Tag Archives: George MacDoanld

Pixel Scroll 1/19/21 Good Gollum Miss Molly

Posted on by

(1) MANDO ABOUT TOWN. Yahoo! Entertainment says people have seen “A Mandalorian and Baby Yoda spotted speeding through Los Angeles streets”.

For several weeks, a masked Mandalorian and his Baby Yoda has been zooming around the streets of Los Angeles, spreading some good cheer during the pandemic.

…The man behind the homemade mask is comedian Tim Brehmer, who told NBC he’s out of work and his goal was simply to make people laugh during a tough time.

“This whole thing got started because I’m a big box of stupid and I love making people laugh,” he told NBC. “…with some people with depression, a pill can help, with some people therapy can help, with me, this is my therapy.”

(2) FANTASY FORERUNNER. In “Why George MacDonald Matters” at the Los Angeles Review of Books, Timothy Larsen gives an introduction to the great Victorian fantasist who was a major influence on the Inklings.

…MacDonald’s grandmother decided that the musical interests of one of her sons were becoming idolatrous and so she threw his violin into the fire.  Likewise, MacDonald’s own father confiscated a copy of a novel by Sir Walter Scott that the future author had managed to get his youthful hands on.

George MacDonald is a central figure in the generation that changed all this. One possible way for children to escape from relentlessly didactic and moralizing literature was to find a portal into fairyland. When MacDonald’s mother died, his father remarried.  The family patriarch also mellowed with age and regretted his Puritanical decision regarding the Waverly novel.  As a young adult, MacDonald insured that his little half-sister, Bella, received a copy of Grimms’ Fairy Tales.

In 1858, George MacDonald published his novel, Phantastes. He called it “a sort of fairy tale for grown people.”  On his twenty-first birthday, Anodos is transported into his fairyland….

(3) RANSOMWARE. Essence of Wonder with Gadi Evron hosts “Ransomware Negotiators: Professionals Talk” on Saturday, January 23 at 3 p.m. US Eastern. Register for the Zoom session at the link.

Ransomware gangs demand millions, from millions of victims. Then there are specialized negotiators that talk to them on behalf of organizations. In this episode, Gadi and Karen will host two such masters, Christoph Fischer and Moty Cristal, who will share their experience with incident response, negotiation, and communication with criminal organizations.

(4) FIRESIGN THEATRE. In an interview with two surviving members of the troupe, Wisconsin Public Radio recalls “How The Firesign Theatre Predicted The Future”.

…And the Firesigns did not shy away from social commentary. Their work predicted the downfall of the Soviet Union, the undoing of a president, the computer revolution, and a modern-day plague.

Ossman puts it this way: “I think at heart, although we loved mystery, we were really science fiction writers in that big genre, it holds everybody from futurists to fantasists to surrealists. Over the course of our entire career, we developed all kinds of worlds and characters and universes. I mean, it was fantasy combined with science fiction, combined with comments about what was going on at that moment.”

The Firesign Theatre has just released their first new record in 35 years — “Dope Humor of the Seventies.” It’s a two-disc set that includes 83 minutes of freeform radio mayhem, and madness from 1970 to 1972…. 

(5) SOME REALLY SMALL BITES. ASU’s Center for Science and the Imagination’s series Science Fiction TV Small Bite presents “short films from talented creators that invite us to explore a range of possible futures.” The next one on February 4 features a short sf film about genetically engineered mosquitoes followed by a discussion. Register here.

Our latest Small Bite is Akoota, a science fiction film about genetically engineered mosquitoes and social control written and directed by Dilman Dila. We’ll screen the 20-minute film, and then have a conversation with Dilman, an award-winning filmmaker, speculative fiction author, and storyteller based in Uganda, and Andrew Maynard, director of the Risk Innovation Lab at Arizona State University, professor and associate dean in the College of Global Futures, and author of the books Films from the Future and Future Rising.

We’ll also feature a segment on future cuisine by Corey S. Pressman, an educator, anthropologist, poet, and member of CSI’s Imaginary College.

This virtual event is free and open to everyone. Register today!

(6) YOU’RE NOT FROM AROUND HERE, ARE YOU. It’s like one of those Ancestry.com DNA searches that finds you a whole new set of parents. James Davis Nicoll discusses “Classic SF in Which Humans Come From ‘Beyond the Stars’”.

Ursula K. Le Guin: The Hainish Stories

Ages ago, humans evolved on Hain. The Hainish exuberantly settled a large number of worlds in our galactic neighbourhood before apparently abandoning interstellar travel for long enough that worlds like Earth forgot they were Hainish colonies. When a new era of interstellar contact began, terrestrial humans discovered worlds already occupied by their cousins.

On the plus side, even though time and evolution—or alternatively, an ancient Hainish fad for genetic engineering—led to considerable diversity between the various branches of humanity, the communications gap is still less than that which exists between any group of humans and the truly alien entities found elsewhere, such as on Vaster than Empires and More Slow’s World 4470. On the minus side, human vices manifest in diverse native forms on each world: thus, the interstellar civil disorders seen in Rocannon’s World, the political strife featured in The Dispossessed, and brutal exploitation in The Word for World is Forest.

(7) GODFALLSTALK.  [Item by Martin Morse Wooster.] In “Honest Game Trailers: Godfall,” Fandom Games says that Godfall is the sort of low-imagination game for times when “you just want to hit a bunch of guys with a big sword until they fall over” and has characters so generic they look like “sketches from a fifth-grader’s science notebook.”

This episode dropped today.  It is dedicated to Brad Venable, long time voice for Honest Game Trailers, who died on January 7 at 43.

(8) CONSTANTINE (1956-2021). David Barnett has written an excellent appreciation of the late Storm Constantine for The Guardian: “’A force to be reckoned with’– fantasy world pays tribute to Storm Constantine”.

… Constantine was never less than wildly enthusiastic about all her books, including the three of mine that Immanion published. If her imprint had started as a way to get her own work back into print, it quickly evolved into a personal mission to bring books to readers that the mainstream publishers often overlooked.

Donna Scott, now a writer, editor and standup comedian, was assigned by Storm to edit Hinterland. “It’s no exaggeration to say she changed my life. She was so encouraging and supportive to new writers, and fan fiction writers, which is rare among writers held in similar esteem,” said Scott. “The heart of fantasy literature is going to ache from the loss of Storm. Not only was she one of the most powerfully unique and creative voices we had, but also a welcoming friend to new talent.

(9) MEDIA BIRTHDAY.

  • January 19, 1990 — Tremors premiered in theaters. It was directed by Ron Underwood, and produced by Gale Anne Hurd, Brent Maddock, and S. S. Wilson, and written by Maddock, Wilson, and Underwood off the story by Brent Maddock, S. S. Wilson and Ron Underwood. It starred Kevin Bacon, Fred Ward, Finn Carter, Michael Gross and Reba McEntire. Five direct-to-video sequels followed, plus a series. The first film was well-received by critics for its story, special effects and acting alike, it currently has an eighty-six percent rating among audience reviewers at Rotten Tomatoes. Later films and the series are more varied in their audience ratings. (CE)
  • January 19, 2016 — DC’s Legends Of Tomorrow premiered.  It was developed by Greg Berlanti, Marc Guggenheim, Andrew Kreisberg, and Phil Klemmer, who are also executive producers along with Sarah Schechter and Chris Fedak; Klemmer and Fedak serve as showrunners. The cast is is sprawling but Rip Hunter (portrayed by Arthur Darvill of Doctor Who fame) was at the centre for the first few seasons. The time travel, multiverse premise, and it’s now been renewed for a sixth season, allows for everything from Greek Mythology to Jonah Hex to show up. It holds a rating among audience reviewers at Rotten Tomatoes of seventy percent. (CE)

(10) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge and John Hertz.]

  • Born January 19, 1924 — Dean Fredericks. Actor best known for his portrayal of the comic strip character Steve Canyon in the television series of the same name which aired from 1958–1959 on NBC. His first genre role is in Them! followed by appearances in The Disembodied and the lead in The Phantom Planet which you can watch here. (Died 1999.) (CE)
  • Born January 19, 1925 — Charles Aidman. He makes the Birthday Honors for having the recurring role of Jeremy Pike on The Wild Wild West, playing him four times. Other SFF appearances include Destination Space, The Invaders, Twilight Zone, Mission: Impossible and Kolchak the Night Stalker to name but a few of them. (Died 1993.) (CE) 
  • Born January 19, 1934 — Audrey Dalton, 77. I’ve first got visiting the SFF genre in the Fifties monster flick The Monster That Challenged the World where she was Gail MacKenzie. She’ll make three more SFF appearances in Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, The Wild Wild West and The Girl from U.N.C.L.E. before retiring in her late Forties from acting.  (CE)
  • Born January 19, 1940 — Mike Reid. He’s a curious case as he’s been in a number of SFF roles, usually uncredited, starting with a First Doctor story, “The War Machines” and including one-offs for The Saint, The Champions and Department S.  He is credited as playing Frank Butcher in Doctor Who: Dimensions in Time which you can watch here. (Died 2007.) (CE)
  • Born January 19, 1956 — Geena Davis, 65. Her first genre was as Veronica “Ronnie” Quaife In The Fly reboot followed by her widely remembered roles as Barbara Maitland in Beetlejuice and Valerie Gail In Earth Girls Are Easy. She also plays Morgan Adams in the box office bomb Cutthroat Island before getting the choice plum of Mrs. Eleanor Little in the Stuart Little franchise.   She has a lead role in Marjorie Prime, a film tackling memory loss in Alzheimer’s victims some fifty years by creating holographic projections of deceased family members that sounds really creepy. Who’s seen it?  Her major series role to date is as Regan MacNeil on The Exorcist, a ten episode FOX sequel to the film. (CE)
  • Born January 19, 1962 — Paul McCrane, 59. Emil Antonowsky in RoboCop whose death there is surely an homage to the Toxic Avenger.  A year later, he’d be Deputy Bill Briggs in the remake of The Blob, and he played Leonard Morris Betts in the “Leonard Betts” episode of the X-Files. (CE)

(11) COMICS SECTION.

  • Lio warns us about a new reason for alien abductions.
  • “Spaceman Spiff” (Calvin) learns that evading alien Zarches is much like evading your parents at Calvin & Hobbes.
  •  The Far Side tells how an alien invasion will be stopped.

(12) DC UNIVERSE INFINITE. A.V. Club describes DC’s new plan: “DC launches DC Universe Infinite with massive library of comics”.

With its movies and TV shows moving to HBO Max, DC Comics is taking its remaining assets (the comics, guys, it’s the comics) over to a brand-new platform. DC Universe Infinite launches this Thursday, January 21, and boasts over 25,000 comic books and graphic novels—including several frequently-requested titles that weren’t available on the previous app, like Grant Morrison’s Batman: Arkham Asylum and Brian Azzarello’s Joker. Described as a “premium digital comic book service and community,” DC Universe Infinite will offer a library of the largest collection of DC Comics anywhere, with plans to “continuously add selections from DC’s iconic labels, Vertigo, DC Black Label and Milestone Media.” New comic books will be available on the platform six months after release. The platform is available directly online, as well as on iOS and Android devices. Subscriptions cost $7.99 a month or $74.99 per year, billed annually.

(13) PROVING AUTHENTICITY. The Huntington’s article “Securing Election Results in 1640” shows how it was done old-school, with photos of the kind of specialized document involved.

…The need to ensure accurate reporting of election results is nothing new. In 17th-century England, local officials used documents called “indentures” to report the winning candidate in parliamentary elections.

The earliest use of the word “indenture” dates to the 1300s, when it described a feature of the document itself. Long before the widespread use of paper in the western world, scribes wrote contracts or deeds on parchment (treated animal skins). Then, as now, documents typically were executed by more than one party, so scribes wrote mirroring copies of the agreement on a single piece of parchment.

Using a pen knife, the scribe then sliced the parchment in two with vertical cuts that resulted in a pattern that looked like either jagged jack-o-lantern teeth fitted together or rolling, interlocking, scalloped edges. The word “indenture” derives from the Latin dentatum (toothed) because the cut along the top of each of the documents resembled teeth.

Parties would affix their wax seal to one copy of the indenture. If the contents of the document were ever disputed later, the parties could retrieve their copies and set them together. If the indents along the edges of the documents fit together like puzzle pieces, they knew neither of the halves had been forged. The indents served as a security measure….

(14) TITAN TALK. The American Museum of Natural History will livestream “Toxic Titan: Life on Saturn’s Moon?” on January 27. Ticket purchase information at the link.

Saturn’s largest moon, Titan, is unique in our solar system: below its thick organic haze layer, rivers of methane carve channels into an icy bedrock and flow into large hydrocarbon seas. Could this moon’s lake-mottled surface and thick, organic rich atmosphere be an ideal setting for life as we do not know it?

Planetary scientist Sarah M. Hörst explores this question and all that’s left to be discovered about our own home from studying a moon worlds away. 

(15) I’LL TAKE DONOVAN’S BRAIN FOR $100. Daniel Dern says he’s reminded of Niven’s story “The Coldest Place.” In “Superconducting Microprocessors? Turns Out They’re Ultra-Efficient” – Slashdot reports an IEEE Spectrum news item: 

Computers use a staggering amount of energy today. According to one recent estimate, data centers alone consume two percent of the world’s electricity, a figure that’s expected to climb to eight percent by the end of the decade. To buck that trend, though, perhaps the microprocessor, at the center of the computer universe, could be streamlined in entirely new ways.

One group of researchers in Japan have taken this idea to the limit, creating a superconducting microprocessor — one with zero electrical resistance. The new device, the first of its kind, is described in a study published last month in the IEEE Journal of Solid-State Circuits …

(16) RAMPANT MUPPETRY. Seems like every day brings a new selling point for Disney+ that I can’t ignore. “Muppet Show coming to Disney Plus in February 2020” reports A.V. Club.

Oh, The Muppet Show! 15 seconds to curtain, The Muppet Show! Or, make that one month: Disney+ has announced that all of five seasons of Jim Henson’s pioneering variety show will join its library February 19—the show’s streaming debut, if you don’t count all the YouTube rips we’ve been watching while waiting for the show to come to streaming.

And speaking of YouTube rips, how about Gilda Radner doing a G&S Pirates of Penzance bit on the original Muppets series?

[Thanks to Martin Morse Wooster, Lise Andreasen, Michael Toman, Andrew Porter, John Hertz, JJ, Mike Kennedy, Cat Eldridge, Daniel Dern, Darrah Chavey, and John King Tarpinian for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Daniel Dern.]

Pixel Scroll 1/4/19 I’ll Go Down To The Computer Bank And Watch Peaceful Pixels Scroll

Posted on by

(1) OKORAFOR IS PERSON OF THE YEAR. Nnedi Okorafor was named Person of the Year at the 2018 African Diaspora Awards presented December 1 reports the Amsterdam News.

The Society for Africans in Diaspora held their eighth annual African Diaspora Awards at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture Dec. 2, 2018. The African Diaspora Awards celebrate prominent people in the Africa Diaspora around the world.

Photo at Locus Online.

(2) ABOUT TOLKIEN. Pages Unbound Book Reviews names “10 Must-Read Books about J. R. R. Tolkien”.

J. R. R. Tolkien: Author of the Century by Tom Shippey

Tom Shippey’s work is perhaps the Tolkien criticism and, if you can only read one book about Tolkien, this should be it.  Shippey explains how Tolkien was inspired by philological difficulties and missing information in old myths and legends to create his own mythology that explains those difficulties and fills in those gaps. Shippey’s own knowledge of philology gives him insight into Tolkien’s understanding that many other critics lack.

(3) THE ENVELOPE, PLEASE. Galactic Journey has revealed its picks for the best sff of 1963! Three books rated a callout for Best Novel – one of them, Cat’s Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut. “[December 11, 1963] Count every star (1963’s Galactic Stars)”. Lots of other categories.

In any event, it’s now December, a time for reflection.  Specifically, reflection on which book, stories, artists, creators, films and TV shows stood out from all the rest.  Yes, folks — it’s time for the 1963 edition of The Galactic Stars!

(4) KEEP WATCHING THE SKIES. Ireland’s Independent says the numbers how “Aliens are coming to Belgium as UFO sightings soar in 2018”.

UFO sightings over Belgium surged last year with the public reporting higher numbers of possible alien spaceships than in 2017.

Belgium recorded 255 reports of UFOs in 2018, an increase on the 171 witnessed the previous year.

Sightings were up across the whole country, with increases in Wallonia, Flanders and Brussels.

(5) CLEAR AS MUDD. Io9 quizzes “Rainn Wilson on the Many Layers of Harry Mudd, and the Lighter Side of Star Trek.”

Star Trek: Short Treks has so far been the perfect way to while away the time until Discovery’s return in a few weeks. Tonight, “The Escape Artist,” the fourth and final minisode in the series, shines a spotlight on the infamous Harcourt Fenton Mudd—and to learn more, we spoke to Mudd himself, Rainn Wilson….

io9: Can you tell us a bit about how you were approached for the chance to be a part of this Short Treks venture? 

Rainn Wilson: Yeah, well, I really enjoyed playing Harry Mudd for Star Trek: Discovery, and we’d always been having a kind of back-and-forth discussion about, “How do we have more Harry Mudd?” And, you know, “Can you do more episodes?” And trying to figure that out. Then this kind of came from out of the blue. They just said, “Hey, we’re doing these shorts and we have a Harry Mudd short and we’d love for you to direct it as well as act in it.” And I think they wanted to sweeten the deal by having me direct it. Which was great. It was a great opportunity for me. And I had a blast.

(6) THE EMERALD AISLE. [Item by Mike Kennedy.] OK, how often does File 770 run a beauty article? Ever? Actor Jackie Burns, who has played Elphaba onstage in Wicked over 1,300 times, has probably been green for more hours than your typical college frat dude with a taste for cheap liquor. The Hollywood Reporter has the story of how she gets green—and ungreen—without destroying her skin (“Elphaba from ‘Wicked’ on How to Keep Your Skin Glowing After All That Green”).

I’ve played the role of Elphaba longer than any other actress on Broadway. I’ve performed the role over 1,300 times. With eight performances each week, that means I spend close to 30 hours every week “going green,” as we say in the Wicked biz. If you do the math that adds up to being green over 4,000 hours of my life.

Burns goes on to describe the makeup process (including changes made between acts), the products she uses afterwards to take it all off, and what she uses between shows. The article reads a bit like an advertisement for a whole raft of products, but if you (or someone in your life) perhaps makes the occasional appearance in local theater you might learn something.

(7) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

  • Born January 4, 1785 – Jacob Grimm. Here solely for two reasons, the first being the he and his brother were the first to systematically collect folktales from the peasantry and write them down. Second is that the number of genre novels and short stories that used the Grimms’ Fairy Tales as their source for ideas is, well, if not infinite certainly a really high number. I’d wager that taking just those stories in any of The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror would get quite a number based on these tales. (Died 1863.)
  • Born January 4, 1890 – Malcolm Wheeler-Nicholson. A magazine merchant who created a lot of pulp fiction and is important as the founder of the company, National Comics Publications, which would become DC Comics. Wheeler-Nicholson’s premiere comic – New Fun #1  which was published in in February 1935 became the first comic book containing all-original material. He was a 2008 Judges’ Choice inductee into the Will Eisner Comic Book Hall of Fame. (Died 1968.)
  • Born January 4, 1946 – Ramsey Campbell, 73. My favorite novel by him is without doubt The Darkest Part of the Woods which has a quietly building horror to it. I know he’s better-known for his sprawling (pun full intended) Cthulhu mythology writings but I never got into those preferring his other novels such as his Solomon Kane movie novelization which is quite superb.
  • Born January 4, 1958 – Matt Frewer, 61. His greatest role has to be as Max Headroom on the short-lived series of the same name. Amazingly I think it still stands thirty five years later as SF well crafted. Just a taste of his later series SF appearances include playing Jim Taggart, scientist  and dog catcher on Eureka, Pestilence in Supernatural, Dr. Kirschner in 12 Monkeys and Carnage in Altered Carbon. His film genre appearance list is just as impressive but I’ll single out Supergirl, Honey, I Shrunk the Kids, The Stand, Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life (oh do guess where he is in it) and lastly Night at the Museum: Secret of the Tomb, a series of films that I really like.
  • Born January 4, 1962 – Graham McTavish, 57.He has played Thangbrand in Erik the Viking, voiced  in The Wind in The Willows, Dwalin in The Hobbit trilogy, Dougal Mackenzie in the Outlander series, Submarine Captain in  Lara Croft: Tomb Raider – The Cradle of Life (I like those films a lot) and the Saint of Killers in the Preacher series.
  • Born January 4, 1982 – Kerry Condon, 37. She provides the voice of F.R.I.D.A.Y. in the Marvel Universe films. More impressively, she was the youngest actress ever to play Ophelia in a Royal Shakespeare Company production of Hamlet. She also played Clara on three episodes of The Walking Dead, and I see she was Dr. Zoe Boyle In Believe, one of those many series that disappeared before anyone knew they existed. 
  • Born January 4, 1985 – Lenora Crichlow, 34. She played Annie Sawyer on the BBC version of Being Human from 2009 to 2012. She has made an appearence in Doctor Who as Cheen In the “Gridlock” episode, and she appeared as Victoria Skillane in the “White Bear” of Black Mirror.

(8) COMICS SECTION.

  • Who’s Frankenstein? This Tom the Dancing Bug has the answer. Well, two answers. Both wrong. If we’re being pedantic about it.
  • In this Last Kiss, we find out how to achieve real stability. (Pssst, the secret is comics.)

(9) SKIFFY CHANGES THE WORLD. VICE News has published a 7-part video series on, “How sci-fi has changed your life, even if you don’t realize it.” (It sounds promising, but I haven’t watched it yet.)

VICE News recently spoke with noted science-fiction authors and scholars, including “The Martian“ author Andy Weir and “The Expanse” co-authors Daniel Abraham and Ty Frank, for a series exploring the often inspiring, occasionally terrifying, and always thought-provoking ways science and sci-fi have overlapped and shape the world around us.

(10) YOU CAN’T TALK TO ME LIKE THAT! Comcast’s Xfinity X1 Voice Remote just won’t countenance that kind of language, says The Hollywood Reporter.

Two users have confirmed to THR that the remote gets snippy when asked to play episodes of The Dick Van Dyke Show. “Sorry, I cannot handle commands with that type of language,” it responds. Commands for “Dick Van Dyke” are now able to be completed after the problem was discovered, according to an Xfinity spokesperson: “We want to provide our customers with a best-in-class voice control experience that is also safe and appropriate for every member of the family. Last month alone, our customers issued 700 million voice commands, and when issues like this arise, we work to address them quickly.”

(11) LIKE YOU NEED LITTLE BRANDING IRONS FOR BRANDING ANTS. BBC presents a photogallery about “The business of eating bugs”. And just so you’re warned, the landing page has a great big photo of someone chomping a grasshopper.

Tiny critters are becoming big business in the food and agriculture sector, and for good reason.

Westerners are increasingly seeing edible insects as a sustainable form of a ‘complete protein’. Insects offer all nine amino acids essential to the human diet, similar to animal proteins.

But it’s not just about nutrition. The environmental sustainability of insect farming poses a compelling reason to embrace entomophagy – the practice of eating insects. Insects can offer as much protein as animals when produced on a large enough scale, but need far fewer natural resources than beef, pork or poultry production and also emit a fraction of the greenhouse gases.

This is big news for the agriculture sector, which is not only the world’s biggest land and water user but also one of the most significant greenhouse gas producers.

(12) CALL THE PARATIME POLICE! It’s right here in the news — “Edinburgh scientists discover mammoth secret in ivory DNA”.

…But in the work on Cambodian ivory samples the researchers have uncovered something even more exotic: DNA from woolly mammoths.

Mammoths are not covered by international agreements on endangered species for the unfortunate but unavoidable reason that they have already been extinct for around 10,000 years.

It is relatively easy to spot the difference between elephant and mammoth tusks.

But once the ivory has been carved into trinkets it is far harder.

“To our surprise, within a tropical country like Cambodia, we found mammoth samples within the ivory trinkets that are being sold,” says Dr Ball.

“So this has basically come from the Arctic tundra, dug out the ground.

“And the shop owners are calling it elephant ivory but we’ve found out it’s actually mammoth.”

(13) GEORGE MACDONALD COMIC. In National Review Online, Kathryn Jean Lopez, in “Light in the Comic World”, interviews Mark Rodgers, head of Cave Pictures Publishing, about why he is about to publish a comic based on George MacDonald’s The Light Princess.

Kathryn Jean Lopez: What’s so special about The Light Princess?Rodgers: George MacDonald was a pioneer in modern fairy tales, and his work ultimately shaped writers such as C. S. Lewis and J. R. Tolkien.  In fact, Lewis said that MacDonald’s book Phantastes “baptized his imagination” and considered him his “master.”  Chris Mitchell, the former director of the Wade Center at Wheaton College, the depository of Lewis and the other Inklings works, considered The Light Princess the most profound of MacDonald’s works, and the one which parallels the gospel most closely.

(14) FOUR-LEGGED THESPIANS. The New York Times asks “Are Animals Getting Better at Acting?”

…By these modern standards, Toto is an amateur. Mister Ed? A hack. A year of buzzy pet performances raises the question: Are animals getting better at acting?

Daniel Dern sent the link with a small grump: “No mention of (the movie) Harry and Tonto (starring Art Carney as Harry).” Apparently, this is a grave oversight.

(15) SHERLOCK SUMMARY. Lyndsay Faye, in “The Year in Sherlockiana” on Crimereads, summarizes events of 2018 of interest to Sherlock Holmes fans, including the HBO Asia series Miss Sherlock Takes Tokyo, the auctioning of a Sherlock Holmes short story for $361,000, and the Sherlock Holmes parody on Family Guy where Stewie says, “I rathboned someone’s cumberbatch.”

Miss Sherlock Takes Tokyo

As much as we enjoy the strong female characters bountifully scattered throughout the canon, there are no limitations when it comes to reimagining our heroes, and I was particularly thrilled by HBO Asia and Hulu Japan’s decision to produce a new series starring Yuko Takeuchi as Sherlock Holmes (Sara Shelly Fubata), and Shihori Kanjiya as Dr. Watson (Dr. Wato Tachibana). The sleek production design is a post-BBC Sherlock thing of beauty, and modern-day Tokyo looks as gorgeous as Victorian London ever did.  All things Sherlockian are popular in Japan (I have very fond memories of Sherlock Hound, for example), and it’s a particular joy to see the passion they put into this sharp, funny, clever series.

(16) FAMILY GUY REFERENCE.  “The Drunken Clam Bar From ‘Family Guy’ Exists, and It’s in Dallas” – Food & Wine has pictures to prove it.

The Knox-Henderson area Whippersnapper bar (1806 McMillan Avenue) is undergoing a massive interior renovation. But, before the big overhaul, the space is temporarily transforming into a cartoon-world watering hole. “We have some exciting plans for The Whip moving forward, but we thought we’d have a little fun first by bringing The Drunken Clam to Dallas,” co-owner Brandon Hays said in a statement. “Whether you’re a fan of the show or not, we think you’ll enjoy dropping by and checking out the pop-up bar along with drink specials, photo opportunities and more!”

[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, Paul Weimer, Cat Eldridge, Andrew Porter, Carl Slaughter, Martin Morse Wooster, Mike Kennedy, JJ, Nicholas Whyte, and Chip Hitchcock for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Robert Whitaker Sirignano.]