Pixel Scroll 12/26/23 Warning – Spindizzy Recall! Your City May Auto-Return Abruptly!

(1) TO THE NASFIC AND BEYOND. A chapter of Sandra Bond’s Trans-Atlantic Fan Fund trip saga appears in the new issue of Geri Sullivan’s fanzine Idea 13. Says S&ra, “It contains my report on Pemmi-Con with detailed thoughts on What Went Wrong With It And Why.”

Day thirteen of TAFF, unlucky for some. Sandra Bond – already befuddled by her travels and overwhelmed by the generosity of North American fans – has left Minneapolis and has hitched a lift with Minnesota fans Curt Gibson and Alice Ableman in Curt’s mom’s SUV, riding north for NASFiC. No, you haven’t missed any previous instalments; they will be published elsewhere, in due course, and eventually a complete version will follow. I’m starting with this chapter, partly because Geri is publishing it and chapter 1 will largely be about her as my first host, and partly in order to air some issues arising from Pemmi-Con while the iron, so to speak, is hot….

Here’s a taste of those hot iron issues. Think of it as what the 2023 Worldcon experience would have looked like if Chengdu had not wrested it away from Winnipeg.

… (The programme as a whole showed every sign of having been thrown together by robots with no human eyes; for instance, the registration field had a space for you to enter your “organization.” I had put “TAFF”, which was fine, but Tanya Huff had foolishly essayed a little joke by putting “I am not at all organized” in that field, and was rewarded by having that phrase appended to her name on every single programme item featuring her. Others were flagged as variations on “n/a” or “–”, or found themselves billed as representing the organisation of “Myself” (Rich Horton) or “Julie E. Czerneda” (go on, guess). And Nisi Shawl – a fucking guest of honor, and consequently on many programme items – was accompanied on every occasion by the tag “I believe you already have my bio and photo.” Apparently they didn’t, since her “photo” was the generic one used for people who hadn’t supplied any.)…

(2) WHEN NEEDS MUST. The BBC interviewed a fan who remembers “When Tom Baker popped in to watch Doctor Who”. The experience wasn’t quite like when Dustin Hoffman needed to see “Wapner” in Rain Man, but was not entirely unlike it, either.

The time is November 1976, and the space is the Nuneaton branch of Radio Rentals, the old TV stockist that was once a familiar high street fixture. Pauline Bennett remembers being on shift there when a “very smart chap” walks in with a strange request.

“He came in about five o’clock and said he and Tom Baker needed to watch the Doctor Who episode that was going to be on shortly,” she said.

Titular star Baker had been travelling back from the show’s exhibition in Blackpool with BBC manager Terry Sampson when the pair were delayed by fog.

They had turned off the motorway heading for the town, hoping to persuade someone to let them watch the show, the first to feature filming at an outside location, she explained….

(3) FREE AT LAST. Jennifer Jenkins, Director, Duke Center for the Study of the Public Domain, tells us what we can look forward to on “Public Domain Day 2024” at the Duke University School of Law blog.

On January 1, 2024, thousands of copyrighted works from 1928 will enter the US public domain, along with sound recordings from 1923. They will be free for all to copy, share, and build upon. This year’s highlights include Lady Chatterley’s Lover by D. H. Lawrence and The Threepenny Opera by Bertolt Brecht, Buster Keaton’s The Cameraman and Cole Porter’s Let’s Do It, and a trove of sound recordings from 1923. And, of course, 2024 marks the long-awaited arrival of Steamboat Willie – featuring Mickey and Minnie Mouse – into the public domain. That story is so fascinating, so rich in irony, so rife with misinformation about what you will be able to do with Mickey and Minnie now that they are in the public domain that it deserved its own article, “Mickey, Disney, and the Public Domain: a 95-year Love Triangle.” Why is it a love triangle? What rights does Disney still have? How is trademark law involved? Read all about it here. …

(4) NO WAITING FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN HERE. In “’Gale: Stay Away From Oz’ Offers a Horror Take on ‘The Wizard of Oz’”, The Mary Sue reminds everyone this 30-minute short already was released in September.

…In 2023, The Wizard of Oz books by L. Frank Baum entered the public domain. That means anyone can take those characters or the world of Oz and reimagine them in brand-new stories. The independent short horror film Gale: Stay Away From Oz does just that. According to IMDBGale‘s official summary is “Long gone are the days of emerald cities and yellow brick roads. In this dark re-imagining of the Wizard of Oz, Dorothy Gale is now an elderly woman, broken by years of paranormal entanglement with a mystical realm.” Emily Gale, the granddaughter of Dorothy, reconnects with her grandmother and the mystical realm that haunts her.

Unlike Winnie the Pooh, which also got the horror treatment, the original stories of Dorothy already lend themselves to the horror genre. Who hasn’t watched Return to Oz and felt terrified? With Gale: Stay Away From Oz, it seems like the curse of Oz haunts any of Dorothy’s descendants, which makes for an even creepier connection. So when is Gale: Stay Away From Oz coming out and where can you watch it?…

(5) AT THE NIMOY. “Mr. Spock’s Widow Puts on a Show” – and The New Yorker profiles her.

The other day, Susan Bay Nimoy—actress, writer, director, philanthropist, and widow of Leonard—stood at the entrance of a historic Art Deco theatre in Westwood, which she had helped to restore and convert to a live-performance space. On the marquee, lit bulbs spelled out the theatre’s new name: the Nimoy.

“There’s a lot of history,” Bay Nimoy, an exuberant eighty-year-old, said. “I called Jane Fonda and asked if she would come to the press opening, because her mother, Frances, funded the theatre.” More history: during the Second World War, newsreels played at the theatre; “Dr. Strangelove” had its first L.A. screening there, in 1964. Two decades later, when Disney managed the theatre, “Three Men and a Baby” was the opening film. Leonard was the director; Bay Nimoy accompanied him to the première. “It was certainly in the eighties, because I wore a black suit with big shoulder pads, with a lot of jewelled things on them,” she said….

… “Leonard and I came from very poor backgrounds. His father was a barber. My dad was an accountant,” Bay Nimoy said. The couple invested their Hollywood earnings in California real estate and contemporary art. “Leonard was not a fancy person,” she went on. When they met, she said, “I was driving a Honda.” Their goal was to give their children—he had two, she had one—a buffer, and no more. “They will not be gabillionaires, but they have a leg up,” she said. “And the rest we’re giving away.” They built a Jewish day school (their rabbi asked them to), a new theatre at Griffith Observatory (Leonard loved outer space), and a theatre for Symphony Space, in New York (where Leonard used to perform short stories)….

(6) NOTHING YOU HAVEN’T THOUGHT OF YOURSELF. Maris Kreizman tells New York Times Readers “Let’s Rescue Book Lovers From This Online Hellscape”.  

… In an ideal world — one in which it wasn’t owned by Amazon — Goodreads would have the functionality of a site like Letterboxd, the social network for movie fans. Letterboxd has called itself “Goodreads for movies” but it has far surpassed that initial tag line, having figured out how to create a smooth and intuitive user experience, provide a pleasant and inviting community and earn revenue from both optional paid memberships and advertisers, including studios that produce the films being discussed. Meanwhile, publishers still rely on Goodreads to find potential readers, but targeted advertising has grown both less affordable and less effective.

So how to fix it? It starts with people: Goodreads desperately needs more human moderation to monitor the goings-on. Obviously, part of any healthy discussion is the ability to express displeasure — those one-star reviews, ideally accompanied by well-argued rationales, are sacrosanct — but Goodreads has enabled the weaponization of displeasure.

It’s not just fledgling authors being pummeled. Earlier this year, Elizabeth Gilbert, the best-selling author of “Eat, Pray, Love,” decided to withdraw a forthcoming novel, “The Snow Forest,” after Goodreads users bombarded its page with one-star reviews objecting primarily to the fact that the novel (which no one had yet read) was set in Russia and would be published at a time when Russia and Ukraine were at war. There is most likely no way to eliminate personal attacks entirely from the site — or from the internet, for that matter — but having more human beings on hand to mitigate the damage would certainly improve the experience.

Fortifying the guard rails wouldn’t be that difficult. Currently Goodreads uses volunteer librarians who add new books to the site’s database in their free time. Hiring these people (and scores more like them) and paying them a living wage would empower Goodreads’s representatives to communicate with publishers, large and small, to facilitate posting books to the site when, and only when, a book has actually been written and edited and is ready to be shared with the world….

(7) CURING YOUR WHO HANGOVER. In the unlikely event that you need somebody to explain the Doctor Who Christmas Special to you, The Hollywood Reporter has volunteered. “’Doctor Who’ Christmas Special “The Church on Ruby Road,” Explained”. For everyone else, beware spoilers. The following excerpt is a little spoilery though not prohibitively so, I thought.

…Initially, Mrs. Flood would appear to be just a normal neighbor. Nothing unusual about her, until we see her sitting down to enjoy the TARDIS dematerializing. Something that most humans would balk at.

However, not for Mrs. Flood. In fact, at the end of the episode, she says to her understandably shocked neighbor (who also witnessed The Doctor’s ship disappearing), “Never seen a TARDIS before?”

And, if this wasn’t enough, she looks directly down the camera and winks. Mrs. Flood is clearly someone to be reckoned with, and undoubtedly will make a return. But is she a familiar character in the Whoniverse? (Time Lords change their appearance quite regularly.) Or, is this a new friend/foe for The Doctor? Names have often hinted at deeper connections and meanings in Doctor Who (see Melody Pond and River Song, for example) — is there a clue here?

Mrs. Flood is played by Anita Dobson, who will be known to many in the U.K. as she made a name for herself as alcoholic landlady Angie Watts in the BBC’s long-running soap, Eastenders. An accomplished stage actress, Dobson is also married to Brian May, guitarist for rock outfit Queen (who’ve had a number of songs feature memorably in Doctor Who, such as “Bohemian Rhapsody,” “Crazy Little Thing Called Love” and “Don’t Stop Me Now”)….

(8) IT ONLY GETS WORSE. [Item by Mike Kennedy.] Did you get new clothes for Christmas? Then beware Jólakötturinn, the gigantic Yule Cat, which will chase you down and eat you if you don’t wear those clothes! “Meet the Yule Cat, an Icelandic folklore beast who eats children” on NPR.

… That’s right. A child’s worst nightmare — new clothes under the tree — could only be outdone by a somehow worse nightmare, being devoured by a ferocious feline that hunts down children caught not wearing their new clothes.

The tale of Jólakötturinn, which translates to Yule Cat, is an Icelandic Christmas classic dating back to at least 1932, according to the Icelandic Folklore website, a research project managed by the University of Iceland….

(9) THE COMPUTER SAYS ‘CHEESE!’ “A.I. Is the Future of Photography. Does That Mean Photography Is Dead?” wonders Gideon Jacobs in an opinion piece for the New York Times.

John Szarkowski, the legendary curator at the MoMA, once described photography as “the act of pointing.” And for the nearly 200 years since its inception, photography has consisted of capturing a visual perspective from the physical world using light — first with light-sensitive plates, then film, then digital sensors. When digital cameras became widely available, many photographers lamented the move away from analog technology but basically Szarkowski’s definition still held: Photography consists of pointing, as a reaction to something that exists in the world.

With advent of A.I. image generators, however, this definition feels obsolete.

Generative A.I. tools can produce photorealistic images, typically in response to written prompts. These images are available for purchase from major stock photography agencies, alongside traditional photos. They routinely go viral before being debunked. They even occasionally win prestigious photography prizes. All if which has reignited a two-centuries-old debate: What exactly qualifies as a photograph?

… Artists, writers and theorists have long remarked on our very human tendency to project slippery ideas about truth onto two dimensional surfaces. In 1921, Franz Kafka was told about a miraculous machine that could automatically take one’s portrait, a “mechanical Know-Thyself.” He offered up his own name for the apparatus: “The Mistake-Thyself.” Kafka was ahead of his time — in Susan Sontag’s 1977 essay “In Plato’s Cave,” she wrote, “Although there is a sense in which the camera does indeed capture reality, not just interpret it, photographs are as much an interpretation of the world as paintings and drawings are.” Each photograph, she argued, is inevitably the product of countless decisions informed, consciously or not, by the photographer’s predilections and biases, as well as the limits and parameters of the technology.

So when I hear some people calling the arrival of A.I. an extinction-level event for photography, I often think of the French painter Paul Delaroche who, legend has it, declared painting “dead” after seeing a daguerreotype, one of the first photographic inventions. Painting did not die; it just evolved into a different kind of artistry, freed from the obligations of verisimilitude….

(10) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

Born December 26, Elisha Cook, Jr. (Died 1995.) His first major role was the psychopathic killer Wilmer Cook in the 1941 version of The Maltese Falcon. Yeah there are two versions, I’ve never seen the earlier version. Anyone here seen it? 

Now as for genre roles, his first was a Boris Korloff film, Voodoo Island, in which he was Martin Schuyler. Adam West is here in his first film role, uncredited.

His next horror film with Vincent Price, House on Haunted Hill, in which he was Watson Pritchard, is interesting because exterior shots of the house were filmed at the historic Ennis House in Los Feliz, California, designed by Frank Lloyd Wright and built in 1924.

Here’s a curious one for you. The Haunted Palace is a horror film starring Vincent Price Lon Chaney Jr. in which he’s Micah Smith / Peter Smith. The film was marketed as based on a Poe title but only the title is from him – the plot is from Lovecraft’s “The Case of Charles Dexter Ward” novella.

I saw Rosemary’s Baby once in which he played Mr. Nicklas. That was more than enough, thank you.  Hey, he’s in the original The Night Stalker movie as Mickey Crawford. Neat. And next up is being Gordon “Weasel” Phillips in Salem’s Lot, a scary film indeed.

Most memorable series appearance? As Samuel T. Cogley, Esq in Star Trek’s “Court Martial” episode of course. He also made a Wild, Wild West appearance as Gideon McCoy in “The Night of the Bars of Hell”, the new Twilight Zone in “Welcome to Winfield” as Weldon, The Bionic Woman in “Once a Thief” as Inky and in ALF in “We’re So Sorry, Uncle Albert” as Uncle Albert.  Oh, and his first television appearance was on the Adventures of Superman in “Semi-Private Eye” as Homer Garrity.

(11) COMICS SECTION.

(12) EJECT! Arturo Serrano declares “Rebel Moon is the most Snyder that Snyder has ever been” at Nerds of a Feather. And that’s not a good thing.

One could summarize Rebel Moon as “the Zack Snyder of Star Wars,” which would sound mean-spirited if it weren’t its literal description. Conceived originally as Snyder’s pitch for Lucasfilm and eventually rescued by Netflix, Rebel Moon files off the Star Wars serial numbers just enough to prevent lawsuits from the Mouse. As you would expect, it tells the story of a loosely assembled team of impromptu freedom fighters who rise up against a brutal interstellar empire. A tale as old as time, and one that Lucasfilm has kept profitable for nine movies and I forget how many TV shows. But Snyder’s version of this formula, stripped of its identifiable markers for legal reasons, becomes a nameless, featureless collection of plot beats and cool poses. If there was ever a time when the infamous itch for canceling everything at Netflix could be used for good, it’s now. There’s no need for a Rebel Moon Part 2, or for all the multimedia spinoffs Snyder is reportedly preparing. This is not the galaxy you’re looking for….

(13) TO HELL AND MAYBE BACK. Disney+ has started airing the new series based on Rick Riordan’s YA fictionalization of Greek myth: “Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Quest Begins in New Clip” from Comicbook.com.

Percy Jackson and the Olympians is gearing up to kick off its quest. The serialized adaptation of Rick Riordan‘s best-selling novels made its surprise debut on December 19th, dropping its first two episodes six hours ahead of schedule in the Tuesday primetime slot. This came with the announcement that all future episodes of Percy Jackson would get the primetime treatment, as the rest of Season 1 will premiere at 9 PM ET. The last fans saw, Percy (Walker Scobell) was officially claimed by his father, Poseidon, and given the news that he must lead a cross-country quest to retrieve Zeus’s (Lance Reddick) stolen master bolt. The belief is that Hades (Jay Duplass) stole it out of jealousy and is keeping it in the Underworld….

(14) STRANGE NEW WORLDS. We hear from the Guardian “How the James Webb telescope is ‘set to find strange and bizarre worlds’”.

There is a distant world where quartz crystals float above a searing hot, puffy atmosphere. Vaporised sand grains, not water droplets, form the clouds that fill the sky on Wasp-107b, a planet 1,300 light years from Earth.

Then there is GJ1214, the sauna planet. With a mass eight times that of Earth, it orbits its parent star at a distance that is one-seventieth of the gap between Earth and the sun and seems to be coated in a thick dense atmosphere containing vast amounts of steam.

Or there are the giant, Jupiter-sized planets of the Orion Nebula which have been discovered free-floating in space, rogue worlds that appear to be unconnected to any parent star – to the bafflement of astronomers….

(15) A YEAR’S WORTH OF SCREEN TIME. Gizmodo picks out the “40 Most Memorable Sci-Fi, Fantasy, and Horror Movie Moments of 2023”. Here’s one example:

Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves: Jarnathan Arrives

This is the moment you knew Honor Among Thieves absolutely got Dungeons & Dragons. It’s an incredible set-up to a gag that builds over the opening scenes, establishing the roguish humor of our heroes, throwing a loving curveball to an esoteric D&D race, and of course giving us the most perfect ass-pull of a character name that feels like a Dungeon Master made it up for an NPC on the spot mid-improv. Oh Jarnathan, indeed.

(16) VIDEO OF THE DAY. “Our Pros bring Wednesday Addams to the Strictly Ballroom” from the BBC.

[Thanks to Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, John King Tarpinian, Daniel Dern, Jeff Warner, Kathy Sullivan, Chris Barkley, Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, and Steven French  for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Daniel Dern.]

Pixel Scroll 11/17/23 Walking My Sloth Named Thoth

(1) A TAFF GUIDE TO BEER. [Item by Geri Sullivan.] A TAFF Guide to Beer is now available in print on Amazon in the US and UK!

Claire Brialey & Mark Plummer published A TAFF Guide to Beer during the 2019 Eastbound TAFF race. It celebrates the Trans-Atlantic Fan Fund and the ways in which in brings together and fosters connections between science fiction fans from across Europe and North America, seen through the lens of beer. It features contributions from over 3 dozen TAFF delegates as well as the 4 candidates in the 2019 race. We printed copies then, and it’s been available on Dave Langford’s splendid TAFF ebook page pretty much ever since.

When I started working on Idea #13 (being published shortly, a mere 23 years since Idea #12), Pat Virzi advised me to publish another, small project on Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) since the first book you publish with them often takes a long time for them to process. 

Claire and Mark gave the go-ahead. I faffed around for longer than I like to admit, but finally figured out how to make room for the bar code on the back cover, and sent off for a proof copy. It arrived Tuesday. After I clicked the “publish” button, the fanzine spent a few days in KDP’s review process, but it’s now available for $10 or £8. TAFF will receive just over $1/£1 for each copy sold.

Note: KDP says it takes up to 3 days Amazon.com to show it in stock and up to 5 days in other marketplaces. These links are working for me tonight; you’re welcome to share them with fans who might be interested: 

And several other countries, too. 

(2) BOOKS FOR CREDENTIALS. [Item by Daniel Dern.] The Harvard Book Store was expecting a shipment of books. A pallet of boxes marked ‘haddock filets’ arrived instead — Warehouse workers panicked, but it was only a red herring.

The Boston Globe story is paywalled, so here’s an excerpt:

…Sitting before [the bookstore’s warehouse manager] were dozens of green-and-white cardboard packages that read, “FROZEN FISH” and “HADDOCK” in big block letters…but it turns out that the store’s regular distributor…simply had extra boxes lying around… [that] happened to be for a Florida-based seafood wholesaler called Beaver Street Fisheries, Inc.

The bookstore did an Instagram caption contest; entries included “Available in hardcover, paperback, and filet.”

(3) THIEVES LIKE US. “Lost Doctor Who episodes found – but owner is reluctant to hand them to BBC” reports the Guardian.

For Doctor Who-lovers they are the missing crown jewels: lost episodes of the first series of the TV sci-fi drama, shown in the 1960s. But now film recordings of not just one, but two of the early BBC adventures, both featuring the first doctor, William Hartnell, has been found in Britain by amateur sleuths.

The episodes, one featuring the Daleks, would offer viewers a chance to travel back in time without the use of a Tardis. But the Observer has learned that the owners of the rare, rediscovered footage are not prepared to hand it over to the BBC, even as the clock ticks down to the 60th anniversary of the show’s launch this month.

Veteran film collector John Franklin believes the answer is for the BBC to announce an immediate general amnesty on missing film footage.

This would reassure British amateur collectors that their private archives will not be confiscated if they come forward and that they will be safe from prosecution for having stored stolen BBC property, something several fear….

(4) EARLY JOANNA RUSS. “’It’s Not Shrill, It’s Ultrasonic’: Queer SF Pioneer Joanna Russ’s Feminist Awakening” at Library of America.

…“We started with the assumption that the woman’s problem is not a woman’s problem; it is a social problem,” [Sheila] Tobias wrote. “There is something wrong with a society that cannot find ways to make it possible for married women, single women, intelligent women, educated or uneducated, or welfare women, to achieve their full measure of reward.” Some two thousand people attended discussions on abortion, contraception, childcare, race, and sexuality. It was one of the first conferences in the United States to address sexism in an academic setting….

(5) HAND Q&A. “Elizabeth Hand on Playwriting, Haunted Houses, and Shirley Jackson” at CrimeReads.

[ELIZABETH HAND]: I just love haunted house stories. And The Haunting of Hill House is kind of the haunted house story, certainly for Americans. For me, it was just a matter of really following the template that [Jackson] created. Laurence sent me scans of the drawings that she had made, like the house plans for Hill House, some of which I think are reprinted in the Franklin bio. But I had them in like a bigger format. And so that was really cool—to see how she envisioned that space. And I had read the book multiple times over the years, and I reread it more than once when preparing to write this book [A Haunting on the Hill]. And during one of those three readings, I just went through with a highlighter to highlight all the references to doors and windows of the halls and just… spaces within it, because I thought, if I get anything wrong, people are going to call me on it! If I have the red room at the wrong end of the hallway, you know, no one’s going to let me get away with it!

(6) INVEST WISELY. Cat Rambo advises writers about “Making the Most of Your Con Budget” at the SFWA Blog.

…Decide who you want to connect with by a) looking at the guest or membership list, which is usually available online, b) joining/following the convention’s social media accounts to see who’s posting there, and c) asking among your friends, including online groups you belong to.

If the convention is non-genre-specific, find out what kind of presence your genre will have. What teachers or mentors are attending that you would like to meet? What agents are appearing and what genres do they represent? (You may need to go to their agencies’ websites to find this out.)

Look over the convention’s website and promotional materials to determine what the event’s strengths are—what does it offer that isn’t always available, such as a chance to pitch to multiple agents, or the Nebula Conference Mentorship Program that pairs newer conference attendees with experienced Nebula-goers?

Using all of the above, set your goals for the event….

(7) UNMANNERLY VISITORS. Recommended: “’The Earthlings’ by Matthew Olzmann” at Academy of American Poets.

(8) SHADES OF TRALFAMADORE. Sophie Kemp assures us “Kurt Vonnegut’s House Is Not Haunted” in The Paris Review.

… And as for me, I do not remember when I first registered that Kurt Vonnegut lived in Alplaus, a small hamlet in Schenectady County, named after the Dutch expression aal plaats, which means “a place of eels.” (There were no eels that I am aware of.) I think it was in high school. I think my hair was cut short. I think it was when I was a virgin. I think it was when I got a job as a bookseller at the Open Door on Jay. I think I was probably sixteen….

… They asked if we wanted to see inside. The thing about the house, they told us, is that it was not haunted, because ghosts are not real, but also a copy of Player Piano, sitting face out on a bookshelf, kept falling on the head of one of their kids and as a result the family had this inside joke about it being Kurt’s ghost. Obviously, I wanted to see the haunted bookshelf so they showed me the haunted bookshelf. It looked pretty normal. Also facing out was a stuffed animal gnome holding a coffee cup that said “Best Mom,” and a book about raising chickens. I cannot stress enough that the house of Kurt Vonnegut is now just a completely normal house where people live and is full of completely normal things that appear in completely normal houses. Which to me makes a lot of sense. Vonnegut in my opinion is a charming and scrappy weirdo. He is not the kind of person you think of as living on some kind of grand estate…. 

(9) THE FIRE THIS TIME. [Item by Dann.] Author and lecturer, Virginia Postrel, found herself aghast at a repeated misrepresentation of the myth of Prometheus.  The tale of Prometheus was presented as a cautionary tale about the risks of innovation and technology.  She responds by pointing out that Prometheus was a defender who loved humanity in “The Myth of Prometheus Is Not a Cautionary Tale”

…No. No. No. No.

Prometheus is punished for loving humankind. He stole fire to thwart Zeus’ plans to eliminate humanity and create a new subordinate species. He is a benefactor who sacrifices himself for our good. His punishment is an indicator not of the dangers of fire but of the tyranny of Zeus.

…The Greeks honored Prometheus. They celebrated technē. They appreciated the gifts of civilization.

The ancient myth of Prometheus is not a cautionary tale. It is a reminder that technē raises human beings above brutes. It is a myth founded in gratitude.

She points out that a similar anti-technology reading of Frankenstein is also flawed.

(10) ABANDON TWITTER ALL YE WHO EXIT HERE. Not at all trying to be a completist, but here are a few more authors who are leaving X.

Scott Edelman also wants Filers to know that he bailed from Twitter – except he did it two months ago.

Several advertisers are also applying the brakes. “Disney, Apple, Lionsgate Suspend X/Twitter Ads; White House Condemns Musk Post” according to Deadline.

Deadline has confirmed that Disney is the latest company to suspend its advertising on X/Twitter in the wake of owner Elon Musk‘s amplification of an anti-semitic post two days ago. Read more below.

…More companies are suspending advertising on X/Twitter in the wake of reports that the site has let spots run next to pro-Nazi content.

Apple has decided to pause advertising on the platform, according to a report from Axios, citing sources at the company. An Apple spokesperson did not immediately return a request for comment.

A spokesperson for Lionsgate also confirmed a Bloomberg report that it, too, was suspending advertising on the platform.

(11) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

  • Born November 17, 1915 Raymond F. Jones. Writer who is best remembered for his novel This Island Earth, which was made into a movie which was then skewered in Mystery Science Theatre 3000: The Movie. However, he produced a significant number of science fiction novels and short stories which were published in magazines such as Thrilling Wonder Stories, Astounding Stories, and Galaxy, including “Rat Race” and “Correspondence Course”, which respectively earned Hugo and Retro Hugo nominations. (Died 1994.)
  • Born November 17, 1932 Dennis McHaney. Writer and Critic. Pulp writers in particular seem to attract scholars, both amateur and professional. Robert E. Howard was not an exception. So I give you this individual who, between 1974 and 2008, published The Howard Review and The Robert E. Howard Newsletter. Oh, but that was hardly all he did, as he created reference works such as The Fiction of Robert E. Howard – A Pocket Checklist, Robert E. Howard in Oriental Stories, Magic Carpet and The Souk, and The Fiction of Robert E. Howard: A Quick Reference Guide. A listing of his essays and other works would take an entire page. It has intriguing entries such as Frazetta Trading CardsThe Short, Sweet Life and Slow Agonizing Death of a Fan’s Magazine, and The Films of Steve Reeves. Fascinating… (Died 2011.)
  • Born November 17, 1936 John Trimble, 87. Husband of Bjo Trimble. He has assisted her in almost all of her SF work, including Project Art Show. They were GoHs at ConJose. He’s a member of LASFS. He’s been involved in far too many fanzines and APAs to list here, some of which I’d loved to have read such as “Where No Fan Has Gone Before”,  a fanzine done in support of the Save Star Trek campaign which was edited by him and Bojo. You can read one of their late Fifties fanzines, which I choose because of its title, “Some Important Information Concerning Unicorn Productions”, here.
  • Born November 17, 1966 Ed Brubaker, 57. Comic book writer and artist. Sandman Presents: Dead Boy Detectives I’d consider his first genre work. Later work for DC and Marvel included The AuthorityBatmanCaptain AmericaDaredevilCatwoman and the Uncanny X-Men. If I may single out but one series, it’d be the one he did with writer Greg Rucka which was the Gotham Central series. It’s Gotham largely without Batman but with the villains so GPD has to deal with them by themselves. Grim and well done. In 2016, he joined the writing staff for the Westworld series where he co-wrote the episode “Dissonance Theory” with Jonathan Nolan.
  • Born November 17, 1983 Christopher Paolini, 40. He is the author of the most excellent Inheritance Cycle, which consists of the books EragonEldestBrisingr, and Inheritance. Several years ago, The Fork, the Witch, and the Worm, the first book in a series called Tales of Alagaësia, was published. A film version of the first novel came out sometime ago but I’ve not seen it. His SF Fractulverse series, To Sleep in a Sea of Stars, and Fractal Noise, is quite well crafted.

(12) WHO FAN FROM THE BEGINNING. “Russell T Davies on secrets, sex and falling for Doctor Who: ‘Something clicked in my head: I love you’” in the Guardian.

…The turning point came at the age of 11 – a huge change for me and for the show. I went to comprehensive school; the Doctor became Tom Baker. I have a crucial memory of TV Comic’s weekly Doctor Who strip printing a gorgeous piece of artwork (drawn, I now know, by Gerry Haylock) showing Tom Baker in full hat, scarf and toothy grin. And something clicked in my head. Something clicked and has stayed clicked ever since. A simple thought which said: I love you.

It’s easy to draw a link between gayness and fandom. So easy, maybe it’s true. Because as those teenage years advanced, two things synced up. I was gay and went silent, watching all the parties and fancying boys at a remove instead of getting drunk on cider, scared of giving myself away. At exactly the same time, I watched TV fiercely. Both things became closeted. Doctor Who became the other love that dares not speak its name.

It lasts, the closet. Many years later, in my late 20s, when I’d moved to Manchester and worked in TV and went to Canal Street every weekend, I copped off with a nice lad who saw a book about Doctor Who on my shelf and said: “I was in that! I was a soldier in The Caves of Androzani.” And I lied, I lied to a man I’d just had sex with, I said: “No, that book’s from work, it’s someone else’s, I don’t really know what it is.” Sorry, soldier.

I wonder now why I fell in love so hard. Though can anyone ever answer that? Some of the secret exists in what the Doctor is not. He/she/they have never had a job or a boss or even parents, they never pay tax, never do homework. They never have to go home at night. Maybe you fall in love with the show when you’re a kid because the Doctor’s a big kid, too. I could never love Star Trek in the same way because they’re the navy; when I survive to the year 2266, they won’t allow me on board. I’ll be scrubbing the floor below decks, at best. But Doctor Who’s greatest idea is that the Tardis can land anywhere. I’d walk home from school wishing I could turn the corner and see that blue box and run inside to escape everything. I don’t think that wish has quite gone….

(13) WELL, HARDLY EVER. Black Nerd Problems’ Mikkel Snyder says, “To Watch ‘Pantheon,’ I Wouldn’t Ever Promote Piracy…”

… The central point of all of this is that studios are much more concerned with not paying residuals, and you know what, in the capitalist hellscape that we exist in, I can pretend that I can understand. However, as someone who loves media in all of its forms and is a proponent of media preservation, it’s exceedingly frustrating that works of art that I could see as seminal are subject to the whims of razor thin profit margins. And I’m willing to pay to get access to this media. I immediately purchased all four seasons of Infinity Train in a desperate bid to get access to one of my favorite animated series of 2020 and 2021. Even now, I’m aware that if Prime wanted to they could wipe my entire library, and I would have next to no recourse.

But let’s flash forward to early October when thanks to a friend, I caught wind that for some reason, the second season of Pantheon was in fact airing exclusively on Prime Australia and New Zealand and had no discernable release in the States.

Now, I wouldn’t ever promote piracy. Piracy hurts hard working creatives. It denies them of any direct revenue that is generated from purchases or views, and the only thing potentially worse is completely removing any evidence that it ever existed and preventing any legitimate means of acquisition…or you know, something like that.

And it would be a real shame if the second season of a phenomenal science fiction series that may or may not conclude its story as there is no way in hell a third season is ever going to exist. And it would be completely wild if access to the episodes would be entirely dependent on the random whims of a random Prime ANZ executive. But at least *someone* would get to watch it. And at least it would be online….

(14) JEOPARDY! Andrew Porter enjoyed this wrong reply on tonight’s episode of Jeopardy!

Final Jeopardy: Literary Characters

Answer: In his first appearance in 1902, he was described as “betwixt-and-between” a boy & a bird.

Wrong question: Who is Batman?

Right question: Who is Peter Pan?

(15) UPDATE TO THE ROBERT BLOCH OFFICIAL WEBSITE. Two updates to the Psycho page at the Robert Bloch Official Website.

  • A link to a video showing Psycho (film) locations and how they look today.
  • A nice behind-the-scenes shot with Hitchcock in front of the Bates home.

(16) KEEP CALM, ZACK FANS. “Both of Zack Snyder’s Rebel Moon films will get their own R-rated director’s cut” says Entertainment Weekly.

For years after Zack Snyder departed Justice League in the midst of production, the filmmaker’s most passionate fans repeatedly pleaded their case: #ReleasetheSnyderCut. Eventually, they succeeded. In 2021, Warner Bros. brought the director back to their DC superhero roster one last time to complete Zack Snyder’s Justice League

That experience taught Snyder and his wife/producing partner Deborah that there is a significant subset of people who will always be interested in seeing his pure, uncut artistic vision. They took that lesson with them as they set out building their own new cinematic universe in the form of the two-part sci-fi epic Rebel Moon (which you can read all about in EW’s new cover story). 

Rebel Moon Part One: A Child of Fire hits Netflix on Dec. 22, but that won’t be the only version of the film. At some undisclosed point in the future, a longer R-rated version will be added to the streaming platform, and the same will be true for next year’s Rebel Moon Part Two: The Scargiver. But unlike the messy years-long experience with DC, these “director’s cuts” were planned from the beginning. During an hourlong Zoom interview with EW on Halloween about the making of the new films, Snyder said that Netflix producers brought up the idea very early on in the process….

(17) HISTORY FROM ANOTHER PLANET. StarWars.com reminds everyone about “The Origins of Life Day”.

Before you and your family gather your glowing orbs, don your ankle-length red smocks, and gather at the sacred tree to recite hallowed Shyriiwook verses in celebration of Life Day, let’s look back at the holiday’s origins. Not from within the Star Wars setting, mind you; rather, let’s examine its real-world history and evolution from an obscure TV source to an annual fan tradition.

The root of Life Day is found in The Star Wars Holiday Speciala star-studded 1978 prime time broadcast that aired on CBS once on November 17, 1978. After that broadcast, it was never to be (officially) seen again in the US and instead was relegated to bizarre cultural curiosity in the years that followed. The intent of the Holiday Special was to keep Star Wars in the public eye during the long three-year stretch between movies with new entertainment, using a tried-and-true television format of the 1970s: the variety special….

(18) STARSHIP HELD FOR QUICK FIX. [Item by Mike Kennedy.] SpaceX has announced it will delay the planned second launch of its “Starship“ rocket until Saturday to replace a failed or questionable grid fin actuator. The rocket has been unstacked at the launchpad to provide access for replacing the part. The four grid fins provide guidance/attitude control when returning the super heavy booster to a controlled landing. (In this case, a “land”ing in the ocean.) “SpaceX delays launch of its giant Starship rocket to swap out a part” at Ars Technica.

The launch of SpaceX’s second full-size Starship rocket from South Texas is now scheduled for Saturday, a day later than previously planned, according to company founder Elon Musk.

This 24-hour delay will allow time for SpaceX technicians at the company’s launch facility, known as Starbase, to replace a component on the rocket’s stainless steel Super Heavy booster. There is a 20-minute launch window on Saturday, opening at 7 am CST (13:00 UTC), shortly after sunrise in South Texas.

A delay at this point is unsurprising. Starship is a complex launch vehicle with a sum of 39 methane-burning engines, each producing roughly a half-million pounds of thrust, powering its booster stage and upper stage. And this is only the second test flight of SpaceX’s new full-scale, nearly 400-foot-tall (121-meter) rocket, the largest launch vehicle ever built…

[Thanks to Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Mike Kennedy, Steven French, Dann, Scott Edelman, Geri Sullivan, Rich Lynch, Andrew Porter, John King Tarpinian, and Chris Barkley for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Daniel Dern.]

Pixel Scroll 10/23/22 The Scrolls Of The Prophets Are Written In The Pixel Files

(1) THE LIBRARY OF RAY’S YOUTH. “Work begins on renovation of Carnegie Library building” in Waukegan, IL reports the Chicago Tribune in a paywalled story.

Janet Kilkelly, the president of the Waukegan Park District’s Board of Commissioners and the city clerk, remembers spending time in her youth at the Carnegie Library, built in 1903 at the northeast corner of Washington Street and Sheridan Road.

“The children’s room was there,” Kilkelly said, pointing to the room to the left as people walk in the door thinking about how it will soon be the home of the Waukegan History Museum. “It was a magical place. I like books. This was nirvana.”

Kilkelly led a group of federal, state and local officials at the groundbreaking ceremony Tuesday in front of the Carnegie as a prelude to the start of construction for the renovation of the former library into the permanent home of the museum.

…“It will be a chance for them to learn about the history of Waukegan,” Kilkelly said. “Perhaps one of them will be inspired like the young Ray Bradbury when he spent his days here,” she added, referring to the Waukegan native and world-renowned author.

Ty Rohrer, the Park District’s manager of cultural affairs, the chair of the city’s Historic Preservation Commission and a historian by profession, said the onetime children’s reading room will be redone to look as it did in Bradbury’s youth.

When complete, Rohrer said the room will contain the collection of papers, books and other memorabilia Bradbury willed to the Waukegan Public Library. The collection will be there on a long-term loan from the library to the museum….

(2) SPOILERY DOCTOR WHO NEWS. Don’t even hover your cursor over the link to Deadline’s coverage of Jodie Whittaker’s last Doctor Who episode if you want to preserve all surprises til you can view it yourself. On the other hand, if you want to know what happened, click through.  

(3) CORFLU AWARDS. Corflu today adopted Tom Becker’s proposal that fwa, the “fan writers of America”, be changed to mean “fan writers association”, with the proviso that “writer” stands in for any creative fannish endeavor. Subsequently, Claire Brialey was elected “past president of fwa” for 2021.

Also, Geri Sullivan was presented with the Lifetime Achievement Award.

(4) IRISH NATIONAL SF CON COVID REPORT. [Item by Edmund Schluessel.] Octocon 2022 returned to in-person in its new venue of Croke Park, Dublin and, with 283 warm bodies present, reports NO cases of COVID-19 one week after the convention wrapped.

Octocon had a policy of mandatory masks (exemptions were available) and requested all in-person members take self-tests before attending.

From the post-Octocon edition of the members’ newsletter: “Thank you to everyone for complying with our mask requirements. We would like to remind people to let us know if they have tested positive following Octocon, either by using our #covid-safety channel on Discord, which has a ticketing bot to create a private message thread visible only to the committee, or by contacting [email protected]. We’re happy to report that we’ve had no reports of positive tests so far.”

(5) FINLAY ART OFFERED. Doug Ellis has been asked to raise some money quickly for Virgil Finlay’s granddaughter, Brien, and so rather than putting together his usual type of catalog, Ellis has taken pictures of 42 pieces of Finlay art that have not appeared in any of his catalogs and posted the images here on Dropbox.

All of this art is on consignment from Brien.  All of the files have an identifying number in the image together with the price, and that info also is included in the file name (except for the one Word file, which contains info on the size of each piece). The prices do NOT include shipping.

If you’d like to purchase any of these, please email Doug Ellis at [email protected] 

(6) FLY FREE. The SFWA Blog series “The Indie Files” continues with Anthony W. Eichenlaub’s advice about “An Indie Approach to Series”.

…Fixing a Series After Publication

You’ve crunched the numbers. Readers who get through the second book in your series tend to read every book after that. You expect a dropoff from the first to the second, but the numbers are terrible, and you know why:

The first book isn’t good.

You’ve grown as a writer, and now that book’s flaws are painfully obvious. The later books in your series are fantastic. Reviews are great. People who get that far are turning into your best fans. The problem is that most of them just aren’t getting that far.

A traditionally published author would likely be stuck. They could either work on a new series or, if their publisher allowed it, continue to crank out books hoping to overcome the weak start with rave reviews for later entries.

An indie author has the power to fix a bad Book 1. You can go in and tweak a few things, send it through another round of edits, or even in extreme circumstances, give it a complete rewrite. You can make the imperfect first book a prequel or even remove it entirely, promoting Book 2 to the first spot….

(7) JUSTIN E.A. BUSCH DIES. [Item by George Phillies.] Justin Edwin Anton Busch, editor of the N3F zine Films Fantastic and monthly fanzine review column “Fanfaronade”, died peacefully in his sleep in the early evening of Friday, October 21, 2022. His death, while untimely, was not unexpected.

Justin E. A. Busch, a long-time fan from St. Paul, Minnesota authored the nonfiction work The Utopian Vision of H.G. Wells, published by McFarland Company in 2009.

(8) MEMORY LANE.

1962 [By Cat Eldridge.] Bradbury wrote one of the shortest opening narrations that Serling gave in the series:

They make a fairly convincing pitch here. It doesn’t seem possible, though, to find a woman who must be ten times better than mother in order to seem half as good, except, of course, in the Twilight Zone. — “I Sing the Body Electric”

Though I didn’t know that Bradbury had a script produced for the one and true Twilight Zone, it doesn’t at all surprise me that he did. I had assumed Serling wrote all of the episodes. Not true as it turns out, to my delight, as we get the “I Sing the Body Electric”. It is said that he contributed several scripts to The Twilight Zone, but this was the only one produced. He certainly was no stranger to tv script writing with five scripts for the Alfred Hitchcock Presents series alone. 

This would air as the thirtieth-fifth episode of the third season on May 18, 1962. This was one of six Twilight Zones episodes directed by James Sheldon and his co-director William Clazton who did four. 

LOOK, GO EAT A CANDY APPLE FOR A MINUTE PLEASE. 

Just three words this time— sweet robotic grandmothers. Ok, a few more. My god, this episode drips with cloyness, it does. A recent widower, needing care for his three young children, orders a robotic “grandmother”. Two of the children accept her, but one of his daughters adamantly rejects her, with what might be near fatal consequences. 

DID YOU ENJOY THAT CANDY APPLE? 

You can see it on Paramount +

(9) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

  • Born October 23, 1880 Una O’Connor. Actress who appeared in the 1930s The Invisible Man as Jenny Hall. She had a bit part in Bride of Frankenstein, and a supporting role in the genre-adjacent The Adventures of Robin Hood. Though not even genre adjacent, she was Mrs. Peters in the film adaptation of Graham Greene’s Stamboul. Great novel, I’ll need to see if I can find this film. She’s in The Canterville Ghost, and shows up twice in TV’s Tales of Tomorrow anthology series. And that’s it. (Died 1959.)
  • Born October 23, 1918 James Daly. He was Mr. Flint in Trek‘s “Requiem for Methuselah” episode. He also showed up on The Twilight ZoneMission:Impossible and The Invaders. He was Honorious in The Planet of The Apes, and Dr. Redding in The Resurrection of Zachary Wheeler.  (Died 1978.)
  • Born October 23, 1935 Bruce Mars, 87. Here for his most excellent role on Star Trek in the “Shore Leave” episode as Finnegan. Earlier he had been brought in to audition for the role of Junior Navigations Officer Dave Bailey in episode “The Corbomite Maneuver” but someone else got that part, but he did come back for a part in “Assignment Earth” where he was listed as First Policeman.  He had one-offs in Time TunnelVoyage to the Bottom of the Sea and Mission: Impossible. He is now Brother Paramananda with the Self-Realization Fellowship in Los Angeles which he joined shortly after ending his acting career in 1969. 
  • Born October 23, 1948 Brian Catling. Author of The Vorrh trilogy whose first novel, The Vorrh, has an introduction by Alan Moore. Writing was just one facet of his work life as he was a sculptor, poet, novelist, film maker and performance. And artist. Impressively he held Professor of Fine Art at the [John] Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art in Oxford and was a fellow of Linacre College. Yeah that John Ruskin. (Died 2022.)
  • Born October 23, 1953 Ira Steven Behr, 69. Best remembered for his work on the Trek franchise, particularly Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, on which he served as showrunner and executive producer. As writer and or producer, he has been in involved in Beyond RealityDark AngelThe Twilight ZoneThe 4400Alphas, and Outlander
  • Born October 23, 1959 Sam Raimi, 63. Responsible for, and this is not a complete listing, the Darkman franchise, M.A.N.T.I.S., the Jack of All Trades series that Kage loved, the Cleopatra 2525 series, Hercules: The Legendary Journeys and Xena: Warrior Princess series and the Spider-Man trilogy. 
  • Born October 23, 1969 Trudi Canavan, 53. Australian writer who’s won two Ditmars for her Thief’s Magic and A Room for Improvement novels and two Aurealis Awards as well, one for her “Whispers of the Mist Children” short story, and one for The Magician’s Apprentice novel.  It’s worth noting that she’s picked up two Ditmar nominations for her artwork as well. 
  • Born October 23, 1974 Naomi Alderman, 48. English novelist and game writer. The Power with its premise being the women suddenly the ability to release electrical waves from their hands, thus leading them to become the dominant sex. The novel is set to be turned an Amazon Prime Video television series, but what isn’t? She’s also written two Doctor Who novels set in the new series, Borrowed Time and Time Lapse, and some short fiction there as well.

(10) COMICS SECTION.

(11) COSTUME PARTY. Lis Carey’s dog Cider went to a Howloween party at the dog park today.

(12) HIDE THAT BOOK! To enrich your Colleen Hoover knowledge, we bring you Mayi H.S. Hughes’ article “In Defense of Colleen Hoover: Intellectual Snobbery at Harvard” from The Harvard Crimson.

A few weeks ago, I did something bizarre. I was sitting in the dining hall, reading a book when my friend approached me from behind and, peering over my shoulder, asked me what I was reading. Almost immediately, I slammed the book shut and spluttered, “Oh, nothing.”.

As the conversation moved on, my eyes turned to the cover of my Colleen Hoover novel, which I had so shamefully hidden. The truth is, I was embarrassed. I had bought the book solely because of a TikTok video, with thousands of likes and comments raving about Hoover’s “It Ends With Us.” Having been up all night ripping through its pages, I had come to several conclusions: It was a terribly written book; it was repulsively predictable ]; and most importantly, I loved it.

My shame of being found reading Colleen Hoover stemmed from a culture of intellectual snobbery — feeling superior and prideful about the type of culture you consume. It’s the person who prides themselves on their knowledge of “classical” literature, listing off the last names of authors such as John Milton, Charles Dickens, and Jane Austen as if they are family friends….

…David M. Levine, a Theater, Dance, and Media professor, described intellectual snobbery as “automatically excluding materials from intellectual consideration because they give immediate pleasure.” Being an intellectual snob means feeling superior to e mass culture, due to the status and inaccessibility of the type of culture you consume, literary and beyond.

Intellectual snobbery can feel especially pervasive at Harvard, where books like Hoover’s are rarely on reading lists. But her work was clearly popular amongst the masses – number one in the New York Times Best Sellers List as of January 2022. It was an easy read with a simple plot….

(13) TITANS MOVE TO THE CITY. That’s The City. HBO Max dropped this trailer for the new season of Titans last week.

Having saved Gotham, the Titans hit the road to head back to San Francisco. But after a stop in Metropolis, they find themselves in the crosshairs of a supernatural cult with powers unlike anything they’ve faced before.

(14) VIDEO OF THE DAY. [Item by Martin Morse Wooster.] Andy Martin asks if people can stand the titanic genius of Mr. Director.

[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, Andrew Porter, Chris Barkley, Lis Carey, Doug Ellis, Jeffrey Smith, Lise Andreasen, Michael Toman, Cat Eldridge, Mike Kennedy, Martin Morse Wooster, and JJ for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Dan’l Danehy-Oakes.]

Chicon 8 Fan Fund Activities Final Tally

Fan Fund activities at Chicon 8 brought in a total of $4,649.64 reports Geri Sullivan, a past administrator of the Trans-Atlantic Fan Fund.

Fan funds enable a well-known fan to attend a major science fiction convention in another country or region.

The Live Auction brought in $2,160 with fans bidding on flash fiction by Michael Swanwick, dill chips from TAFF delegate Fia Karlsson, a hand-beaded/hand-knit lace shawl from Esther MacCallum-Stewart, and an original poem by Jane Yolen as well as one by Jo Walton. Also going under the hammer were Tuckerizations by Mary Robinette Kowal, Cat Valente, and Steven Barnes in collaboration with Larry Niven.

OTHER ACTIVITIES

$1,432.64 Dublin/Glasgow suite (Comic & book sales, bar tips, & Tammy’s Tastings Ukraine); with thanks to CoNZealand
$   303.00 Yard Sale
$   584.00 Silent Auction
$   170.00 Other donations ($2 given to Lynelle, DUFF 50th Party, Jeanne Mealy, Comic sales to Greg Ketter)

Geri Sullivan says: “Not only did we do remarkably well overall, 31% of the proceeds came from the utterly splendid support of the Dublin/Glasgow suite. A healthy but undetermined amount of that came from the sale of a box of Ben Yalow’s comics and copies of Mad Magazine from the 1960s-1980s while several hundred dollars clearly came from the tip jar and Tammy’s Tastings Ukraine cocktail event. Huge thanks to James Bacon for carrying on and expanding the support started at DisCon III, and to CoNZealand as well as Dublin and Glasgow. Those daily great big, gronking wads of money were amazing!”

The distributions to participating fan funds worked out to:

$1,132.66 Trans-Atlantic Fan Fund
$1,245.39 Down Under Fan Fund
$1,086.62 GUFF (Get Up-and-over Fan Fund or the Going Under Fan Fund)
$1,172.95 FFANZ (Fan Fund of Australia and New Zealand)
$12.02 PayPal Fees

Fia Karlsson Wins 2022 TAFF Race

By Geri Sullivan and Johan Anglemark: What an exciting TAFF race! We’re pleased to announce Fia Karlsson as the winner. TAFF will bring her to Chicon 8, the 80th Worldcon at the beginning of September. Fia will serve as the TAFF Delegate at Chicon and wherever else her travels take her as she journeys from Sweden to visit fans in North America.

The intial count shows there were 237 valid votes cast, more than in any TAFF race since 2006, and during a global pandemic at that. By standing for TAFF, Fia Karlsson, Anders Holmström, Mikolaj Kowalewski, and Julie Faith McMurray helped spread the word about the Trans-Atlantic Fan Fund and inspired fans to participate by voting for them. Voters sent a total of £735.47, €605.82, and $947.73 in voting fee donations along with their ballots! 

TAFF Administrators Johan Anglemark (EU) and Geri Sullivan (NA) congratulate Fia and thank all of the candidates for making it such a lively, high-participation race. We also thank Dave Langford for a multitude of services supporting TAFF, especially the online voting platform on his unofficial TAFF website, and Claire Brialey, who ran the TAFF operations at Eastercon. Kudos and appreciation to those who nominated such a fine slate of candidates and to everyone who voted, donated time and money to TAFF, shared our announcements, and cheered the candidates on.

The exact numbers in this announcement are preliminary, but the result was clear and is final. We will publish the usual voting details and the list of voters shortly. 

[Editor’s note: File 770’s WordPress does not support a special character in Kowalewski’s first name, so a Latin “L” has been substituted.]

TAFF 2022 Race Begins 12/15

Beginning December 15, you can help decide which European fan is going to attend the 2022 Worldcon in Chicago as the Trans-Atlantic Fan Fund delegate.

The candidates are: Anders Holmström (Sweden), Fia Karlsson (Sweden), Miko?aj Kowalewski (Poland), and Julie Faith McMurray (UK).

Each has been nominated by five other fans to travel to Chicon 8, the 80th World Science Fiction Convention, being held next year in Chicago from September 1-5. Then the winner will assume their duties as the next European administrator of TAFF.

Voting commences December 15, 2021 and closes April 18, 2022. These dates coincide with DisCon III in Washington DC and Reclamation (Eastercon) in London, respectively. When the race opens you will be able to read their platforms on David Langford’s TAFF site. This is also the place to go to learn more about TAFF, to read the rules for voting, to make the necessary monetary donation needed for voting, and to cast your vote.

For more information, contact Johan Anglemark, European Administrator ([email protected]) or Geri Sullivan, North American Administrator ([email protected]).

TAFF Taking Nominations for 2022 Race

The 2022 Trans-Atlantic Fan Fund race is now officially open for nominations.

After two consecutive eastbound races, it is time for a westbound race. Johan Anglemark, European TAFF Administrator, and Geri Sullivan, North American TAFF Administrator, say ”These are still uncertain times, but we think it is realistic to proceed with the race. It seems unlikely that the pandemic will make a TAFF trip impossible in 2022.”

Therefore, European fans who want to stand for TAFF for an East to West (Europe to North America) race should round up their nominators and contact one of the administrators by December 10.

Voting to elect the TAFF delegate will commence December 15 and close April 18, 2022. The winning delegate will attend Chicon 8, The 80th World Science Fiction Convention, in Chicago, Illinois, (chicon.org) from September 1 to September 5, 2022 and take over as TAFF’s next European administrator upon returning home.

This year candidates will need three European fans and two North American fans known to the Administrators to nominate them: these people must contact the current Administrators by December 10, 2021, informing them of whom they are nominating. Potential delegates will also need to send an official statement to the administrators that they are standing for TAFF (contact information provided below) listing their nominators, plus a 101-word platform statement, and a £10/€12 bond fee sent via PayPal to [email protected].

Note: When counting the votes, if there are more than three candidates, we will not apply the “20% rule” until the candidates with the fewest votes have been eliminated and there are just three candidates left.

More details about TAFF can be found at David Langford’s excellent website, taff.org.uk. If you are interested in standing for the 2022 TAFF Race or would like to nominate some deserving fan, please contact Johan Anglemark, the European Administrator ([email protected]), or the North American Administrator, Geri Sullivan ([email protected]).

[Based on a press release.]

Geeks Bearing Gifts

By John Hertz:  Yesterday being Don Fitch’s 92nd birthday, I wanted to bring him something; as the saying goes, a token but not a measure of my esteem.

I consulted Geri Sullivan in Wales – Wales, Massachusetts.  She confirmed DF was still living assistedly where I’d thought him.  Health precautions were strict just now, but I could relay through an attendant at the front door.  This dissuaded me from gift-wrapping.

GS had arranged with local fan Chris Marble to get DF a flower and some sushi from her and him.  Luckily I’d asked before redounding (note that redundant still keeps the old sense of “swollen, overflowing”).  GS asked “How about books?” pleasing me that my reputation there was still good.  “He’s been reading mysteries,” she said.

A first-rate used-book shop was on my way.  Traffic on the roads would be swollen soon, disincentive from an afternoon’s browsing.  I got the Nero Wolfe books Some Buried Caesar and Might As Well Be Dead, Georgette Heyer’s historical romance mystery The Masqueraders, and the SF mystery Saturn Run which I brought to your attention here (p. 17; PDF).

CM told me he’d got an Orange Gemstone orchid, and albacore and yellowtail sushi.

I arrived in good time, rang the doorbell, and handed gifts to a greeter.  As I was leaving, another attendant called “Would you like to see him?”  She didn’t have to ask twice.  She set a chair for me outside a mesh-screened window and brought a pad of paper.  DF’s deaf; not expecting to see him I hadn’t brought one.

In a moment there he was on the other side.  He walked up smoothly, so I supposed easily, with a bamboo staff (i.e. a walking stick as tall as he was).  His beard was full and well-kempt.  We had a happy 1/3 hour, the duration that house rules allowed.  He spoke, I wrote.

He hadn’t brought more than a few feet of books when relocating there a couple of years ago.  He was glad of Caesar and Might and the Heyer, had until then only heard of Saturn.

We talked of re-reading.  Since SF was thought a literature of ideas, he said, some was hardly worth a second go once its ideas were known.  It’s too bad, I said; I feared some authors didn’t trouble to write well.

We talked of re-thinking young and old.  I recounted how, at a museum in Japan, a guide had said of calligraphy by Soseki Mûso (14th Century) “The vigorous and self-confident brush strokes suggest that this was written in the later years of his life.”

We told a few jokes.  Since I was wearing a nose-and-mouth mask I drew a smiley face.

And, as Mary Poppins had said, it was time for me to go.

No TAFF Race For 2021

Trans-Atlantic Fan Fund administrators Johan Anglemark, Geri Sullivan and Mike Lowrey say “After much thought and consideration, [we] have come to the conclusion that we need to postpone the 2021 TAFF race due to the coronavirus pandemic.”

The TAFF race for 2021 was intended to go East to West, from Europe to DisCon III. They will now wait until 2022, and instead have a race from Europe to Chicon 8, the 80th Worldcon.

The administrators explained the reasoning behind the delay:

The general expectation of expert epidemiologists is that the pandemic will continue to rage well into 2021. For example, the British government has announced that they expect severe restrictions, including the bans on public events, to be in place for another half year. We think that DisCon III likely will be one of the first large conventions after the pandemic has been successfully beaten back or we have learnt how to live with it. Our concern is with having a TAFF race in the midst of the pandemic, without any physical conventions to attend. It would be much more difficult to enthuse people and get them to vote and to donate.

Postponing the race reduces the uncertainty for the eventual westbound TAFF delegate, and it greatly increases the probability that Michael Lowrey — this year’s TAFF winner — will get to take his postponed trip first.

“We don’t want to increase the inventory of TAFF delegates waiting to travel,” say the administrators. “And it’s not just TAFF and Mike Lowrey. Fandom has two more fan fund delegates waiting to take their trips: Alison Scott (GUFF) and Erin Underwood (DUFF). We think there will be a lot more excitement for another race once we start having in-person conventions again.”

[Based on a press release.]

2020 Trans-Atlantic Fan Fund Delegate Announced

“Orange Mike” Lowrey

By Geri Sullivan and Johan Anglemark: We, the administrators of the 2020 TAFF race, are pleased to announce that Michael Lowrey will be the 2020 TAFF Delegate. He will attend Concentric: Eastercon 2020 to be held in Birmingham, UK on April 10–13, 2020 (see their website at www.concentric2020.uk), and he plans to travel to Swecon (the Swedish national convention), continental Europe, and maybe Ireland before arriving in the UK.           

From TAFFish #1, here is some biographical information about “Orange Mike”:

“I stumbled onto the early-1970s version of the U. of Chicago SF club (there have been several over the eons) through the SCA in 1971, and thus learned about fandom. When I returned to Tennessee, I joined the good ol’, much-maligned N3F, which for this country boy was a lifeline to the broader world of fandom, including my first exposure to fanzines. When I got to Nashville, I discovered the local SCA and through them the Nashville SF club. Through the SCA I discovered D&D (thanx, Daishi-san!) and through the Nashville club I learned that there were SF cons I could go to! That first con (it was a Midwestcon) was a glorious revelation: this was my tribe, these were my people! I’ve been to well over a couple of hundred cons since then, and my opinion has not changed. It was in those Nashville years that I fell into the habit of wearing head-to-toe orange.”

Following his return home, Mike will become the next North American administrator of TAFF, and will conduct the 2021 TAFF race in association with Johan Anglemark, who has to suffer through yet another year of adminship.

Fans throughout Europe who may be interested in standing for TAFF in 2021 should make a point of talking with Mike and Johan at Swecon, Eastercon, or elsewhere on Mike’s trip, if at all possible, to begin the process of becoming involved in one of the best experiences a fan can have. The 2021 TAFF race will be westbound, going to Discon III, the 79th Worldcon.

And do not forget to attend the Fan Fund auction at Eastercon where you will find a wealth of fannish and sf-ish loot from across time and space. All proceeds benefit the fan funds. For more information about the Trans-Atlantic Fan Fund – past, present, and future – please visit David Langford’s excellent TAFF website at www.taff.org.uk.

Here is the breakdown of the voting results by first preference. As you can see, Mike won by simple majority in the first round of counting.

RESULTS

Candidate                          NA+RoW  Europe      Total

Michael Lowrey   56    27    83
Ann Totusek     3      2      5
Hold Over Funds     4      0      4
No Preference     6      5    11
         Total votes    69    34  103

We wish to thank Mike and Ann for a fun TAFF campaign, and hope that Ann stands again in the future. Our most sincere thanks to all who voted in, contributed to, or otherwise supported the 2020 TAFF campaign. See you in Birmingham!

The fund received $866.55, £232.05, and €176.14 in donations (before deducting Paypal fees).