(1) GOODREADS CHOICE WRITE-INS. Because Mount TBR can never be high enough, Mark Hepworth did his best to figure out the write-in nominees in the Goodreads Choice Awards 2017 in the Fantasy, SF and Horror categories. These are the popular additions to Goodreads’ own handpicked finalists:

Fantasy:

• City of Miracles by Robert Jackson Bennett
• Oathbringer by Brandon Sanderson
• Age of Swords by Michael J Sullivan
• The Land: Raiders by Aleron Kong
• Silence Fallen by Patricia Briggs

SF:

• The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O by Neal Stephenson and Nicole Galland
• The Punch Escrow by Tal M. Klein
• Seven Surrenders by Ada Palmer
• The Stars are Legion by Kameron Hurley
• Six Wakes by Mur Lafferty

Horror:

• A God in the Shed by J-F Dubeau
• Strange Weather by Joe Hill
• What the Hell Did I Just Read by David Wong
• The Grip of It by Jac Jemc
• Bone White by Ronald Malfi

(2) HUNG BY THE CHIMNEY WITH CARE. Popsugar has been out shopping: “Hold the Door — These 21 Game of Thrones Gifts Are So Cool, We Want Them For Ourselves”.

Hodor Door Stop

As you know, this Hodor Door Stop ($8) will be quite dependable.

(3) BREW TO BEAM UP. Meanwhile, ThinkGeek is hustling “Star Trek Transporter Pad LED Coasters”. (Note: Will not actually materialize / dematerialize your drinks.)

Until a future comes in which condensation no longer exists, coasters will be a useful device. This is a set of 4 coasters that look and sound like ST:TOS transporter pads. Yes, we said “sound.” When you place a drink on one or remove it, the coaster lights-up and plays either a materialization or a dematerialization sound. If it’s all a little too overwhelming, you can set it just to light up. But that’s basically only half the fun.

 

(4) WHALESONG. SPECPO, the official blog of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Poetry Association, introduces a poet: “Words, Whales and Wonder: An Interview with Jenna Le”.

What inspired you to write A History of The Cetacean American Diaspora? What was the most challenging of the poems for you to include in this collection?

At least for me, a collection of poetry comes into existence in a very different way from how I’m told a novel comes into existence: each poem has its own inspiration, its own reason for being. Some of the book’s many inspirations included: the American Museum of Natural History’s 2014 exhibit “Whales: Giants of the Deep”; Rudy Boschwitz’s flavored milk stand at the Minnesota State Fair; my Taylor & Ng “La Baleine” coffee mug; the Waterboys album An Appointment With Mr. Yeats, especially the song “Sweet Dancer,” which inspired me to research the life of Yeats’s mistress Margot Ruddock; my 7^th-grade English teacher Mr. Sandeen, who taught me to love the passage in The Song of Hiawatha wherein Wenonah is impregnated by the wind god; some documentary about the Fall of Saigon that was available to watch for free on Hulu, whose name I can’t remember; an advertisement I saw for Le Lam’s documentary Cong Binh: The Lost Fighters of Vietnam; my parents’ oral narratives about their own flight from Vietnam and immigration experiences; embryology class in my second year of med school; various mythology compendia and PBS nature documentaries.

(5) HOORAY. Phil Nichols chronicles the friendship of “The Two Rays”, Bradbury and Harryhausen, at Bradburymedia.

In 1993, Bradbury paid perhaps the highest tribute of all, by incorporating a fictionalised Harryhausen as a major character in his Hollywood novel A Graveyard for Lunatics. Special effects wizard “Roy Holdstrom” is a very thinly disguised Harryhausen, and accompanies the narrator in attempting to solve a murder mystery in 1950s Hollywood. Here is how the narrator first sees Holdstrom’s workshop, which we can imagine is similar to what Bradbury saw back in 1938 when first invited into Harryhausen’s garage:

Stage 13 was, then, a toy shop, a magic chest, a sorceror’s trunk, a trick manufactory, and an aerial hangar of dreams at the centre of which Roy stood each day, waving his long piano fingers at mythic beasts to stir them, whispering, in their ten-billion year slumbers.

(6) THE FORMER MRS. SISKO. CinemaBlend asked “How The Orville’s Penny Johnson Jerald Feels About Competing With Star Trek: Discovery”.

Penny Johnson Jerald has built up a hell of a resume as a veteran TV actor, with shows such as 24, The Larry Sanders Show, and even Castle all playing important parts in her body of work. But for Star Trek fans, she’s most notably known for playing Kasidy Yates Sisko on Deep Space Nine. This is a fact that wasn’t lost on anyone from the Trek fandom who also watches The Orville on Fox, which of course means that Jerald would most definitely have an opinion on her Fox show running around the same time as Star Trek: Discovery is unfurling on CBS All Access.

…While some may try to pit the two shows against each other, Penny Johnson Jerald isn’t interested in playing that game at all. As The Orville’s Dr. Claire Finn, she gets to play a role different from the law-breaking romantic interest to Avery Brooks’ law-abiding space station overseer.

(7) HAWK YOUR WARES. The SFWA Market Report for November compiled by David Steffen includes such information as —

NEW MARKETS

Guilds and Glaives

Razor’s Edge

Second Round: A Return to the Urbar

Sword and Sonnet

(8) LAUGHING ALL THE WAY. Alex Acks raves about Thor: Ragnarok:

I saw it twice this weekend. I’ll be seeing it more times before it leaves the theater. And after several days to collect my thoughts so I can write something more coherent than a high-pitched squeal of delight, I’ve calmed down to the level of OH MY GOD COLORS AND FUNNY AND LOKI AND VALKYRIE AND SO MANY JOKES PLEASE TAIKA WAITITI TAKE MY SOUL IT’S YOURS.

If you’re not familiar with Taika Waititi’s work, it’s time to get right with the world. A great place to start is with What We Do in the Shadows, which is a mockumentary about vampires living in New Zealand–and bonus swearwolves. Hunt for the Wilderpeople is also freaking amazing and easy to find. I first encountered his work in Flight of the Conchords, and was hooked. His sense of humor (heavy on the irony and diminution) and aesthetic sensibility are both right up my alley, so I’d already just about lost my mind when I found out he would be directing Thor: Ragnarok. Finally, I thought, if someone was going to get Loki right as a character, it would be him.

Well, I was right. And so much more. SO MUCH MORE.

…The big thing that doesn’t really show up in the summary is how fucking hilarious this movie is. It just doesn’t stop the entire time, even in the action sequences. And the humor cleverly disguises–and also sharpens–some incredibly fucked up things that the film examines. And between jokes, there are quiet character moments that have more impact because they occur in the ten seconds you aren’t laughing–or you are laughing and then you realize just how important this is to that character and it’s like a punch to the sternum. I’d also recommend this piece about the Maori spin on Waititi’s brand of humor as seen in the movie, though it could be considered spoilery depending on how sensitive you are about that stuff.

(9) GORDON OBIT. Astronaut Richard Gordon died November 6.

Richard Gordon

Former Apollo 12 astronaut Richard Gordon, one of a dozen men who flew around the moon but didn’t land there, has died, NASA said. He was 88.

Richard “Dick” F. Gordon Jr. was a test pilot chosen in NASA’s third group of astronauts in 1963. He flew on Gemini 11 in 1966, walking in space twice. During Apollo 12 in November 1969, Gordon circled the moon in the command module Yankee Clipper while Alan Bean and Charles Conrad landed and walked on the lunar surface.

Gordon died Monday at his home in California, according to the Astronaut Scholarship Foundation.

“Dick will be fondly remembered as one of our nation’s boldest flyers, a man who added to our own nation’s capabilities by challenging his own. He will be missed,” acting NASA administrator Robert Lightfoot said in a statement Tuesday.

Born in Seattle, a Navy captain and a chemist, Gordon was such a steely professional that after a difficult first spacewalk, he fell asleep during a break in his second spacewalk. He downplayed Apollo 12 being hit by lightning during launch.

In a 1997 NASA oral history, Gordon said people would often ask if he felt alone while his two partners walked on the moon. “I said, ‘Hell no, if you knew those guys, you’d be happy to be alone’.”

(10) MOLLO OBIT. Oscar-winning costume designer John Mollo died October 25.

John Mollo, a largely self-taught historian whose expertise on military uniforms led George Lucas to choose him to design costumes for “Star Wars,” winning Mr. Mollo the first of two Academy Awards, died on Oct. 25 in Froxfield, Wiltshire, England. He was 86. His death, in a care facility, was confirmed by his wife, Louise Mollo, who said he had had vascular dementia. Mr. Mollo had a long career in the movies, creating costumes for Richard Attenborough’s epic “Gandhi” (1982), which brought him his second Oscar; the Revolutionary War drama “Revolution” (1985), with Al Pacino; “Cry Freedom” (1987), with Denzel Washington as the South African freedom fighter Steve Biko; “Chaplin” (1992), with Robert Downey Jr. in the title role; and “The Empire Strikes Back” (1980), the second installment in the first “Star Wars” trilogy.

… Mr. Mollo’s costumes, intricate but appearing lived-in, were based on Mr. Lucas’s instructions and on his own sketches and those of a concept artist, Ralph McQuarrie, who drew some of the earliest renderings of many of the characters. The results included the weather-beaten martial arts outfit of Luke Skywalker, played by Mark Hamill; the monkish robes of Obi-Wan Kenobi, played by Alec Guinness; the dusty cowboy look of Han Solo, played by Harrison Ford; and the pure white dress draped over Princess Leia, played by Carrie Fisher. For the dark side, Mr. Mollo encased the imperial storm troopers in hard white carapaces and masks and hid Darth Vader, played by David Prowse and voiced by James Earl Jones, in a swooping black cloak and a helmet that brought to mind that of a samurai. The imperial outfits were designed to embody a fascist, dehumanizing order.

(11) COMICS SECTION.

• John King Tarpinian finds a very early version of Batman in today’s Bizarro.
• And can’t you see this mistake happening, as illustrated in The Flying McCoys?

(12) PHOTON LEAP. On Camestros Felapton’s blog, Dr Timothy the Talking Cat and Professor of Thought-Expansion Straw Puppy M.D. continue to spin their epic yarn — “McEdifice Returns: Chapters are just another way the man tries to control us”.

Journal Entry. Field Officer Qzrrzxxzq Day 39 since the dimensional distortion event.

As far as I can ascertain our current location is an urban centre called ‘Manchester’. I can confirm now that we are moving in time as well as space. Possibly we have shifted to another reality as this one appears to have been drained of much of its colour. Sky, buildings, people all appear more grey than normal. The translator device seems to be broken as the local language is unintelligible but the device insists that it is still ‘English’.

Earlier in the day we successfully infiltrated the sub-culture festival apparently named “Woodstock”. Levels of casual nudity and psychotropic substances were higher than the cultural norms we had observed elsewhere. Our mission was simple – find the cultists who had possession of McEdifice, regain the asset and then use ScanScan’s powers to evac.

“If you are going to San Francisco, be sure to wear flowers in your hair.” sang a young man at us both. A coded message? Helpful advice? Or just frankly insulting given that I’m bald? I side stepped and made my way through the crowds of long haired youths.

(13) HOW ARE YA FIXED FOR BLADES? Deadline reports “Millennium To Produce Female-Strong ‘Red Sonja’ With Cinelou”.

Millennium Media will finance and produce a new version of Red Sonja and is looking to it as a new franchise for the company. The project will be produced by Millennium’s Avi Lerner and Joe Gatta alongside Cinelou’s Mark Canton and Courtney Solomon. They are fast-tracking this project and next will hire a writer.

Red Sonja is based on a comic book heroine from the 1970s. She has appeared in hundreds of comic books over the decades, which Dynamite Entertainment continues publishing today.

“We have been waiting for the right time for this remake,” said Lerner, “and with the success of Wonder Woman, the audience has spoken. They want female heroes.”

(14) THAT IDEA IS QUACKERS. Michael Isikoff, in “Kill The Damn Duck!  Ex-DNC Head Brazile Describes Clash Over Trolling Donald Trump In Donald Duck Costumes” on Yahoo! News, says former Democratic National Committee head Donna Brazile told representatives of the Hillary Clinton campaign that showing up at Donald Trump rallies with someone in a Donald Duck outfit with a sign saying, “Don’t Duck Your Taxes” could backfire because Donald Duck was Disney’s “intellectual property” and “they could sue us.”

She called Marc Elias, the senior lawyer for the Clinton campaign, and told him “that I had heard from ABC and Disney about the duck and he had to kill it.”

“The duck is the intellectual property of Disney,” Brazile told Elias, on her account. “They could sue us, OK? Do you want that story out there? Hillary’s about to go to California to raise money, and she’s going to see Bob Iger, the CEO of Disney, who is holding this fundraiser, and this is coming from him. What do you want to do? Have him cancel the fundraiser? I know you all want that money. So get rid of the f—ing duck!”

(15) LGBT SEARCH. Autostraddle leads fans to “8 Queer Speculative Short Story Collections”. Part of the “Ask Your Friendly Neighborhood Lesbrarian” post series, this list includes —

Fist of the Spider Woman: Tales of Fear and Queer Desire edited by Amber Dawn

Starting with the two questions “What do queer women fear the most?” and “What do queer women desire the most?,” Amber Dawn created this amazing collection of stories to both turn you on and scare you, sometimes simultaneously. The stories range from ones that are genuinely terrifying and not so erotic to ones that would be at home in an erotica anthology. For example, Aurelia T. Evans’s “In Circles,” which features an intersex main character, will make you never think of that silly sleepover game Bloody Mary the same way again. Dawn’s “Here Lies the Last Lesbian Rental in East Vancouver” is part ghost story, part anti-gentrification treatise, and part mean mommy and little girl kinky erotica. “Homeland” by Kristyn Dunnion peels back the horrors possible in the average night at your local lesbian bar….

(16) HEAD’S UP. A fashionable hairstyle is a genre inspiration — “The Sci-Fi Bob Is the Out-of-This-World Hair Trend for Fall”.

Calling all you Trekkies and sci-fi fans, fall 2017 has a new hair trend that is designed with you in mind. The sci-fi bob is a simple, short blunt cut that features sharp angles and is usually paired with a baby bang. This futuristic femme style, inspired by movies like The Fifth Element and Star Trek, is here to heat up limp cold-weather ‘dos, just in time for the holiday season.

 

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(17) THE POINT. Clive Barker tells The Guardian “How we made Hellraiser”.

Clive Barker, director

I worked as a hustler in the 1970s, because I had no money. I met a lot of people you’ll know and some you won’t: publishers, captains of industry. The way they acted – and the way I did, to be honest – was a source of inspiration later. Sex is a great leveller. It made me want to tell a story about good and evil in which sexuality was the connective tissue. Most English and American horror movies were not sexual, or coquettishly so – a bunch of teenagers having sex and then getting killed. Hellraiser, the story of a man driven to seek the ultimate sensual experience , has a much more twisted sense of sexuality.

By the mid-80s I’d had two cinematic abominations made from my stories. It felt as if God was telling me I should direct. How much worse could I be? I said to Christopher Figg, who became my producer: “What’s the least I could spend and expect someone to hire a first-time director?” And he said: “Under a million dollars. You just need a house, some monsters, and pretty much unknown actors.” My novella The Hellbound Heart, which mostly took place in one house, fitted those parameters. Roger Corman’s company New World – who agreed to fund a film for $900,000 – said very plainly it would go straight to video.

(18) ON STAGE. Lythgoe Family Panto’s BEAUTY AND THE BEAST – A CHRISTMAS ROSE will play December 13-17 at the Pasadena Civic Auditorium.

An updated version of the classic tale, in the style of a traditional British family Panto, BEAUTY AND THE BEAST – A CHRISTMAS ROSE features family-friendly magic, with a comedic twist, dancing (with “So You Think You Can Dance” alumni), contemporary music and more…

Tickets are available online at Ticketmaster.com/PantoPasadena or by calling 626-449-7360.

(19) AREN’T YOU BLIND? Another wild ride on Twitter begins here.

BARISTA: Do I know him?
OWNER: The hot guy that comes in here? Looks like Lucifer?
BARISTA: I feel like I'd remember that…

— Kingfisher & Wombat (@UrsulaV) November 7, 2017

(20) RETWEET. Or whatever the right term is for what I’m doing on a blog —

https://twitter.com/aeglethusa/status/927660966690504704

(21) UNSOLVED. io9 has heard “Creator Donald Bellisario Has Written a Quantum Leap Film Script”.

That news comes courtesy of this weekend’s LA Comic Con event, where Quantum Leap’s creator, Donald Bellisario, reunited with Scott Bakula during a panel discussion that inevitably turned to reboots.

“I just finished writing a Quantum Leap feature,” Bellisario announced. “I don’t know what’s going to happen with it, but I did write it.”

Quantum Leap ended infamously, with one of the most tragic (and unintentionally funny, or maybe that’s just me) end title cards in history, announcing that Bakula’s Sam Beckett never made the leap home. After five seasons of interdimensional problem solving, Sam Beckett was never going to get to solve his own.

(22) TECH DEMO. SyFy Wire explains the joke — “Stargate alum David Hewlett parodies 1980s sci-fi series Automan in hilarious short”.

We love a good fake trailer. After all, it creates its own broad vision while at the same time distilling it to hilarious specificity. The most recent one to cross our paths, Hewlogram, below, one-ups the fake trailer genre in two ways: 1) It stars David Hewlett, who played Rodney McKay, our favorite snarky scientist on Stargate: Atlantis, and 2) It doubles as a demonstration of some fairly nifty technology.

The special effects software and filmmaking company Red Giant produced Hewlogram and could have created a standard commercial to promote the release of its Red Giant Universe 2.2 tools for filmmakers and visual effects producers. Instead, it gave us a wacky short for a 1980s television show you’ve never seen but recognize in your geeky fiber, a buddy cop show spliced together with Tron and folded into 21st century reality—a self-aware Automan.

 

[Thanks to Mike Kennedy, Martin Morse Wooster, Andrew Porter, John King Tarpinian, JJ, and Cat Eldridge for some of these stories, Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Chris S.]