Tag Archives: Galaktika

Pixel Scroll 3/8/23 Scrolling to Filezantium

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(1) NEBULA FINALIST UPDATE. Rebecca Gomez Farrell, SFWA Communications Director, today distributed a corrected Nebula Finalist press release.

SFWA makes every effort to include all appropriate contributors to Nebula Award finalist works before our initial announcement. However, due to the short turnaround time between the certification and the subsequent finalist announcement, we’ve had to make some corrections to our original release. Please see the updated list below for corrections to Journeys through the Radiant Citadel and Vampire: The Masquerade – Sins of the Sires, and additional finalists for Andor: “One Way Out” and Horizon Forbidden West. Please celebrate all of our finalists with us once again.

These updates have been inserted into File 770’s post “SFWA Announces the 58th Nebula Awards Finalists”.

(2) WE INTERRUPT THIS PROGRAM. Here’s one more reason not to believe everything you read. R.L. Stine says he did not participate in changes made to books in his Goosebumps series.

(3) WOMEN’S PRIZE FOR FICTION LONGLIST. The longlist for the 2023 Women’s Prize for Fiction includes three works of genre interest: Glory by NoViolet Bulawayo; Pod by Laline Paull; and Stone Blind by Natalie Haynes. The complete list is at the link.

The judging panel will issue a shortlist of six novels on April 26. The winner of the 2023 Women’s Prize for Fiction will be announced on June 14.

(4) FREE READ FROM FUTURE TENSE. “Intangible Variation” by Meg Charlton is the latest in the monthly series of stories released by Future Tense Fiction about how technology and science will change our lives.

In a response essay, Heather Tal Murphy, a  journalist who has covered biomedical technology for Slate and the New York Times, advises readers about “The Trap to Avoid if You Ever Meet a Stranger Who Shares Your DNA”.

(5) FANAC.ORG HITS 20,000 FANZINES. Fanhistory website FANAC.org recently passed a substantial milestone.

FANAC.org now has more than 20,000 fanzines digitally archived on the site. With zines ranging from 1930 to this week, we are continuing to enrich the available catalog of original materials related to science fiction and science fiction fandom. With a number like that, it’s no surprise that we count more than 500 contributors listed at https://fanac.org/FANAC_Inc/fancont.html

Don’t forget – We have added some navigation tools to access our ever-growing archive. The Fanzines drop-down button on FANAC.org allows you to find zines by Title, by Editor, by Date, by Country and more. There’s a special list of newszines if you’re looking for those, and we are building a listing of major APAs. If there are other organizational principles you’d like to see in a nav tool, please let us know at [email protected].

(6) SCANNERS DON’T LIVE IN VAIN. The Fanac.org team will continue to add to its holdings during upcoming visits to Ireland and the UK.

FANAC will have a scanning station at Corflu Craic in Belfast at the end of March, and we hope to have one at Conversation 2023, the Birmingham Eastercon being held the following week. If you are planning to attend either of these, please bring fanzines for us to scan. If you can, write to let us know so we can plan ahead.

Please remember two things: First, to scan each issue, we carefully take each issue apart and then re-staple it. Second, we do not put fanzines online without permission from editors who are still around. Keep that in mind when you bring them. If you can provide contact information for the editor, we’ll try to reach them later. In the meantime, we will keep them archived until the editors can be reached. If you’re not sure, drop a note to [email protected].

 Of course, please check the site first to see if the issues are already online. We’re hoping to get some quality Irish/UK/European zines that we haven’t had access to in the past.

(7) THE ULTIMATE WAKE-UP. William Alexander shares “An Alchemist’s Guide to Cuban Coffee” at Sarah Gailey’s Stone Soup. Includes a fine photo of the author with his cat.

Every kind of espresso-maker looks like an anachronistic piece of lab equipment, because that’s exactly what it is. Some of the countertop varieties are steampunkish wonders from alternate versions of the present. Others were sent from the distant future to gather samples and develop new vaccines. The best thing to use for brewing cafecito—also known as Café Cubano, the Elixir of Life, and the Fountain of Youth—is the humble stovetop moka pot created by the engineer, alchemist, and time-traveler Alfonso Bialetti in the distant past (though he didn’t bother to patent his invention until 1933).

Go find yourself a moka pot. You may have to trade for it. Don’t give up your name….

(8) I’M FEELING BETTER. NPR tells “How Barnes & Noble turned a page, expanding for the first time in years”.

The ghost of Barnes & Noble past meets the spirit of Barnes & Noble future in a single shopping center in a suburb of Baltimore.

The new store in Pikesville, Md., separated by half a parking lot from its shuttered predecessor, is part of an unlikely plot twist: Barnes & Noble is staging its largest expansion in over a decade.

After years on the brink of extinction, the book chain is planning to open some 30 new stores this year. Many are returning the retailer to areas it previously abandoned. In a few, Barnes & Noble is even taking over former Amazon bookshops.

The retailer hopes this will turn a new leaf. Barnes & Noble sales have been rising, and last year grew more than 4%, according to Shannon DeVito, director of books.

(9) BUY IT ALL AT ONCE. Did we mention there is an Everything Everywhere All at Once Shop run by A24 films? There really is. For example, this is an item you can buy for a mere $36.

(10) FILMED ON LOCATION AT THE ISS. Russia’s state space corporation Roscosmos has released a trailer for The Challenge, the Russian film shot aboard the International Space Station. Presumably the actual trailer is in the Russian language. The CNN video at the link includes tiny snippets from it: “Video: Trailer for ‘The Challenge,’ the Russian film shot in space, released”

“The Challenge” is the first feature film to send a professional film crew into space and stars Russian actress Yulia Peresild and cosmonaut Oleg Novitskiy.

(11) BERT I. GORDON (1922-2023). A director of genre films known for their “cheesy” special effects, Bert I. Gordon died March 8 from complications after a fall. The Hollywood Reporter recalls his many credits in tough-loving detail. Here’s an excerpt:

Bert I. Gordon, the sci-fi director who aimed to terrify drive-in denizens of the 1950s and ’60s with low-budget films featuring colossal creatures, shrinking humans and radioactive monsters, has died. He was 100. …

…Highlights (lowlights?) on his B-movie résumé include The Cyclops (1957), The Amazing Colossal Man (1957), Beginning of the End (1957), Earth vs. the Spider (1958), Attack of the Puppet People (1958), Tormented (1960), The Boy and the Pirates (1960) and Picture Mommy Dead (1966).

In the ’70s, Gordon directed Vince Edwards and Chuck Connors in The Police Connection (1973) and wrote and directed How to Succeed With Sex (1970), Necromancy (1972), The Food of the Gods (1976) and, starring Joan Collins in the muck, Empire of the Ants (1977)….

Don Ameche, Martha Hyer and Zsa Zsa Gabor manipulated minds in Picture Mommy Dead (Hedy Lamarr had dropped out after a shoplifting arrest); Peter Graves battled giant grasshoppers in Beginning of the End; Basil Rathbone practiced mean wizardry in 1962’s The Magic Sword; and youngsters Beau Bridges and Ron Howard handled mysterious goo in 1965’s Village of the Giants, which featured a performance by The Beau Brummels. …

Mystery Science Theater 3000 revived interest in his work in their own way. Gordon didn’t like that they made fun of it…

(12) ED FURY (1928-2023). Model and actor Ed Fury, especially known for his physique and work in sword-and-sandal epics, died February 24 at the age of 94. Deadline’s recitation of his work onscreen includes —

…At first appearing uncredited (he was the King of Venus in Abbott and Costello Go To Mars, Olympic Team Member in Gentlemen Prefer Blonds, Actor In The Play in The Country Girl and Cowboy in the Saloon in Bus Stop) he landed his first featured and credited role in 1960’s Italian release Colossus and the Amazon Queen, a rare comedic take on the sword-and-sandal genre starring Rod Taylor.

The following year Fury found his signature role as the title character in Ursus, a pseudo-mythological fantasy adventure later released to U.S. television as Ursus, Son of Hercules, though the character had no relation to Hercules. Fury reprised the role in 1961’s Ursus in the Valley of the Lions and, in 1963, Ursus in the Land of Fire….

(13) MEMORY LANE.

2008 – [Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

This Scroll, we have the Beginning of A. Lee Martinez’s The Automatic Detective which was published by Tor in 2008. Its great story of a war robot that’s not trying to be a private detective on a society that doesn’t really want him to be there at all. 

Martinez manages here, much to his credit, to pull off the conceit that this robot is in the keeping of classical detectives like those created by Chandler and Hammett. If you got the proper frame of mind, it really does work.

I thought it would be a neat series but it was a one-off for the author. Oh well.

And now we get introduced to our detective in this Beginning…

The Learned Council had an official name for Empire City. 

Technotopia. 

Yeah, it wasn’t a real word, but that was kind of the point. The Council loved to reinvent things, improve them, make them new and snazzy. Of course Empire had a lot of unofficial nicknames as well. 

Mutantburg. Robotville. The Big Gray Haze. The City That Never Functions. But Technotopia was the official party line, along with the motto “Building Tomorrow’s Town. Today.” I guess it all depended on what you thought the future should look like. If you were looking for a bright and shiny metropolis where all of civilization’s problems had been solved through the wise and fortuitous applications of equal parts science, wisdom, and compassion, then I guess you’d be out of luck. But if your ideal tomorrow was a sprawling, impersonal city with rampant pollution, unchecked mutation, and dangerous and unreliable weird science, then I guess you would be right at home. 

Name’s Mack Megaton. I’m a bot. Or automated citizen, as the Learned Council liked to phrase it. There were three classes of robot in Empire. You had your drones: low sophistication models geared toward mundane tasks. Then there were the autos: humanoid models designed for more complex work. Then you had your bots: autos and drones that qualified for citizenship. I hadn’t quite reached bot status yet, but so far my probation had been going smoothly, and I was only forty-six months, six days, four hours, and twenty-two minutes from crossing that objective. I occupied a more vague class between auto and citizen. I couldn’t vote, couldn’t hold public office, and if the Learned Council decided to issue a recall, there wasn’t much I could do about it. 

I was barely two years old and weighed a compact seven hundred and sixteen pounds. That’s light when you’re seven feet tall and made entirely of metal. I could punch through concrete and bend steel. I could not, however, tie a bow tie. My programming was state of the art: adaptive, intuitive, evolutionary. I wasn’t programmed knowing how to drive a cab, and I got along just fine doing that. I wasn’t designed to play poker, and I was a decent card sharp, though it’s easier to bluff when you have a featureless faceplate. But my artificial intelligence couldn’t wrap its binary digits around the ins and outs of getting a bow tie on. My hands didn’t help any. They weren’t designed for delicate work, more like sledgehammers with fingers. But the Bluestar Cab Company insisted all its drivers wear bow ties. Real, honest-to-God bow ties. No clip-ons. That’s what got me involved in the mess. 

A bot’s got bills to pay. Bill, really. I used to be juiced by a small atomic power core. That was gone now. The Learned Council removed it as part of the terms of my probation. But I still consumed a lot of electricity in a day, and it didn’t come cheap. Not in Empire. There was barely enough to go around in this town. To get my fair share to keep up and running costs plenty. It was fortunate that I didn’t have many other expenses or I’d have never been able to support myself driving a cab. As it was, I usually had to operate at half-power. Used to feel sluggish doing that, but I’d gotten adjusted to it.

(14) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

  • Born March 8, 1859 — Kenneth Grahame. The Wind in the Willows, of course. Did you know A.A. Milne dramatized it for the stage in 1930? Oh, and he did write one other fantasy, The Reluctant Dragon. (Died 1932.)
  • Born March 8, 1921 — Alan Hale Jr. The Skipper on Gilligan’s Island which most likely isn’t genre but he did show up in such films as Captain Kidd and the Slave Girl, The Fifth Musketeer and The Giant Spider Invasion which is most decidedly SF if of a pulpish variety. Series wise, I see he was on The Wild Wild West and Fantasy Island. (Died 1990.)
  • Born March 8, 1922 — John Burke. He was active in Fandom in the Thirties, with work in The Fantast, The Futurian and The Satellite. He went pro by the late Thirties in a number of pulp zines. If you read nothing else by him, I recommend his late in life series The Adventures of Dr. Caspian and Bronwen, well-crafted horror. Ash-Tree Press collected much of his superb short fiction in We’ve Been Waiting for You And Other Tales of Unease. (Died 2011.)
  • Born March 8, 1931 — Paddi Edwards. She’s here for two very different roles. First is for being the voice of Gozer in the Ghostbusters film. Second is having the lead role of Anya on “The Dauphin” of The Next Generation. The casting agents at Disney liked her so she had the role of Flotsam & Jetsam in The Little Mermaid franchise. (Died 1999.)
  • Born March 8, 1932 — Jim Webbert.  First active in fandom at the 1950 NorWesCon. He was member of the committee for Seacon, the 1961 Worldcon in Seattle. And he involved in the charmingly named LepreCons. His wife Doreen Webbert is still with us. (Died 2021.)
  • Born March 8, 1934 — Kurt Mahr. One of the first writers of the Perry Rhodan series, considered the largest SF series of the world. He also edited a Perry Rhodan magazine, wrote Perry Rhodan chapbooks and yes wrote many, many short stories about Perry Rhodan.  He did write several other SF series. Ok what’s the appeal of Perry Rhodan? He runs through SF as a genre but I’ve not read anything concerning him. (Died 1993.)
  • Born March 8, 1939 — Peter Nicholls. Writer and editor. Creator and co-editor of The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction with John Clute. His other publications were Science Fiction at Large, The Science in Science Fiction edited by Nicholls and written by him and David Langford, and Fantastic Cinema. He became the first Administrator of the United Kingdom-based Science Fiction Foundation. He was editor of its journal, Foundation: The Review of Science Fiction, from 1974 to 1978. (Died 2018.)
  • Born March 8, 1976 — Freddie Prinze Jr., 47. I’m fairly sure his first genre role was in Wing Commander as Lt. Christopher Blair followed by the animated Mass Effect: Paragon Lost in which he voiced Lieutenant James Vega. Speaking of animated endeavors, I’ve got him in Kim Possible: A Sitch In Time voicing Future Jim / Future Tim followed by being in all in all four seasons of the animated Star Wars Rebels as Kanan Jarrus. And that’s a series which I highly recommend as it may well be the best Star Wars fiction ever done. 

(15) KUCZKA CENTENARY. [Item by Bence Pintér.] Péter Kuczka, the founder of Galaktika, the principal SF magazine of Hungary in the Communist years, was born 100 years ago. For this anniversary Petőfi Literary Museum posted some never before seen photos of him, e.g. with Brian Aldiss and Harry Harrison. View them here on Facebook.

Péter Kuczka, poet, writer, editor-in-chief of the magazine Galaktika, founder member of Digitális Irodalmi Akadémia (DIA) was born a hundred years ago. He started his writing career in the second half of the 1940s. He wrote his poem cycle Nyírségi Napló in 1953. Between 1953 and ’56, he was a precursor to the revolution. He was banned from publishing after 1956, so his attention turned to science-fantastic literature. From 1969 he edited the Cosmos Fantastic Books series and from 1972 to 1995 he became the editor-in-chief of the Galactics anthology and magazine. He was awarded with numerous awards and awards for his outstanding editorial and organizer work in the field of sci-fi literature….

(16) ALL’S QUIET ON THE STAR WARS FRONT. It’s getting crowded in development hell, although not all of these projects have been lucky enough to return to the underworld: “’Star Wars’: Kevin Feige, Patty Jenkins Movies Shelved” and Variety sorts it all out.

…In December 2020, Lucasfilm chief Kathleen Kennedy announced that “Wonder Woman” helmer Patty Jenkins would direct the next “Star Wars” movie, the one-off adventure “Rogue Squadron.” But in September 2022, Disney pulled the title from its scheduled December 2023 release, and sources with knowledge of the production say it is no longer in active development at the studio. (A rep for Lucasfilm did not respond to a request for comment. In December, Jenkins said in a statement that she was still developing “Rogue Squadron,” but “I don’t know if it will happen or not.”)

Meanwhile, Variety has learned that a possible “Star Wars” feature produced by Marvel Studios chief Kevin Feige is also no longer in active development at Lucasfilm.

…As for Rian Johnson, the in-demand filmmaker has made no secret that he still wants to make the “Star Wars” movies he first announced in 2017 before the release of his film “The Last Jedi,” and Kennedy has been clear that Lucasfilm still wants him, too. But Johnson’s immediate priorities — continuing his Benoit Blanc movies with Daniel Craig for Netflix and Season 2 of hit Peacock series “Poker Face” with Natasha Lyonne — will keep him occupied for the foreseeable future.

So what “Star Wars” movie could slot into that open December 2025 release date? Sources say “Thor: Love and Thunder” filmmaker Taika Waititi continues to work on his possible “Star Wars” feature, and he would most likely have a part in it as well, similar in prominence to his standout role as an imaginary Adolf Hitler in his Oscar-winning 2019 feature “Jojo Rabbit.” And although Lucasfilm has yet to officially confirm it, sources say the studio is committed to a “Star Wars” movie from director Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy, a two-time Oscar-winning documentarian (“Saving Face,” “A Girl in the River: The Price of Forgiveness”), who made her live-action narrative debut with two episodes of 2022’s “Ms. Marvel” for Disney+. Damon Lindelof (“Watchmen”) and Justin Britt-Gibson (“Counterpart”) were attached in October to write the script for that movie.

Whether one of those films, or some as-yet-unannounced project, lands at the front of the line has been a fiercely guarded secret at Lucasfilm, but sources say the studio will begin to unveil its plans for the future of “Star Wars” cinema at the Star Wars Celebration convention in London the weekend of April 7…. 

(17) DON’T BELIEVE EVERYTHING YOU READ. A discouraging word from fact-checking site PolitiFact: “Is the moon ‘habitable’ for people? Not with its lack of liquid water or breathable atmosphere”.

It’s not time to move to the moon, no matter how out of this world the idea sounds.

Citing an anonymous source, a social media post suggested the moon could be prime real estate. 

“A confidential source claims that the moon is a habitable place and that it is inhabited by more than 250 million humanoid aliens,” read the Feb. 6 Facebook post. 

This post was flagged as part of Facebook’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram.)…

(18) ILK OF MAGNESIUM. BBC Future describes “The giant arcs that may dwarf everything in the cosmos”.

In 2021, British PhD student Alexia Lopez was analysing the light coming from distant quasars when she made a startling discovery.

She detected a giant, almost symmetrical arc of galaxies 9.3 billion light years away in the constellation of Boötes the Herdsman. Spanning a massive 3.3 billion light years across, the structure is a whopping 1/15th the radius of the observable Universe. If we could see it from Earth, it would be the size of 35 full moons displayed across the sky.

Known as the Giant Arc, the structure throws into question some of the basic assumptions about the Universe. According to the standard model of cosmology – the theory on which our understanding of the Universe is based – matter should be more-or-less evenly distributed across space. When scientists view the Universe on very large scales there should be no noticeable irregularities; everything should look the same in every direction.

Yet the Giant Arc isn’t the only example of its kind. These gargantuan structures are now forcing scientists to reassess their theory of how the Universe evolved….

(19) FAILURE TO LAUNCH. We’re still looking forward to the launch of the first 3-D printed rocket. It didn’t happen today after all: “Relativity Space scrubs debut launch attempt of world’s 1st 3D-printed rocket after abort” reports Space.com.

The space startup Relativity Space called off the first-ever flight of its new 3D-printed rocket on Wednesday (March 8) after a last-minute abort and temperature issues during the countdown. 

Relativity Space’s Terran 1 launch vehicle, billed as the world’s first 3D-printed rocket, experienced an automatic abort about 70 seconds before an initial launch try at 2:40 p.m. EST (1940 GMT) at its Florida launch pad at the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. While the company tried to reset for a second launch attempt on Wednesday, it ultimately had to stand down “due to exceeding launch commit criteria limits” for the fuel temperatures on the rocket’s second stage, officials wrote in a Twitter update(opens in new tab)…. 

(20) A TIME WHOSE IDEA HAS COME. The New York Times thinks “The Moon May Get Its Own Time Zone”. Those sun dials aren’t cutting it.

What time is it on the moon?

Since the dawn of the space age, the answer has been: It depends. For decades, lunar missions have operated on the time of the country that launched them. But with several lunar explorations heading for the launchpad, the European Space Agency has deemed the current system unsustainable.

The solution, the agency said last week, is a lunar time zone.

“ESA is not taking the lead on this discussion, we’re just putting a finger on a problem we need to tackle,” said Brice Dellandrea, an engineer with the ESA. “But this is the kind of topic that needs international coordination and consensus.”

The main objective of establishing a universal timekeeping system for the moon, the ESA said, is to streamline contact among the various countries and entities, public and private, that are coordinating trips to and around the moon….

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

Editor of Hungarian Prozine Galaktika Steps Down, But Denies Piracy

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By Bence Pintér: As you may remember, a few years ago I uncovered the blatant copyright infringement case of Hungarian SF magazine Galaktika. Now, three years later the editor-in-chief has stepped down, but not because of that case: he wrote in a letter in the January issue that he is a feminist, so he is stepping down to give place for a female editor, who is in fact his wife. (It is also funny, because in the last decade he and publishing house he owns published the anti-feminist book A helyes asszonytartás, which roughly translates as “The Good Way of Female Husbandry”.)

Anyways, he gave an interview, which can be interesting for authors who followed the case. I translated the relevant section quickly:

SFportal: There was a copyright infringement scandal few years ago. Did you manage to sort out things? Did you considered this problem when you decided to step down?

Burger István: There was no scandal, it was fake news. A malicious blogger tried to smear Galaktika. I think it was because we did not publish something he wrote, or he thought that he can gain some readership with these sensationalist articles.

For a start, it was pathetic lie to state that Galaktika had stolen from writers deliberately. We paid 400,000$ for rights to authors and agencies, while this whole debate was about 4000$. That’s just 1 percent of the whole sum. I don’t think that anyone with good intentions think that for that 1 percent we would steal from authors. That makes no sense. We made a mistake, but our error was only that we thought that we can reprint short stories by authors whose books we published. That was a mistake, but you should know that agencies do not like to deal with the 10-20 $ sum of short story rights. Since then we learned that we have to contact the authors directly. Anyways, we are over this. My persecution was a factor in the decision to step down. I would rather take the responsibility for this issue, so they can’t blame Galaktika further.”

He is a genius, this guy. So he said that they paid 400,000 for rights, but that all was for book rights. They simply didn’t pay for almost all of the short stories. He also wants everyone to think that they published short stories just by authors whose books they published, but that’s not the case. They published short stories by 348 authors in this period, while they published books by a fraction of that number.

[For more background information see “Authors Guild and SFWA Reach Agreement with Galaktika Magazine on Infringement Claims”.]

Pixel Scroll 9/13/17 Is That A Pixel On Your Screen, Or Are You Just Scrolled To See Me?

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(1) YOU CAN ORBIT BUT YOU CAN’T HIDE. Alex Parker likes to think Cassini’s dive into Saturn is payback for the dinosaur extinction event. A thread explaining his complicated theory starts here:

(2) SFWA GALAKTIKA SETTLEMENT NAMES AFFECTED AUTHORS. There are further developments in a story reported here in July. Full information at the SFWA Blog: “Agreement Reached with Galaktika on Past Infringements”.

The Authors Guild and Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA) announced today that they collaboratively reached an agreement with a Hungarian science fiction magazine, Galaktika, which for years had been reprinting stories of American and British science fiction writers without their permission….

Part of the settlement between the magazine Galaktika and SFWA and the Authors Guild was that Galaktika would provide a complete list of authors whose work had been published without authorization by Galaktika. The list below was created from the spreadsheet that they provided, and, as far as SFWA can discover, it is accurate. This list includes authors or their representatives who have already come to agreements with Galaktika or are still in the process of negotiation. It is being made public to aid authors who may not know their work was published without authorization. Note that some of the works affected may be out of copyright in Hungary.

(3) BOOK SMUGGLERS KICKSTARTER. Thea James and Ana Grilo have launched The Book Smugglers: Level Up Kickstarter.

Ana and Thea

We celebrate our tenth anniversary next year and we would like to level up, so we finally decided to take the leap and create a Kickstarter of our own. We are trying to raise $16,500 which will go towards a new season of short stories (under the theme “Awakenings”) at a higher pay rate and ensuring we can hire freelancers to do production work for the ebooks. We would also love to get paid contributors to the blog on a weekly basis. If we raise more than the initial amount? The sky is the limit. All with a view to continue to publish and highlight diverse voices.

We donate our time to the Book Smugglers because we love the work that we do, which we hope to continue doing for another ten years.

To date their Kickstarter has raised 5,842 of its $16,500 goal.

(4) KEEP ON TICKING. Jim C. Hines reviews “The Tick, Season One”. BEWARE SPOILERS. In case that sort of thing worries you….

I didn’t need this to be a repeat of the animated show I loved. But it felt like it tried way too hard to be dark and gritty and edgy, at the cost of the heart and joy I was hoping for.

With all that said, I might still watch the next batch of six episodes when they come out. (I’m told that technically, this won’t be season two, but the second half of season one.) If they continue to improve the way they did in those last couple of episodes…

But for now, I’m rating this a solid disappointment.

(5) GUILTY CONSCIENCE. Anybody who’s watched the right episodes of the TV series Suits on the USA Network knows that lawyer Louis Litt is a Game of Thrones fan … at one point, he said, referring to himself, “A Lannister always pays his debts.” This clip from the most recent episode shows that watching aGoT may not always be good for your mental health:

(6) ACROSS THE ATLANTIC BY HOT AIR. Black Gate’s Sean McLachlan blows the whistle on a pre-internet author of bogosity: “Edgar Allan Poe Wrote Fake News”.

In 1844 he was working for the New York Sun, and penned a front-page story for the April 13 issue trumpeting a new scientific wonder — the crossing of the Atlantic in three days by balloon. The story breathlessly related how a crew of eight men, including William Henson and Monck Mason, both well-known aeronauts, and famous British novelist Harrison Ainsworth, traveled in a powered balloon from England to Charleston, South Carolina, in 75 hours. The article went on to give various technical details.

(7) GETTING PAID, BUT NOT MUCH. Catherine Baab-Migura, in “Edgar Allan Poe Was A Broke-Ass Freelancer” on The Millions looks at how little money Poe made for his great works and how much time he had to hassle publishers to pay him. But now that you know his history with fake news, how broken up can you really feel?

A lot of fans know Edgar Allan Poe earned just $9 for “The Raven,” now one of the most popular poems of all time, read out loud by schoolteachers the world over. What most people don’t know is that, for his entire oeuvre—all his fiction, poetry, criticism, lectures—Poe earned only about $6,200 in his lifetime, or approximately $191,087 adjusted for inflation.

Maybe $191,087 seems like a lot of money. And sure, as book advances go, that’d be a generous one, the kind that fellow writers would whisper about. But what if $191,087 was all you got for 20 years of work and the stuff you wrote happened to be among the most enduring literature ever produced by anyone anywhere?

(8) AFTER THE EVE OF DESTRUCTION. Jennifer Brozek’s new project returns her to the BattleTech universe: “Award-winning author Jennifer Brozek slated to pen the first Young Adult BattleTech trilogy”.

Catalyst, licensors of the BattleTech tabletop game and Shadowrun roleplaying game, is taking the next step in creating a diverse BattleTech universe with a new young adult trilogy. Jennifer Brozek, award-winning author of BattleTech: The Nellus Academy Incident and Shadowrun: DocWagon 19, is developing a character-driven, action-filled story set after the Jihad, and exploring the tumultuous aftermath of the Age of Destruction. Currently scheduled for a Fall 2018 release date, it can’t come soon enough for BattleTech fans looking for brand new fiction set in the military science fictional universe.

(9) SADCOMS. The Guardian should warn readers they might need a tissue here: “In the golden age of TV, the existential-animation is king”

Why is a talking cartoon horse making me cry? It’s a question many of us might have asked ourselves as the new season of BoJack Horseman – an improbably moving Netflix cartoon about a version of Hollywood populated by talking animals – surfaced over the weekend.

The characters, led by BoJack (voiced by Will Arnett), make terrible decisions about sex and dating, sell themselves short, and generally end up miserable in the funniest possible ways. It’s a show at the forefront of a recent crop of animated TV series for adults that surpass most live-action shows this side of Twin Peaks in terms of sheer emotional ambition.

There’s BoJack, Adult Swim’s critically lauded sci-fi series Rick and Morty, the Duplass brothers’ Animals on HBO, and Archer, a workplace comedy about a spy agency that has gone crazily off the rails. In broad terms, TV is still embracing what critic Jenny Jaffe dubbed the “sadcom” – a show with an ostensibly comic outlook that trades in for pathos – but something special is happening in animation. With animated shows TV is able to flex different muscles.

(10) FROZEBUD. Citizen Lucas might go for this — “Star Wars Wampa Cave Snow Globe” from ThinkGeek.

We’re going to be honest here: we squeed when we first unboxed this product. Our excitement might have drawn other employees over to look. There are SO many little details. “Oh look! Luke’s lightsaber is in the snow!” “I love how the ice of the cave starts on the inside of the globe and continues outside it.” “OMG. THERE’S A DEAD TAUNTAUN ON THE SIDE.” A Hoth snow globe just makes sense. And this Star Wars Wampa Cave Snow Globe created by our GeekLabs team is magnificent. It perfectly captures the tense atmosphere of the cave scene while still being a flippin’ snow globe. Watch the snow gently settle around Luke in what looks like a hopeless situation. And the Tauntaun isn’t gory so it’s appropriate for all ages. Stick it behind your little holiday village diorama as a reminder to the elves and reindeer not to wander out alone.

(11) TODAY IN HISTORY

  • September 13, 1965 — Ghidorah, The Three-Headed Monster battled their way into theaters
  • September 13, 1974 — Planet of the Apes TV version premiered.
  • September 13, 1977 — Jay Anson’s The Amityville Horror is published.

(12) TODAY’S CHITTY CHITTY BANG BANGER

  • Born September 13, 1916 – Roald Dahl

(13) YOUR FAVORITE ICONOCLASTS. Timothy the Talking Cat and Straw Puppy declare “Chapters are cultural convention that we need not adhere to” at Camestros Felapton’s blog as they unleash (get it?) a new installment of their classic work.

“Well, well, well,” said McEdifice, “if it isn’t Commander Clench, my old nemesis. I thought I told you never to set foot again on the Grassland Planet of Steppe.”

“Well yes, you did but as I explained at the time, I’m free to go anywhere I like and also I outrank you and also I have an orbiting space-dreadnought directly above us that could wipe you off the face of the planet before you could even grimace at me in a way I didn’t like.” explained Commander Clench.

I don’t know, I thought this was quite readable…. Send help….

(14) EMPTY THE MAGAZINE. Bullets with the Monster Hunters International logo on sale for charity. Ten percent goes to the Houston Food Bank. They’ve already sold 60,000. Living in interesting times.

These are just bullets for handloading. This is not loaded ammunition. Also, be aware that this design is on the front of a 9mm bullet. It is VERY small and serves no purpose other than being really cool. Please do not expect anything magical or supernatural from them. They are just bullets with an awesome stamped logo. Though the lead we sourced does contain trace amounts of silver, it isn’t enough for serious hunting. They are to be used on nothing larger than a gnome.

(15) NZ CONREPORT. At Concatenation, Lee Murray, Dan Rabarts and Darian Smith discuss LexiCon 2017, New Zealand’s 38th National Science Fiction and Fantasy Convention – with a shout out to DUFF delegate Paul Weimer.

LM:  First up for me panel-wise was moderating a session on the language of science fiction and fantasy, with Swedish writer Emma Lindhagen, Cloud Ink Press’ Mark Johnson and local personality Jack Newhouse sharing the front table. One of the first panels of the con, it was too soon for convention goers to have succumbed to con crud, so the room was packed and it was a lively discussion covering topics such as conlanging, conlinging, inclusiveness, and Klingon. I also moderated a panel on Introducing new readers to SFF, but because the session was scheduled against Paul Mannering in conversation with Guest of Honour Seanan McGuire, there were only seventeen of the con’s attendees present. So we decided to pull the chairs into a circle and invite everyone to join in, which turned out to be a great idea as the input from the audience was terrific. I think that’s one of the advantages of our New Zealand conventions: because we are small and most of us know each other, we can be flexible and no one throws a hissy fit. The DUFF delegate, Paul Weimer from Minneapolis, made a comment to that effect in the ‘Australia and Us’ panel, saying he hadn’t realised before he came, just how close-knit our SF/F/H community is here, an aspect he felt might be unique to New Zealand.

DR:  In the way of all good cons, a good portion of the Con should have seen the bar buzzing with people rubbing shoulders and chinking glasses, and from time to time it was. Surprisingly, there was less of this than expected, mainly because so many of the attendees were going to panels, which in some cases came as a surprise even to them. So while there was less action in the bar than we are used to, the panels were humming and people were networking and fan fund delegates were hanging out and talking community-building while peddling raffle tickets and auction lots. I am not quite sure the Suncourt knew what they were letting themselves in for when they agreed to our booking the place out for a convention, but they were amazing hosts as well, and everything went off about as smoothly as we could have hoped.

(16) SCHRODINGER’S 7-11. Fast Company says “Two Ex-Googlers Want To Make Bodegas And Mom-And-Pop Corner Stores Obsolete”.

While it sometimes feels like we do all of our shopping on the internet, government data shows that actually less than 10% of all retail transactions happen online. In a world where we get our groceries delivered in just two hours through Instacart or Amazon Fresh, the humble corner store–or bodega, as they are known in New York and Los Angeles–still performs a valuable function. No matter how organized you are, you’re bound to run out of milk or diapers in the middle of the night and need to make a quick visit to your neighborhood retailer.

Paul McDonald, who spent 13 years as a product manager at Google, wants to make this corner store a thing of the past. Today, he is launching a new concept called Bodega with his cofounder Ashwath Rajan, another Google veteran. Bodega sets up five-foot-wide pantry boxes filled with non-perishable items you might pick up at a convenience store. An app will allow you to unlock the box and cameras powered with computer vision will register what you’ve picked up, automatically charging your credit card. The entire process happens without a person actually manning the “store.”

Cat Eldridge sent the link with a comment, “Interesting idea but expecting it to be viable in ethic communities where a bodega or the cultural equivalent is as much community centre as store is incredible culturally naive.”

Where Cat lives, “We have, other than gas stations that carry a range of stuff this plans on carrying, exactly one English language as first tongue convenience shop for the twenty thousand inhabitants of the peninsula. But there’s dozens of ethically based shops including Central American, Middle Eastern, African, Russian and at least one Armenian one.”

And to see the Bodega Cats, er, SJW Credentials mentioned in the above article, click here, Instagram has photos.

(17) BRIGHT. Will Smith in Bright available on Netflix starting December 22.

In an alternate present-day where magical creatures live among us, two L.A. cops become embroiled in a prophesied turf battle. Stars Will Smith.

Starring: Will Smith, Joel Edgerton, Noomi Rapace

 

(18) LEAGUE OF GODS. Out on DVD.

Based on the 16th-century Chinese novel Feng Shen Yan Yi (The Investiture of the Gods), the story tells of how King Zhou of Shang becomes a tyrant due to the wiles of Daji, a vixen spirit who is disguised as one of his concubines.

 

[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, Mark-kitteh, JJ, Martin Morse Wooster, Cat Eldridge, Daniel Dern, and Carl Slaughter for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Ingvar.]

Pixel Scroll 1/6/17 It Scrolls! It Pixels! It Makes Julienne Files!

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(1) GALAKTIKA UP TO ITS OLD TRICKS. Bence Pintér of Mandiner.sci-fi checked with the authors of translated short stories in the latest issue of Galaktika, the Hungarian prozine caught publishing overseas authors without payment. Pinter discovered —

They [Galaktika] went on with publishing short stories without the authors’ permission, in this case the victims were Indra Das and Colin P. Davies. Davies knew nothing about this translation; but they asked Das for permission, but never got back to him with contract or the royalty. He did not know his story was published. Here is my article in Hungarian.

(2) CINEMA DENIERS. New Statesman’s Amelia Tait, in “The Movie That Doesn’t Exist and the Redditors Who Think It Does”, reports there is an intense discussion on Reddit about people who say that they saw a movie called Shazaam in the mid-1990s with Sinbad as a genie, even though there is no evidence that this movie was ever made and Sinbad himself tweeted that “only people who were kids in the mid-90s” claim to have seen it.  Tait says these redditors are probably mis-remembering Kazaam, a movie with Shaquille O’Neal as a genie from the mid-1990s.

“I remember thinking Shaq’s Kazaam was a rip-off or a revamp of a failed first run, like how the 1991 film Buffy the Vampire Slayer bombed but the late Nineties TV reboot was a sensation,” says Meredith, who is one of many who claim to remember both Shazaam and Kazaam. Don remembers ordering two copies of the former and only one of the latter for the store, while Carl says: “I am one of several people who specifically never saw Kazaam because it looked ridiculous to rip off Shazaam just a few years after it had been released.” When Carl first realised there was no evidence of the Sinbad movie existing, he texted his sister to ask if she remembered the film.

“Her response [was] ‘Of course.’ I told her, ‘Try and look it up, it doesn’t exist’. She tried and texted back with only: ‘What was it called?’ – there was never a question of if it existed, only not remembering the title.”

(3) ALL HE’S CRACKED UP TO BE. Another work of art from “Hugo Nominated Author” Chuck Tingle.

(4) THE NEXT STEP. “Where do you get your ideas,” is an oft-mocked interview question, but how one writer develops his ideas is captured in Joshua Rothman’s profile “Ted Chiang’s soulful Science Fiction” in The New Yorker.

Chiang’s stories conjure a celestial feeling of atemporality. “Hell Is the Absence of God” is set in a version of the present in which Old Testament religion is tangible, rather than imaginary: Hell is visible through cracks in the ground, angels appear amid lightning storms, and the souls of the good are plainly visible as they ascend to Heaven. Neil, the protagonist, had a wife who was killed during an angelic visitation—a curtain of flame surrounding the angel Nathanael shattered a café window, showering her with glass. (Other, luckier bystanders were cured of cancer or inspired by God’s love.) Attending a support group for people who have lost loved ones in similar circumstances, he finds that, although they are all angry at God, some still yearn to love him so that they can join their dead spouses and children in Heaven. To write this retelling of the Book of Job, in which one might predict an angel’s movements using a kind of meteorology, Chiang immersed himself in the literature of angels and the problem of innocent suffering; he read C. S. Lewis and the evangelical author Joni Eareckson Tada. Since the story was published, in 2001, readers have argued about the meaning of Chiang’s vision of a world without faith, in which the certain and proven existence of God is troubling, rather than reassuring.

(5) BIG RAY GUN. The UK Ministry of Defence has awarded a ?30M contract to produce a prototype laser weapon.

The aim is to see whether “directed energy” technology could benefit the armed forces, and is to culminate in a demonstration of the system in 2019.

The contract was picked up by a consortium of European defence firms.

The prototype will be assessed on how it picks up and tracks targets at different distances and in varied weather conditions over land and water.

(6) CHOW DOWN. Episode 26 of Scott Edelman’s Eating the Fantastic podcast brings Edelman together with James Morrow at an Uzbek restaurant.

James Morrow

James Morrow

We discussed his first novel (written when he was only seven years old!), why he feels more connected to the fiction of Arthur C. Clarke than that of Robert Heinlein and Isaac Asimov, his many paths not taken, including that of filmmaker, the ethical conundrum which occurred after Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. autographed a book “for Jim Morrow, who writes just like me,” how Charles Darwin “confiscated our passports,” and much more.

Edelman has launched an Eating the Fantastic Patreon.

In order to make Eating the Fantastic even better, I’d like to pick up the pace, post episodes more often than biweekly, make day trips to capture writers whom I never get a chance to see on the con circuit, and maybe even upgrade to more advanced recording equipment.

(7) AUTOGRAPH THE PETITION. Brad Johnson of Covina, CA has started a Change.org petition calling for California lawmakers to repeal the troublesome new standards for dealers in autographed items.

Nearly everyone in California is impacted by AB 1570, California’s new autograph bill, because it affects everyone with a signed item in their possession, whether it’s a painting passed down through generations, an autographed baseball, or a treasured book obtained at an author’s book signing. Under the new law, when a California consumer sells an autographed item worth $5 or more, the consumer’s name and address must be included on a Certificate of Authenticity. This requirement applies to anyone reselling the item as authentic, be it a bookseller, auction house, comic book dealer, antiques dealer, autograph dealer, art dealer, an estate sales company, or even a charity.

AB 1570 is fatally flawed and must be repealed with immediate effect. It is rife with unintended consequences that harm both consumers and small businesses. It has been condemned by newspaper editorial boards and the American Civil Liberties Union.

“This bill never should have passed. The Legislature must fix or repeal it immediately when it resumes business.” – Los Angeles Times Editorial Board

(8) THERE IS A SILVER BULLET FOR THIS PROBLEM. Kate Beckinsale, star of Underworld: Blood Wars, joins Stephen Colbert to deliver an important werewolf-related public service announcement.

(9) A STRANGE DEVICE. Seattle’s Museum of Popular Culture hosts “The Art of Rube Goldberg” beginning February 11.

stamp_usps_rube_goldberg

From self-opening umbrellas to automated back scratchers, if you can dream it, Rube Goldberg invented it.

For more than 70 years, cartoonist Rube Goldberg drew unique worlds filled with inventive technology and political commentary. Equal parts clever satirist and zany designer, the Pulitzer Prizing-winning artist is best known for his invention drawings—complex chain-reaction machines designed to perform simple tasks.

From iconic board games like Mouse Trap to thrilling music videos such as OK Go’s “This Too Shall Pass,” Goldberg has influenced some of the most indelible moments in pop culture. His name is so synonymous with his creations that it was added to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary as an adjective that describes the act of complicating a simple task. The tireless creator is thought to have drawn 50,000 cartoons over his long career.

Today, Goldberg’s ideas live on through the Rube Goldberg Machine Contest. This annual international competition challenges teams of students to compete in building the most elaborate Rube Goldberg Machine.

The Art of Rube Goldberg is the first comprehensive retrospective of Goldberg’s 72-year career since 1970. With more than 90 objects on display ranging from original drawings and animations to 3D puzzles, these incredible artifacts are paired with MoPOP’s signature interactive style to bring Goldberg’s imagination to life.

(10) EIGHTIES VERTLIEB. Matt Suzaka at Chuck Norris Ate My Baby rediscovered an old video of Steve Vertlieb being interviewed on Philadelphia TV:

While wandering the crowded halls of YouTube recently, I came across this enjoyable Halloween special that aired sometime in the early 1980s (maybe ‘81 or ‘82). The show in question, People Are Talking, was hosted by Richard Bey, and this particular episode features a genuinely interesting interview with film journalist and historian Steve Vertlieb.

One thing that I enjoy about this special, specifically the interview with Vertlieb, is the fact that horror films aren’t being chastised, something of which was very common for this type of show during the time period. Instead, this interview and the special as a whole is more of a celebration of what makes horror enjoyable for people of all ages. There is some discussion about how horror evolves to reflect modern society as well as how horror films can be a positive escape for some people.

 

(11) SPECIAL SNOWFLAKES. Anthony Herrera Designs has many patterns for science fictional paper snowflakes. The link takes you to the 2016 Star Wars set, and on the same page are links to Guardians of the Galaxy, Frozen, and Harry Potter designs.

New characters! New vehicles! 50% more beards! It’s time for Rogue One: A Star Wars Story. These characters look just awesome and they make great snowflakes too. Here is the Star Wars snowflake collection for 2016. Featuring Rogue One characters and a few additional ones I just needed to throw in there. Download, cut and decorate with these snowflakes and most of all REBEL! This is an rebellion isn’t it? Unless your office coworkers will be annoyed. In that case be cool. Don’t be that guy.  As always I recommend using scissors, a sharp x-acto knife and patience. Have fun!

death_trooper-displayed

(11) THE SHAPE OF SHADES TO COME. Several File 770 readers have said they will be chasing the eclipse next summer. Here’s the latest information on where it can be viewed — “NASA Moon Data Provides More Accurate 2017 Eclipse Path”.

On Monday, Aug. 21, 2017, millions in the U.S. will have their eyes to the sky as they witness a total solar eclipse. The moon’s shadow will race across the United States, from Oregon to South Carolina. The path of this shadow, also known as the path of totality, is where observers will see the moon completely cover the sun. And thanks to elevation data of the moon from NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, or LRO, coupled with detailed NASA topography data of Earth, we have the most accurate maps of the path of totality for any eclipse to date.

 

(12) MOON PICTURE. Annalee Newitz at Ars Technica says “Hidden Figures is the perfect space race movie”. Does the review live up to the wordplay of the headline? You decide!

Hidden Figures is the perfect title for this film, based on Margot Lee Shetterly’s exhaustively researched book of the same name. It deals with an aspect of spaceflight that is generally ignored, namely all the calculations that allow us to shoot objects into orbit and bring them back again. But it’s also about the people who are typically offscreen in sweeping tales of the white men who ran the space race. What Hidden Figures reveals, for the first time in Hollywood history, is that John Glenn would never have made it to space without the brilliant mathematical insights of a black woman named Katherine Johnson (played with what can only be called regal geekiness by Taraji Henson from Empire and Person of Interest).

Johnson was part of a group of “colored computers” at Langley Research Center in Atlanta, black women mathematicians who were segregated into their own number-crunching group. They worked on NASA’s Project Mercury and Apollo 11, and Johnson was just one of several women in the group whose careers made history.

Though Johnson is the main character, we also follow the stories of her friends as Langley pushes its engineers to catch up to the Soviets in the space race. Mary Jackson (a terrific Janelle Monae) wants to become an engineer, and eventually gets a special court order so she can attend classes at an all-white school. Dorothy Vaughan (Octavia Spencer) becomes the first African-American woman to lead a department at the space agency, by teaching herself FORTRAN and learning to program Langley’s new IBM mainframe. One of my favorite scenes is when Vaughan debugs the computer for a bunch of white guys who have no idea what’s going on. As they splutter in confusion, she pats the giant, humming mainframe and says, “Good girl.”

(13) OCTAVIA BUTLER’S KINDRED NOW GRAPHIC NOVEL. Via Tor.com’s Leah Schnelbach we learn:

If you’re in New York City on January 13th and 14th, illustrator and Visual Studies professor John Jennings will be debuting the graphic novel adaptation of Octavia E. Butler’s Kindred at the 2017 Black Comic Fest at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture! Jennings collaborated with writer Damian Duffy on the project, and you can read a preview here.

(14) SHINING GEEKS. Also at Tor.com is Schnelbach’s post “Adam Savage Tours a Weta Workshop Sculptor’s Mini Labyrinth Maze!”

Is there anything more joyful than watching someone explain their passion to an appreciative audience? In the video below, Johnny Fraser-Allen walks Adam Savage through his gorgeously detailed model of the Labyrinth from, er, Labyrinth. Fraser-Allen began work at Weta Workshop straight out of high school, after being inspired to go into film by repeated viewing of Labyrinth and The Dark Crystal. Now he’s been commissioned by River Horse Games to create figures and illustrations for their Labyrinth tabletop game, and he gleefully shares his work with fellow maze-enthusiast Adam Savage, whose model of The Shining‘s iconic hedge maze is currently touring the country with the Stanley Kubrick Exhibition.

See her post for the Youtube video about the Labyrinth maze.

Meantime, here’s another video about Savage’s own Overlook Hotel Maze. The video is cued to when it’s all complete for about an 8-minute run, but people who want all the details on how it was designed and built can watch from the very beginning (24:21 total).

(15) PROFESSIONAL ADVICE. Alex Acks tweets

https://twitter.com/katsudonburi/status/817375521034137600

https://twitter.com/katsudonburi/status/817376625180418048

(16) AWESOMENESS. Patrick Wynne, renowned mythopoeic artist, was thrilled with a gift he received from Carl F. Hostetter, one of his colleagues in the Elvish Linguistic Fellowship. It’s amazing what happens when your friends really know you.

I think I might just have gotten my favorite Procasmas present EVER—a huge fleece throw with the infamous friendship portrait of Amy Farrah Fowler and Penny from “The Big Bang Theory”! Thank you, Carl F. Hostetter, it’s wonderful!

wynne-friendship-potrait

(17) INTERPLANETARY LOVE. The Space Between Us trailer #3 is out.

[Thanks to Chip Hitchcock, Martin Morse Wooster, JJ, Mark-kitteh, Soon Lee, Michael J. Walsh, Steve Vertlieb, Andrew Porter. and John King Tarpinian for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Dawn Incognito.]

SFF in Hungary: A Status Report

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By Bence Pintér: Mandiner.sci-fi celebrated its first birthday this October. I used this joyful occasion as a pretense to ask bloggers, critics, fans, writers, publishing professionals and other luminaries of the Hungarian SFF-scene to answer the question: where are we now? And while the respondents were not exactly like-minded, some aspects of the answers I got were surprisingly similar. The following is a summary of the dozens of answers I get.

  1. Being up-to-date. Hungarian SFF-publishing nowadays is up-to-date, professional and thorough like it never was. The most popular English-language titles are on the shelves in translation in the same year they were published in the USA. The Hungarian publishing houses offer a wide scale of subgenres of speculative fiction. They are mostly translated from English, but there are some books from Russia, the Czech Republic and Estonia.

  2. Publishing classics. There is a never-ending debate about publishing the classic authors of SFF in Hungary. In fact, during the communist era a lot of books by the contemporary SF masters (Asimov, Clarke, Heinlein, etc.) were published, and a lot more was published in the last two decades. But everyone can name five favourite authors, ten favourite books, which were never translated into Hungarian. And probably they’ll never be. Small market, small opportunities: only the really big names could make it.

  3. Domestic authors. Short fiction could be the best training ground of a genre author, but in Hungary there are just few opportunities. The only monthly magazine dealing with domestic SFF stories is the infamous Galaktika. There is also the quarterly Új Galaxis (New Galaxy) which is publishing novice writers’ work; and Aranymosás competition with a similar approach. We have a shortfall of online venues also. There aren’t any serious writers’ workshops. There were some really good books and we saw new talents emerging in the last few years. The respondents’, and also the genre readers’ favourite seems to be the fantasy novel Horgonyhely by Anita Moskát. But generally we can not be satisfied. A part of the respondents think that Hungarian authors need to be more open-minded and they have to read more to be able to compete with foreign titles. Others think that the publishing houses have to take part in bringing up a new generation of Hungarian SF writers.

  4. Establishments. There is a Hungarian sci-fi award, the Zsoldos Péter Award. It is an understatement that it has limited reputation: a lot of prominent authors refused to take a part in it in the last few years. There is also a debate about HungaroCon, the only convention of SF literature in Hungary. One representative of a publishing house also expressed concerns about Hungarian fan’s willingness to visit events. There is a growing need for the academic discussion of genre fiction.

  5. What we need to do? The majority of respondents think that the mentioned trends and facts indicate that we are heading in a good direction, although we have to be more open-minded to put together the fragmented puzzle which is now the Hungarian SFF fandom.

*

So that’s the situation now. On our part, I can say that Mandiner.sci-fi, the first professional Hungarian news site in the field had a very exciting first year. We wrote countless reviews about Hungarian and English books, comics, TV shows and movies, made interviews with Hungarian authors, while reporting on the events of domestic fandom. And also we managed to shock the national (and also the international) genre community by revealing the extensive copyright infringements made by Galaktika in the last twelve years. You can read the two-part article here and here. (These ones are also Hugo-eligible in the Best Related Work category. Just sayin’.)

In one year we built a solid readership amongst the hardcore SFF fans, but we look for more. For the next year our aim will be to invite new readers to the field of speculative fiction. It will be a great challenge, finding the ways to do that. But we will try.

Pixel Scroll 9/28/16 I Can Tick, I Can Tick ‘Cause I’m Better Than You

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(1) BITING THE HAND THAT FEEDS YOU. In Victoria, Texas, a “Facebook post costs Comic Con thousands in funds”.

A Facebook comment from one of the founders of Victoria Comic Con cost the group $2,770 in city support.

After Megan Booth blasted the city of Victoria’s criteria for doling out Hotel Occupancy Tax funds to local groups and questioning the value of the city’s annual Bootfest, council members voted 5-2 at Tuesday’s meeting to reduce the group’s funding from $12,770 to $10,000 and award Children’s Discovery Museum the difference: $2,770.

Booth said she was furious after she learned the city had given Comic Con less than the $20,000 the group had requested in HOT funds for fiscal 2016-2017.

Her Facebook comment called out Bootfest for being unprofitable for the city and ridiculed the city’s $36,000 festival beer tab, said Booth.

“The city has never allocated HOT funds correctly,” said Booth. “After I learned the committee allocated funds according to actual heads in beds this year, the way it’s supposed to, I took my Facebook post down.”

But it was too late. Booth’s Facebook post had reached City Council members.

(2) UNCONVINCING EXCUSE. Following SFWA’s update on the Galaktika Magazine situation, Ann Leckie added a few choice words of her own.

Their really inadequate excuses for these thefts. Editor in chief István Burger is quoted in the SFWA statement as saying:

When I decided to revive Galaktika more than 10 years ago, I went to the leader of one of the most respected literary agencies, to ask for his advice how to get permissions for the stories we plan to publish in the magazine in the future. I had no experience at all in this respect.

Our conversation had a very friendly atmosphere, the leader of the agency was happy that such an aknowledged magazine was revived. Finally we had a verbal agreement, that – as we plan to have a serious book publishing activity as well – we can consider short stories in Galaktika sort of an advertisement in which authors are introduced to Hungarian readers, so that we could publish their novels afterwards. The money we would pay for the rights for the novels contains the price of short stories. So agencies don’t have to deal with rights of short stories for $10 which is as much work as to get the rights of a $1000 novel. During this conversation it became obvious that agencies don’t want to deal with $10-20 so I didn’t want to bother the others with similar requests. Of course in case of longer stories and novels we made contracts. I hope that it is obvious now that there were no intentional stealing at all, as we made an agreement in time for the use of stories. Now I regret that it was only a verbal agreement, but at that time we both acknowledged it.

Yeah, the fact that the verbal “agreement” wasn’t on paper means nothing. There can have been no agreement that mattered if the rights-holders of the stories concerned weren’t involved. Having a tape-recording of the conversation notarized by God Herself would change nothing. (I’m willing to believe the conversation actually happened, by the way, and that if so Mr Burger’s description of it is spun hard enough that the anonymous literary agent might only barely recognize it.)

Let me be absolutely clear about this: this excuse is utter bullshit. If Mr Burger actually believes this, he has no business trying to run a magazine.

Look, the thing about Galaktika publishing books too is completely irrelevant. My books are published in Hungary, translated into Hungarian–by Gabo, not the publisher that owns Galaktika. No story of mine in Galaktika was ever going to be an advertisement for a translation of my books. If I’d wanted an advertisement I would have bought an ad.

And I’ve been asked several times–sometimes personally, sometimes through my agent–for permission to translate short stories. Sometimes specifically in order to promote the translated editions of my novels! My agent is not too busy to deal with such things, and neither am I. And besides, let’s say I and/or my agent didn’t want to deal with such a small transaction? Well, tough cookies. That doesn’t mean you just get to take what you want anyway.

(3) SFWA IN TIMES TO COME. Cat Rambo, after giving credit to SFWA’s Griefcom for its work on the Galaktika issue, told some of the ideas that are part of her international vision for the organization.

Will Galaktika shape up? It remains to be seen. I hope so, and SFWA will revisit the matter in three months to follow-up and let folks know what Galaktika has done in the interim.

Is this actually a matter that SFWA should concern itself with? Absolutely. Recently it’s been underscored for me that people perceive SFWA as an American entity, but the truth is that we have a substantial international contingent. Worldcon in Finland poses a chance to spread that message, and so here’s a few things that I’m doing.

  • SFWA members scanning the most recent copy of the Singularity, SFWA’s bi-monthly e-newsletter for members, to find volunteer opportunities, will have noticed that I have a call out for translators. My plan is to get the SFWA membership requirements and questionnaire translated into as many languages as possible; I have commitments for Chinese, Filipino, Finnish, French, Klingon, Russian, and Spanish versions and am pursuing others. If you’re interested in helping with that effort, please let me know.
  • At the suggestion of Crystal Huff, I’m thinking about programming that might spread the message, such as a panel on the internationalization of SFWA. Such a panel would work for many conventions, I would think, but debuting it in Finland seems like a great idea (although we might sneak peek it at the Nebulas next May in Pittsburgh.)
  • I’m mulling over what form something connecting translators and F&SF writers might look like. Translating fiction requires not just ability with the language, but a writerly sensibility, an understanding of how to make the sentences fluid and compelling and three dimensional. So maybe something where potential translators could submit a listing of translation credits along with sample of their own work, translated into the languages they’re adept in, backed up with the ability for SFWA members to post testimonials. This seems like something the field needs; if anyone’s aware of existing efforts along these lines, please let me know?
  • Maybe it’s time for a new version of The SFWA European Hall of Fame, this time The SFWA International Hall of Fame. That seems like something for me to discuss with our Kickstarter contact. She and I have been discussing a 2018 project, reviving the Architects of Wonders anthology, but this might make a good interim effort. (Speaking of Kickstarter, SFWA partners with over three dozen institutions and companies, including Amazon, Kickstarter, and Kobo to make sure member concerns and suggestions are passed along as well as new opportunities created. If you’d like to be on the Partnership committee handling these monthly check-ins, drop our volunteer wrangler Derek a line at [email protected].)

(4) THE VALUE OF SILVER. Dan Wells is ecstatic that a film based on his work won a medal at a European film festival — “I Am Not A Serial Killer” Won A Really Big Award”

So over the weekend I announced that I AM NOT A SERIAL KILLER had one the Silver Melies award at the Strasbourg film festival, which I and many of you thought was awesome, but it turns out that I was grossly underestimating it’s actual awesomeness. The Olympics have trained me to think of Silver as second place, but looking into the award I have learned the truth: the Silver Melies is Strasbourg’s top prize for international films. The top prize. First place. That’s a big honkin’ deal.

(5) THE PROOF. Jim C. Hines is “Searching For Revisionary Goofs”. I was thinking this was going to be a political analysis, but what it really means he’s proofing another edition of his novel Revisionary.

The mass market paperback edition of Revisionary comes out in February. This means I have a whole new set of page proofs to review.

If you’ve read the hardcover (thank you!) and noticed any typos or other problems, now would be the perfect time to let me know so we can get those fixed for the paperback release. You can comment here or shoot me an email at jchines -at- sff.net.

(6) WEINBERG SERVICES SET. Thanks to Steven H Silver for the information:

The memorial service for Bob Weinberg will be held on October 15 from noon to 5:00 at:

Orland Park Civic Center
14750 S. Ravinia Avenue
Orland Park, IL. 60462
708 403 6200

(7) STERN OBIT. Lucy Stern, a LASFS member since 1988, passed away September 28, of cancer. Her husband, Mike Stern, announced on Facebook:

Lucy has died. She stopped breathing sometime around 2am. I am devastated. I loved her for forty-nine years, and I will never be able to see fifty, although I will still be loving her then.

The Stern family, including daughters Alison and Heather, has been one of the most important parts of LASFS for decades. I’m very saddened by the news.

(8) BOOK REVIEW BLOGS. Netgalley’s “Blogger Spotlight” today visits with Anya of On Starships and Dragonwings.

Let’s start with your origin story – how long have you been blogging about Sci-Fi & Fantasy books, and why did you start?

I started the blog in 2010, so six years, time flies! It’s a bit embarrassing to admit, but I started blogging about sci-fi and fantasy books because I wanted to try out blogging in general and realized that books were the thing that I would never get tired of! It’s worked so far I guess :).

Are there particular subgenres that you prefer or find more interesting at the moment? Are there any trends that you are excited to see come or go?

I try to switch between subgenres every book so that I don’t get bored with any one. I’ve found that my preferences don’t align with elements special to any particular subgenre, but more what makes books excellent no matter their subject: strong voice, unique world, beautiful writing, etc. In all subgenres though I’m seeing a trend of authors working hard to bring in mythology from places other than Western Europe and I love that. Since I tend to be more interested in new-to-me magic and monsters and worlds, stories that pull in myths I’m not familiar with are exactly what I’m looking for.

(9) JEMISIN INTERVIEW. Fans of The Fifth Season should enjoy Chris Urie’s interview with N. K. Jemisin in Clarkesworld.

A few of your short stories have featured New York City. What is it about the city that keeps you curious and writing about it?

I love New York! New York for me was the place where I came to be an artist. I grew up in a lot of different places but mostly between Mobile, Alabama and Brooklyn.

I remember being told that I should go outside and play. I remember the passive-aggressive things that people who don’t get artists tend to say to them because they don’t understand that sitting in one place and just writing or reading a book is a good thing. When I came here, I was free to write as much as I wanted, free to talk with other people about my plots and the ideas that were driving me nuts at night. During the school year, I had to lie awake and sort of chew on them and try to sleep. I was sort of a childhood insomniac. Here, I could talk it out and I slept like a baby.

New York was also where I could be a nerd. My father is a nerd too and we would watch Star Trek and the Twilight Zone ‘till the wee hours of the morning and talk about them and post-process every episode. That was the thing that made me love New York.

New York is the place where souls can be free. So, naturally, when I’ve come back here as an adult I want to understand what it is about this city that makes it so unique. What it is that brings that feeling out. It was a kind of magic and I want to try and capture that magic.

(10) A NEW STANDARD. Aaron argues that “Stopping Harassment After the Fact Just Isn’t Good Enough” at Dreaming of Other Worlds.

Right now, there is no real way to document patterns of bad behavior on the part of convention attendees. Conventions simply must get better at documenting and sharing information about instances of harassment. There needs to be some way to keep track of who has been ejected from a convention, and for what reason. Other conventions have to be able to look at these records and decide whether to issue a badge to individuals with a propensity to cause trouble. Conventions must be willing to preemptively ban serial harassers and bad actors. Had ConCarolinas documented the harassment that took place at their event and made it available to other conventions, and WisCon documented the harassment that took place at their event and made that available to other conventions, then this pair would not have been able to fly under the radar the way they did and turn up at MidAmeriCon II without anyone there being aware of their history. Had such a system already been in place, the people who harassed Alyssa Wong at MidAmeriCon II might not have even been there to harass her in the first place.

(11) QUESTION TIME. Author Confidential, an upcoming fundraiser for the Bacon Free Library, lets people bid on the opportunity to ask an author questions.

Bid to ask any of these award winning, best-selling, beloved, classic authors three (3) questions! If you win, the author will send you a letter with the responses! Yes, an honest to goodness letter which you can cherish forever

Only a few genre writers are on the list, like Diana Gabaldon, Gail Carriger, and Piers Anthony, but a large number of best-selling authors are participating, including Lee Child and Alexander McCall Smith.

When: Sunday, October 23, 2016 8pm – Sunday, October 30, 2016 8pm Where: Ebay links and feed will be open on Sunday, Oct. 23rd at 8pm

(12) WELL, THEY HAVE SAND IN COMMON. On A. V. Club, Ignatiy Vishmevetsky’s “The Eraserhead baby from space” analyzes David Lynch’s Dune, and explains what a strange and wonderful film it is.  The big news was that Lynch was offered Return of the Jedi but turned it down.

There’s a good reason to bring up Star Wars here, as Lynch had passed on the chance to direct Return Of The Jedi before accepting an offer from Italian super-producer Dino De Laurentiis to write and direct Dune. (Several attempts had been made before, including one by Alejandro Jodorowsky that’s been much mythologized, despite sounding unfilmable.) By his own admission, Lynch had no interest in sci-fi, and neither, in a sense, does Dune. It has a lot more in common with its writer-director’s most admired work than it’s generally given credit for, from the ominous, rumbling soundscapes to the first appearances of future Lynch favorites MacLachlan and Everett McGill (as a Fremen leader), as well as Blue Velvet’s Dean Stockwell (as the Atreides’ court physician, forced to betray them under tragic circumstances). There are echoes: the mutated space-farer who travels in a train-car-sized tank of melange gas resembles the baby from Eraserhead grown to gigantic size; a tray of flowers brings to mind the opening of Blue Velvet; and so on and so forth. Dune, in other words, is not so much Lynch’s big-budget dead end as a transitional artwork that eludes most of the expectations that come with being a big-budget sci-fi movie.

(13) IF PATRICK MCGOOHAN BLOGGED. Soon Lee invites you to sing along to this excellent filk left in a comment.

SECRET FILER FAN

(Dedicated to OGH, and with apologies to Johnny Rivers)

There’s a fan who runs a file of genre
To everyone he meets he is no stranger
With every scroll he makes, another pixel he takes
What odds ::ticky:: brings comments by email?

Secret Filer Fan, Secret Filer Fan
He’s given you a number (five!), you’ve appertained your drinks

Beware the rabid puppies in the links
Excerpting news and S-F-F hijinks
Ah, be careful what you write
They’ll find their way to this site
Damned or praise you with words your own self typed

Secret Filer Fan, Secret Filer Fan
He’s given you a number (five!), you’ve appertained your drinks
Secret Filer Fan, Secret Filer Fan
He’s given you a number, you’ve appertained your drinks

SFWA INFOGRAPHIC. Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of American point out ways they are helping their members.

[Thanks to Lace, Dave Doering, JJ, and John King Tarpinian for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Junego.]

Pixel Scroll 9/26/16 Scrolls To The Left Of Me, Pixels To The Right

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(1) JUST. ONE. SCHOOL. UPDATE. There was the inevitable brush with bureaucracy, but the books everyone donated are now being checked out to kids at Greenville High School in the Sierras of California.

“Just. One. School. A Saga Continues” (August 11) at Throwing Chanclas.

Last night I attended a monthly board meeting of Plumas Unified School District in Quincy, CA. I don’t normally attend such meetings as I thankfully as a reporter do not have the school board as my regular beat. I attended because I got last minute word that the Library Project was an agenda item. I’d received no phone call or email from the district, no inquiries whatsoever. As this was my idea and I’ve been heading up the volunteer effort (we’ll let my 17 years experience as a college instructor + knowledge of books, music, and film go at this point). So I show up there because um…my library, OUR library is on the agenda.

So I address the school board and give them a brief history of the project. As the board only has one member who regularly engages online, they were not all completely aware that we exist.  So I spend my five minutes of public comment time on facts of our project and I answer a few questions.

The curriculum director–who has never set foot in our library, nor called me or emailed me to ask questions–gets up and makes a brief presentation whereupon she states that she’ll “approve” students to check out books as soon as we produce a list of titles so that she can decide whether they belong in our library.

…America. This is why we can’t have nice things. This is why Holden Caufield whines about how every time you see something beautiful someone else has scrawled an OBSCENITY upon it.

None of this comes out of my mouth however. I do remind however that we are two schools, not one. That all summer 98% of my volunteers have been from community members and Indian Valley Academy students and parents and that we have no such stipulations concerning censorship and approval. Our goal –which we had thought and hoped was shared–was to get kids reading–especially kids who don’t read. And we’ve already been achieving our goal.

just-one-book-library

Mary of the Good Week (August 28)

There’s some bureaucratic snags. The curriculum director finally came down to look at the site (honestly we are a brisk 22 minutes from Capital City–it wasn’t that hard) and we hope she went away knowing that the books aren’t hers that they are indeed the communities and the kids.

…We had a great moment last week when a kid who was on track to drop out and have no use for the world walked into the library almost on a dare and realized that every graphic novel and Japanese manga he ever wanted to read was in there. (He was too cool for school and then left like a kid coming out of a candy store). We let him borrow the Death Note series.

just-one-book-library-2

Just. One. Book. Live with Students! (September 9).

Since Sept 6 when we opened we’ve checked out about 65 books, dvds, and cds  to students and faculty.  Considering the two schools have only 200 students combined that’s some great reach.

THANK YOU!’

Oh and on a side note. Whoever sent the soundtrack to Hamilton? I LOVE YOU. That’s the first thing that I checked out.

(2) SFWA ISSUES STATEMENT ON GALAKTIKA MAGAZINE. On March 23, 2016, Bence Pintér published an article at Mandiner Magazine regarding numerous stories published by Hungary’s Galaktika Magazine in 2015 – most of them translated and reprinted without the knowledge or consent of the original authors. The unfolding story is included in today’s SFWA statement on Galaktika, warning professionals to avoid working with the publication.

SFWA has refrained from comment so far due to hopes that Galaktika would resolve outstanding issues, but so far this has not been the case. It has taken the Hungarian agency representing one leading U.S. agency months to arrive at an agreement with Galaktika calling for a per-story fee of $75 covering 37 stories by 16 authors; this agreement was finally signed by István Burger on 7th September 2016, and apparently the money is on the way to the Hungarian Agency.  Meanwhile, the same agency is still working on finding a satisfactory arrangement with other clients whose authors are involved, although no other agreement is in the works yet (as of mid-September 2016). Some clients of the Hungarian Agency reportedly are inclined to give Galaktika a post-publication license; others want to review legal options that their own clients can undertake; others are working with other U.S. agents to explore a possible collective response.

SFWA formally recommends that authors, editors, translators, and other publishing professionals avoid working with Galaktika until the magazine has demonstrated that existing issues have been addressed and that there will be no recurrence. Authors should check to determine whether or not their works have been published by Galaktika on the magazine’s website at http://galaktikabolt.hu/galaktika/page/6/. SFWA recommends that members work with their agents and publishers to address the issue before passing it to Griefcom. At the moment SFWA has three active grievances against Galaktika

(3) GETTING THERE EVENTUALLY. Kelly Robson, “On Being a Late Bloomer”, at Clarkesworld.

I always wanted to be a writer. That’s not unique. Many writers have their destiny revealed in childhood. Like others with this particular itch, I read voraciously, and when I bought my first Asimov’s magazine at the age of sixteen—a moment embedded in my senses more vividly than my first kiss—I knew I had to be a science fiction writer.

But it took me more than thirty years to become one. And by that, I don’t mean I was thirty before I published my first fiction. I was forty-seven. By anyone’s measure, that’s late for a first publication.

Most of us have preconceived ideas about how a writer’s career should proceed, and we judge ourselves harshly if we don’t achieve the various benchmarks on time…

(4) VISIT TO THE CHINESE NEBULAS. Cat Rambo has written up her trip to China: “Beijing/Chengdu Trip, September 206: Some Notes, Observations, and Images”.

We were treated very well. Overall, recent wins by Cixin Liu have drawn significant attention to SF in China. In all of this, I am speaking primarily about science fiction, rather than fantasy, since the Chinese see the two genres as very distinct from each other. There has also historically been tension between science writing and science fiction, which is the past has been perceived as being aimed at children, or at least that is something that came up multiple times over the course of the visit.

Nowadays, that’s very different. Numerous groups in China are working on putting together Worldcon bids and I would suspect the question is not so much whether or not we’ll see a Worldcon bid from China in coming years so much as which city will host it: Beijing, Chengdu, or Shanghai. Several people, including the World Science Fiction Society, said that they’d love to see SFWA’s Nebulas hosted over in China if we’re ever interested in doing that. Crystal Huff had been sponsored by the first group as part of their effort to research what would be needed to run a Worldcon.

(5) THE DARK ADDS MORENO-GARCIA. The Dark Magazine has hired Silvia Moreno-Garcia as co-editor alongside current editor Sean Wallace. Moreno-Garcia will assume her responsibilities effective October 1 and her first issues will start next January.

Mexican by birth, Canadian by inclination, Silvia’s debut novel, Signal to Noise, about music, magic and Mexico City, was listed as one of the best novels of the year at io9, Buzzfeed and many other places and nominated for the British Fantasy, Locus, Sunburst and Aurora awards. She was nominated for a World Fantasy Award for her work on the anthology She Walks in Shadows and is the guest-editor for Nightmare Magazine’s POC Destroy Horror. She edits The Jewish Mexican Literary Review together with award-winning author Lavie Tidhar. Her website can be found at www.silviamoreno-garcia.com

“Silvia has always impressed me with her editorial acumen and acquisitions, both with her own anthologies and Innsmouth Magazine, and it is to our credit that we have her onboard going forward,” said Sean Wallace, co-editor and publisher of The Dark Magazine.

(6) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY GIRLS

  • Born September 26, 1932  — Donna Douglas. Her “Eye of the Beholder” Twilight Zone episode had one of the best reveals on any TV show.
  • Born September 26, 1956 — Linda Hamilton

(7) ANCILLARY COMIC. Someone has been peeking inside the heads of Ancillary Justice readers.

(8) CROWDFUNDING TERRY JONES BOOK. Terry Jones’ publisher Unbound is crowdfunding the publication of the third volume of a Medieval adventure trilogy he has written. They discuss his recent announcement on this page.

It’s safe to say that when Unbound launched, five years ago, we could not have done it without Terry Jones.

He launched his collection of stories, Evil Machines, and went on every form of media to help us launch the business, brilliantly communicating what was new and exciting about Unbound. Here was one of the country’s best loved comic writers and performers – a Python! – entrusting us with a brand new book and pushing our start-up for all it was worth.

First and foremost, though, Terry has been a friend, not ‘just’ a driving force and collaborator. So the news of his illness has hit us hard.

We launched this book in the hope that we could get it to him for his 75th birthday in February but the announcement of illness gives us all pause for thought. We have considered whether we should remove the project but after speaking to the family we have decided we still very much want to publish this book because it completes the trilogy and because it meant a great deal to Terry that we should. So we hope you’ll agree that we should continue to fund and publish the final fictional work from an old and dear friend.

There’s an excerpt from Chapter 1 at the site.

(9) LETTERS TO TIPTREE. Alisa Krasnostein’s scorecard reads —

LETTERS TO TIPTREE has won: the Tin Duck, Ditmar, Aurealis Convenor Award, Locus, Alfie, British Fantasy; shortlisted for the British SF and WFA, long listed for the Tiptree. Which kinda blows my mind!!!!

(10) AN INGENIOUSLY DECEPTIVE WORK OF ART. Nobody knows about this transportation disaster because it didn’t happen it happened on the same day as the Kennedy assassination, you see…. Artist Joe Reginella told The Gothamist how he perpetrated the hoax.

Staten Island Ferry Disaster Monument

Staten Island Ferry Disaster Monument

Reginella told The Post that the project took six months to plan and that it’s “part practical joke, part multimedia art project, part social experiment.” The fliers, which he and his team have been giving out around downtown Manhattan and Staten Island in recent weeks, promise an octopus petting zoo, historical exhibits and a “Ferry Disastore” gift shop at the nonexistent museum.

It also includes directions to a fictitious shoreline address across the street from the Snug Harbor Cultural Center, where some people have ventured to. Francesca Navarro, who works the front desk of the Staten Island Museum, told the Post that despite the ludicrousness of the premise, some people can’t help but check it out: “I think they maybe have a suspicion it’s fake, but they feel like they just have to prove it.”

The Post found a few of the tricked: “Australian tourist Tamara Messina [said]: ‘The brochure sounded very intriguing,’ adding that her three young sons ‘seemed a bit more concerned that it may happen again’ as the family rode the ferry.”

In addition to the fake monument, there’s a website for the Staten Island Ferry Disaster Memorial Museum. The New York Post says people are still looking for it.

About the Memorial

The Staten Island Ferry Disaster Story. . . It was close to 4am on the quiet morning of November 22, 1963 when the Steam Ferry Cornelius G. Kolff vanished without a trace. On its way with nearly 400 hundred people, mostly on their way to work, the disappearance of the Cornelius G. Kolff remains both one of New York’s most horrific maritime tragedies and perhaps its most intriguing mystery. Eye witness accounts describe “large tentacles” which “pulled” the ferry beneath the surface only a short distance from its destination at Whitehall Terminal in Lower Manhattan. Nobody on board survived and only small pieces of wreckage have been found…strangely with large “suction cup-shaped” marks on them. The only logical conclusion scientists and officials could point to was that the boat had been attacked by a massive octopus, roughly half the size of the ship. Adding to the tragedy, is that this disaster went almost completely unnoticed by the public as later that day another, more “newsworthy” tragedy would befall the nation when beloved President John Fitzgerald Kennedy was assassinated.  The Staten Island Ferry Disaster Museum hopes to correct this oversight by preserving the memory of those lost in this tragedy and educating the public about the truth behind the only known giant octopus-ferry attack in the tri-state area.

 

(11) SOMETIMES. Just saw this today and it cracked me up.

https://twitter.com/crashwong/status/767507775454871552

(12) THAT MALLEABLE VERSE. And I had a smile left over for this —

[Thanks to Janice Gelb, Sean Wallace, Ruth, Steven H Silver, Dawn Incognito, and John King Tarpinian for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Bill.]

Pixel Scroll 7/14/16 I Am the Pixel in the Darkness

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(1) READERCONTROVERSY. Mikki Kendall’s “#Readercon: Low Point & Lessons” rounds out an ongoing conversation about a panel at last weekend’s con.

For those who weren’t at Readercon—or who didn’t attend the Beyond Strong Female Characters panel—Sabrina Vourvoulias’ post lays out the panel I was going to write about as my low point for the weekend. I expect a certain amount of fail at sci fi conventions, and as failures go this wasn’t one of the majors for me. (Ellen Kushner has already apologized to me on Twitter, and I will be talking to her shortly after this post goes live. I accept the apology and this post isn’t really about Ellen so much as the phenomenon she was a part of at this particular panel.)….

Ultimately, cons are supposed to be fun. They’re a chance to meet people who love the same kinds of things that you do, a chance to geek out with them about whatever it is that you love. They are also a major part of networking in the industry. You can share a table with an agent, an editor, and your potential audience. Cons are important for fans, for authors, for the publishing industry as a whole.

Dissuading new authors and fans from con spaces this way won’t keep them out of publishing. It might make it more difficult, it might make for fewer amazing stories. But mostly it will make for the end of con culture. Maybe that’s the point. If the panels aren’t welcoming, if some con spaces feel closed, then as sad as it might be to lose con culture, maybe that’s for the best because endlessly fighting for space at the table is energy that can be used to build a new table.

(2) POLLBUSTERS. FiveThirtyEight uses Ghostbusters as a springboard to examine the problems with online ratings systems.

But this “Ghostbusters” thing? It lays bare so, so much of what we’re investigating when it comes to the provenance and reliability of internet ratings.1 Namely, they’re inconsistent, easily manipulated and probably not worth half the stock we put in them.2 Here are a few stats I collected early Thursday for the new “Ghostbusters” movie:

The movie isn’t even out in theaters as I’m writing this, but over 12,000 people have made their judgment. Male reviewers outnumber female reviewers nearly 5 to 1 and rate “Ghostbusters” 4 points lower, on average.

(3) STUDYING THE HISTORICAL DOCUMENTS. This week on James Davis Nicoll’s Young People Read Old SF the panel looks at Isaac Asimov’s “Nightfall”. Jamie comments —

I’ve actually read this one before, in a collection of Asimov stories. I had forgotten the details but knew what the big reveal was. Maybe because I read and liked the Foundation stories I don’t find the prose in this story so foreign. And foreign is the word for all these stories. They were clearly written by people who lived in a different time and place. People just don’t speak like that anymore and writers don’t write dialogue like that anymore.

The format is one that I’ve seen in other stories, a journalist chasing a story as a means to give the scientists someone to explain to. It’s a good trick, and kept the story moving.

(4) MANY AUTHORS NOTIFIED. Bence Pintér sent the link to the final article in his investigation of a Hungarian sf magazine – “Piracy by Galaktika: They Are Doing It Since 2004”.

Galaktika placed emphasis on reprinting stories by the grand masters of sci-fi, fantasy, horror genres dating back to even the 19th century. This can be witnessed from the very beginning when in the first edition in November 2004 authors such as Arthur C. Clarke, Stephen Baxter, Isaac Asimov, Robert Sheckley and Poul Anderson were included. We were able to reach the agencies of Poul Anderson, Stephen Baxter and Arthur C. Clarke, who stated that Galaktika magazine had no right to publish their clients’ work (not only in this case, but in all concerned cases). The agency representing the Asimov estate has only recently taken control and therefore was unable to give a statement.

When we last contacted the agency representing the Anderson estate (and fifteen other affected authors), they claimed that negotiations were underway with the publisher – more on that at the end of the article. The agency representing the Clarke estate stated that after our first article on this issue all previous debt was settled by the publisher. ?Copyright protection is essential to the survival of these stories and our industry, and we are very reassured to know that there is such a strong SF community in Hungary which is holding those like Galaktika to account for their actions? – stated that representative of the company towards Mandiner. We also inquired towards the books of Arthur C. Clarke reprinted by Galaktika. It turned out that besides the reprinted short stories, there was also at least one novel that needed to be discussed between the parties; but we have no further information about this issue. (Sources tell us that this novel may be 2001: A Space Odyssey reprinted last year.)

Coming back to the grand masters: besides Clarke, Anderson, and Baxter, the agencies of Terry Pratchett, George R. R. Martin, Robert J. Sawyer, Theodore Sturgeon, Robert Heinlein, Nancy Kress, Jack Williamson, Michael Flynn, Kim Stanley Robinson, Hal Clement, Leigh Brackett, Cordwainer Smith, Philip José Farmer, Jack McDevitt, Robert Silverberg, Connie Willis, Jack Vance and Richard Matheson also gave no permission for the reprinting of the authors’ works; similarly, Larry Niven was also not informed that his works were being reprinted. Vance’s agency later informed us that the two parties came to an agreement. A regularly occurring author was Michael Swanwick, winner of the Nebula Award and nominee for many others; he too was oblivious to his works being reprinted; neither were the successors of Philip K. Dick or Tanith Lee informed. These authors alone had a work reprinted nearly every year, all of which were illegal. This however is only the tip of the iceberg….

(5) AMAZON BITES. Mary Rosenblum’s guest post at the SFWA Blog, “Amazon Bites Author”, argues that a client’s receipt of a warning letter that they were about to suspend his Amazon account and stop selling his books shows writers can innocently run afoul of the online bookseller’s anti-fraud algorithims.

Meanwhile, I’ve been changing my client advice for career authors regarding Amazon.com. I no longer suggest going the Select/KU route. Clearly, Amazon is casting a net for scammers there and if you use book discounters and other promotions well, you may find yourself in Brad’s shoes. You can make your ebook free in other ways. Use the book discounters and free downloads to reach a lot of new readers and stay off the KU system. If your book is good and readers like the freebie, they’ll pay for the next book and become loyal fans.

Here are my new ‘rules’.  It’s a depressingly long list, isn’t it?

  • Never offer any kind of thank you gift, incentive, or what have you for a review.
  • Never post a free book offer on your Facebook page to solicit reviews.
  • Use only the email list you’ve acquired from your website (and this is why that list is SO important) to send an offer of an epub or mobi or pdf copy of the new book to those people and ask them to review the book when it’s out.
  • Never ask for a positive review, only ask for an honest review.
  • Never let family members review your book.
  • Never use a paid review service.
  • Use only honest book discounters such as Fussy Librarian and BookBub.
  • Never swap reviews with other authors.

(6) HARDY OBIT. Robin Hardy, director of the horror film The Wicker Man (1973), died July 1 at the age of 86.

When Mr. Hardy, a television director, decided he wanted to make a horror film, he found an enthusiastic collaborator in Anthony Shaffer, who wrote the play “Sleuth” and the screenplay for the Alfred Hitchcock film “Frenzy.” Mr. Hardy and Shaffer, partners in a production company, were avid fans of the horror films made by Hammer Studios. Together they set about making a film that would take the Hammer approach in a new direction.

Shaffer, using the novel “Ritual” by David Pinner as a basis, came up with the story of a devout Christian policeman, Sergeant Neil Howie, who travels to a Scottish island to investigate the disappearance of a girl. In Mr. Hardy’s hands, the island and its inhabitants — led by the priestlike Lord Summerisle, played by Christopher Lee, took on a mystifying aura, with bizarre events unfolding….

(7) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY BOY

  • Born July 14, 1910 – William Hanna: The Flintstones, The Jetsons, Yogi Bear, Top Cat etc.

(8) ANIME. Petréa Mitchell runs down more than 20 stfnal anime premieres for Amazing Stories.

Gray-man HALLOW premiere – In Fairytale Britain, a villain called the Millennium Earl is creating demonic constructs and sending them out to take over the world or somesuch. Opposing him is a vaguely religious order armed with everything from magical powers to amped-up mundane weapons. At the center of it all is Allen Walker, a particularly talented exorcist, who is slowly being taken over by the personality of one of the Milliennium Earl’s former allies. There are people in the power structure moving against him, and something unfortunate is about to happen to his mentor.

While most of this episode is spent catching new viewers up, there’s still room for some supernatural monster-killing action. It does a decent job at both. All around, it’s a perfectly serviceable action-adventure.

The big caveat for a Western audience is that it takes the European setting and religious trappings and does very weird things with them. It operates at about the same level of fidelity in its depiction of Japanese culture as a typical Western cartoon.

(9) PUMPKIN IS THE NEW ORANGE. The Halloween Daily News urges one and all to sign a petition to make Ray Bradbury’s favorite day of the year a real holiday. (They don’t mention Ray, but we know it’s true.)

Have you ever wished that your favorite day of the year, Halloween was recognized as an actual federal Holiday like Christmas and Thanksgiving? Of course you are not alone, and one person is taking this request to the White House in the form of an online petition that needs at least 100,000 signatures by July 25 to be taken seriously. But we can do that, right?

(10) THE VOTE. Hugo ballot picks for Novella by Jonathan Edelstein.

I wasn’t able to put the best novella of 2015 on the top of my Hugo ballot, because that story, The Pauper Prince and the Eucalyptus Jinn by Usman T. Malik, didn’t make the finals.  That said, I can’t complain too much about the choices I had: the novella can be an awkward length, but most of this year’s entries carried it off and some were very good indeed.

(11) TEMPERATURE RISING. Kate Paulk’s comments in “Hugo Finalist Highlights – Best Short Story and Best Novelette” for once venture beyond indifference. There were some stories she even warmed up to.

“Cat Pictures Please” by Naomi Kritzer (Clarkesworld, January 2015) – Another cute piece, but with a liberal side of “hmm” that kept me thinking after I’d finished. This is one of my personal contenders for this category.

(12) THE ANSWER MY FRIEND. Teri Windling shares ancient knowledge in “Hedgies”.

“Aristotle says that hedgehogs can foretell a change of wind,” writes mythologist J.C. Cooper, “and accordingly shift the outlook of their earth-holes.”

Aristotle!

(13) SIDE OF HAM. Entertainment Weekly’s view is that “Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan is a movie about acting”.

For the moment, stuff the subtext: The Kobayashi Maru is a scene about the Enterprise crew – highly-skilled space-naval pioneer coworkers – putting on a show. They’re performing. And “performance” is both running plot point and underlying theme in Wrath of Khan. Khan fools Kirk with a performance, and Kirk fools Khan with three performances. In the second scene, Spock performs the opening lines from A Tale of Two Cities: “It was the best of…” etc. In the penultimate scene, Kirk quotes Dickens’ closing: “It is a far, far better…” etc.

(14) ABOUT FACE. Handimania supplies a recipe for the head in a jar prank.

The thing is to blend two pictures together in order to prepare flat image of a human head. Afterwards, the photo has to be laminated and placed in a jar filled with fluid to create the illusion of a decapitated head. This nasty prank was prepared by Instructables’ user, mikeasaurus, who advises to personalize the gag for the best effect.

(15) E.T. ON LINE 1. Listserve knows “10 Bizarre Ways Scientists Believe Aliens Will Contact Us”

  1. Flashing A Billion Stars

Astrophysicist Ragbir Bhathal works with SETI to scan the skies for possible communications from extraterrestrial intelligence. Unlike most SETI facilities, which look for radio signals, Bhathal’s facility looks for laser pulses at his lab. The pulses sweep a nearby volume of space—within about 100 light-years—to find laser bursts that come in regular patterns. Scientists are now capable of detecting signals as faint as a single photon of light every few fractions of a second.

Lasers can, in principle, help transmit messages over extraordinary distances. While scientists have monitored a large number of stars looking for alien laser signals—like the facilities at Harvard and Princeton that scanned more than 10,000 Sun-like stars for several years—no evidence for any alien communication has been found.

(16) RESPECT. In “Should Pokémon Go?”, Kim Stahl offers a defense of Pokémon Go at the Holocaust Museum.

Following the articles about the D.C. Holocaust museum’s reaction to Pokémon Go, it struck me how very differently game-theory people and other people react to what’s going on with this game. The spots in the museum have been targets in another game (Ingress) for a few years, apparently without incident. Hundreds of thousands of people play that game, and many have played it inside the museum. But Pokémon is a very different sort of game. It is much more popular, and appeals to younger people, and unlike a game that is essentially a game-ified version of Geocaching, Pokémon is lighthearted and people are excited about it because it is new….

But the important difference I’m seeing is that the challenge the museum is facing made me think “great! People are visiting a place with so much to teach them because of the game! Now, how should they take the next step to encourage appropriate behavior from those visitors?” In other words, “how could the museum gamify getting the behavior they want from visitors instead of the behavior they don’t?” Quiet, respectful behavior and attention to the exhibits presumably.

When I was in Milan, one of the official pamphlets from the Duomo had information for Ingress players about a mission there. One of the most famous cathedrals in the world, a historical wonder intended for silent, respectful contemplation of God, used a game to get more people to visit and to get them to see the best parts of the church. That surprised and impressed me, of all of the places I would expect to clamp down on frivolous things or modern things, instead they embraced the possibilities.

(17) GO FOR PARENTS. Matthew Johnson wrote “A Parents’ Guide to Pokémon Go” for MediaSmarts.

Over the last week our world has been invaded: cute cartoon creatures can now be found lurking in parks, restaurants, museums, and even people’s houses. If you haven’t seen them, it’s because they’re only visible on a smartphone screen, and only if you’re playing the new game “Pokémon Go”.

While most parents are probably at least a bit familiar with the thirty-year-old Pokémon franchise, Pokémon Go is something new: the first widely popular alternate reality game (ARG). These games use GPS and similar location-finding technologies to overlay a game onto the real world. As a result, both public spaces and news stories have filled up with people looking to “catch ‘em all.”

Although most people playing Pokémon Go are probably adults, Pokémon’s popularity among kids means that many of them will want to play it too. Here’s a quick rundown on what to consider if your kids ask if they can play: ….

(18) POKESONG. Then Matthew Johnson took a break and insta-filked a bit of Pokémon trivia.

Darren Garrison on July 14, 2016 at 5:50 am said: My son sez Mew is the rarest Pokémon.

Okay, somebody, quick–filk “Mew is the rarest Pokemon” to the tune of “One is the Loneliest Number” for Paul_A.

As you wish:

Mew, is the loneliest Pokémon you’ll ever do
Mew is just the saddest one, he’s so lonely that they had to clone Mewtwo
It’s just no good anymore since Mew went away
I spent my time just catching Grimers yesterday
Pokémon Go is the saddest experience you’ll ever know
Yes, it’s the saddest experience you’ll ever know
Because Mew is the loneliest Pokémon
Mew is the loneliest Pokémon
Mew is the loneliest Pokémon you’ll ever do

[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, Aziz Poonawalla, Chip Hitchcock, Will R., and Petréa Mitchell for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Greg Hullender.]