Pixel Scroll 8/25/23 Like A File Over Troubled Pixels I Will Scroll You Down

(1) HOPE FOR THE JAMES WHITE AWARD. Gareth Jelley, editor and publisher of Interzone, responded to the comments about the James White Award in yesterday’s post “Are These Awards Dead or Just Pining for the Fjords?”

Thank you for the interesting post today on awards. Funnily enough, I’m becoming a big fan of James White’s writing and have one of his books on the bedside stack at the moment.

But you are right: I’ve not yet been asked about Interzone and the James White Award.

It is on my radar, though! It has been on my list of things to do as Martin McGrath and I chat once in a while on the IZ Digital Discord. But we’ve both been quite busy.

So, not 100% an ex-award yet — it is something I would definitely like to get going again, once Interzone is back on its feet.

(2) BEHIND THE SCENES. “Disney+ Celebrates ‘Star Wars: Ahsoka’ Debut with ‘Rebel Crew’ Featurette” and Animation World Network has the story.

Disney+ celebrated yesterday’s launch of Lucasfilm’s newest series, Star Wars: Ahsoka, by sharing the Rebel Crew featurette, a look behind the making of the series. The first two episodes of the show are now available. 

The show, set after the Empire’s fall, follows the former Jedi Knight Ahsoka Tano as she investigates an emerging threat to a vulnerable galaxy.

Rosario Dawson, who reprises her The Mandalorian role as Ahsoka Tano, is joined by Natasha Liu Bordizzo as Sabine Wren; Mary Elizabeth Winstead as Hera Syndulla; Ivanna Sakhno as Shin Hati; Wes Chatham as Captain Enoch; Hayden Christensen as Anakin Skywalker; the late Ray Stevenson as Baylan Skoll; David Tennant as Huyang; Temeura Morrison as Captain Rex; and Lars Mikkelsen as Grand Admiral Thrawn….

(3) EATING THE FANTASTIC. Scott Edelman invites listeners to chow down on crispy pickled cucumbers with Lisa Morton in Episode 205 of his Eating the Fantastic podcast.

Lisa Morton

My second guest from this year’s Pittsburgh StokerCon is Lisa Morton, a screenwriter, award-winning prose writer, author of non-fiction books, and Halloween expert.

She’s written more than 150 short stories, including the Bram Stoker Award-winning “Tested” (from Cemetery Dance magazine) and “What Ever Happened to Lorna Winters?,” chosen for inclusion in Best American Mystery Stories 2020. In 2010, her first novel The Castle of Los Angeles was awarded the Bram Stoker Award for First Novel. Her other novels include Malediction (nominated for the Bram Stoker Award for Best Novel), Netherworld, and Zombie Apocalypse: Washington Deceased.

Her work as an editor includes the anthology Midnight Walk, winner of the Black Quill Award and nominated for the Bram Stoker Award, Haunted Nights (co-edited with Ellen Datlow), Ghost Stories: Classic Tales of Horror and Suspense, and Weird Women: Classic Supernatural Fiction by Groundbreaking Female Writers 1852-1923, co-edited with Leslie Klinger. As a Halloween expert, Lisa wrote the definitive reference book The Halloween Encyclopedia (now in a second edition), and the multiple award-winning Trick or Treat: A History of Halloween. Her screenplay credits include the feature films Tornado WarningBlood AngelsBlue Demon, and The Glass Trap. She’s is a former President of the Horror Writers Association.

We discussed how seeing The Exorcist at age 15 changed her life, why she sometimes feels guilty about her path to publication, our memories of the late, great Dennis Etchison, the differences between trick or treating in New York vs. L.A., the weirdest thing about working in a bookstore during the pandemic, the differing ways our writing was affected by lockdown, how she myth-busted Halloween, why she doesn’t think of rejection as rejection, what she means when she says horror fiction should be more political, writing for themed anthologies, what it would take for us to turn our hand to novels, and so much more.

(4) SFF ABOVE THE 38TH PARALLEL. Ars Technica leads readers to “The strange, secretive world of North Korean science fiction”.

A plane is flying to the Philippines, gliding above “the infinite surface” of the Pacific Ocean. Suddenly, a few passengers start to scream. Soon, the captain announces there’s a bomb on board, and it’s set to detonate if the aircraft drops below 10,000 feet.

“The inside of the plane turned into a battlefield,” the story reads. “The captain was visibly startled and vainly tried to calm down the screaming and utterly terrorized passengers.”

Only one person keeps his cool: a young North Korean diplomat who has faith that his country will find a solution and save everyone. And he’s right. North Korea’s esteemed scientists and engineers create a mysterious anti-gravitational field and stop the plane in mid-air. The bomb is defused, and everyone gets off the aircraft and is brought back safely to Earth.

This story, Change Course (Hangno rǔl pakkura) by Yi Kŭmchǒl, speaks about solidarity, peace, and love for the motherland, displaying an intricate relationship between literature and politics. It was first published in 2004 in the Chosǒn munhak magazine, only to be reprinted 13 years later, around the time North Korea claimed it was capable of launching attacks on US soil.

“Political messages in every North Korean sci-fi can be hardly missed,” historian of science Dong-Won Kim, who taught at Harvard University and the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology in South Korea, told me….

(5) GALAXY QUEST NEWS. “Is Sigourney Weaver Reprising Her Role in a ‘Galaxy Quest’ Series?” Animation World Network thinks the answer is yes.

Finally, a morsel of news from the Paramount+ series adaptation of Galaxy Quest! While the project has finally made headway after a stint in production hell, we can now report that Sigourney Weaker will reprise her role as Gwen DeMarco, according to a source close to Giant Freakin Robot. Gwen will serve as a mentor-like figure for a new generation of cast members aboard the Protector, if the news is to be believed….

…The Galaxy Quest series will be produced by Mark Johnson under his Gran Via Productions banner. No other execs have been announced.

(6) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

  • Born August 25, 1909 Michael Rennie. Definitely best remembered as Klaatu in The Day the Earth Stood Still. He would show up a few years later on one of The Lost World films as Lord John Roxton, and he’s got an extensive genre series resume which counts Lost in Space as The Keeper in two episodes, The Batman as The Sandman, The Time TunnelThe Man from U.N.C.L.E. and The Invaders. (Died 1971.)
  • Born August 25, 1913 Walt Kelly. If you can get them, Fantagraphics has released Pogo in six stunning hardcover editions covering up to 1960. They’re planning to do all of his strips eventually. Did you know Kelly began his career as animator at Walt Disney Studios, working on Dumbo, Pinocchio and Fantasia? (Died 1973.)
  • Born August 25, 1940 Marilyn Niven, 83. She was a Boston-area fan who lives in LA with her husband Larry Niven. She has worked on a variety of conventions, both regionals and Worldcons.  In college, she was a member of the MITSFS and was one of the founding members of NESFA. She’s also a member of Almack’s Society for Heyer Criticism.
  • Born August 25, 1947 Michael Kaluta, 76. He’s best known for his 1970s take on The Shadow with writer Dennis O’Neil for DC in 1973–1974. He’d reprise his work on The Shadow for Dark Horse a generation later. And Kaluta and O’Neil reunited on The Shadow: 1941 – Hitler’s Astrologer graphic novel published in 1988. If you can find them, the M. W. Kaluta: Sketchbook Series are well worth having.
  • Born August 25, 1955 Simon R. Green, 68. I’ll confess that I’ve read pretty much everything he’s written. Favorite series? The NightsideHawk & Fisher and Secret History are my favorite ones with Drinking Midnight Wine the novel I’ve re-read the most. 
  • Born August 25, 1958 Tim Burton, 65. Beetlejuice is by far my favorite film by him. His Batman is interesting. Read that comment as you will. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is definitely more Dahlish than the first take was, and Sleepy Hollow is just damn weird. Well, too damn weird for my liking. 
  • Born August 25, 1970 Chris Roberson, 53. Brilliant writer. I strongly recommend his Recondito series, Firewalk and Firewalkers. The Spencer Finch series is also worth reading. He won two Sidewise Awards, first for his “O One” story and later for The Dragon’s Nine Sons novel. He’s had five Sidewise nominations. And he’s scripted a lot of comics, primarily Hellboy related, but also FablesThe Shadow, Doc SavageiZombie and House of Mystery.

(7) SAND STOPS RUNNING IN THE HOURGLASS. “’Dune: Part Two’ release postponed to 2024 as actors strike lingers” reports the Portland (ME) Press-Herald.

The release of “Dune: Part Two,” one of the fall’s most anticipated films, has been postponed from November until next near, Warner Bros. confirmed Thursday.

Denis Villeneuve’s science-fiction sequel had been set to open Nov. 3 but will instead land in theaters March 15. With the actors strike entering its second month, “Dune: Part Two” had been rumored to be eyeing a move. Variety earlier this month reported Warner Bros. was mulling the delay.

Warner Bros. is opting to wait until its starry cast can promote the follow-up to the 2021 Oscar-winning “Dune.”…

…Dune: Part Two” is one of the biggest 2023 films yet postponed due to the ongoing strikes by actors and screenwriters. Recent releases have mostly opted to go ahead, despite lacking their stars on red carpets or on magazine covers. SAG-AFTRA has asked its members not to promote studio films during the work stoppage….

(8) NEXT DOMINO TO FALL IS TOLKIEN ANIME FILM. “‘Lord Of The Rings: The War Of The Rohirrim’ Release Delayed Until December 2024” reports Deadline.

New Line’s animated movie The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim is moving from its April 12, 2024 release date to December 13 of next year.

The move stems from a chain reaction of Warner Bros re-dating Thursday, spurred by Legendary Entertainment’s Dune: Part Two moving from November 3 this year to March 15, 2024, which pushed that financier and producer’s other title, Godzilla X Kong: The New Empire, from that date to April 12, 2024.

Dune: Part Two had to move had to shift on account of the unavailability of its cast to promote during the ongoing actors strike.

War of the Rohirrim will now face off on its new December date against Sony’s reboot of The Karate Kid.

The anime feature, directed by Kenji Kamiyama, is set 183 years before the events chronicled in the original New Line Lord of the Rings trilogy. Those Peter Jackson movies, in addition to his Hobbit trilogy, always played the December year-end holiday period.

The War of the Rohirrim centers on the fate of the House of Helm Hammerhand, the mighty King of Rohan, a character from the appendix of JRR Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the KingSuccession actor Brian Cox will provide the voice of the protagonist.

(9) FOUND ON FACEBOOK. This is a little touch of genius.

(10) DO YOU KNOW SHUTTLE LORE? The National Air and Space Museum Hackathon invites you to play Galactic Mystery. As far as I can tell I got all the questions right. Is that possible? That has never happened before!

Each year, the National Air and Space Museum holds the Air and Space Hackathon, in collaboration with Deloitte, for local students. A hackathon is a design sprint-like event with the goal of creating functioning software or hardware by the end of the event.

In the most recent Air and Space Hackathon, small teams from schools around the DC area took on the challenge of designing a web or mobile prototype aimed at a K-12 student audience. The goal of their prototype was to highlight inspiring stories of diversity in the past, present, and/or future that connects to something on display at the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center.

Team Rambutan from the Governor’s School @ Innovation Park was the winner of our latest Hackathon! They created a game called “Galactic Mystery” in which users answer questions related to Space Shuttle Discovery to solve the mystery of who stole Canadarm. As players successfully progress through the game, their shuttle climbs through the levels of the atmosphere.

And now, their “Galactic Mystery” game is a reality! Anyone can play from wherever you are to test your knowledge of Space Shuttle history.

[Thanks to Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, John King Tarpinian, Chris Barkley, Michael Toman, Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Joe H.]

Are These Awards Dead or Just Pining for the Fjords?

Myriad science fiction and fantasy awards are given but not so many that it goes unnoticed if they skip a year. Here are four sff awards that have missed a beat, with an assessment of whether we’re likely to see them again.

Campbell Award

JOHN W. CAMPBELL MEMORIAL AWARD

LAST GIVEN: 2019

Harry Harrison and Brian W. Aldiss established the John W. Campbell Memorial Award for best science fiction novel of the year following the editor’s 1971 death. The juried award was first presented in 1973. It came to be frequently presented at the University of Kansas Center for the Study of Science Fiction’s (CSSF) Campbell Conference (renamed “Gunn Center Conference” in 2019).    

However, the John W. Campbell Memorial Award for Best Science Fiction Novel has not been given since 2019. A number of awards were forced on hiatus by the pandemic but before that began the Campbell was already in trouble over strong challenges to the reputation of its namesake.

In Jeannette Ng’s acceptance speech at Dublin 2019 for a different award also named after the late editor she called Campbell a fascist who exalted “the ambitions of imperialists and colonizers, settlers and industrialists”, stirring enough controversy that the sponsors promptly renamed it the Astounding Award. And a week later, Chris McKitterick, then the CSSF Director, announced that the Gunn Center (CSSF) was changing the name of the annual Campbell Conference and was “discussing alternatives” for the Campbell Memorial Award.

The Gunn Center for the Study of Science Fiction acknowledges and condemns the problematic words and actions of John W. Campbell.

We had already been discussing changing the name of the Campbell Conference to the Gunn Center Conference, which is in any case more accurate…

As for the John W. Campbell Memorial Award for best science-fiction novel of the year, the Center directors and Award jurors are currently discussing alternatives; when a decision is made, we will announce it.

However, by November 2021 McKitterick had left the Gunn Center for another job under the umbrella of the University of Kansas’ Achievement & Assessment Institute (AAI), and the following month the CSSF got a new director. Despite the CSSF’s then-Associate-Deputy Kij Johnson saying, “The Gunn Center remains in control of the Conference and the Campbell Award, and it will be up to them to decide what comes next,” what happened is that the Center continued running the Sturgeon Award and did nothing with the Campbell Award. Whether they wanted to may have been a moot question — McKitterick says the CSSF doesn’t own the rights. On his own Campbell Award website he wrote, “The new English SF Center does not own or manage the Award, and its Chair [McKitterick] and jury are seeking a new host organization friendly with our history and mission.”

When the award was last given in 2019 the jury members were Gregory Benford, Sheila Finch, Paul Kincaid, Christopher McKitterick (Chair), Pamela Sargent, and Lisa Yaszek.

Jury member Gregory Benford said in 2021, “No clear message yet on the award. We’ve gotten so little from NYC publishing last year and this, we can’t do it. Next year, yes. On the name: we’re divided, with no clear other choice. (I favor keeping just JWC award.)” However, there was no activity throughout 2022 either. Then at the end of the year, unfortunately, Gregory Benford had a major stroke. Although Allen Steele offered a positive update, it would be surprising if Benford resumed work on a literary jury.

With no sponsor, years having passed without a decision on a new name, an award jury divided over making a name change and likely to lose its most highly-awarded member for health reasons, the Campbell Memorial Award has probably come to the end of its run.

Prediction: The award has “joined the choir invisible”.

JAMES WHITE AWARD

LAST GIVEN: 2019

The James White Award, established in 2000, offered non-professional writers the opportunity to have their work published in Interzone, the UK’s leading sf magazine. The winner received a £200 prize. The competition was open to original, unpublished short stories of not more than 6,000 words by non-professional writers.

Quoting the administrator Martin McGrath, their Facebook page announced in August 2020 that “Due to technical issues with the current website, and problems caused by a certain global crises beyond our control, we have not been able to set a timetable for this year and, with a great deal of reluctance, we have concluded that it will not be possible to schedule the competition in 2020.” The text ended with a promise to return in 2021, but there have been no further posts on that page.

In mid-2022 Andy Cox was struggling to produce his final issue of Interzone before handing over to Gareth Jelley, who seems to have found it hard going, with his first issue not seen until this year (dated January, reached subscribers in February) and the second still awaited despite hopes of return to a bimonthly schedule. Therefore he probably has not even been asked about continuing the James White Award.

Prediction: “This is an ex-award.”

NOMMO AWARDS

LAST GIVEN: 2022

The Nommo Awards for Speculative Fiction by Africans are presented by the African Speculative Fiction Society, an organization of professional and semiprofessional African writers, editors, publishers, graphic artists and film makers. The group was founded in 2016, and the awards were given for the first time in 2017.

For the first three years the Nommo Awards ceremonies were held at the Aké Arts & Book Festival in Nigeria. The 2020 ceremony – which had already been taken online due to the pandemic – was postponed out of respect for the people injured in protests then occurring in Lagos and other Nigerian cities. After a delay the virtual ceremony went ahead. The next two ceremonies moved to North American venues, with the 2021 awards given at the World Science Fiction Convention, DisCon III, in Washington, D.C. and the 2022 awards at Chicon 8 in Chicago.

Since the Chicon 8 ceremony there has been no Nommo Awards activity. The African Speculative Fiction Society reportedly said they were suspending it to restructure the organization. While I know the organization wants to do more than just give an award, the Nommos have been successful in drawing attention to some good sff writers.

Prediction: We hope it will soon be ready to fly again.

CHESLEY AWARDS

LAST GIVEN: 2021 (for work published in 2020)

The Association of Science Fiction and Fantasy Artists established the Chesley Awards in 1985 as a peer award to recognize individual works and achievements during a given year. They were initially called the ASFA Awards but were later renamed to honor the famed astronomical artist Chesley Bonestell after his death in 1986. The awards are nominated and decided upon by ASFA members.

ASFA called for suggestions of quality work published in 2021 for use in formulating a 2022 Chesley ballot, however, no ballot went out and no awards were presented. The inability to present awards was attributed to the organization’s lack of volunteers.

In late spring of 2023 a new call for Chesley suggestions went out. Then on July 10 ASFA announced, “We are now in the process of putting together our curated nomination list”.

Prediction: The Chesleys may have been “simply stunned.” They show promising signs of life.

[Thanks to David Langford for an assist on the James White Award.]

No James White Award for 2020

James White Award administrator Martin McGrath announced today they will not be running a competition in 2020.

We regret to announce that the James White Award will not be running a competition this year. Due to technical issues with the current website, and problems caused by a certain global crises beyond our control, we have not been able to set a timetable for this year and, with a great deal of reluctance, we have concluded that it will not be possible to schedule the competition in 2020.

The James White Award, established in 2000, offers non-professional writers the opportunity to have their work published in Interzone, the UK’s leading sf magazine. In addition last year, the winner received a £200 prize. The competition in prior years has been open to original, unpublished short stories of not more than 6,000 words by non-professional writers.

Award Administrator McGrath also said:

We have been put off this decision for months, hoping (perhaps increasingly foolishly) that we could come up with a fix for the problems we are facing within a timescale that would allow us to go ahead this year. Ultimately, however, it simply hasn’t been possible to get things in place in time and we have – with very great reluctance – made the decision to not hold the competition this year. We will, however, be back in 2021.

In 2019, judges Justina Robson, Chris Beckett and Donna Scott selected “Limitations” by David Maskill as the winner.

[Via Locus Online.]

2019 James White Award

The winner of the 2019 James White Award is:

  • “Limitations” by David Maskill

David wins £200, his story will be published in a forthcoming issue of Britain’s longest running science fiction magazine, Interzone, and his story will be translated into Italian to be included in Mondi Incantati 2019).

Competition judge Chris Beckett described “Limitations” as an “ingenuous story” and said it was:

“very rich in ideas, it managed to be funny and touching while playing clever games with some very exotic science. I won’t say the science was plausible, but it was implausible in the way that real science is implausible these days. It was plausibly implausible. Likeable characters too.”

The judges also awarded a special commendation to runner up “Property Crime” by Michael Donoghue. They say he missed out by the narrowest margin in the Award’s history.

Martin McGrath, Award Administrator, described “Property Crime” as:

“an immensely likeable story with a strong emotional core that manages to combine recognisable elements from the crime and science fiction genres without ever feeling over familiar.”

The winner was selected by the James White Award’s final panel of judges, Chris Beckett, Donna Scott and Justina Robson.

The other shortlisted stories in this year’s competition were:

  • Better Lost Than Loved – Bryn Fazakerley
  • Bug on Bug – Mica Scotti Kole
  • Digital Nomad – Koji A Dae
  • The Last Words of Harry Niffen – Stephen Cashmore
  • Property Crime – Michael Donoghue

[Thanks to Mark Hepworth for the story.]

2019 James White Award Shortlist

The 2019 James White Award shortlist is out, six stories chosen from 355 submissions, 22 of which made the longlist:

  • Better Lost Than Loved – Bryn Fazakerley
  • Bug on Bug – Mica Scotti Kole
  • Digital Nomad – Koji A Dae
  • Limitations – David Maskill
  • The Last Words of Harry Niffen – Stephen Cashmore
  • Property Crime – Michael Donoghue

The competition is open to original, unpublished short stories of not more than 6,000 words by non-professional writers. The award, established in 2000, offers non-professional writers the opportunity to have their work published in Interzone, the UK’s leading sf magazine. In addition, this year’s prize is £200.

The winner, selected by judges Justina Robson, Chris Beckett and Donna Scott, will be announced on Thursday, September 5.

 [Thanks to Mark Hepworth for the story.]

Pixel Scroll 8/7/19 The Files Of Master Scroll And Number Ten Pixel

(1) WHITE AWARD LONGLIST. The James White Award’s 2019 longlisted stories have been posted – titles only, not author names yet: “judging is still going on and we want to preserve anonymity as part of the selection process.” They received 355 submissions.

The James White Award Short Story Competition was established in 2000. It is open only to non-professional writers and offers them the opportunity to have their work published in Interzone,

(2) SF IN CHINA. Derek Künsken’s news-filled “SF in Beijing Report” for Locus Online tells about his visit to Another Planet Science Fiction Convention this past May.

It’s interesting to try to understand where Chinese science fiction conferences are coming from and why this one in particular is being led by a multi-media SF company. I chatted with Ji Shaoting, the CEO of FAA. She’s a former journalist at the Xinhua news Agency who later co-founded Guokr, a massive Chinese-language pop-science website with a few stories, and pop-culture blog, and a fan club called Future Affairs Administration. Her work with FAA and Guokr caught the attention of an investor who wanted to create a repository of IP that could be developed into movies, TV, games, etc., because he “believes in the imagination industry.” FAA transitioned from a fan club into a company whose business goals are publishing SF and developing new Chinese writers.

(3) GOOD NEIGHBOR POLICY. The Addams Family animated movie comes to theaters October 11.

Get ready to snap your fingers! The first family of Halloween, the Addams Family, is back on the big screen in the first animated comedy about the kookiest family on the block. Funny, outlandish, and completely iconic, the Addams Family redefines what it means to be a good neighbor.

(4)NEW ZEALAND ENTRANCE CHANGES. The CoNZealand (2020 Worldcon) blog has notified readers there will be “New entrance requirements for New Zealand from 1 October”.

Entrance requirements to New Zealand (NZ) are changing on 1 October 2019. Please read these instructions carefully, even if you have travelled to NZ before.

The key change is that New Zealand is introducing a pre-travel electronic authorisation process, called an NZeTA (New Zealand Electronic Travel Authority). This authorisation must be obtained in advance of travel, and will apply to many citizens of countries included in the Visa Waiver programme, including the United States of America, the UK and most European countries (full list here)….

There is additional information in the full post.

(5) DON’T WASTE A MOMENT. Heritage Auctions’ Intelligent Collector interviews sff art collector Glynn Crain in  “Amazing Sci-Fi Story”. The Glynn and Suzanne Crain Science-Fiction Collection goes under the hammer August 13-14.

If Glynn Crain has a tip, it is don’t ignore late-night phone calls. Especially if you are a collector.

Crain vividly recalls the evening several years ago that he and his wife came home from the movies. “It was about 10 o’clock and a friend of mine had left a message. ‘Hey Glynn, give me a call when you get a chance.’ I didn’t call him back until the next evening. I didn’t think there was any urgency. Well, there was urgency and when he couldn’t get ahold of me, he picked up the phone and called someone else and the painting sold instantly.”

The friend’s find was a painting by famed illustrator Stanley Meltzoff, who in the 1950s created dozens of covers for novels by science-fiction author Robert Heinlein and others. “[Meltzoff] influenced a host of illustrators that came later,” Crain says, “people like Paul Lehr, Vincent Di Fate, and on and on. He’s revered. It was a painting I would dearly love to have, a fantastic example.

“It’s in a good home now,” says Crain, 63, who knows the collector who acquired the painting. “But that was definitely the one that got away. There’s a saying: ‘You don’t regret the art you buy. You regret the art that you don’t buy.’ For some reason, you thought it was too expensive or you just couldn’t come to terms with the person who had it or the timing wasn’t right or maybe you didn’t have the money. It’s always the things you pass on that you really regret. That was something I learned quickly.”

(6) HOGGING THE LIMELIGHT. Let Alexandra Erin sing it for you —

(7) RED INK. Fortunately, Disney’s been recording billion dollar ticket sales from several hits, because the company took a bath on Dark Phoenix. Yahoo! Finance reports“‘Dark Phoenix’ was a giant bomb that hurt Disney earnings”

And yet, “These improvements were partially offset” by a loss from the 21st Century Fox (21CF) business. And the loss at 21CF was “driven by the performance of ‘Dark Phoenix,’ for which we also recorded a film cost impairment.”

(8) NUTTALL OBIT. Early UK fan Stanley Nuttall (1926-2019) died April 26. He was a former Chairman of the Liverpool Science Fiction Society and the British Interplanetary Society. He was made a Knight of St. Fantony at Cytricon III (1957). Dave Kyle quoted Nuttall quite extensively in his Mimosa article “The Noble and Illustrious Order of St. Fantony”.

(9) TODAY IN HISTORY.

  • August 7, 1942 Invisible Agent premiered.
  • August 7, 1953 Spaceways debuted.
  • August 7, 2012 — The Curiosity Rover landed on Mars at Bradbury Landing.

(10) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

  • Born August 7, 1933 Jerry Pournelle. Yes, I read his Byte column. And much of his Janissaries series and more than a bit of his CoDominium work as well but I’ll hold that his best work was The Mote in God’s Eye that he co-authored with Niven. The follow-up, The Gripping Hand, wasn’t nearly as good unfortunately. (Died 2017.)
  • Born August 7, 1936 Richard L. Tierney, 83. A Lovecraftian scholar. Coauthored with David C. Smith, a series of Red Sonja novels which have Boris Vallejo cover art . Some of his standalone novels riff off the Cthulhu Mythos. Unless you read German, he’s not available digitally on either iBooks or Kindle. 
  • Born August 7, 1957 Paul Dini, 62. First, he’s largely responsible for the existence  of Batman: The Animated Series, Superman: The Animated Series, The New Batman/Superman Adventures, Batman BeyondJustice Leagueand yes, Duck Dodgers And Tiny Toons as well which are superb, too. He’s recently been writing for the Ultimate Spider-Man series which is quite good. He co-authored with Pat Cadigan Harley Quinn: Mad Love.
  • Born August 7, 1960 David Duchovny, 59. Obviously, Fox Mulder on X-Files. Now, has he done any other genre? Well he was Dr. Ira Kane in Evolution, a comic SF film, and then there’s Denise Bryson, formerly Dennis Bryson, played by him, who’s a transgender DEA agent on the Twin Peaks series. He also voices Ethan Cole in Area 51, a first person video game shooter. 
  • Born August 7, 1960 Melissa Scott, 59. I think the first work I read by her was Trouble and Her Friends which holds up well even now. I’m also fond of Night Sky Mine and The Jazz. I see she has an entire series set in the Stargate Atlantis universe. 
  • Born August 7, 1964 A. J. Hartley, 55. His Steeplejack is not only really well-written but has an interesting conception as he tells here. Though written for the Tor Teen line, I recommend it as it’s a fun series. Well fun as dystopias go. 
  • Born August 7, 1975Charlize Theron, 44. She surprised me by being in a number of genre films including 2008), Snow White and the Huntsman and The Huntsman: Winter’s War (which are both quite superb), Prometheus, Mad Max: Fury Road, The Addams Family as Mortica Adams, The Devil’s Advocate, Æon Flux in  Æon Flux, the narrator of Astro Boy and her first film, Children of the Corn III: Urban Harvest, a horror film I suspect she’d prefer everyone forget. She played Pria Lavesque on The Orville in the episode called, errr, “Pria”.
  • Born August 7, 1978 Cirroc Lofton, 41. Jake Sisko on Deep Space Nine which I still consider the best Trek series to date, though Discovery is now my second favorite series. Lofton btw, like many performers on all of the series, has shown up in the fan-made video series. He’s played Jacob, no last name, on two part “Requiem” of Star Trek: Renegades. Presumably the name change was because he didn’t have permission to appear as his Trek character. And he played Sevar on Star Trek: Of Gods and Men, another such endeavor.  
  • Born August 7, 1979 Eric Johnson, 40. Scifi’s Flash Gordon on the series of that name that they aired from August 10, 2007 to February 8, 2008. Look, I’m used to Flash Gordon series that are nearly a century old so I had no idea no one had been done recently. Anyone see this?

(11) THE DRAGONS HATCH. Fast work! Mere hours after the ballot went live Cora Buhlert posted an epic analysis of the Dragon Awards nominees in “The 2019 Dragon Award Finalists: Mainstream Respectability at Last?”

So the Dragon Awards finally seem to be moving towards what they were supposed to do, namely reward broadly popular works in a variety of genres. Indies and eager self-promoters can still grab slots in the less popular down ballot categories, but except for military science fiction they no longer dominate any one category. Chris Kennedy still managed to grab a few slots for his publishing outfit, but then maybe he is one of the few who still care. Meanwhile, the 20Booksto50K/LMBPN Publishing folks are notable by their complete absence. There are a few puppy/puppy adjacent authors, but most of them have fanbases beyond the puppy bubble. And indeed, Camestros Felapton dug up Brad Torgersen’s reaction to the ballot and a list of which finalists he considers the relevant ones. It’s about the names you’d expect except for Philip Ligon, who’s notable by his absence.

(12) THE ORIGINAL CRASHLANDERS. Meanwhile, could tardigrades be hibernating on the Moon for however long it takes for us to get up there and terraform it? The Guardian speculates “Tardigrades may have survived spacecraft crashing on moon”.

The odds of finding life on the moon have suddenly rocketed skywards. But rather than elusive alien moonlings, the beings in question came from Earth and were spilled across the landscape when a spacecraft crashed into the surface.

The Israeli Beresheet probe was meant to be the first private lander to touch down on the moon. And all was going smoothly until mission controllers lost contact in April as the robotic craft made its way down. Beyond all the technology that was lost in the crash, Beresheet had an unusual cargo: a few thousand tiny tardigrades, the toughest animals on Earth.

(13) LIKE FOSSILIZED SPACESHIPS. In last week’s Science — “Fossils show large predator prowled Cambrian sediments”.

In the summer of 2018, palaeontologists hammering away at 500-million-year-old rocks high in the Canadian Rockies turned up hundreds of specimens of an unknown but evidently hyperabundant creature. With a hand-size carapace that looks like it was sketched out in science fiction concept art,the diggers nicknamed it “the spaceship.” Now, they’ve given the creature its first scientific description and a name: Cambroraster falcatus—after the famed Millennium Falcon starship from Star Wars

(14) DINNER IS SERVED. Contrary to popular belief, carnivorous cats and canines probably didn’t hunt the same limited pool of prey — “Fossils Reveal Why Coyotes Outlived Saber-Toothed Cats” in the Smithsonian.

…Per CNN’s Ashley Strickland, the scientists’ research pinpoints a different explanation for S. fatalis and other giant cats’ demise, positing that factors, including climate change and an uptick in nearby human populations, precipitated the species’ eventual extinction. (The team is collaborating on a second study with experts across six institutions to further refine these causes, Chrissy Sexton notes for Earth.com.)

Smaller predators such as coyotes and grey wolves, on the other hand, weathered harsh conditions by adapting to the times. As DeSantis tells National Geographic’s John Pickrell, “When the large predators and prey go extinct, not only do [the smaller animals] shrink, but they fundamentally change their diet and start scavenging to become the opportunists we know today.”

(15) NOVEL: ENDORSEMENT. Here’s the plug on the cover of JDA’s next book: “’Could be the most dangerous sci-fi novel of my lifetime. Read it before it’s banned.’ – MIlo Yiannopoulos.” Jon is sure I’ll want to pick that up the first day.

(16) GREASED LIGHTNING. “Stonehenge: Neolithic People Moved Enormous Rocks Using Pig Fat for Lubrication, Archaeologist Says”Newsweek has the story.

In a study published in February, researchers examined how the stones were quarried. They suggested the Neolithic people may have constructed a platform to excavate the rocks, then used wooden levers to lower the rocks onto a wooden sledge that could then have been “hauled away with ropes.”

The largest of the stones, known as the sarsen trilithons, are over 25 feet in height and weigh over 30 tons. These were moved from a site 18 miles away.

Researchers have also previously suggested these sledges were greased to help move them along—past experiments show the most efficient way to transport them would be a greased timber slipway. However, physical evidence to back this up was lacking—the logs used for the sledges are unlikely to have been preserved.

In a study published in Antiquity, Shillito, from the U.K.’s Newcastle University, has said fat residues found on pottery near Stonehenge may help back the greased sled theory….

(17) ALL RISE. Surprisingly, it worked: “The ancient Egyptian yeasts being used to bake modern bread”.

The yeast microbes had been asleep for more than 5,000 years, buried deep in the pores of Egyptian ceramics, by the time Seamus Blackley came along and used them to bake a loaf of bread.

An amateur Egyptologist and one of the inventors of the Xbox game console, he’s also a keen hobby baker who routinely posts pictures of his breadmaking projects on social media.

He has, he admits, made his fair share of “horrible, rock-like loaves”. But this experiment was in a different league altogether.

The first step was to extract the yeast without destroying the vessels where it was held. With the help of archaeologist Dr Serena Love, Mr Blackley gained access to the collections of Egyptian beer- and bread-making vessels held in two museums in the US city of Boston.

(18) POLLY WANNA KLINGON? It could have eaten them for snacks: “Ancient parrot in New Zealand was 1m tall, study says”.

A giant parrot that roamed New Zealand about 19 million years ago had a height of 1m (3ft 2in) – more than half the average height of a human, a new study has found.

The remains of the parrot were found near St Bathans in New Zealand’s southern Otago region.

Given its size, the parrot is believed to have been flightless and carnivorous, unlike most birds today.

…”There are no other giant parrots in the world,” Professor Trevor Worthy, a palaeontologist at Flinders University in Australia and lead author of the study, told the BBC. “Finding one is very significant.”

The Smithsonian calls it “Squawkzilla”.

(19) END OF THE TRIAL. BBC tells how “Franz Kafka papers lost in Europe but reunited in Jerusalem”.

The National Library [Israel] unveiled the documents after years of international searches and legal disputes.

It was left the collection in 1968 by Max Brod, the friend who Kafka had trusted to burn his writings after his death in the 1920s

But Brod refused, later going on to publish them instead.

Brod then left the papers to the National Library of Israel in his will.

However, after he died in 1968 they disappeared – eventually sparking a hunt which led investigators to Germany, Switzerland, and bank vaults in Israel.

It was, the National Library’s spokeswoman Vered Lion-Yerushalmi said, a story which was in itself “Kafkaesque”.

The final batch, which has just been sent to Jerusalem, had spent decades stored in vaults at the headquarters in Zurich of Swiss bank UBS.

(20) COLLATERAL DAMAGE. NPR explains why it’s crackers to slip a wild wasp the dropsy in snide: “New Evidence Shows Popular Pesticides Could Cause Unintended Harm To Insects”.

Consider, for a moment, the circuitous journey of the insecticide called thiamethoxam, on its way to killing a wild wasp.

Alejandro Tena, a researcher at the Valencia Institute of Agricultural Research, in Spain, mixed the chemical into water used to irrigate clementine trees. This is a common practice among citrus farmers. As intended, the tree roots absorbed the insecticide, and it spread throughout the trees’ branches and leaves.

A mealybug landed on the clementine tree, bit through the bark, and began feeding on tree sap underneath. The bug ingested traces of the insecticide. This, in fact, is how thiamethoxam is supposed to work.

Unfortunately, though, the pesticide’s journey wasn’t over. Traces of it showed up in a sticky, sugary, substance called honeydew that the mealybugs excrete. Honeydew is an important food for other insects, such as wasps and hoverflies. In Tena’s experiments, wasps and hoverflies that fed on this contaminated honeydew died in large numbers. Wasps and hoverflies are a fruit grower’s friends, because they help to fight harmful insects.

Tena’s study, published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, is just the latest evidence that a family of pesticides called neonicotinoids, sometimes just called “neonics,” can pose risks to the insect world that are not fully understood.

(21) VIDEO OF THE DAY. “Retrobites:  Hanna Barbera (1961) CBC” on YouTube is an excerpt from a 1961 Canadian Broadcasting Corporation documentary in which Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera explained how an episode of “The Flintstones” was made.

[Thanks to Mark Hepworth, Martin Morse Wooster, Mike Kennedy, John King Tarpinian, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Cat Eldridge, JJ, Chip Hitchcock, Carl Slaughter, and Andrew Porter for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Jack Lint.]

Pixel Scroll 7/3/19 These Are The Pixels That Try Men’s Scrolls

(1) IN OPINIONS YET TO COME. Brooke Bolander is the latest sff author to pen a futuristic op-ed for the New York Times.

As Tor.com puts it –

Asking “Who Should Live in Flooded Old New York?” Bolander imagines a time in which it’s illegal to live in the flooded remains of NYC, with the only residents being those who are too poor to move elsewhere. In this future, Mr. Rogers’ theme song has turned into an “old folk song,” and “draconian federal regulations” punish those remaining, while millionaires running illegal tourism schemes in the city get off scot-free.

(2) WHAT TOR LEARNED FROM LIBRARY SALES EMBARGO. Jason Sanford’s analysis, “Does library ebook lending hurt book sales? Tor Books experiment reveals answers, may lead to new ebook lending terms”, is a free post at his Patreon page. 

Sanford interviewed Fritz Foy, president and publisher of Tom Doherty Associates, the unit of Macmillan that includes Tor, who shared “an unprecedented look at their embargo test….”

…To discover if library ebook lending was indeed hurting sales, Macmillan used their Minotaur imprint as a control group and Tor Books as an experimental group. The two groups have books which sold in similar patterns along with authors and book series which drove steady sales from year to year.

For the experiment Tor prohibited ebook sales to libraries until four months after a book’s release. After that date libraries could purchase the Tor ebooks. The control group Minotaur instituted no such restriction. (As a side-note, Foy said the there was never a plan to do a six-month embargo on ebook sales to libraries, as reported in that Good e-Reader article.)

Foy was surprised by the experiment’s stark results.

“All but one title we compared (in the Tor experiment group) had higher sales after the four month embargo on ebook sales to libraries,” he said. “And the only title where we didn’t see this happen had bad reviews. And when you looked at the control group, sales remained the same.”

(3) LOTR DIRECTOR. “‘The Lord Of The Rings’: J.A. Bayona To Direct Amazon Series”Deadline has the story.

Amazon Studios’ high-profile The Lord of the Rings TV series has made a key hire. Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom director Juan Antonio (J.A.) Bayona has been tapped to direct the first two episodes of the big-scope fantasy drama, following in the footsteps of Peter Jackson, who directed the feature adaptations of the classic J.R.R. Tolkien novels.

…Bayona’s first feature film, critically acclaimed thriller The Orphanage, executive produced by Guillermo del Toro, premiered to a 10-minute standing ovation at the 2007 Cannes Film Festival and later won seven Goya Awards in Spain, including best new director.

Bayona most recently directed Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, which grossed more than $1.3 billion worldwide last year. He also directed the features The Impossible, starring Naomi Watts and Ewan McGregor, and A Monster Calls, starring Sigourney Weaver, Liam Neeson and Felicity Jones, as well as the first two episodes of Showtime’s hit series Penny Dreadful.

(4) LOTR LOCATION. And where will the series be filmed? Probably where you’d have predicted it would if you never heard about the plan for Scotland. Yahoo! Movies reports “Scotland loses out on lucrative ‘Lord of the Rings’ shoot over ‘Brexit uncertainty’, claims new report”.

Amazon’s $1.5 billion (£1.19bn) Lord of the Rings series looks set to begin filming in New Zealand this month, after producers reportedly got cold feet about shooting in Scotland.

The NZ Herald reports that a “huge” part of the series, said to be the most expensive TV show ever made, will be produced in Auckland, specifically at the Kumeu Film Studios and Auckland Film Studios, with an official announcement coming this month. The report states that pre-production on the Amazon show has been based at the two studios for the last year.

Producers were also said to be considering Scotland as a production base, but New Zealand’s public-service radio broadcaster Radio New Zealand (Radio NZ), claims “the tumultuous Brexit situation hindered Scotland’s pitch”.

(5) RESNICK RETURNS TO FB. Mike Resnick gave Facebook readers a medical update about his frightening health news:

Sorry to be absent for a month. 4 weeks ago I was walking from one room to the next when I collapsed. Carol called the ambulance, and 2 days later I woke up in the hospital minus my large intestine. Just got home last night.

I don’t like growing old.

(6) TIDHAR PICKS BUNDLED. Storybundle announced the The 2019 World SF Bundle, curated by Lavie Tidhar:

For StoryBundle, you decide what price you want to pay. For $5 (or more, if you’re feeling generous), you’ll get the basic bundle of four books in any ebook format—WORLDWIDE.

  • Afro SF V3 by Ivor W. Hartmann
  • The Apex Book of World SF 5 by Cristina Jurado and Lavie Tidhar
  • Nexhuman by Francesco Verso
  • Under the Pendulum Sun by Jeannette Ng

If you pay at least the bonus price of just $15, you get all four of the regular books, plus SIX more!

  • Escape from Baghdad! by Saad Z. Hossain
  • After the Flare by Deji Bryce Olukotun
  • The Thousand Year Beach by TOBI Hirotaka
  • Slipping by Lauren Beukes
  • Falling in Love with Hominids by Nalo Hopkinson
  • The Vanishing Kind by Lavie Tidhar

This bundle is available only for a limited time.

(7) JAMES WHITE AWARD. The judges for the 2019 James White Award will be Justina Robson, Chris Beckett and Donna Scott.

The competition is open to original, unpublished short stories of not more than 6,000 words by non-professional writers. The award, established in 2000, offers non-professional writers the opportunity to have their work published in Interzone, the UK’s leading sf magazine. The deadline for submissions was June 28. The winner will be announced in August.

(8) JUMANJI. The next sequel will be in theaters at Christmas.

In Jumanji: The Next Level, the gang is back but the game has changed. As they return to Jumanji to rescue one of their own, they discover that nothing is as they expect. The players will have to brave parts unknown and unexplored, from the arid deserts to the snowy mountains, in order to escape the world’s most dangerous game.

(9) TODAY IN HISTORY.

  • July 3, 1958 Fiend Without A Face premiered.
  • July 3, 1985 Back to the Future was released.
  • July 3, 1996 Independence Day debuted in theaters.

(10) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

  • Born July 3, 1898 E. Hoffmann Price. He’s most readily remembered as being a Weird Tales writer, one of a group that included Lovecraft, Robert E. Howard, and Clark Ashton Smith. He did a few collaborations, one of which was with H. P. Lovecraft, “Through the Gates of the Silver Key”. Another work, “The Infidel’s Daughter”, a satire on the Ku Klux Klan, also angered many Southern readers. (Died 1998.)
  • Born July 3, 1926 William Rotsler. An artist, cartoonist, pornographer and SF author. Well, that is his bio. Rotsler was a four-time Hugo Award winner for Best Fan Artist and one-time Nebula Award nominee. He also won a “Retro-Hugo” for his work in 1946 and was runner-up for 1951. He responsible for giving Uhura her first name, created “Rotsler’s Rules for Costuming”, popularized the idea fans wore propeller beanies and well, being amazing sounding. (Died 1997.)
  • Born July 3, 1927 Tim O’Connor. He was Dr. Elias Huer in Buck Rogers in the 25th Century for much of its run. Other genre appearances were on The Six Million Dollar ManThe Twilight Zone, The Outer LimitsWonder WomanKnight RiderStar Trek: The Next Generation and The Burning Zone. (Died 2018.)
  • Born July 3, 1927 Ken Russell. Altered States is his best known SF film but he’s also done The Devils, an historical horror film, and Alice in Russialand. Russell had a cameo in the film adaptation of Brian Aldiss’s novel Brothers of the Head by the directors of Lost in La Mancha. And, of course, he’s responsible for The Who’s Tommy. (Died 2012.)
  • Born July 3, 1937 Tom Stoppard, 82. Screenplay writer, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead which is adjacent genre if not actually genre. Also scripted of course Brazil which he co-authored with Terry Gilliam and Charles McKeow. He also did the final Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade final rewrite of Jeffrey Boam’s rewrite of Menno Meyjes’s screenplay. And finally Shakespeare in Love which he co-authored with Marc Norman.
  • Born July 3, 1943 Kurtwood Smith, 76. Clarence Boddicker in Robocop, Federation President in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, and voiced Kanjar Ro in Green Lantern: First Flight. He’s got series appearances on Blue ThunderThe Terrible ThunderlizardsThe X-FilesStar Trek: Deep Space NineStar Trek: VoyagerMen in Black: The Series3rd Rock from the SunTodd McFarlane’s Spawn, Judtice League, Batman Beyond, Green Lantern and Beware the Batman. His last role was as Vernon Masters as the superb Agent Carter.
  • Born July 3, 1962 Tom Cruise, 57. I’m reasonably sure his first genre role was as Jack in Legend. Next up was Lestat de Lioncourt in Interview with the Vampire followed by being Ethan Hunt in the first of many Mission Impossible films. Then he was John Anderton in the abysmal Minority Report followed by Ray Ferrier in the even far more abysmal War of The Worlds. I’ve not seen him as Maj. William Cage in Edge of Tomorrow so I’ve no idea how good he or the film is. Alas then Nick Morton in, oh god, The Mummy

(11) COMICS SECTION.

(12) IT DON’T PAY TO BE IGNORANT. Not on Jeopardy! as Andrew Porter witnessed tonight:

In the category American Writers, the answer was, “In a story by this sci-fi master, ‘I Sing the Body Electric!’ is the title of a pamphlet for a robot grandmother.”

Wrong questions: “Who is Isaac Asimov?” and “Who is Robert Heinlein?”

(13) AURORA AWARDS. The 2019 Aurora Awards Voter Package is online, available to members of the Canadian Science Fiction & Fantasy Association.

The purpose of the Aurora Awards Voter Package is simple. Before you vote for the Aurora Awards this year, we want you to be able to read as much of the nominated work as possible, so you can make and informed decision about what is the best of the year. Please note: the package is only available while voting is open. Remember voting ends September 14, 2019 at 11:59:59 EDT!

The electronic versions of these Aurora Award nominated works are made available to you through the generosity of the nominees and publishers. We are grateful for their participation and willingness to share with CSFFA members. If you like what you read, please support the creators by purchasing their works, which are available in bookstores and online.

(14) EN ROUTE. John Hertz, while packing for his journey to Spikecon, paused to quote from the classics:

Farewell my friends, farewell my foes;
To distant planets Freddy goes;
To face grave perils he intends.
Farewell my foes, goodbye my friends.

(15) MORE BOOKS I HAVEN’T READ. At Tor.com, Gabriella Tutino publicized a list compiled by Reddit User einsiboy, creator of the TopRedditBooks site: “Here are the 100 Most Discussed Fantasy Books on Reddit”.  The Reddit link is here. I’ve only read 19 of these – what a disgrace!

(16) JDA REAPPLIES TO SFWA. Mary Robinette Kowal took office as SFWA’s new President at the start of the month. Jon Del Arroz says his latest application for membership is already in her inbox: “A New Dawn For SFWA!” [Internet Archive link].

Things are changing at SFWA as my friend Mary Robinette Kowal has been installed as president, after I endorsed her candidacy early on.

…As she has featured my books on her blog not once, but twice, I know that Ms. Kowal’s commitment to diversity and inclusivity is important to her, and she will be doing everything she can to change the perception that SFWA is a place where Conservatives and Christians are not welcome to be called professional authors.

As such, I have reapplied to SFWA as of yesterday, and let Ms. Kowal know, so we can begin the long journey of working together to ensure equality for Conservative and Christian authors. I’ve offered my services as an ambassador to the community, so she will directly be able to hear the grievances of such authors who have been treated as second class citizens — dare I say, 3/5ths of a professional author — for so long now within the science fiction community.

(17) VOYAGE TO THE BOTTOM OF THE INTERNET. Shades of Cryptonomicon. Futurism.com thinks that the “Russian Sub That Caught Fire Possibly Sent to Cut Internet Cables”

Fire Down Below

On Monday, a Russian submarine caught fire during a mission, killing 14 sailors on board.

But the public didn’t find out about the incident until the next day, when Russia finally released a statement about the accident — though two days after the event, the nation still wouldn’t say exactly what kind of sub caught fire or whether it was nuclear-powered.

A possible reason for Russia’s caginess? Multiple sources are now claiming the sub was an AS-12 “Losharik,” a nuclear-powered submarine some speculate was designed to cut the undersea cables that deliver internet to the world.

(18) FOUR FOR THE FOURTH. For the holiday, James Davis Nicoll has lined up “4 SF Works Featuring a Far-Future U.S.A.” at Tor.com.

In Joe and Jack C. Haldeman’s There Is No Darkness, English is an obscure language, spoken only on backwater worlds and a few places on Earth. We don’t know exactly when the book takes place, as year zero has been set to the founding of the (future) Confederacion. We are told the year is A.C. 354.

What we see of a future Texas suggests that it’s still as recognizably American as Justinian’s Constantinople would have been recognizably Roman. While the region seems a bit down at heel, it’s also one of the more optimistic takes on a future America.

(19) SCALZI GIVEAWAY. Or maybe Christmas will come early and you can read this:

(20) IF IT E-QUACKS LIKE A DUCK. Thomas has found a place where “Robots Replace Ducks in Rice Paddy Fields”.

Aigamo is a Japanese farming method that uses ducks to keep unwanted plants and parasites out of rice paddy fields. This duck crossbreed is able to keep the paddy clear without the use of herbicides or pesticides, and the fowls’ waste actually works as a pretty good fertilizer.  

The method was first introduced in the 16th century but soon fell out of favor. It wasn’t reintroduced as a natural farming method until 1985 and it quickly became popular across the country as well as in China, Iran, France, and other countries. 

About 15 ducks can keep a 1,000-square-meter area clear of insects, worms, and weeds, and they even enrich the water with oxygen by constantly stirring up the soil. But as humans are prone to do, an engineer from Nissan Motor, needed to build a better mousetrap, although this one may not have too many beating down a path to his door. 

Created as a side project, the Aigamo Robot looks less like its namesake and more like a white, floating Roomba with eyes. While the ducks can be trained to patrol specific areas, the robot employs Wi-Fi and GPS to help the robot stir up the soil and keep bugs at bay, though no word yet on how much ground it can cover in a single day. 

(21) SPIDER TO THE FLIER. Have you seen “United–Fly Like a Superhero” on YouTube? The Spider-Man version of the United Airlines safety video? Too bad it’s not as much fun as the Air New Zealand hobbit videos.

(22) STRANGE VIDEO OF THE DAY. In “9 Ways To Draw A Person” on Vimeo, Sasha Svirsky offers a strange video that doesn’t actually tell you how to draw a person.

[Thanks to Mike Kennedy, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Jason Sanford, Martin Morse Wooster, JJ, Daniel Dern, John King Tarpinian, Chip Hitchcock, Cat Eldridge, Greg Hullender, Carl Slaughter, and Andrew Porter for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day rcade.]

2018 James White Award

The winner of the 2018 James White Award is:

  • “Two Worlds Apart” by Dustin Blair Steinacker

The winning story was selected by judges Anne Charnock, RJ Barker and Una McCormack.

The winner receives £200 and publication of the story in Interzone.

The judges also awarded a special commendation to:

  • “A Sip of Pombé” by Gustavo Bondoni

RJ Barker, author of Age of Assassins, praised the winning story:

A short story is a hard thing to write. You have to establish a a realistic and believable character in a very short space of time to carry it (sometimes I struggle to do this with a whole novel at hand). Then of course you have to tell a satisfying, and self-contained, story. An SFF short story is an even harder thing to write because you not only have to do all of the above but you have to establish a world with rules and structure and make the reader buy into it. ‘Two Worlds Apart’ does that brilliantly.

Life springing up on a planet with no sun that just wanders the galaxy? Is that even possible or likely? Probably not, I reckon, when you start thinking about radiation and meteors and all that science stuff. But did I ever question it in this story? No. Not for a moment. It absolutely sold its premise and ideas and I flew through it with a real sense of wonder at the alien-ness of it all, it felt like something new – and that is a beautiful thing to happen. More than that, the story itself left me with a sense of hope and real feeling that in the end people are worthwhile and I think, in a time when the news cycle is increasingly grim, that’s an important message to be putting across. A worthy winner in among a set of stories that showed some real talent at work and were a pleasure to judge.

And Anne Charnock added:

A tightly written story with well-drawn characters, ‘Two Worlds Apart’ poses profound questions about what it is to be a species. Earth hopes to join a Consortium of species and, as a test, a group of human emissaries aided by a Consortium facilitator – an augmented insectoid – is attempting first contact with the Tarshach. The Tarshach face extinction, their energy resources close to depletion. But will they accept help? Why do the Tarshach repeatedly ask “What is expected of us?” A fascinating glimpse into the imagined cultural differences between intelligent species, the inevitability of good intentions lost in translation.

Una McCormack said about runner-up, Gustavo Bondoni’s “A Sip of Pombé”:

Our world at the moment seems to have turned inwards, away from the stars and the promise of the stars, becoming lost in divisions and threat. ‘A Sip of Pombé’, which concerns an illicit Ugandan mission to Mars, shows us how humanity can be audacious and strive towards a better future. It reminds us that if we are to have such a future, it must be found together. A fine story within an excellent set of short stories.

The other shortlisted stories in this year’s competition were:

  • “Imago” by Matthew Eeles
  • “Ms. Höffern Stays Abreast of the News” by Sarah Pauling
  • “My Fault” by Sarah Palmer
  • “The Big I Am” by E.M Faulds

Award administrator Martin McGrath said the 2019 James White Award will open to entries in October.

[Thanks to Mark Hepworth for the story.]

2018 James White Award Shortlist

The finalists for the 2018 James White Award have been named. Six stories were selected from over 300 entrants:

  • “A Sip of Pombe” by Gustavo Bondoni
  • “Imago” by Matthew Eeles
  • “Ms. Höffern Stays Abreast of the News” by Sarah Pauling
  • “My Fault” by Sarah Palmer
  • “The Big I Am” by E.M Faulds
  • “Two Worlds Apart” by Dustin Blair Steinacker

The competition is open to original, unpublished short stories of not more than 6,000 words by non-professional writers. The award, established in 2000, offers non-professional writers the opportunity to have their work published in Interzone, the UK’s leading sf magazine. In addition, this year’s prize is £200.

The winner, selected by judges, RJ Barker, Anne Charnock and Una McCormack, will be announced August 2.

[Thanks to Mark Hepworth for the story.]

2018 James White Award Longlist

The 2018 James White Award longlist was announced July 6.

The competition is open to original, unpublished short stories of not more than 6,000 words by non-professional writers. The award, established in 2000, offers non-professional writers the opportunity to have their work published in Interzone, the UK’s leading sf magazine. In addition, this year’s prize is £200.

The competition received 312 valid entries, and 29 stories made it to the second stage of judging. Because the stories are judged anonymously, only the titles have been released:

  • A Long Way From Home
  • A Sip of Pombé
  • Amalus and the Automatons
  • Androids for the Elderly
  • Blood, Bone, Feather
  • By the Boiler’s Hand
  • Deliver Us
  • Dimensions
  • For the Love of AI
  • Ghost in the War Machine
  • Halfway Human
  • How Grady Lost Andraya
  • Imago
  • In Communion with the Invisible Flock
  • Inheritance
  • Insert
  • Ms Hofferen Stays Abreast of the News
  • My Fault
  • New Instruments
  • Sky Burial
  • Suburban Twilight
  • The Big I AM
  • The Gift That Keeps on Taking
  • The Human Condition
  • The Malfunctioning Heart
  • The Snowstorm
  • Transaction
  • Two Worlds Apart
  • Waiting for the Winter

The judges for the final stage of the competition will be announced in weeks to come. The winning story is scheduled to be chosen by the end of July