1976 Richelle Mead, 47. Best known for her Georgina Kincaid series, the Vampire Academy franchise and its spin-off series Bloodlines, and the Dark Swan series. I’ve only read Succubus Blues by her but it’s a truly great read and I recommend it strongly. Spirit Bound won a Good Reads Award.  

(9) COMICS SECTION.

  • PHD Comics is a Star Wars crossover.

(10) THERE WAS A PLAN, IT JUST DIDN’T WORK. Deadline’s Anthony D’Alessandro’s article “Box Office: The Marvels $47M Lowest for MCU – What Went Wrong” has a long list of things that broke down, and this is one item on it:

…No, The Marvels meltdown isn’t about superhero fatigue. It’s about Disney’s overexposure of the Marvel Cinematic Universe brand on Disney+, and those moth holes are beginning to show: Keep what’s meant for the cinema in cinemas, and keep what’s meant for in-homes in the home. Meaning, this whole crossover streaming-into-film master plan isn’t working, nor is it really connected in a jaw-dropping way, and with Ms. Marvel not being one of the OTT services better series (ala WandaVision and Loki season one), there’s a whole quad of fans who either didn’t catch Ms Marvel, or who were too turned off by it that they sure as heck don’t want to see The Marvels.

But more to the point, Marvel Studios, The Marvels — with its crossover streaming series blah-blah — looks like it was built to be seen in homes, not to get audiences off the couch….

(11) AND YET… No matter what happened to the latest movie, Gizmodo remembers “How Carol Danvers Became Marvel Comics’ Flagship Hero”.

Captain Marvel was dead, to begin with. More than one Captain Marvel, if we want to be perfectly accurate about it. By 2012, the Marvel Comics hero that bore the company name had been relaunched in no fewer than six different series, and seen a total of three separate characters take on the name. More than three decades in, it seemed increasingly that Captain Marvel was the flagship character who just couldn’t manage to hoist a flag—and the Marvel powers that be were determined to change things once and for all.

What followed was a strange saga of missteps, false starts, and roads not taken, that finally landed on one of the most unexpected heroes of all: a neglected, half-appreciated, and similarly unsuccessful character called Carol Danvers. This is the inside story of how an ambitious first-time writer, a bullheaded editor, and a stylish designer created the most unexpected Marvel success of their era.

To understand why Captain Marvel was in need of saving, we need to understand something about why the character existed in the first place. Put indelicately, Captain Marvel was born as a trademark in need of a character. In 1967, Marvel Comics and its owner, a company called Magazine Management, realized that the name Captain Marvel—once held by the venerable Fawcett Comics character now known as Shazam!—had lapsed into disuse over the course of the decade. Fearing that another enterprising publisher would scoop up a name that should, by all rights, be identified with Marvel, a character was hastily rushed out by management fiat. Cobbled together by Stan Lee and artist Gene Colan (the latter of whom hated the character, and claimed no involvement in his conception), the good Captain was an alien spy of the Kree race, creatively named Mar-Vell, who turned traitor to his people to fight as a costumed defender of Earth. In such ways are great ideas born….

(12) BRONTË BIRTHPLACE CROWDFUNDING SUCCESS. “Campaigners save Bradford birthplace of Brontë sisters” reports the Guardian.

Campaigners have saved the birthplace of the Brontë sisters and are now fundraising to turn the building into a cultural and education centre – helped by a man with a link to the literary family.

Nigel West, who traces a family connection to Charlotte Brontë’s husband, made a “significant donation” to the crowdfunding appeal, which aims to transform 72-74 Market Street in Thornton, Bradford, into a tourist destination.

Around a million visitors a year travel to Haworth, to visit the house that writers Charlotte, Anne and Emily shared with their father, church minister Patrick, and their wayward brother, Branwell, and campaigners hope to transform the Thornton house, which went on sale this year, into a similar attraction….

(13) FROM BARBIE TO ASLAN? The Guardian’s Ben Childs wonders “Can Greta Gerwig bring a new kind of magic to Netflix’s Narnia Chronicles?”

You might think Greta Gerwig an unusual choice to take on CS Lewis’s Narnia stories for Netflix. And at first glance, few would argue with you. Beginning her career as an actor in mumblecore movies such as Baghead, Hannah Takes the Stairs and Greenberg before transitioning into indie cinema as a film-maker with Lady Bird, Gerwig became a household name with this year’s $1.4bn-grossing, conservative-baiting, slyly subversive comedy fantasy Barbie, a movie that will be remembered as the most topically adroit cinematic event of 2023, despite ostensibly being about a child’s plastic toy.

So what on earth might Gerwig do with Aslan, Eustace Grubb and Mr Tumnus the faun? Gerwig is down to make at least two from Lewis’s seven-book series for Netflix, and the streamer’s chairman Scott Stuber hinted to Variety this week that the films might be more traditional than we might think. “She grew up in a Christian background,” Stuber said. “The CS Lewis books are very much based in Christianity. And so we just started talking about it. We don’t have IP, so when we had the opportunity [to license] those books or the [Roald Dahl stories] we’ve jumped at it, to have stories that people recognise and the ability to tell those stories.” Stuber said Gerwig was currently working out the “narrative arc” of the films, but implied heavily that The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe would be a central focus.

This is pretty much expected, but the idea that Gerwig might zero in on the traditional religious imagery, when she’s known for a movie that went against the grain with such impish if warm-hearted attitude, is less predictable….

(14) FAN CONCEPT TRAILER. From Darth Trailer, Andor Season 2.

[Thanks to SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, Ruth Sachter, Lise Andreasen, Dann, Steven French, John King Tarpinian, Chris Barkley, and Cat Eldridge for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Cat Eldridge.]

Sara A. Mueller Wins Endeavour Award for 2022 Books

The Endeavour Award for books published in 2022 was presented on November 10 at OryCon 43. The winner is:

  • Sara A Mueller, for The Bone Orchard (Tor).

The award encourages the growth of literature in the field and recognizes works of excellence by Pacific Northwest authors. It is named for H.M. Bark Endeavour, the ship of Northwest explorer Capt. James Cook. It is accompanied by a grant of $1,000.

The winning entry was selected by judges Deborah Ross, Brenda Cooper, and Meg Elison. Each of the judges offered praise for the winner:

Meg Elison: “This was a tough decision, but in the end gorgeous sentence-level writing made the difference. The Bone Orchard is a stunning debut and a show of force from a new talent who doubtless has a treasure trove of stories yet to share.”  

Brenda Cooper: “The Bone Orchard is a delightful, complex tale that feels both familiar and strange. A beautiful novel rich with description, sprinkled with surprise, and full of feeling. This was a very hard decision. The Pacific Northwest is rich with brilliant writers. In addition to the winning novel, the finalists included a book in a personal favorite series by a favorite writer, a creepy and complex debut, and a haunting dark historical fantasy. This was a strong set of finalists. I wish all of the books, and writers, well.”

Deborah Ross: “With a style reminiscent of Tanith Lee, Sara A. Mueller spins a tale of magic, identity, politics, and hidden pain. We know that severe early trauma increases the risk of dissociative identity disorder, formerly called multiple personality. Suppose, then, that it were possible to create a synthetic version of yourself, using bones grown on trees, for example, a “you” that would bear that unbearable pain? Or take your shame upon herself? At what point would you cease to be you? How many aspects of yourself must you lose to become someone else, and what would be left? From the very first pages, I was enthralled by The Lady, Charm, Pain, Pride, Shame, and Justice, and how they each survived (or perished) in the ruthless, often lethal game of magical politics. I especially loved how each found a wellspring of compassion in her burden, especially Pain. The unexpected love story was like a chocolate left on my pillow.”

Sara A. Mueller writes speculative fiction in the Pacific Northwest, “where she lives with her family, numerous recipe books, and a forest of fountain pens.”

The other Endeavour Award finalists were: 

  • Leech, by Hiron Ennes (Tor.com)
  • Be The Serpent, by Seanan McGuire (DAW)
  • Spelunking Through Hell, by Seanan McGuire (DAW)
  • The Wild Hunt, by Emma Seckel (Tin House)

Submissions will soon open for the Endeavour Award for books published in 2023. To enter, contact Jim Kling at jkling (at) gmail (dot) com for submission instructions. Eligible entries are (1) science fiction or fantasy works of 40,000 words or more, or single-author collections of short fiction (2) by an author or authors whose legal or physical residence was in the Pacific Northwest [Alaska, Oregon, Washington, Idaho, The Yukon, and British Columbia] when the publisher accepted the book; and they must affirm that they wrote the majority of the book while living in the Pacific Northwest. See full information on the Endeavour Award web page.

Endeavour Award Fundraiser

By Jim Kling, Endeavour Award Administrator: The Endeavour Award is pleased to announce that an anonymous donor has agreed to match donations to the award, up to a total of $500. Since 1999, the award has recognized fantasy and science fiction novels or short story collections published by authors living in the Pacific Northwest.

The funds are used to support a $1,000 prize as well as a trophy to the winner and certificates to the finalists.

The Endeavour Award uses a two-tiered process that relies on dozens of volunteer readers who review and score each submitted novel or short story collection. Top scorers are named finalists, and a three-person jury selects the winner. Most recently for the 2021 Endeavour Award, Catherine Asaro, Andy Duncan, and Fran Wilde honored the short story collection “How to Get to Apocalypse and Other Disasters,” by Erica L. Satifka

Anyone who donates $5 or more will receive an e-chapbook with a short story from 2021 award winner Erica Satifka.

To donate, please follow this PayPal link. The Endeavour Award is part of Oregon Science Fiction Conventions, Inc. (OSFCI,) a 501 (c)(3) non-profit corporation. Donations to the Endeavour Award/OSFCI are tax deductible.

The Endeavour Award is also looking for volunteer readers. We are currently reading books published in 2022. We ask for a minimum commitment to read and score at least 5 books. This is an excellent opportunity to discover new authors and works you might otherwise not have come across. Note, you DO NOT need to live in the Pacific Northwest to be a reader. If you’d like to volunteer, please reach out to Jim Kling at jkling at gmail dot com. You can also find more information about the Endeavour Award at its web site or its Facebook page.

Pixel Scroll 4/24/23 A Pixel Lives Forever, But Not So Files And Scrolls

(1) MOST CENSORED. “ALA Releases Top 13 Most Challenged Books of 2022” – see the complete list at Publishers Weekly. This genre work is on it:

10. A Court of Mist and Fury by Sarah J. Maas, for claims it is sexually explicit.

(2) 2025 WORLDCON BID STATUS. According to the Chengdu Worldcon PR#1, the deadline for submission of materials for biding for the 2025 Worldcon was April 21, 2023.

Kathy Bond, Co-Chair of the Seattle 2025 Bid, says “We filed our documents in March and received confirmation that they were received by the Chengdu team.” 

However, all are waiting on the Chengdu committee to confirm whether that was the sole filed bid.

(3) THE STATE OF TRADPUB SALARIES. A Publishers Weekly survey sees “Starting Salaries at Big Publishers Grow”.

As of April 1, the average entry-level salary for publishing employees located in New York City at the Big Five trade publishers and Scholastic was $47,583, up from $38,583 before the Covid-19 pandemic, according to a recent survey conducted by PW. That marks an increase of 23.3%, during a period when prices rose 12.4%, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Publishers raced to increase starting salaries beginning in 2020, after the onset of the pandemic and the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police prompted book business workers to call attention to social justice causes, including the need for publishing employees to make a living wage. Another round of salary increases occurred earlier this year across the Big Five—including at HarperCollins, where union members ended a three-month strike in February.

According to the publishers polled in this survey, staffers work between 35 and 40 hours a week, depending on the company, and all are eligible for overtime. Respondents to the industrywide 2022 PW salary survey said they were working an average of 42 hours per week—including time outside the office—the same number of hours they reported working in 2021. The survey also found that median compensation for staff with less than five years of experience was $46,000 for editorial, $48,000 for sales and marketing, and $61,500 for operations and production….

(4) SEE ENDEAVOUR AWARD WINNER INTERVIEW. The Endeavour Award for science fiction and fantasy published by Pacific Northwest authors is announcing a new series of interviews and readings featuring winners, finalists, judges, and other PNW luminaries. The first interview will be with 2021 Endeavour Award winner Erica L. Satifka, who won the prize for her short story collection How to Get to Apocalypse and Other Disasters. The event will be held Friday, April 28 at 4:00 p.m. Pacific (7:00 p.m. Eastern), and will include an interview and a reading from her book. To join, visit the Endeavour Award’s Facebook page

The award administrator is currently seeking entries for books published in 2022. Entries are free. Please contact Jim Kling at [email protected] for more information. 

Since 1999, The Endeavour Award has recognized science fiction or fantasy works of 40,000 words or more, or single-author collections of short fiction. The author(s) must have had legal or physical residence in the Pacific Northwest (Alaska, Oregon, Washington, Idaho, The Yukon, and British Columbia) when the publisher accepted the book, and must affirm that they wrote the majority of the book while living in the Pacific Northwest. The books must have been published in the United States or in Canada.

(5) THE TRUTH IS OUT THERE. Craig Miller tells a fascinating story on Facebook about working on publicity for Oliver Stone’s first feature as a director, a little-known film called The Hand.  

…A couple final comments about the film. When I was a publicist, I would not lie. I would not tell people something was great if I didn’t think it was. When I was repping “The Hand”, I used to describe it as “one of the best disembodied hand movies ever”. And on that metric, I think I’m correct….

(6) BULGACON 2022 RECORDINGS ON LINE. [Item by Valentin D. Ivanov.] Bulgacon is the annual national Bulgarian SFF convention. The 2022 hybrid edition took place in Kardzhali on Sept 2-6, 2002. The event gathered some international participation (including Peter Watts, Paul MacAuley, Julie Novakova and Lavie Tidhar, among others.

A bilingual Bulgarian/English booklet with the program and the list of panelists can be seen in pdf format here.

Recently, the recordings of 16 panels (most in English with Bulgarian translation) were made available on a dedicated YouTube channel.

(7) DENNY LIEN MEMORIAL PLANNED. The family obituary — “Obituary of Dennis Kieth Lien” – includes details of the planned memorial. There is also a link to a page full of tributes and reminiscences about him.

A memorial celebration of life is planned for Friday June 2, 5–8 pm, at the Como Park Streetcar Station. See Denny’s online memorial board for further information as well as tributes, personal anecdotes, and photos: www.kudoboard.com/boards/xRExNJQo/dennylien

(8) HOW TO TRAIN YOUR BOT. The Washington Post’s analysis of a dataset that may be used to train AI bots like ChatGPT, linked in the April 21 Scroll, inspired Jonathan Cowie to check on some other SF sites “including my personal Science-com one I’ve not updated since CoVID…” (To refresh your memories, File 770 ranked 3,445th with 2.5 million “tokens”.) Here are screencaps of the results for Locus.com, Ansible, SF2 Concatenation, and Science.com.

(9) ON THE ROAD. Feline intelligence far surpasses AI when it comes to understanding great literature. “Timothy reads The Road by Cormac McCarthy” at Camestros Felapton.

…Mr McCarthy wrote a novel in which nearly everything is dead. He doesn’t say that a cat did it but I think we can infer that. When you read literature, the author doesn’t always explain everything….

(10) MEMORY LANE.

1997[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

Before her short life was drawn to a close by cancer, Angela Carter was fond in her writings of using folklore themes. Her best remembered story I think is A Company of Wolves which got turned into a film but there were others as well but not limited to including a woman with wings, werewolves, the erl-king, and reworkings of Snow White and Sleeping Beauty. 

What we have for our Beginning tonight is  her “Puss-in Boots” story which she wrote specifically for The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories collection which was published by 1997. 

The Bloody Chamber was  often described as a series  of retellings’ of classic children’s fairy tales. Not true. Carter said she was actually writing new tales which revealed the intrinsic violence which included sexual violence towards women of those old folk tales.

This tale, and I don’t consider this a spoiler, is based off the Italian commedia dell’arte tradition. 

This story, as is The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories collection, simply stellar. 

And now for our rather delightful Beginning…

“Figaro here; Figaro, there, I tell you! Figaro upstairs, Figaro downstairs and–oh, my goodness me, this little Figaro can slip into my lady’s chamber smart as you like at any time whatsoever that he takes the fancy for, don’t you know, he’s a cat of the world, cosmopolitan, sophisticated; he can tell when a furry friend is the Missus’ best company. For what lady in all the world could say ‘no’ to the passionate yet toujours discret advances of a fine marmalade cat? (Unless it be her eyes incontinently overflow at the slightest whiff of fur, which happened once, as you shall hear.)

A tom, sirs, a ginger tom and proud of it. Proud of his fine, white shirtfront that dazzles harmoniously against his orange and tangerine tessellations (oh! what a fiery suit of lights have I); proud of his bird-entrancing eye and more than military whiskers; proud, to a fault, some say, of his fine, musical voice. All the windows in the square fly open when I break into impromptu song at the spectacle of the moon above Bergamo. If the poor players in the square, the sullen rout of ragged trash that haunts provinces, are rewarded with a hail of pennies when they set up their makeshift stage and start their raucous choruses, then how much more liberally do the citizens deluge me with pails of the freshest water, vegetables hardly spoiled and, occasionally, slippers, shoes and boots.

“Do you see these fine, high, shining leather boots of mine? A young cavalry officer made me the tribute of, first, one; then, after I celebrate his generosity with a fresh obbligato, the moon no fuller than my heart–whoops! I nimbly spring aside–down comes the other. Their high heels will click like castanets when Puss takes his promenade upon the tiles, for my song recalls flamenco, all cats have a Spanish tinge although Puss himself elegantly lubricates his virile, muscular, native Bergamasque with French, since that is the only language in which you can purr.

“Merrrrrrrrrrrci!’

Instanter I draw my new boots on over the natty white stockings that terminate my hinder legs. That young man, observing with curiosity by moonlight the use to which I put his footwear, calls out: ‘Hey, Puss! Puss, there!’

‘At your service, sir!’

‘Up to my balcony, young Puss!”

(11) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

  • Born April 24, 1910 Albert Zugsmith. American film producer, film director and screenwriter who specialized in really low-budget exploitation films such as Sex Kittens Go to College and Female on the Beach through the Fifties and Sixties. So why am I giving him a Birthday, you ask?  Why it’s because he produced The Incredible Shrinking Man which won a Hugo at Solacon. (Died 1993.)
  • Born April 24, 1946 Don D’Ammassa, 77. Considered to be one of the best and fairest long-form reviewers ever. His Encyclopedia of Science Fiction (2005) covers some five hundred writers and as can two newer volumes, Encyclopedia of Fantasy and Horror Fiction (2006) and Encyclopedia of Adventure Fiction (2009) are equally exhaustive. I can’t comment on his fiction as I’ve only ever encountered him as a reviewer.
  • Born April 24, 1947 Michael Butterworth, 76. Author with Michael Moorcock of, naturally, two Time of the Hawklords novels, Time of the Hawklordsand Queens of Deliria. He also wrote a number of Space 1999 Year 2 novels, too numerous to list here. He also edited Corridor magazine from 1971 to 1974. He also wrote a number of short fiction pieces including one whose title amuses me for reasons I’m not sure, “Circularisation of Condensed Conventional Straight-Line Word-Image Structures”. 
  • Born April 24, 1950 Michael Patrick Hearn, 73. Academic who has some of the best annotated works I’ve had the pleasure to encounter. I wholeheartedly recommend both The Annotated Wizard of Oz and The Annotated Christmas Carol, not to overlook Victorian Fairy Tales which is simply the best collection of those tales.
  • Born April 24, 1953 Gregory Luce, 70. Editor and publisher of both the Science Fiction Gems and the Horror Gems anthology series, plus such other anthologies as Citadel of the Star Lords / Voyage to Eternity and Old Spacemen Never Die! / Return to Earth.
  • Born April 24, 1955 Wendy S. Delmater, 68. She was nominated at Sasquan for a Best Semiprozine Hugo for editing the exemplary Abyss & Apex webzine. It’s particularly strong in the areas of speculative poetry and small press genre reviews. She herself has written a lot of genre centered essays, plus a handful of genre stories and poems. 
  • Born April 24, 1983 Madeline Ashby, 40. California-born Canadian resident writer whose Company Town novel created an entire city in an oil rig. Interestingly In 2013, she was a finalist for the Astounding Award for Best New Writer but recused herself on the grounds that her pro career started with her ‘09 publication of a short story in Nature, so her eligibility period had expired in ‘11. And her Machine Dynasties series is simply brilliant, and resonates with the later Murderbot series.

(12) FINAL SPACE RECEIVING A CONCLUSION AS A GRAPHIC NOVEL. [Item by N.] Final Space, the beloved cult sci-fi animated series, after it was given an unceremonious cancellation and tax write-off, is able to conclude its story next year via graphic novel as Olan Rogers has received a license.

Book is on sale here.

That’s the good news. The bad news, in a bit of a monkey’s paw for fans of the show outside of the US, is no digital release and what appears to be extremely high shipping costs (though Rogers, as of writing, is working with Shopify to reduce these). See these tweets for examples of the shipping costs: (1), (2), (3).

(13) THE ORIGINAL WAR ON COMICS. Unlike some Filers, there are readers even now approaching retirement age who know nothing about Seduction of the Innocent and the related efforts to censor comics. So CrimeReads’ Keith Roysdon is stepping in to provide “A Brief History of America Freaking Out About Horror Comics”.

Fourteen-year-old David Drew was the poster boy for horror comics in the 1950s, in the worst possible way….

…A wire service story widely published in newspapers beginning May 19 reported that Drew had told Douglas Kelley, a University of California psychiatrist, that he read horror comics and especially liked comics that “depict torture and throwing people off cliffs.” 

As the young killer moved through the California legal system – he pleaded guilty in November 1955 – newspapers and wire services quickly found a memorable label for his crime: “the comic book hatchet slaying.”

Authorities and newspapers were already primed to cite comic books as a bad influence on young people. A year before, in the spring of 1954, the Congressional Subcommittee to Investigate Juvenile Delinquency had held public hearings. Among those testifying was Frederic Wertham, a psychiatrist whose book, “Seduction of the Innocent,” posed the theory that comic book heroes like Batman and Robin were gay and a bad influence on children. 

Months before young Stanley Frank was killed, in October 1954, the Code of the Comics Magazine Association of America had been adopted by comics industry publishers. The comics industry had waved a white flag in the war on comics.

(14) QUEST CATALOG. SYFY Wire does a roundup of “Our favorite Holy Grail quest movies in honor of ‘Mrs. Davis’” Beware spoilers. Monty Python and the Holy Grail wins high praise here.

How far would you go to defeat an evil A.I.? That’s the question at the heart of Mrs. Davis, the new Peacock original series that premiered this week after a wave of positive reviews and early buzz that’s set it up as one of the most intriguing new genre shows of the year.

Now, there are a lot of twists and turns built into this show, but the basic setup is this: There’s a massively popular, potentially dangerous A.I. out there that calls itself “Mrs. Davis,” and a nun named Simone (Betty Gilpin) who wants to shut it down for the good of mankind. Simone is convinced that getting Mrs. Davis to deactivate is the right thing to do, but Mrs. Davis isn’t exactly just sitting by a plug that’s waiting for the nun to pull it. So … how is she supposed to get it done?

SPOILERS AHEAD

In the series premiere, it’s revealed that Mrs. Davis has made a promise to Simone: The A.I. will shut down if Simone can track down, and eventually destroy, the Holy Grail.

(15) ADA HOFFMANN COLLECTION ANNOUNCED. Apex Book Company has acquired first North America English rights to the collection Resurrections by Ada Hoffmann. The deal was brokered by agent Hannah Bowman of Liza Dawson Associates.

Ada Hoffmann’s work has been a finalist for the Philip K. Dick Award (2020, The Outside), the Compton Crook Award (2020, The Outside), and the WSFA Small Press Award (2020, “Fairest of All”). She is the winner of the Friends of the Merrill Collection Short Story Contest (2013, “The Mother of All Squid Builds a Library”) and a two-time Rhysling award nominee (2014 for “The Siren of Mayberry Crescent” and 2017 for “The Giantess’s Dream”).

Apex Book Company is a small press owned and operated by Jason Sizemore.

(16) MOCKUMENTARY. We may have looked at this before – but let’s look again! “The Great Martian War 1913-1917”.

This film was made in 2013 as a joke, for WW1’s 100th anniversary.

(17) VIDEO OF THE DAY. Ryan George tells us what it would be like “If Cats Had Podcasts” – and it’s barely an inconvenience!

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

Satifka Wins Endeavour Award for 2021 Books

The Endeavour Award for books published in 2021 was presented at Norwescon 45 on April 8.

  • How to Get to Apocalypse by Erica L. Satifka (Fairwood Press)

The award encourages the growth of literature in the field and recognize works of excellence. It is named for H.M. Bark Endeavour, the ship of Northwest explorer Capt. James Cook. It is accompanied by a grant of $1,000 to the winner.

The winning book was one of five finalists selected by a group of preliminary readers. The others included Jade Legacy by Fonda Lee (Orbit), Calculated Risks by Seanan McGuire (Daw), Blood of the Chosen by Django Wexler (Orbit), and On Fragile Waves by E. Lily Yu (Erewhon).

The award winner was determined from the finalists by a panel of judges consisting of Catherine Asaro, Andy Duncan, and Fran Wilde.

In combined remarks, the judges said: “We congratulate all the writers on this impressive shortlist, and salute our latest Endeavour Award winner, Erica L. Satifka.”

Regarding the winner, they said: “We are delighted to help shine an eerie phantasmagorical glow of regard onto a book of such spiky originality as this. Satifka’s How To Get to Apocalypse and Other Disasters is a fractal triumph that works on every level, from individual sentences and stories to the splendidly counterintuitive jigsaw of the whole. Rather than forming a seamless sameness, they constitute a fully interlocking kaleidoscope of moods and modes. These 23 stories take a gorgeously broad view of the genre, jacking especially into the cyberpunk mainframe, while exploring 21st-century concerns in language that raises a shower of sparks on every page. One juror compared this book to classic collections by Avram Davidson and R.A. Lafferty, which is the same as saying it’s basically incomparable; another juror summed up by saying, simply: ‘I’m very impressed.’ We also must honor the chutzpah of a book that identifies all the stories therein as disastrous.”

The Endeavour Award recognizes science fiction or fantasy works of 40,000 words or more, or single-author collections of short fiction. Eligibility for nominees remains the same. The author or authors must have been living [maintaining legal or physical residence] in the Pacific Northwest [Alaska, Oregon, Washington, Idaho, The Yukon, and British Columbia] when the publisher accepted the book, and must affirm that they wrote the majority of the book while living in the Pacific Northwest. The books must have been published in the United States or in Canada.

Update 04/10/23: Added information from a press release. 04/11/2023: Added photos.

Pixel Scroll 3/14/23 File 770 Posting Moved Because Pixel Scroll Collapsed From Comments Bug

(1) AFROPANTHEOLOGY. Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki today announced his new imprint, genre, and debut collection with Joshua Uchenna Omenga — Between Dystopias: The Road to Afropantheology. The book’s release date is October 24, 2023 and it can be preordered at Arc Manor Books. The cover is by Cyrielle Prückner.

Afropantheology is a portmanteau of Afro and Pantheology. Pantheology is the study of gods, religions, and the bodies of knowledge associated with them. Afropantheology, thus, is the study of African (and African-descended) religions, gods, and the bodies of knowledge associated with them. It captures the gamut of African works which, though having fantasy elements, are additionally imbued with the African spiritual realities.

​African literary scholars and storytellers have long grappled with the incompatibility of stories of African mysticism with the extant literary labels which seem to erase or dismiss essential aspects of African mysticism in their definitions. Between Dystopias: The Road to Afropantheology takes a stab at this age-old problem that cuts across the continent’s non-monolithic literature rooted in religion and culture. Afropantheology encapsulates the essence and value of African mysticism and dystopia through its award winning and original stories that cut across forms—essays, short stories, novelettes and novellas. It acknowledges the continent’s history in its inexorable journey through time’s spiral, from its origins to the present and into the future. ‘Mother’s Love, Father’s Place’, captures a ‘dark’ moment in the history of certain parts of Africa where the culture forbade the birthing of twins. 02 Arena, on the hand, is a contemporary ‘dystopic’ reality. The Witching Hour reflects the apprentice system in the voodoo practice still extant in many parts of Africa. ‘The Deification of Igodo’ is a tale of creation of deities from among the ancestors in African cosmology. ‘A Dance with the Ancestors’ tells of the interconnection between the world of the living and the world of the dead. And ‘Land of the Awaiting Birth’ is a mystic tale of the link between the born and the unborn in African cosmology.

Ekpeki says the collection will be published by a collaboration of Caezik Books of ARC Manor Books his new Pantheology imprint, “OD Ekpeki Presents”. The imprint logo is by Wilson Ofiavwe.

(2) CONAN BCE (BEFORE COPYRIGHT ERA) AND AFTER. Chuck Dixon’s The Siege Of The Black Citadel is an unauthorized Conan graphic novel published in February by Vox Day’s Castalia House. The original stories published during Robert E. Howard’s lifetime are in public domain in Europe, and Vox Day expressed confidence he will not run afoul of the rights connected with the work of L. Sprague de Camp and others.

This is going to be considered competition with the new authorized Conan novel recently released by Titan Books, S. M. Stirling’s Conan – Blood of the Serpent: The All-New Chronicles of the Worlds Greatest Barbarian Hero, although one reviewer calls it “a 304-page prologue to Robert E. Howard’s Red Nails” which is included in this very volume (rounding out the total page count to 417).

(3) MAGAZINES AND AMAZON. “Genre Grapevine Special Report: Amazon’s Ending of Kindle Newsstand Could Severely Impact SF/F Magazines” is a public post by Jason Sanford on Patreon. He says, “This is a major issue of SF/F magazines in the coming year or two.”

…The reason for the alarm is that over the last decade, Kindle subscriptions have become a significant part of the overall circulation for a large number of science fiction and fantasy magazines. Essentially, people like the convenience and ease of buying and reading e-books and expect the same from their magazine subscriptions.

By ending the Kindle Newsstand program, Amazon would no longer allow people on their platform to subscribe directly to magazines. Instead, Amazon announced it would allow certain magazines to remain on the platform through their Kindle Unlimited program.

As Rajiv Moté said, this means Amazon would be “moving e-magazines to a Spotify model, just like music. You pay the sales platform, not the producers.”…

(4) 2022 ENDEAVOUR AWARD OPEN FOR SUBMISSIONS. The Endeavour Award for science fiction or fantasy is now open for 2022 submissions.

Since 1999, The Endeavour Award has recognized science fiction or fantasy works of 40,000 words or more, or single-author collections of short fiction. The author(s) must have been living [maintaining legal or physical residence] in the Pacific Northwest [Alaska, Oregon, Washington, Idaho, The Yukon, and British Columbia] when the publisher accepted the book, and must affirm that they wrote the majority of the book while living in the Pacific Northwest. The books must have been published in the United States or in Canada with a copyright date in 2022.

In addition to recognition and a handsome physical award, the winner also receives a cash prize of $1,000.

We require submitted books in electronic form (5 copies if they are copy protected), which will be shared with our preliminary readers. We can also accept NetGalley links. No physical copies will be accepted.

The entry form can be downloaded here: https://osfci.org/endeavour/entryform.pdf.

The preliminary readers will use a grading system to select a list of finalists. A trio of judges to be announced will select a winner from these finalists.

Please send completed entry forms and submissions to Jim Kling at [email protected]. Deadline for submissions is May 31, 2023.

For more information, visit the award website at https://osfci.org/endeavour/. General questions can be directed to Marilyn Holt at [email protected] or Jim Kling at [email protected].

(5) INTERNATIONAL BOOKER PRIZE. The International Booker Prize 2023 Longlist of 13 works was released today. There appears to be one item of genre interest, Cheon Myeong-Kwan’s Whale. The shortlist will come out on April 18 and the winner will be announced May 23. Publishing Perspectives breaks down the amount of the prize.

…The focus of this Booker is translation, and its £50,000 prize (US$60,734) is to be split into £25,000 (US$30,367) for the author and £25,000 for the translator—or divided equally between multiple translators. There also is a purse of £5,000 (US$6,072) for each of the shortlisted titles: £2,500 (US$3,036) for the author and £2,500 for the translator or, again, divided equally between multiple translators….

(6) GETTING THERE. “The Lucas Museum Finds Your Lack of Faith Disturbing” japes the New York Times.

It was chased out of Chicago by preservationists, only to become the object of a bidding war between Los Angeles and San Francisco. When George Lucas finally decided to build his $1 billion museum in Los Angeles, its arrival was jeered by some critics who saw it not as a civic gift but a vanity project. The museum is “a terrible idea,” wrote Christopher Knight, the art critic for The Los Angeles Times.

Since then, the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art has been beset by more delays: it is not expected to open until 2025, seven years after ground was first broken on a parking lot across the street from the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum with a promised 2021 opening.

But even in the haze of construction, a seemingly endless swirl of workers, cranes and girders, the enormous scope of the project is coming into focus as its futuristic new home rises in Exposition Park: a grand homage to one of the nation’s best-known filmmakers, and a massive repository for his eclectic collection of 100,000 paintings, photographs, book illustrations and comic book drawings.

Its huge expanse of curving gray metal hovers over the landscape like a low-flying spaceship, or perhaps the unfinished Death Star being built in “Return of the Jedi,” a fitting tribute to its namesake and patron, who created the Star Wars franchise. It stands five stories high, with enough gallery space to fill one-and-a-half football fields, and it takes 15 minutes to walk across its sprawling campus….

(7) MEMORY LANE.

1933[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

Lester Dent’s best remembered work was of course Doc Savage, but it was not the only pulp work that he did. Ninety years ago, he created his scientific detective Lynn Lash who headquarters was in a New York skyscraper where he took on those science fiction threats the police were unable to handle. This in large part led to Dent’s greatest character, Doc Savage. 

Hell in Boxes: The Exploits of Lynn Lash and Foster Fade gathers up the six stories that he wrote with these characters. Our Beginning is that of the first story, “The Sinister Ray”.  It is available from the usual suspects. 

And now our Beginning…

A WOMAN screamed—piercing shrieks torn between hoarse gasps of indrawn breath. 

“My eyes! My eyes!” 

A taxi driver howled, jerked his hands from his wheel to his eyes. 

His cab, wild, bucked over the curb, rooted across the crowded sidewalk. 

The motorman of a street car westbound on Forty-second Street doubled his arms across his face, tumbled sidewise off his stool. His car, no hand on airbrake, rolled against the lights into the Sixth Avenue junction. Automobiles piled against it like driftwood. The street car rocked on its trucks, stopped. 

A man bawled out in horrible agony. More screams! More crashes! Sound became a roar in the brick and glass canyon of Forty-second Street. 

The Sinister Ray had been let loose on the city! 

Men, women, ran blindly, plunging into each other, colliding with whatever was in their path. Some lay on the walks, quivering, hands clawing at their eyes. On the Sixth Avenue “L” station, waiting patrons reeled about, pain-drunk, tearing at their eyes. 

A few fell off the platforms among the electrified rails. Near the south end of the station, a man leaped wildly over the rail to the hard paving thirty feet below. 

Wild hysteria, bedlam was rampant. 

Several blocks distant from that mad corner of Forty-second Street and Sixth Avenue, in his laboratory on the sixth floor of a swanky Park Avenue apartment building, Lynn Lash abruptly laid his pencil on a sheet of paper weighted to his desk top by a glass retort and a microscope. He swung back in his deeply upholstered chair, rubbed his eyes gently with the backs of his thumbs.

“Strange I should suddenly start seeing spots in front of my eyes,” he muttered. “Never felt better in my life.” 

A breeze coming in through the open laboratory windows from Park Avenue faintly stirred the petals of the gardenia in his lapel. In the reception room, he could faintly hear the telephone buzzer as it whizzed out, then the click of the receiver being lifted by Rickey Dean, his secretary. 

Rickey, her voice as throaty as that of a boy, said: “Hello…. Nix! No can do. He’s busy.” 

The metallic gnashings the receiver made at her carried into the laboratory.

“What of it?” she clipped. “You’re Detective Captain Sam Casey and you’ve got something important in your hair—and what of it? That don’t cut any ice.” 

The receiver rattled at her again. There was a thump as she jerked it down on the Lester Dent desk.

“All right, all right, all right! Nobody but a pup of a cop would call a lady them things!” 

She opened the laboratory door, came through, closed the door, but kept her right hand on the knob. She was a small girl with a boyish form, chewing gum. “Sam Casey on the phone,” she said. “He wants to talk at you.”

(8) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

  • Born March 14, 1869 Algernon Blackwood. Writer of some of the best of the best horror and ghost stories ever done according to the research I just did. Most critics including Joshi say his two best stories are “The Willows” and “The Wendigo”. The novel that gets recommended is The Centaur. If you’re interested in reading him, he’s readily available at the usual digital suspects. (Died 1951.)
  • Born March 14, 1918 Mildred Clingerman. Most of her stories were published in the Fifties in F&SF when Boucher was Editor. Boucher included “The Wild Wood” by her in the seventh volume of The Best from Fantasy and Science Fiction and dedicated the book to her, calling her the “most serendipitous of discoveries.” A Cupful of Space and The Clingerman Files, neither available as a digital publication, contain all of her stories. (Died 1997.)
  • Born March 14, 1946 Diana G. Gallagher. She won a Hugo Award for Best Fan Artist along with Brad W. Foster at Noreascon 3 after being a nominee at Nolacon II the previous year.  She won it under the name Diana Gallagher Wu while married to William F. Wu whose Birthday we did yesterday. She was also an author filker and author who wrote books for children and young adults based on Angel, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Charmed, Sabrina the Teenage Witch and various Trek series. Her best-known filksong was “A Reconsideration of Anatomical Docking Maneuvers in a Zero Gravity Environment.” (Died 2021.)
  • Born March 14, 1957 Tad Williams, 66. Author of the Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn series, Otherland series, and Shadowmarch series as well as the most excellent Tailchaser’s Song and The War of the Flowers. I’ve heard good things about his latest novel, Into The Narrowdark which came out last year.
  • Born March 14, 1961 Penny Johnson Jerald, 62. She played Kasidy Yates, the love of Ben Sisko, on Deep Space Nine. She’s played Dr. Claire Finn on the cancelled Orville, just one of many Trek cast member that you’ll find there. And she provided the voice of President Amanda Waller on the most excellent Justice League: Gods & Monsters.
  • Born March 14, 1964 Julia Ecklar, 59. She’s the Astounding Award–winning author of The Kobayashi Maru which is available in English and German ebook editions. She’s also a filk musician who recorded numerous albums in the Off Centaur label in the early 1980s, including Horse-Tamer’s DaughterMinus Ten and Counting, and Genesis. She was inducted into the Filk Hall of Fame in 1996.
  • Born March 14, 1971 Rebecca Roanhorse, 52. Her “Welcome to Your Authentic Indian Experience™” which was first published in the August 2017 issue of Apex Magazine won a Hugo as best short story at Worldcon 76. (It won a Nebula as well.) She also won the Astounding Award for Best New Writer. She has six novels to date, including Trail of Lightning which was nominated for a Hugo at Dublin 2019, and Black Sun, being nominated for a Hugo at DisCon III. 
  • Born March 14, 1974 Grace Park, 49. Boomer on the reboot of Battlestar Galactica. She’s been on a fair amount of genre over the years with her first acting role being the Virtual Avatar in the “Bits of Love” episode of Outer Limits. After that, she shows up on Secret Agent ManThis ImmortalThe Outer Limits again, Star Gate SG-1Andromeda, and oddly enough Battlestar Galactica in a number roles other than her main one. I’m sure one of you can explain the latter. I confess that I’ve not watched it. 

(9) COMICS SECTION.

  • Barney & Clyde shows a classroom that needs a copy of Fahrenheit 451. You can guess what the problem is.
  • Tom Gauld tweeted his two latest cartoons.

(10) PI DAY. John King Tarpinian remembers celebrating the date at the House of Pies near the office, once upon a time.

(11) DISNEY THEME PARK CHARACTERS DISPLAYED AT SXSW 2023. [Item by Mike Kennedy.] The article shows three different ways Disney is working on to interact with theme park characters. There’s a “life” sized Tinker Bell in a lantern, who appears to be played by an off-stage actress  using some sort of 3-D projection system. There’s a full-size Hulk character (that needs work on the appearance side) powered by a person inside working an exoskeleton suit. And there’s a fully robotic character still in very early development stages. “Disney Unveils Unreal New Hulk, Tinker Bell, And Prototype Robot Theme Park Characters” at Slashfilm.

… The first new innovation D’Amaro demonstrated for the crowd was a brand new, unbelievably authentic way to interact with a beloved character, namely Tinker Bell from “Peter Pan.” While Tink has had a presence at the parks for years, this latest version of the magical pixie is true-to-size and can interact with people in a very real way. Much like the lightsaber I mentioned above, what myself and the crowd on hand witnessed is remarkably close to the real thing….

The Tinkerbell demo doesn’t give that good a view – see it at the link. Meanwhile, here’s a view of the lightsaber mentioned in another Slashfilm article: “I Saw A ‘Real’ Star Wars Lightsaber In Person And It Blew My Mind”.

(12) THE GODS THEMSELVES. In “’American Born Chinese’ Teaser: Michelle Yeoh, Ke Huy Quan Reunite”, Variety gives us every reason to look.

It’s a big night for “Everything Everywhere All at Once” at the Oscars, but stars Michelle Yeoh and Ke Huy Quan are already looking to the future with “American Born Chinese.” The two actors reunite in the first teaser for the action-comedy series. Released Sunday morning by Disney+, the footage caps off with the announcement of a May 24 premiere date for the series.

The series is adapted from cartoonist Gene Luen Yang’s acclaimed 2006 graphic novel, which tells the story of Jin Wang (Ben Wang), a child of Chinese immigrants who’s struggling with growing up in a predominantly white suburb. When he meets a new Taiwanese classmate, the two become fast friends, but Jin is pulled into the battles of Chinese mythological gods.

(13) VIDEO OF THE DAY. Mrs. Davis comes to Peacock on April 20.

“Mrs. Davis” is the world’s most powerful Artificial Intelligence. Simone is the nun devoted to destroying Her. Who ya got?

[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, Chris Barkley, Andrew Porter, Anne Marble, Jim Kling, Jason Sanford, Olav Rokne, Michael Toman, Cat Eldridge, and Mike Kennedy for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Jon Meltzer.]

Endeavour Award Finalists for 2021 Books

The Endeavour Award has named the finalists and judges for books published in 2021. A panel of judges will select the winner, to be presented at Norwescon 45, April 6-9, held in SeaTac, Washington at the DoubleTree Hotel. The finalists are:

  • Calculated Risks by Seanan McGuire (Daw)
  • On Fragile Waves by E. Lily Yu (Erewhon Books)
  • How to Get to Apocalypse by Erica L. Satifka (Fairwood Press)
  • Jade Legacy by Fonda Lee (Orbit)
  • Blood of the Chosen by Django Wexler (Orbit)

The award encourages the growth of literature in the field and recognize works of excellence. It is named for H.M. Bark Endeavour, the ship of Northwest explorer Capt. James Cook. It is accompanied by a grant of $1,000 to the winner.

The 2021 Award judges are Fran Wilde, Andy Duncan, and Catherine Asaro.

Fran Wilde: Two-time Nebula Award-winner Fran Wilde has (so far) published seven novels, a poetry collection, and over 50 short stories for adults, teens, and kids. Her stories have been finalists for six Nebula Awards, a World Fantasy Award, four Hugo Awards, four Locus Awards, and a Lodestar. They include her Nebula- and Compton Crook-winning debut novel Updraft, and her Nebula-winning, Best of NPR 2019, debut Middle Grade novel Riverland. Her short stories appear in Asimov’s Science FictionTor.comBeneath Ceaseless SkiesShimmerNatureUncanny Magazine, and multiple years’ best anthologies. Fran teaches for Vermont College of Fine Arts’ WFCMYA MFA and the Genre Fiction MFA concentration at Western Colorado University and also writes nonfiction for publications including The Washington Post, The New York Times, and Tor.com. You can find her on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and at franwilde.net.

Andy Duncan: Andy Duncan’s fiction has been honored with a Nebula Award, a Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award and three World Fantasy Awards. A graduate of Clarion West in Seattle, he is a tenured writing professor at Frostburg State University and a frequent instructor at the Clarion and Clarion West workshops. His latest collection is AN AGENT OF UTOPIA, from Small Beer Press and Recorded Books.

Catherine Asaro: Catherine Asaro has authored about thirty books, including science fiction, thrillers, and fantasy. Her novel The Quantum Rose and novella “The Spacetime Pool” both won the Nebula® Award. She is a multiple Hugo nominee and a multiple winner of the AnLab from Analog magazine. Her most recent book is The Jigsaw Assassin, a science fiction mystery. Catherine has a doctorate in chemical physics from Harvard and a BS in chemistry from UCLA. Her paper “Complex Speeds and Special Relativity” (The American Journal of Physics, April 1996) forms the basis for some of the science in her fiction. She directed the Chesapeake Math Program for many years. Her students distinguished themselves in many national programs, including the USA Mathematical Olympiad, the USA Physics Olympiad, and the Harvard-MIT Math Contest. Catherine has appeared as a speaker at many institutions and as a Guest of Honor at cons across the US and abroad. She served two terms as president for SFWA and is a member of SIGMA, a think tank that advises the government as to future trends affecting national security. She also appears as a vocalist at clubs and conventions. Her most recent single, the Celtic- themed song Ancient Ages (written by Arlan Andrews) placed on the Blast-FM top 100 in 2020.

Submissions will soon open for the Endeavour Award for books published in 2022. The award welcomes submissions of all science fiction or fantasy works of 40,000 words or more, or single-author collections of short fiction. The author(s) must have legal or physical residence in the Pacific Northwest [Alaska, Oregon, Washington, Idaho, The Yukon, and British Columbia] when the publisher accepted the book and must affirm that they wrote the majority of the book while living in the Pacific Northwest.

[Based on a press release.]

Endeavour Award Taking Entries

The Endeavour Award for science fiction or fantasy written by Pacific Northwest writers is back. Entries are being accepted through November 15, 2022. The winner receives a handsome physical award and a cash prize of $1,000.

The award, sponsored by Oregon Science Fiction Conventions, Inc. (OSFCI), was first given in 1999. It was not presented in 2020 and 2021 due to logistical problems created by the pandemic.  

They are now open to submissions. They welcome all science fiction or fantasy works of 40,000 words or more, or single-author collections of short fiction. Eligibility for nominees remains the same. The author(s) must have been living [maintaining legal or physical residence] in the Pacific Northwest [Alaska, Oregon, Washington, Idaho, The Yukon, and British Columbia] when the publisher accepted the book, and must affirm that they wrote the majority of the book while living in the Pacific Northwest. The books must have been published in the United States or in Canada with a copyright date in 2021.

There is a major change in how to submit candidates. They require PDFs or other electronic formats that can be shared with preliminary readers and judges. No physical copies will be accepted. See the website for complete guidelines.

The entry form can be downloaded from: https://osfci.org/endeavour/entryform.pdf. The form can be printed and sent to the address found in the form, OR people can scan or take a photo of the form and send it to Jim Kling at [email protected].

The preliminary readers will use a grading system to select a list of finalists. A trio of judges to be announced will select a winner from these finalists. We will announce the results on April 8, 2023 at Norwescon.

Send your submissions to Jim Kling at [email protected]. Deadline for submissions is November 15, 2022.

Marilyn Holt is now the Endeavour Committee Chairman, having stepped in after the previous award administrator James Fiscus died in 2021.

James Fiscus (1944-2021)

James W, Fiscus

Author and photographer James W. Fiscus, administrator of the Endeavour Awards, died unexpectedly at home on November 7. He was 76.

Fiscus spent decades as a SFWA volunteer. He hosted SFWA’s hospitality events at Westercons in the early 1990s. Later he began writing a column for the SFWA Bulletin looking at the business and legal aspects of the publishing industry. He oversaw a review of the SFWA Handbook from 2002-3.

In 2008, SFWA President Russell Davis appointed Fiscus to succeed him in the position of Western Regional Director, a position Fiscus held until the California re-incorporation, at which time he became a Director-at-large until 2015. During his time as a Director, Fiscus served as Chair of the Orphan Works Committee. When it was re-formed as the Legal Affairs Committee, Fiscus continued as co-Chair with Michael Capobianco. Fiscus also joined the Contracts Committee in 2014, and took on its leadership when the former chair stepped down. SFWA honored him with the Kevin O’Donnell Jr. Service to SFWA Award in 2017.

Fiscus’ first published sf story was “A Time of Martyrs” in Carr and Pournelle’s 1986 anthology Warrior. Another half-dozen short stories he wrote – several of them alternate history – appeared from 2004-2008 in anthologies edited by Harry Turtledove, Martin H. Greenberg, and others.

He was born in Oregon, where part of his family had lived since the 1840s. He was raised in England, Baltimore, Manhattan, New Haven, and occasionally in California, returning to Oregon for high school.

He interrupted his studies at Lewis and Clark College in 1967 to volunteer for the Navy, serving in Vietnam and Okinawa. He eventually returned to finish his undergrad work, then freelanced as a photojournalist for most of a decade before entering Portland State University to earn an MA in Middle East and Asian History in 1987.

He was Oregon/Washington correspondent for The Medical Post (Toronto) and The Medical Tribune (New York), and wrote history books for high school students.

He also wrote Meet King Kong (Famous Movie Monsters), a book on the making of the original King Kong. His other non-fiction works include The Suez Crisis (War and Conflict in the Middle East), Iraqi Insurgents: Resisting America’s Nation-Building in Iraq (Frontline Coverage of Current Events), America’s War in Afghanistan (War and Conflict in the Middle East), and Coping With Growth Spurts and Delayed Growth.

He served as Editorial Director and Media Relations Manager for the National Resource Center for Safe Schools in Portland and as Senior Public Relations Specialist at Legacy Health System in Portland.

Fiscus also held two long-term volunteer posts for Oregon Science Fiction Conventions, Inc., a nonprofit group that hosts OryCons, and other events. He chaired the Endeavour Awards, which annually honors a book by a Pacific Northwest author. And he chaired the board of trustees of the Clayton Memorial Medical Fund, named for the late Jo Clayton, which provides grants to Pacific Northwest genre authors for medical emergencies.

He is survived by his wife, Shawn Wall.

2021 Endeavour Award Suspended

The Endeavour Committee says “with great reluctance” they have suspended the Award for books published during 2020.  The suspension means that the Award will not be given at this year’s OryCon.

Several reasons have led to the suspension.  The Covid 19 situation has made it more difficult to run their preliminary judging.  In addition to problems stemming from the pandemic, additional unspecified problems have contributed to the need to suspend the Award.

They say:

We expect to begin collecting books published during 2021 in early Fall, for the 2022 Award.  We are suspending the Award, not killing it.

Finally, if circumstances change and we are able revive the Award for books published during 2020, we will do so.

Full information on entering the Award is available on the Endeavour Web site: Endeavour website.

The Endeavour Award is sponsored by Oregon Science Fiction Conventions, Inc. (OSFCI), a 501(c)(3) non-profit corporation.