(1) UNRELATED TWINS. Darryl Mott tweeted a rundown about why two gaming companies that each go by the name TSR are making the wrong kind of news recently. Thread starts here.
(2) COOL IDEA. IceCon 2021, the convention happening this November in Reykjavík, Iceland has added Ted Chiang as its third GoH. The first two are Mary Robinette Kowal and Hildur Knútsdóttir.
(3) ABOUT HUGO FINALIST STRANGE HORIZONS. Maureen Kincaid Speller, Strange Horizons’ Senior Reviews Editor speaking here as an individual, set the record straight about their interactions with DisCon III in a Facebook public post.
… There has been a lot of pushback against this kind of thing in the last few years, especially as more groups/collectives are nominated, and rightly so. There is something very wrong with trying to reduce the work of many to one or two names, as if there is something inherently wrong in not being a lone creator. Is it not amazing that all these people pull together to produce this material in their spare time? For nothing? Apparently, it isn’t.
Last year, unforgettably, Fiyahcon showed that it is actually possible to work successfully to a different model. Strange Horizons was nominated for the inaugural Ignyte Award (which we won), and the difference in approach was unbelievable. Everything from happily listing everyone in the press releases to checking how we wanted our names pronounced to providing free access to the convention online for the entire weekend. I mean, wow? Winning was purely a grace note in some ways, but god, did I feel seen! Didn’t we all.
And so to this year’s Worldcon. SH gets nominated for Semi-Prozine again! Yay! Strange Horizons has a civil interaction with the Hugo Awards team and it is agreed that all of the collective can be individually named in the announcement, because pixels are not in short supply.
Except, apparently, they are.
Consternation.
We cannot all be listed, because we are too many. I’m not sure what went on behind the scenes but then, suddenly, we were not too many after all, and we were all listed.
I was not privy to the discussion about what would happen at the ceremony, but here are the things I do know, based on ludicrous claims I have seen on the internet this week….
(4) HWA PRIDE. Horror Writers Association’s “A Point of Pride” series features an “Interview with Nikki Woolfolk”.
What has writing horror taught you about the world and yourself?
Speculative fiction and horror are my go-to regarding explaining the world and reflect current events from a differing perspective. I wrote a short story that was painful and cathartic regarding a beloved cousin who was murdered. The story “L’Chaim” is my way of giving her a chance to live. My editor read the story and informed me that I had written psychological horror.
I had no idea that what I wrote could be seen as horror since I’m kinda a wimp when it comes to consistently watching or reading horror. Looking back I’ve noticed my Urban Fantasy stories have more of a horror slant and it’s surprising to me.
(5) DELANY IN ACADEMIA. Samuel R. Delany answers the question “How did I become a professor?” for Facebook readers.
…Now even then I knew enough about the history of the world to know that people who deluged older folks in a position of authority with long polemical letters are often thought of as basically nuisances whose screeds are to be glanced at and put aside to be looked at later, if not to be simply consigned to the circular file. Basically I was writing across an ocean into a world about which I had no real notion of how it worked: the American academic system.
What Leslie [Fielder]’s letter said was: Would you consider coming to the U. of Buffalo for a term, and teaching here, as Visiting Butler-Chair Professor. It’s an endowed chair. You will have a 10k fund to do with as you wish, as long as it benefits the university, as well as a salary of . . . I don’t even remember what it was. I just know that, other than a job in a rotisserie on upper Broadway (from which I’d been fired after a few weeks because I couldn’t make change) to another as a stock clerk at Barnes & Noble on 18th and 5th to still another behind the counter at a small walk-in soft-core porn and second-hand sex magazine store called Bob’s Bargain Books on West 42 St., for a couple of months each, I’d never had a salary since I was 15, working as a library page at the St. Agnes Branch Library on Amsterdam Avenue.
So Marilyn and I talked about it, and I wrote back “Yes.”
A single term as a guest professor, however, is not the same as full professorship—which did not happen until eleven years later. But it was certainly connected to it….
(6) THE TV SETS ARE BEING EXTINGUISHED ALL OVER EUROPE. Well, no – and perhaps quite the opposite will happen over the long term: “‘The thought is unbearable’: Europeans react to EU plans to cut British TV” – The Guardian has the story.
…But post-Brexit, politically the will is there to challenge the dominance of British TV and film.
When the European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, visited Rome this week to formally approve Italy’s spending plan for its share of the EU’s recovery fund, the Italian prime minister, Mario Draghi, hosted her at the Cinecittà film studios in Rome, where €300m (£257m) of the funds are to be invested in development.
“It’s obvious that if Britain leaves the EU, then its productions no longer fall within the community’s quotas,” the Italian culture minister, Dario Franceschini, told Corriere della Sera. “Europe will have to respond on an industrial and content level, and Cinecittà will be strategic on this front.”
Sten-Kristian Saluveer, an Estonian media policy strategist, said EU plans to reassess the amount of UK content – in particular on streaming platforms such as Netflix and Amazon – were inevitable.
“A big catalyst is the increased trade tensions between the UK and France, as well as the EU’s anti-trust procedures,” he said. “The question is not so much about original content produced in the UK as it is about studios in the UK connected to platforms like Apple and Netflix, which are very well positioned to utilise the good relations the UK has with the US – as well as exploiting the European capacity, including everything from work permits to subsidies,” he said.
“When Britain was in the EU there were spillover effects for the rest of the bloc. But now it’s not, the question is why should these platforms be able to exploit the same benefits?”
Saluveer said smaller EU members could stand to benefit from a reduction in UK content, as it could allow more room for their content. He cited the box office success Tangerines – an Estonian-Georgian co-production which was nominated for a Golden Globe – or the Oscar-nominated The Fencer, a Finnish-Estonian-German collaboration…
(7) THE LIGHT OF OTHER DAYS. MIT Press’ new Radium Age imprint will republish “proto-sf” from the early 20th Century.
Under the direction of Joshua Glenn, the MIT Press’s Radium Age is reissuing notable proto–science fiction stories from the underappreciated era between 1900 and 1935. In these forgotten classics, science fiction readers will discover the origins of enduring tropes like robots (berserk or benevolent), tyrannical supermen, dystopian wastelands, sinister telepaths, and eco-catastrophes. With new contributions by historians, science journalists, and science fiction authors, the Radium Age book series will recontextualize the breakthroughs and biases of these proto–science fiction classics, and chart the emergence of a burgeoning genre.
ABOUT RADIUM AGE PROTO-SF
Do we really know science fiction? There were the Scientific Romance years that stretched from the mid-19th century to circa 1900. And there was the so-called Golden Age, from circa 1935 through the early 1960s. But between those periods, and overshadowed by them, was an era that has bequeathed us such memes as the robot (berserk or benevolent), the tyrannical superman, the dystopia, the unfathomable extraterrestrial, the sinister telepath, and the eco-catastrophe. A dozen years ago, writing for the sf blog io9.com at the invitation of Annalee Newitz and Charlie Jane Anders, I became fascinated with the period during which the sf genre as we know it emerged. In honor of Marie Curie, who shared a Nobel Prize for her discovery of radium in 1903, only to die of radiation-induced leukemia in 1934, I dubbed it the “Radium Age.”
Curie’s development of the theory of radioactivity, which led to the freaky insight that the atom is, at least in part, a state of energy constantly in movement, is an apt metaphor for the 20th century’s first three decades. These years were marked by rising sociocultural strife across various fronts: the founding of the women’s suffrage movement, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, socialist currents within the labor movement, anti-colonial and revolutionary upheaval around the world… as well as the associated strengthening of reactionary movements that supported, e.g., racial segregation, immigration restriction, eugenics, and sexist policies….
In order to help surface overlooked Radium Age texts — particularly works by women, people of color, and writers from outside the USA and Western Europe — Joshua Glenn and Noah Springer have an advisory panel that presently includes Annalee Newitz, Anindita Banerjee, David M, Higgins, kara lynch, Ken Liu, Sean Guynes, and Sherryl Vint.
Here are the covers of the first books in the series.
(8) MEMORY LANE.
- 1966 – Fifty five years ago at Tricon which was held in Cleveland and had Issac Asimov as its Toastmaster, Roger Zelazny would win his first Hugo for …And Call Me Conrad which would later be called This Immortal. It was published in Fantasy & Science Fiction, October and November of 1965 and then in book form by Ace the same year. It tied with Frank Herbert’s Dune. It would be the first of six Hugos that he would win and one of two for Best Novel, the other being for Lord of Light. His other four Hugos would be for the “Home Is the Hangman” novella, the “Unicorn Variation“ novelette, “24 Views of Mt. Fuji, by Hokusai” novella and “Permafrost” novelette.
(9) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.
[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]
- Born June 25, 1904 — Peter Lorre. I think his first foray into genre was in the Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea film as Comm. Lucius Emery though he was in Americanized version of Casino Royale which an early Fifties episode of the Climax! series as Le Chiffre. (James Bond was called Jimmy. Shudder!) Other genre roles were in Tales of Terror as Montresor in “The Black Cat” story, The Raven as Dr. Adolphus Bedlo and The Comedy of Terrors as Felix Grille. (Died 1964.)
- Born June 25, 1910 — Elsie Wollheim. The wife of Donald A. Wollheim. She was one of the original Futurians of New York, and assisted them in their publishing efforts, and even published Highpoints, her own one-off fanzine. When he started DAW Books in 1972, she was the co-founder, and inherited the company when he died. Their daughter Elizabeth (Betsy) now runs the company along with co-publisher and Sheila E. Gilbert. (Died 1996.)
- Born June 25, 1950 — Tom DeFalco, 71. Comic book writer and editor, mainly known for his Marvel Comics and in particular for his work with the Spider-Man line. He designed the Spider-Girl character which was his last work at Marvel as he thought he was being typecast as just a Spider-Man line writer. He’s since been working at DC and Archie Comics.
- Born June 25, 1965 — Daryl Gregory, 56. He won a Crawford Award for his Pandemonium novel. And his novella, We Are All Completely Fine, won the World Fantasy Award and a Shirley Jackson Award as well. It was also a finalist for the Sturgeon Award. I’m also fond of his writing on the Planet of The Apes series that IDW published.
- Born June 25, 1969 — Austin Grossman, 52. Twin brother of Lev. And no, he’s not here just because he’s Lev’s twin brother. He’s the author of Soon I Will Be Invincible which is decidedly SF as well as You: A Novel (also called YOU) which was heavily influenced for better or worse by TRON and Crooked, a novel involving the supernatural and Nixon. He’s also a video games designer, some of which such as Clive Barker’s Undying and Tomb Raider: Legend are definitely genre.
- Born June 25, 1969 — Lev Grossman, 52. Author most noted for The Magicians trilogy which is The Magicians, The Magician King and The Magician’s Land. Winner of the Astounding Award for Best New Writer. His latest work was the screenplay for The Map of Tiny Perfect Things film which was based off his short story of that name.
- Born June 25, 1980 — Jason Schwartzman, 41. He first shows up in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy as Gag Halfrunt, Zaphod Beeblebrox’s personal brain care specialist. (Uncredited initially.) He was Ritchie in Bewitched, and voiced Simon Lee in Scott Pilgrim vs. the Animation. He co-wrote Isle of Dogs alongwith Wes Anderson, Roman Coppola, and Kunichi Nomura. I think his best work was voicing Ash Fox in Fantastic Mr. Fox.
- Born June 25, 1984 — Aubrey Plaza, 37. April Ludgate on Parks and Recreation which at least one Filer has insisted is genre. She voiced Eska in recurring role on The Legend of Korra which is a sequel to Avatar: The Last Airbender. She was in Scott Pilgrim vs. the World as Julie Powers. And she was Lenny Busker on Legion.
(10) COMICS SECTION.
- Alley Oop runs into a little Moon explorer name confusion.
(11) TURING PASSES TEST. “New £50 note featuring Alan Turing goes into circulation” reports The Guardian.
The new £50 note goes into circulation on Wednesday – but with consumers increasingly going cashless, for millions of people it may be months or even years before they see or touch one….
However, perhaps the new-look £50 – featuring Alan Turing, the scientist best known for his codebreaking work during the second world war – will give the note’s image a makeover.
Its arrival is notable as it means the Bank of England has now completed its switch away from paper money.
The Turing £50 will join the Churchill £5, the Austen £10 and the Turner £20, all of which are printed on polymer, a thin and flexible plastic material that is said to last longer and stay in better condition than paper.
… The new £50 note, which features Alan Turing, contains advanced security features including two windows and a two-colour foil, making it very difficult to counterfeit.
(12) THE KLEPTO CONNECTION. “Stealing Science-Fiction: Why the Heist Works So Well in Sci-Fi” – Justin Woolley explains at CrimeReads.
…There is something inherently lovable about the heist story. They have been a mainstay of cinema since the mid-twentieth century and feature prominently in novels, TV, video games and across all media. The heist story often gives us many of the things we love in story, underdogs, a sense of style, thrills, adventure and a chance to see characters who are the smartest, the fastest, the best at what they do. Heists are also perfectly set up for the structure of a story. We usually have a clear external conflict from the very beginning, our team versus whatever is protecting the ‘big score’. Then, we get to see how the crew are going to overcome the odds by being (often literally) in on the plan, blueprints and all. Throw some spanners in the works, maybe a betrayal, a few character flaws to be overcome, and you’re primed to go for a terrific caper.
There’s something else I find interesting about heist stories—they are, in many ways, genre-neutral. They appear most commonly as contemporary action stories but also in historical fiction, fantasy and, of biggest interest to me, science-fiction. I am a fan of many genres, including crime and thriller, but I am foremost an author of science-fiction….
(13) IN THE BEGINNING. Mental Floss’ article about “The Early Careers of 12 Famous Novelists” includes entries on Octavia Butler, Frank Herbert, Mark Twain, and George R.R. Martin.
8. FRANK HERBERT
Frank Herbert was a veteran newspaper reporter when he began circulating Dune, his 1965 novel of galactic intrigue over spice. Though it was well-received by sci-fi fans and even serialized in Analog magazine, Herbert had no takers until it was accepted by automotive publisher Chilton. By 1972, Herbert had given up his newspaper career to write novels.
(14) VIDEO OF THE DAY. [Item by Martin Morse Wooster.] In “Honest Game Trailers: League of Legends: Wild Rift” on YouTube, Fandom Games says this is “a bite-sized version of League of Legends that lasts half as long” and “has no chat functionality, making it “one of the few games that people who haven’t had their hearts turned to coal by the Internet” can enjoy.
[Thanks to Martin Morse Wooster, JJ, James Davis Nicoll, Nic Farey, Daniel Dern, Michael Toman, John King Tarpinian, Cat Eldridge, Mike Kennedy, and Andrew Porter for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to contributing editor of the day Bill.]
