Tag Archives: Jaroslav Olša

Pixel Scroll 11/16/22 Good Night, Sweet Fen, And Files Of Pixels Scroll Thee To Thy Rest

Posted on by

(1) ILLEGAL AND UNDERGROUND CZECHOSLOVAK SCIENCE FICTION DISPLAYED AT WENDE MUSEUM IN LA. [Item by Jaroslav Olsa Jr.] A set of various illegal (samizdat), underground and semi-legal science fiction fanzines and books which were produced in the socialist Czechoslovakia in the 1980s are on show at Wende Museum of the Cold War in Los Angeles until March 2023. All the samples are from private collections of Zdeněk Rampas, Czech science fiction fan of four decades, and Jaroslav Olsa Jr., who was behind publication of various of them in the 1980s.

During Communist rule in Czechoslovakia (1948-1989), publishing houses were under strict government control. Not only were political writings suppressed; even hobbyists, collectors, gardeners and yoga practitioners, to name only a few, had to deal with the suppression of free thought. In the field of science fiction literature, censorship resulted in the publication of only a minimal number of genre books in Czech or Slovak languages. However, science fiction fans began to organize themselves in 1979, when the first science fiction club was founded in Prague. Other clubs followed; there were over forty of them by 1985 and no less than seventy by 1987. Simultaneously, the first illegal/samizdat science fiction publication saw the light of day in 1977., The first independent science fiction fanzine produced by a science fiction club appeared in 1981, a simple mimeographed paper called Sci-fi, with a print run of just a few dozen copies and a run of only twelve issues.

During the 1980s, the number of science fiction fanzines published increased, with almost a hundred different titles. By the end of the decade, the first independently produced science fiction samizdats were published, often with pirate translations by authors like Isaac Asimov, G. R. R. Martin and Robert Silverberg. While in the mid-1980s majority of science fiction fanzines were mimeographed, the late 1980s science fiction samizdats were sometimes printed in offset with runs up to 1,000 copies.

Many of these publications were associated with future-to-be important writers, historians, journalists, publishers, or translators, who thus started their careers with producing science fiction samizdats.

Visit www.wendemuseum.org

(2) CADIGAN Q&A. Pat Cadigan was inverviewed about “Science Fiction, Cyberpunk & Curiosity” by Luke Robert Mason at the Science Museum in London on October 26.

Cyberpunk author Pat Cadigan shares her thoughts on the role of science fiction in society, her methods for thinking about the future, and which elements of the cyberpunk genre have become features of our everyday reality.

(3) CARNEGIE MEDALS. No genre works are on the shortlist for the 2023 Andrew Carnegie Medals for Excellence in Fiction and Nonfiction. See the titles that did at the link.

(4) AN EVER-GROWING LIST. Shaun Duke reminded people that he’s building a list of “Space Opera Novels by Cisgender Women, Non-Binary, and Trans People” at Google Sheets. He’s taking suggestions of works to be added.

(5) IS THAT DRAGON FLUFF OR PUFF? Camestros Felapton pulled his eyes away from streaming TV long enough to write “The Dragon Prince Season 4 (Review)”.

If you prefer your dragon fantasy series light, fluffy and PG-rated, then you may be pleased to know that Netflix has a new season of The Dragon Prince.

This is more of a sequel to the original three seasons that ended with the bulk of the plotlines resolved as well as the genre-mandatory epic battle of good and evil. There were several intentional loose ends though. In particular, behind all the conflict in the first three seasons was the mysterious figure of Aaravos. Who is he? Where is he? What is he up to? These questions were left unanswered, which helped lend an air of underlying mystery to the story….

(6) FIXED THAT FOR YOU. Courtesy of Gary Farber on Facebook you can read Alexandra Petri’s paywalled column, “Mike Pence’s new book describes last days with Killer Robot3000”.

“Mike Pence,” everyone says. “Killer Robot3000 recklessly endangered your life, didn’t he?”

I shake my head. It is technically true in the most plodding, literal way that Killer Robot3000, a deadly robot programmed to kill, did exactly that, but I know better. Dangerous as it is, that is just how he says hello; I took his firing a deadly laser at me every time I approached for the friendly greeting it was. I know better than to think it was personal. Killer Robot3000 and I have always had nothing but deep respect for one another.

“I will pray for you, Killer Robot3000,” I told him.

He beeped at me in what I knew was a soulful way. “KILL! KILL!” he said, softly, although technically it was at the same volume he said anything. But there was an undeniable softness to it, the kind of undeniable softness that would have been denied by anyone hearing it except myself….

(7) MEMORY LANE.

2006 — [By Cat Eldridge.] Patricia A. McKillip’s Solstice Wood

Gram called at five in the morning. She never remembered the time difference. I was already up, sitting at the table in my bathrobe, about to take my first sip of coffee. The phone rang; my hands jerked. Coffee shot into the air, rained down on my hair and the cat, who yowled indignantly and fled. I stared at the phone as it rang again, not wanting to pick up, not wanting to know whatever it was Gram wanted me to know. — Solstice Wood

There are certain novels that I find absolutely fascinating from their very first words. Excepting the brief poem (And every turn led us here. Back into these small rooms. — Winter Rose), these apparently mundane words lead off one of her most interesting novels, Solstice Wood which was published sixteen years ago.

WARNING: I’M WEAVING SPOILERS STARTING NOW. GO DRINK COFFEE PLEASE.

Sylva Lynn has a comfortable life away from her family. But after receiving word that her grandfather has died, she very reluctantly returns to New York for the funeral. 

But the old magic protecting their house from the Fey has begun to fail, and Sylva’s cousin has been kidnapped and replaced with a changeling. 

So her like relative Rois Melior, the protagonist of Winter Rose, it is only Sylva, who is part fairy herself, who is able to cross the border into the other realm to rescue him and return peace to their ancestral home.

The best part of story however is we get meet the Fiber Guild, the group who knit, embroider, and sew. Well they do much, more than that with their weavings. They tell Sylvia learns why her grandmother watches her so closely, and what the ancient power is in the forest that Fiber Guild seeking to bind in its stitcheries. 

FINISHED WITH YOUR COFFEE? GOOD.

Not really a spoiler, so I’ll note it’s told from a number of first-hand viewpoints, all very well defined. Not an easy thing for an author to do.

It’s a wonderful novel and though it’s technically a sequel to Winter Rose, also a brilliant novel, there’s no need to read that first. Indeed my reviewer at Green Man, an ardent McKillip fan didn’t even mention it was a sequel to that novel in his review of it. 

Great characters, stellar story, fascinating setting, particularly the house which becomes an active part of the story. The usual outing by her.  Highly recommended if you’ve not read it yet.  And  yes it won a richly deserved Nebula. 

Both novels are available from the usual suspects.

(8) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

  • Born November 16, 1907 — Burgess Meredith. Brief though his visit to genre was, he had significant roles. One of his genre roles was a delightful take as The Penguin in original Batman series. He also shows up in Tales of Tomorrow, an anthology sf series that was performed and broadcast live on ABC in the early Fifties, and on The Invaders, The Twilight Zone, Faerie Tale Theatre: Thumbelina (with Carrie Fisher!) and The Wild Wild West. In Twilight Zone: The Movie he was Narrator, although initially he was uncredited. Did I mention he voiced Puff the Magic Dragon in a series of the same name? Well he did.   Ok so his visit to our world wasn’t so brief after all… (Died 1997.)
  • Born November 16, 1939 — Tor Åge Bringsværd, 83.Writer, Editor, and Fan from Norway who co-founded Norwegian fandom. He and his university friend Jon Bing were huge SF readers in a country where SF publishing did not exist, so they founded, in 1966, the still-existing Aniara science fiction club and its fanzine at Oslo University. In 1967, they produced an SF short story collection Ring Around the Sun, which is known as the first science fiction by a Norwegian author. In 1967, they persuaded Gyldendal, the leading Norwegian publisher, into launching a paperback SF line with themselves as editors. Between then and 1980, this imprint released 55 titles which included the first Norwegian translations for many authors, such as Aldiss, Bradbury, Le Guin, and Leiber. He quit university to become a full-time SF writer, and since then has accumulated an impressive array of awards, including the Norwegian Academy Award, the Ibsen Award, and the Norwegian Cultural Council Award. (JJ)
  • Born November 16, 1942 — Milt Stevens. Law Enforcement  Analyst, Fan, Conrunner, and Filer. Excerpted from Mike Glyer’s tribute to him: Milt attended his first Los Angeles Science Fantasy Society meeting in 1960 at the age of 17. By 1970 Milt was President of LASFS – he signed my membership card when I joined. He was somebody to look up to who also became a good friend. Milt won the Evans-Freehafer Award for service to the club in 1971. He was on the LASFS, Inc. Board of Directors for a couple of decades, and was Chair for around five years. After the original LASFS clubhouse was bought in 1973 Milt dubbed himself the “Lord High Janitor,” having taken on the thankless task of cleaning the place. Milt was among the club’s few nationally-active fanzine publishers and fanpoliticians. He put out an acclaimed perzine called The Passing Parade. He coedited and bankrolled later issues of my fanzine Prehensile. For many years he was a member of the Fantasy Amateur Press Association (FAPA). He was Chair of LA 2000, the original Loscon (1975), and later the 1980 Westercon. And he co-chaired L.A.Con II (1984), which still holds the attendance record. He was made Fan GoH of Loscon 9 and Westercon 61. (Died 2017.) (JJ)
  • Born November 16, 1952 — Candas Jane Dorsey, 70. Canadian writer who’s the winner of the Prix Aurora Award, and the Otherwise Award for gender-bending SF, for her Black Wine novel. She’s also won a Prix Aurora Award for her short story, “Sleeping in a Box”.  She’s one of the founders of SF Canada was founded as an authors collective in the late Eighties as Canada’s National Association of Speculative Fiction Professionals. At the present time, she appears to have little available from the usual digital suspects. 
  • Born November 16, 1952 — Robin McKinley, 70. Beauty: A Retelling of the Story of Beauty and the Beast was her first book. It was considered a superb work and was named an American Library Association Notable Children’s Book and an ALA Best Book for Young Adults. Rose Daughter is another version of that folktale, whereas Spindle’s End is the story of Sleeping Beauty, and Deerskin and two of the stories that you can find in The Door in the Hedge are based on other folktales. She does a superb telling of the Robin Hood legend in The Outlaws of Sherwood. Among her novels that are not based on folktales are Sunshine, Chalice and Dragonhaven. Her 1984 The Hero and the Crown won the Newbery Medal as that year’s best new American children’s book. She was married to Peter Dickinson from 1991 to his death in 2015, they lived together in Hampshire, England where she still lives. They co-wrote two splendid collections, Water: Tales of Elemental Spirits and Fire: Tales of Elemental Spirits. I’d be very remiss not to note her Awards, to wit a Newbery Honor for The Blue Sword, then a Newbery Medal for The Hero and the Crown, a World Fantasy Award for Anthology/Collection for Imaginary Lands, as editor, a Phoenix Award Honor Book for Beauty and a Mythopoeic Fantasy Award for Adult Literature for Sunshine. Impressive indeed!
  • Born November 16, 1976 — Lavie Tidhar, 46. The first work I read by him was Central Station which won a John W. Campbell Memorial Award for Best Science Fiction Novel. It certainly deserved that accolade! The next work by him I experienced was The Bookman Histories in which Mycroft Holmes is murdered and, well, everything of a pulp nature gets tossed into alternate history England. Both absolutely brilliant and completely annoying at the same time. I’m just finished Neom which might be one of his best works, period.
  • Born November 16, 1977 — Gigi Edgley, 45. Actor and Singer from Australia. Though her genre experiences are varied, I think she’ll be best remembered for her role as Chiana, one of the Nebari, a repressive race that she rebels against, and as a result, becomes a member of the crew on Moya on the Farscape series. Other genre appearances include a role in Richard Hatch’s robot film Diminuendo, and guest parts in episodes of Beastmaster, The Lost World, Quantum Apocalypse and the web series Star Trek Continues (in “Come Not Between the Dragons”). She is a popular guest at SFF media conventions.

(9) COMICS SECTION.

(10) HERNANDEZ BROTHERS Q&A. Publishers Weekly celebrates “40 Years of Love and Rockets: PW Talks with Gilbert and Jaime”.

Marking the 40th anniversary of a groundbreaking literary comics series, Fantagraphics Books is releasing Love and Rockets: The First 50 by the celebrated cartooning brothers Gilbert and Jaime Hernandez, a boxed eight-volume hardcover set collecting the series’ first 50 issues. The new edition is out this month.

Created by two Mexican American brothers (with occasional contributions from another brother, Mario) and first released as periodical comics (now book collections) by Fantagraphics in 1982, Love and Rockets came to define the budding alternative comics scene of the 1980s. Originally focused on comic, sometimes surrealist science-fiction, the stories of Los Bros shifted into the realm of nuanced naturalistic fiction set within a vividly written and illustrated world of working class Latinx characters….

How did you get into the punk scene, and when did you start working that into your comics?

GH: Growing up, reading and drawing comics, the radio was always on. Later, when we were older, we listened to a lot of glam rock. When punk came along, it was similar, except revved up. It was louder, it was more political. You went to the punk shows in the early days, they were wild, and you had the most stories you could fit into your brain. A lot of those ended up in Love and Rockets.

Jaime Hernandez: It was the first time I was part of a youth culture thing. My characters that I was creating on the side—this was before Love and Rockets—they started to cut their hair. They started to wear punk clothes. It was at the same time that we started thinking about our own culture and putting that in our comics. I think back now and go, “Why didn’t we do that the whole time?” Stories happening in our neighborhood, or at punk shows, were way more interesting than the latest X-Men comic.

(11) WAKANDAN AND ATLANTEAN FASHION STATEMENTS. In Variety:“’Wakanda Forever’ : Ruth Carter on Creating Costumes for ‘Black Panther’ Sequel”.

… “Black Panther’s” costume designer Ruth E. Carter and production designer Hannah Beachler both returned for the sequel. And for the film’s cinematography, Coogler called in Autumn Arkapaw — who is no stranger to the Marvel Cinematic Universe, having worked on “Loki” — to help deliver his vision.

A good chunk of the film involves the underwater city of Talokan, where the franchise’s new character Namor [Tenoch Huerta] rules off the coast of Mexico; thus, lots of Mayan art and cultural influences. “We continue to push the artistic elements. We were exploring the deep ocean and looked at different inspirations in Mayan culture, as well as the Aztecs. We were [also] upgrading and reinventing Wakanda,” says Carter. “I remember Ryan saying every time he sees a new Batman movie, the suit is different. He felt that we could upgrade some of the things in Wakanda. So the Dora Milaje warriors got new armor and Nakia [Lupita Nyong’o] got a new suit.”Namor ’s right-hand man Attuma, played by Alex Livinalli, wears a fierce headdress that comes from the sea. Carter says that once Coogler saw concepts of hammerhead shark bone structure, he wanted that for the character’s costume, something that also ties into Attuma’s Atlantean origins. “We went to the historians and showed them some of the things were looking at. We learned about Spondylus shells and jade,” Carter says of the elements used for the costume.

(12) PRESIDENT CARTER. “Helena Bonham Carter Named London Library’s First Female President”. She’s been a member since 1986.

The 180-year-old private library, the first lending library in London, will welcome Helena Bonham Carter as its first female president. The actress has been linked to members of the library through her career, having played characters in an adaptation of founding member Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations, and Netflix’s adaptation of Enola Holmes, itself a retelling of London Library member Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock series.

“The library is truly a place like no other, inspiring and supporting writers for over 180 years, many of whom have in some way informed my own career and those of actors everywhere,” she said….

(13) GRAMMY. The 2023 Grammy Award nominations were published in yesterday’s Los Angeles Times. While I do recognize a few genre finalists it doesn’t seem profitable to post those while doubtless overlooking many more due to my unfamiliarity with hit music. If you are so inclined, feel free to name the ones you recognize in comments.

(14) VIDEO OF THE DAY. Award-winning game God of War Ragnarök is coming to PS5 and PS4, a fact to which “All Parents Can Relate”. Or so this celebrity-filled commercial claims!

What could real parents learn from the relationship between Kratos and Atreus? Whether you’re a famous celebrity or a troubled god, parenting is always a work in progress. Just ask parent support group leader, Ben Stiller, as he explains to LeBron James, John Travolta and their children how the father/son dynamic in God of War Ragnarök can inspire us all to become better parents – especially when wearing the Kratos costume. God of War Ragnarök arrives to PS5 and PS4 November 9th and these famous families aren’t waiting a minute longer to fully embrace a new way of parenting… well at least the parents.

[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, Chris Barkley, Andrew Porter, Chris Rose, Daniel Dern, Michael Toman, Cat Eldridge, Mike Kennedy, and JJ for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Jayn.]

Pixel Scroll 11/16/21 Filefjonk, Scrollmaiden, And Other Moominpixels

Posted on by

(1) SFF HISTORY. Jaroslav Olsa Jr., Consul General at the Czech Consulate in Los Angeles, will lecture on forgotten Czech-American science fiction writer Miles / Miloslav J. Breuer during the November 18 LASFS meeting.

After publishing a small booklet and opening of an exhibition on Breuer, you can hear a short lecture (30 min) on Breuer, his Czech-American life and science fiction I am to deliver on 18 November 2021 to Los Angeles Science Fantasy Society. LASFS was created by my late friend Forrest J Ackerman in 1934 and this is to be its meeting number 4395!!!

The zoom room opens on 18 November 2021 at 7:45 PM Pacific Standard Time (in Europe it is 19 November 04:45 AM, and in Beijing 19 November at 11:45 AM), meeting starts at 8:00 PM, my lecture will be the part of the meeting.

You do not need to be LASFS member – only use the following link. Zoom address:  https://us02web.zoom.us/j/82574832548

(2) AUREALIS AWARDS ALERT. There is now less than one month until entries close for the 2021 Aurealis Awards. The administrators remind Australian creators —

It’s important to remember that ALL eligible Australian work published for the first time between January 1 and December 31, 2021 must be entered by December 14, even work intended for publication after the December 14 cut off date.

(3) SEE WORLD FANTASY AWARDS. A recording of the World Fantasy Awards 2021 awards ceremony held Sunday, November 7 can be viewed here.

(4) JOURNEY PLANET. Journey Planet issue 59, dedicated to the Hugos, continues the zine’s usual year-end deluge of issues. Available here.  

Chris Garcia and James Bacon are joined by Jean Martin for an issue that takes a look at the Hugos in various ways. Hugo nominee Cora Buhlert looks at one of Fritz Lieber’s legendary stories. Chris Garcia and Kristy Baxter bring their podcast Short Story Short Podcast to the pages of Journey Planet as they look at the 2021 Best Short Story nominees, Jean interviews the amazing Hugo-winning Fan Artist Maurine Starkey, and Hugo winning Fanzine Editor James Bacon looks at Best Graphic Story. All this with art by Mo Starkey and Chris Garcia’s various AI-assisted programs!

(5) STRANGE MUSIC. [Item by Martin Morse Wooster.] In the Financial Times behind a paywall, Tom Faber reviews The Artful Escape.

The most bizarre premise of any game I’ve played was that of 2007’s role playing title Eternal Sonata.  As it begins, Frederic Chopin is lying on his death bed aged 35, succumbing to tuberculosis.  In his dying state, he dreams a vivid fantasy world.  Here the player controls an anime-fied Chopin and teams up with a cast of plucky teens. However, this imaginative conceit only leads to a rote exercise in dungeon-crawling, broken up by dry educational interludes that tell the story of the composer’s life, scored by his nocturnes…

…The game (The Artful Escape) is a simple platformer offering little challenge, but it has visual flair and the genius inclusion of a button you can press at any time to launch into a wailing guitar solo (I held it down for almost the entire game). With hilarious vocal turns from Carl Weathers, Lena Headey, Jason Schwartzman and Mark Strong, The Artful Escape is more engaging as a story, but it resonates as a fable about finding your own voice.

(6) GAIMAN ON STAGE. [Item by Martin Morse Wooster.] Also behind a paywall in the Financial Times, Sarah Hemming reviews the theatrical adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s The Ocean At The End Of The Lane, which will be at Britain’s National Theatre through May.

What’s brilliant about Katy Rudd’s staging is that it keeps all options open.  Perhaps it’s true that a hideous otherworldly creature does (literally) worm its way through the boy’s hand and into his household, assuming the seductive form of Ursula, a woman who beguiles his dad and his sister.  Or perhaps we’re in the traumatised imagination of a shy boy, struggling to comprehend death.  Or perhaps it is his adult mind, transposing a buried memory about when his father became abusive (the double casting of Nicolas Tennant as both father and adult son hints at this).

On stage, interior and exterior landscapes overlap, just as they do in memory, and something is no less real for being imagined.  The boy seeks refuge in stories, all of them pitched on the threshold between this world and another.  Rudd’s staging takes this as its key. Thresholds and portals loom large in Fly Davis’s set:  at home, doors move and multiply in nightmare fashion to allow Ursula to keep bursting in on him (a transfixing bit of stagecraft); a window offers escape; thickets on the farm yield up terrifying, shape-shifting creatures composed of rags and shards and beaks (designed by Samuel Wyer).

(7) IMPORTANT BITS. “Bill Nighy to narrate Terry Pratchett’s footnotes in new Discworld recordings”. The Guardian says, “The actor will bring Pratchett’s ‘personal commentary’ to life in a star-studded re-recording of all 40 Discworld audiobooks.”

 Bill Nighy might be one of the UK’s best-loved actors, known for roles from Love Actually’s Billy Mack to Davy Jones in the Pirates of the Caribbean. But he will be relegated to the marginalia in his next endeavour after signing up to read the footnotes in a new adaptation of Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series.

Nighy will be part of a star-studded re-recording of all 40 Discworld audiobooks from Penguin Random House, which will see narrators read nearly four million words in total, over almost 150 days in the studio, to result in more than 400 hours of finished audio. Indira Varma, of Game of Thrones fame, will be narrating Pratchett’s books about his trio of witches, Fleabag’s Sian Clifford will narrate the titles in which Death plays a major role, and Andy Serkis will narrate Small Gods, with more casting to be announced….

(8) WHILE WE’RE WAITING FOR THE TARDIS TO BE INVENTED. “The UK’s red telephone boxes are disappearing. But some are getting a second life” – ZDNet tells how.

There are still around 21,000 phone boxes across the UK: if that seems like a lot, then it’s worth remembering that there used to be nearer to 100,000.

We made five million calls from those kiosks last year, but volumes have also been dropping for some time: we spent 800 million minutes talking in phone boxes in 2002, but just seven million last year.

That’s bad news for the remaining telephone boxes across the country…

…Still, amidst this inevitable decline, the UK’s communications watchdog Ofcom has announced plans to protect about 5,000  boxes, for example giving a kiosk more protection from being decommissioned if more that 52 calls were made from it in the last year or if it’s situated in an accident hotspot. But beyond this protected sub-set, what about the rest?

As William Gibson famously noted ‘the street finds its own uses for things’. Technology is often put to uses unplanned or unexpected by its makers….

…And already the street is finding new uses for phone boxes: in the last few years, 6,000 have been turned into everything from miniature libraries to holders of defibrillators….

(9) TRIVIAL TRIVIA. In The Munsters, the Raven in the “cuckoo clock” who said “Nevermore” instead of cuckoo was voiced by Mel Blanc.

(10) CLIFFORD ROSE (1929-2021). A founding member of the Royal Shakespeare Company who also appeared in Doctor Who, actor Clifford Rose, died November 6 at the age of 92. The Guardian’s obituary is here.  

[He] was a founder member of the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1960 and one of its most prominent “second leads” over many seasons.

For a time, and before returning to the RSC, he was a household face, reaching even larger audiences in the 1981 Doctor Who story Warriors’ Gate, as the maverick starship trooper Captain Rorvik, who is transporting the enslaved, time-sensitive Tharils, a pride of leonine aliens – until the fourth Doctor, Tom Baker, intervenes.

… On film, he played nice cameos in 2011, in the fourth of the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise, On Stranger Tides (in a neat scene with Johnny Depp, he plays bailiff to Depp’s “pretend” judge), and in Phyllida Lloyd’s underrated The Iron Lady, with Meryl Streep as the best ever Mrs Thatcher, Jim Broadbent her gobsmacked loyal husband, Denis.

(11) MEDIA BIRTHDAY.

1991 — Thirty years ago, The Addams Family premiered. It’s based off both the characters from the cartoon created by Charles Addams and the Sixties Addams Family series. It was directed by Barry Sonnenfeld in his film directing debut from a screenplay by Caroline Thompson who had co-wrote the story for Edward Scissorhands and Larry Wilson who co-wrote Beatlejuice. It had an amazing cast of Anjelica Huston, Raul Julia, Christopher Lloyd, Christina Ricci, Jimmy Workman, Judith Malina, Carel Struycken and Christopher Hart. So how was the reception for it? The consensus among critics at the times was that it was mildly amusing but not much more than that.  Only the BBC really liked it saying that, “the top-notch cast that elevates this film from flimsy to sheer delight.” It was however a box office success making over two hundred million dollars against a thirty million dollar budget. Over at Rotten Tomatoes, audience reviewers give a rather superb sixty-six percent rating.  It would be nominated for a Hugo at MagiCon, the year that Terminator 2: Judgment Day won. It followed by a sequel, Addams Family Values, two years later.

(12) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

  • Born November 16, 1907 — Burgess Meredith. Brief though his visit to genre was, he had significant roles. The first was in Twilight Zone: The Movie as Narrator although initially he was uncredited. One of his other genre role was a delightful take as The Penguin in original Batman series. He also shows up in Tales of Tomorrow, an anthology sf series that was performed and broadcast live on ABC in the early Fifties, and on The Invaders, The Twilight Zone, Faerie Tale Theatre: Thumbelina (with Carrie Fisher!) and The Wild Wild West. Did I mention he voiced Puff the Magic Dragon in a series of the same name? Well he did.   Ok so his visit to our world wasn’t so brief after all… (Died 1997.)
  • Born November 16, 1952 — Candas Jane Dorsey, 69. Canadian writer who’s the winner of the Prix Aurora Award and the Otherwise Award for gender bending SF for her Black Wine novel. She’s also won a Prix Aurora Award for her short story, “Sleeping in a Box”.  She’s one of the founders of SF Canada was founded as an authors collective in the late Eighties as Canada’s National Association of Speculative Fiction Professionals. At the present time, she appears to have little available from the usual digital suspects. 
  • Born November 16, 1952 — Robin McKinley, 69. Beauty: A Retelling of the Story of Beauty and the Beast was her first book. It was considered a superb work and was named an American Library Association Notable Children’s Book and an ALA Best Book for Young Adults. Rose Daughter is another version of that folktale, whereas Spindle’s End is the story of Sleeping Beauty, and Deerskin and two of the stories that you can find in The Door in the Hedge are based on other folktales. She does a superb telling of the Robin Hood legend in The Outlaws of Sherwood. Among her novels that are not based on folktales are Sunshine, Chalice and Dragonhaven. Her 1984 The Hero and the Crown won the Newbery Medal as that year’s best new American children’s book. She was married to Peter Dickinson from 1991 to his death in 2015, they lived together in Hampshire, England where she still lives. They co-wrote two splendid collections, Water: Tales of Elemental Spirits and Fire: Tales of Elemental Spirits. I’d be very remiss not to note her Awards, to wit a Newbery Honor for The Blue Sword, then a Newbery Medal for The Hero and the Crown, a World Fantasy Award for Anthology/Collection for Imaginary Lands, as editor, a Phoenix Award Honor Book for Beauty and a Mythopoeic Fantasy Award for Adult Literature for Sunshine. Impressive indeed!
  • Born November 16, 1962 — Darwyn Cooke. Canadian comics artist, writer, cartoonist, and animator. His work has garnered myriad Eisner, Harvey, and Joe Shuster Awards. He did the art on Jeph Leob’s Batman/The Spirit one-off, and did everything including the cover art on the most delicious Catwoman: Selina’s Big Score. Cooke adapted for IDW five of Donald Westlake’s Richard Stark novels in graphic novel form, four after Westlake passed on. (Died 2016.)
  • Born November 16, 1972 — Missi Pyle, 49. Laliari in the Hugo winning Galaxy Quest which is one of my fave feel good SF films of all time. Let’s hope that a series never comes to be.  She’s also has been in Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters, A Haunted House 2, Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle, Star Trek: The Next Generation,  Roswell, The Tick, Pushing Daisies and Z Nation. 
  • Born November 16, 1976 — Lavie Tidhar, 45. The first work I read by him was Central Station which won a John W. Campbell Memorial Award for Best Science Fiction Novel. It certainly deserved that accolade! The next work by him I experienced was The Bookman Histories in which Mycroft Holmes is murdered and, well, everything of a pulp nature gets tossed into alternate history England. Both absolutely brilliant and completely annoying at the same time. I’m just read Unholy Land, his telling of the founding of a Jewish homeland long ago in Africa, and I’ve got By Force Alone, his profane Arthurian retelling, on my TBL list. 
  • Born November 16, 1977 — Gigi Edgley, 44. Though her genre experiences are varied, I think she’ll be only remembered for her role as Chiana, a Nebari who was a member of Moya’s crew on Farscape. Other genre appearances include Beastmaster, The Lost World, Quantum Apocalypse and she has a role in the video fanfic Star Trek Continues in the “Come Not Between the Dragons” episode. 

(13) COMICS SECTION.

  • Zits finds a record of genre interest that deserves to be even rarer.  

(14) JUST SAY NO. “Somebody finally fixed the ending of The Giving Tree.” Read the “fixed it for you” ending at Literary Hub.

This weekend on Instagram, I discovered something I never knew I always wanted: a helpful update to Shel Silverstein’s psychotic parenting allegory The Giving Tree, in which a tree gives up every molecule of itself to help some ungrateful kid, and we’re supposed to think it’s good and noble or something. Yeah, you remember.

Anyway, playwright and screenwriter Topher Payne has now fixed it. The Tree Who Set Healthy Boundaries is part of Payne’s “Topher Fixed It” series, which was created in support of The Atlanta Artist Relief Fund, and which offers printable alternate endings for certain problematic children’s books….

(15) SANDBOX. [Item by Martin Morse Wooster.] In “Honest Trailers: Dune (2021)” the Screen Junkies say the film “at its core is about getting high while your workaholic parents are distracted” and that Paul Atreides “would be a perfect fit in the X-Men Universe, but here Professor X just teaches you how to recycle your piss.”

(16) WRECK OPPORTUNITY. [Item by Mike Kennedy.] Thousands of pieces of dangerous debris were left in orbit when Russia conducted an anti-satellite missile test this past weekend. Reportedly at least 1500 pieces large enough to be tracked were generated as well as likely many thousands more objects too small to be tracked from the ground. “US says it ‘won’t tolerate’ Russia’s ‘reckless and dangerous’ anti-satellite missile test”.

The US strongly condemned a Russian anti-satellite test on Monday that forced crew members on the International Space Station to scramble into their spacecraft for safety, calling it “a reckless and dangerous act” and saying that it “won’t tolerate” behavior that puts international interests at risk.

US Space Command said Russia tested a direct-ascent anti-satellite, or DA-ASAT missile, striking a Russian satellite and creating a debris field in low-Earth orbit of more than 1,500 pieces of trackable orbital debris that is also likely to generate hundreds of thousands of pieces of smaller orbital debris.

US officials emphasized the long-term dangers and potential global economic fallout from the Russian test, which has created hazards for satellites that provide people around the world with phone and broadband service, weather forecasting, GPS systems which underpin aspects of the financial system, including bank machines, as well in-flight entertainment and satellite radio and television.

… The crew on board the ISS had to quickly don their spacesuits and jump into their spacecrafts in case the station was hit by some passing debris, according to Russia’s space agency ROSCOSMOS. Two US officials told CNN the precautionary measures were a direct result of the debris cloud caused by the Russian test….

Spaceflight Now’s coverage also includes a lengthy history of various countries’ history of testing satellite-destroying missiles, including the U.S., China and India. U.S. officials: Space station at risk from ‘reckless’ Russian anti-satellite test – Spaceflight Now

(17) LEND ME YOUR EARS. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] Front Row, the BBC’s daily arts show, on November 15 had a mention of Kim Stanley Robinson in the intro, then halfway through or thereabouts a brief reading from Ministry for the Future, followed by a discussion by others about dystopian and utopian fiction. Audio available at the link.

(18) COP26. The recent COP26 conference included a session on “Arts and the Imagination Hosted by Brian Eno”. Some familiar sff names participated.

Just as we need climate scientists to present the facts, we need the arts and culture to help us think and feel and talk about the climate crisis at all levels. The conversation needs scientists – but it urgently needs artists too. Science discovers, Art digests. Art and culture tell us stories about other possible worlds, lives, and ways of being. A novel or a film invites us to experience an imaginary world and see how we feel about it. Culture is where our minds go to experiment, to try out new feelings. This special event on the final day of COP26 features story-tellers, artists and performers brought together by 5×15 and Brian Eno, EarthPercent and the Jaipur Literature Festival to explore the role of artists and the arts in responding to climate change. As COP26 draws to a close, we’re looking forward to the road ahead and exploring the power of imagination to drive change – for humans, for animals, for flora and fauna, for soil, for oceans. Featuring Rosie Boycott, Brian Eno, Carolina Caycedo, Amitav Ghosh, Kim Stanley Robinson, Ben Okri, Charlotte Jarvis, Mirabella Okri, Olafur Eliasson, Emtithal Mahmoud, Wilson Oryema, Neil Gaiman and more.

[Thanks to Cat Eldridge, Mike Kennedy, Martin Morse Wooster, JJ, Jeanne Jackson, Daniel Dern, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Chris Garcia, John King Tarpinian, Andrew Porter, and Michael Toman for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Ingvar.]

Pixel Scroll 1/29/21 By Glyer’s Hammer, By The Scrolls Of Trekfan, You Will Be Appertained

Posted on by

(1) ROBOT IS 100. The Czech Consulate of Los Angeles invites fans to the Robot is 100! Webinar on Thursday, February 4 at 12:00 PM Pacific exploring the influence of Karel Capek’s play “R.U.R.” on other forms of art, and the future of robotics. Register here.

[Note: WordPress does not support the proper character for the author’s last name, so the Latin C has been used. And a screenshot of the program description is used to work around the same problem.]

To further explore the past, present, and future of artificial intelligence, visit UCLA Library’s virtual exhibit Robot is 100! Karel Capek’s R.U.R. and the Robot in Pop Culture. You can learn more about Karel Capek’s life and R.U.R. in a complementary UCLA Library Research Guide.

Enjoy an audio created by the BBC Sounds: “The Robots are Us.” This BBC Radio Documentary features Jesse Brown O’Dell, PhD. graduate from the UCLA Department of Slavic, East European and Eurasian Languages and Cultures.

(2) EATING THE FANTASTIC. Scott Edelman invites everyone to settle in for bagels and a schmear with comics retailer Joel Pollack in Episode 137 of his Eating the Fantastic podcast.

Joel Pollack has been a part of comics fandom even longer than I have — he attended one of Phil Seuling’s 4th of July Comic Art Conventions two years before I did — in 1968 — and founded Big Planet Comics in Bethesda, Maryland in 1986. That flagship store has expanded to other locations in Washington, D.C., College Park, MD, and Vienna VA, and I thought it would be fun to chat about the world of comics and comics fandom of the past half century, and how comics retailing has changed over the past three and a half decades.

We discussed what the pandemic has done to the comics shop business, the comic his mother bought him which changed his life, the card game which led to him getting his first piece of original art, how his run-in with a young Howard Chaykin convinced him he wasn’t cut out to be a professional comics artist, what opening day was like at the first of his Big Planet comic book stores, the biggest sales event he’s seen during his 35-year retailing career, what inspired Bernie Wrightson to draw a freaky issue of Swamp Thing, how he fights back against the Comic Book Guy cliche to makes his shops welcoming places, our joint distaste of slabbing, why he doesn’t like doing appraisals, and much more.

(3) INTERZONE UPDATE. [Item by PhilRM.] This week’s PS Publishing newsletter provides some more information on their take-over of Interzone (first mentioned in the 1/8/2021 Pixel Scroll) from Andy Cox and TTA Press (and note that Strahan’s post referenced there didn’t make the latter clear: not only is Ian Whates taking over as editor, but Interzone will be published by PS Publishing). Interzone will now appear on a quarterly schedule, and only in digital format. The first issue will appear in August, and will be free to current subscribers.

And heh, we’re kind of jazzed up a little right now where electronic reading matter is concerned . . . and it’s all thanks to our taking on board INTERZONE, which we’ll be running in digital format only, kicking off in August. Ian has already earmarked some 60/70 thousand words for the debut, and the special festive issue in December (always assuming we have a festive season, that is). So watch out as further details emerge and IZ takes its justified place in the pantheon of Science Fiction and Fantasy in digital format only. 

All queries/comments regarding the TTA Press Interzone should be directed to either Andy Cox or Roy Gray direct at [email protected] or [email protected]. In the meantime, by way of a goodwill gesture, the first electronic PS IZ (August 2021) will be sent free of charge to all previous subscribers. Subsequent issues will be sent quarterly on receipt of an email to be found in the magazine. Watch out for more information

(4) UP PERISCOPE ON SUBSTACK. Yudhanjaya Wijeratne tweeted a list of recommended newsletters. Thread starts here. I’m only familiar with the ones by sff writers and they’re good, so I expect you’ll find more gold in the rest of his list. Here are a few examples:

(5) STOCK MARKET NEWS. Cory Doctorow makes the information comprehensible with his own comments. Read it complete at Threadreader.

(6) DIANA PHO ON DVCON. DVCon 2021 is a free convention for marginalized writers happening online January 30-31.

DVcon, a product of #DVpit, is a free, two-day virtual writers conference for self-identifying marginalized book creators. The mission of DVcon is to educate and connect authors & illustrators who have been historically underrepresented and marginalized in the book publishing industry. Featuring a diverse faculty as well as #DVpit alum, DVcon will offer informative workshops, fun micro-content, and our additional focus will be on community-building and forging connections.

Editor Diana Pho is part of the Money Talks panel from 2:00-3:00 PM Eastern on January 30.

Money Talks.
2:00pm-3:00pm

Let’s face it: publishing doesn’t always pay. Between low advances, payment installments stretched out for years, and the uncertainty of royalties, authors and illustrators might need to get creative about making ends meet. Our panel will discuss different and unexpected ways that authors and illustrators can make money and still stay on the publishing track. It will also help explain some basics about how payments occur in publishing and how to hustle with your writing. Sponsored by the Authors Guild

Featuring: Rebecca Kuss, Thao Le, Diana Pho, Holly Root, Jennifer Ung, Rebekah Weatherspoon

(7) AMBITIOUS ANIME. [Item by Martin Morse Wooster.] In the January 25 Financial Times, Leo Lewis and Kana Inagaki look at whether Japanese anime producers can compete globally against Disney and Netflix.

For many industry executives, the stage is now set for Japanese animation to truly go global.  A newly invigorated Sony is competing with Netflix and global giants to uncover the untapped trove of lucrative anime content.  ‘We were forced to accelerate efforts on all three fronts of digitalization, global expansion and streaming services.  It became now or never,’ said George Wada, senior vice-president at Production IG, the company behind the anime hits Ghost In The Shell and Attack On Titan, ‘We are on the brink of whether Japanese animation becomes big or goes minor.’…

…The list of the world’s 25 most valuable franchises are topped by two Japanese giants–Pokemon and Hello Kitty with respective all-time sales of $92bn and $80bn–and include nine other Japanese names.But behind that success, say analysts, has been a tendency to under-exploit the anime gold mine and heavily criticized labour practices that are hidden behind the most popular titles.

(8) FRAZETTA COLLECTED. Print interviews J. David Spurlock, editor of the art book Fantastic Paintings of Frazetta: “The Daily Heller: Frank Frazetta, the Sci-Fi Rockwell”.

Frank Frazetta (1928–2010) may someday hang his paintings in the Guggenheim Museum (hey, whoever thought that Norman Rockwell would have a major exhibition in Frank Lloyd Wright’s temple of Modern?). False equivalency aside, anything is possible in the current what-is-art world (what’s more, Frazetta already has his own museum). Frazetta is to fantasy what Max Ernst is to surrealism (which is fantasy on another psychic and perceptual plane)….

Frazetta transformed the fantasy genre. What can you point to as his most emblematic work?

There was a gradual building, including comic book covers in the early ’50s, which influenced George Lucas and Star Wars. Then Frank’s early 1960s illustrations for Edgar Rice Burroughs books, including Tarzan and John Carter of Mars. And Frank had a good run, painting big studio, humorous caricature-based movie posters in the mid-’60s. Most illustrators would consider movie poster work as a dream come true. But Frank walked away from them for what he felt was more uniquely his own, with his Sword & Sorcery heroic fantasy art. A shortlist of pieces that I cite as rocking the public’s collective consciousness would include “The Barbarian,” which first ran as the cover to the Conan the Adventurer paperback in 1966. Also “Death Dealer,” which first appeared on an early-’70s paperback but inspired American Artist magazine to break their own traditions to produce a special issue devoted to illustration, including coverage of Frazetta and covered with the Death Dealer. “Dark Kingdom” is another, which most people recall as running on a multi-million–selling Molly Hatchet album cover….

(9) NZ MENTORS. SFFANZ News applauds the “Recognition for Genre Authors Encouraging Young Writers” in a New Zealand magazine:

Check out this item in the forthcoming Focus Magazine. It gives hugely well deserved recognition to well known local SF/Fantasy authors Piper Mejia, Lee Murray, Jean Gilbert and the many other genre authors around NZ who have helped with their efforts in teaching and mentoring and publishing young students.

(10) SF FROM CALIFORNIA. Peter Larsen of the San Jose Mercury-News talks about Bradbury, PKD, Le Guin, and Kim Stanley Robinson in “Dive into California’s science fiction scene — from LeGuin to Philip K. Dick”. Even LASFS gets a shout-out.

…Two years ago, Nick Smith, a Pasadena library technician, curated a “Dreaming the Universe: The Intersection of Science, Fiction & Southern California” exhibit at the Pasadena Museum of History. His observation: While the creators of science fiction are rightly lauded, the history of the sci-fi fandom here is also worth acknowledgment.

“I think that’s part of why this has been home to a lot of science fiction,” says Smith, who is the former president of the Los Angeles Science Fantasy Society. Founded in 1934, it’s the oldest such fan group in the world, with a teenage Ray Bradbury one of its early members.

California appealed to science-fiction writers in the same way it appealed to anyone, Smith says. There were jobs to be had here, the promise of a better life and more opportunity or acceptance for people who might be discriminated against in other parts of the nation.

“Hollywood and television also contributed,” he says. “They provided a steady extra income for some of the writers.”

(11) DARROLL PARDOE OBIT. UK fanzine fan Darroll Pardoe (1943-2021) died January 28 at the age of 77 from COVID-19. Pardoe joined the Birmingham (UK) Science Fiction Group in 1965. He took over Les Spinge from Ken Cheslin and Dave Hale in 1966 and published it until 1979. He also was noted for editing the newzine Checkpoint for a year in the Seventies, and an issue of the British Science Fiction Association’s Vector.

He is survived by his wife, Rosemary Pardoe, co-founder of the British Fantasy Society.

(12) CHRISTOPHER LITTLE OBIT. The agent who handled Rowling’s Harry Potter series, Christopher Little, died January 7. The New York Times obituary is here.

Christopher Little, who as a struggling literary agent took a chance on a scrappy submission about tween-age wizards — even though he once disdained children’s fiction as a money-loser — and built it into the most successful literary empire in history on the strength of its lead character, Harry Potter, died on Jan. 7 at his home in London. He was 79.

His death, from cancer, was announced by his firm, the Christopher Little Literary Agency.

J.K. Rowling, the author of the Harry Potter series, was an unpublished, unemployed single mother in Edinburgh in 1995 when she sent Mr. Little the first three chapters of her first book after finding his name in a directory of literary agents. Knowing nothing about the business, she picked him because his name made him sound like a character from a children’s book.

Mr. Little submitted the manuscript for “Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone” to 12 publishers. He received 12 rejections in response, before selling it for £2,500, or about $3,400 (the equivalent of about $5,800 today). It was a meager amount, but his genius was in the details: He sold only the rights to publish it in Britain and the Commonwealth, and he asked for high royalties….

Mr. Little did more than launch Ms. Rowling’s career. He was the architect of the entertainment powerhouse that grew up around Harry Potter, helping line up everything from Legos to amusement parks.

Ms. Rowling was the first author to earn more than $1 billion off her work, and it’s no surprise that her agent did well too: By some estimates Mr. Little made over $60 million from the Harry Potter franchise. He never claimed credit for her success, but he was ever-present in the background, appearing alongside his client at book launches and movie premieres, enjoying those brief moments in the limelight….

(13) MEDIA BIRTHDAY.

January 29, 1964 — Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb premiered. Starring a stellar cast of Peter Sellers, George C. Scott, Sterling Hayden, James Earl Jones and Slim Pickens, it was directed, produced, and co-written by Stanley Kubrick. 

It was not the original title as Kubrick considered Dr. Strangelove’s Secret Uses of Uranus as well as Dr. Doomsday or: How to Start World War III Without Even Trying, and the much shorter Wonderful Bomb.

The film is somewhat based on Peter George’s political thriller Red Alert novel. (Originally called Two Hours To Doom.) Curiously Dr. Strangelove did not appear in the book. This novel’s available on at usual digital suspects. And George’s novelization of the film is on all digital sources. If you purchase it, it has an expanded section on Strangelove’s early career. 

It would not surprisingly win the Hugo for Best Dramatic Presentation at Loncon II in London in 1965 with The Seven Faces of Dr. Lao being the only other film on the final ballot.

The film was a box office success. Critics were universal in their belief that it was one of the best films ever done with Ebert saying it was “arguably the best political satire of the century”. At Rotten Tomatoes, it currently holds a ninety four percent rating with over two hundred thousand audience reviewers casting a vote. 

A sequel was planned by Kurbrick with Gilliam directing though he was never told this by Kurbrick and only discovered this after Kurbrick died and he later said “I never knew about that until after he died but I would have loved to.”

The original theatrical trailer is here.(CE)

(14) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge and John Hertz.]

  • Born January 29, 1835 – Susan Coolidge.  Known for What Katy Did and two sequels.  Edited Diary and Letters of Frances Burney.  Louisa May Alcott edited Coolidge’s collection New-Year’s Bargain, which is ours; three dozen books all told; short stories, poems.  Alice Dalgliesh edited a posthumous Coolidge coll’n Toinette and the Elves.  (Died 1905) [JH]
  • Born January 29, 1860 – Anton Chekhov.  (Note that kh in the usual Roman-alphabet spelling of his name represents a single consonant in Russian: the pronunciation is near to “che-hoff”).  A dozen stories have fantastic elements making them particularly for us; stories, plays, generally, for everyone.  You can see Nabokov’s discussion of “The Lady with the Little Dog” here.  (Died 1904) [JH]
  • Born January 29, 1907 – John Clymer.  Illustrator of the American West (worked in U.S. and Canada); Prix de West, Rungius Medal, Royal Canadian Acad. of Arts.  Also Argosy, Marine Corps Gazette, Saturday Evening Post (eighty covers), Woman’s Day, Chrysler, White Horse whisky; some for us.  Clymer Museum in Ellensburg, Washington.  Here is the Aug-Sep 37 Romance; it and more about him here.  (Died 1989) [JH]
  • Born January 29, 1918 — Robert Pastene. He played the title role in the first televised Buck Rogers series on ABC that also had Kem Dibbs and Eric Hammond in that role. 35 episodes were made, none survive. As near as I can tell, his only other SFF performance was on the Out There and Lights Out series. (Died 1991.) (CE)
  • Born January 29, 1932 — Paddy Chayefsky. In our circles known as the writer of the Altered States novel that he also wrote the screenplay for. He is the only person to have won three solo Academy Awards for Best Screenplay. The other winners of three Awards shared theirs. He did not win for Altered States though he did win for Network which I adore. (Died 1981.) (CE) 
  • Born January 29, 1938 — Ralph Bakshi, 83. Started as low-level worker at Terrytoons, studio of characters such as Heckle and Jeckle and Mighty Mouse. His first major break would be on CBS  as creative director of Mighty Mouse and the Mighty Heroes. Fast forwarding to Fritz the Cat, which may or may not be genre but it’s got a foul-mouthed talking cat.  Genre wise, I’d say War Wizards which features voice work by Mark Hamill and given a title with the last word Wizards so it wouldn’t be confused with you-know-what film. Next up was The Lord of the Rings, a very odd affair. That was followed by Fire and Ice, a collaboration with Frank Frazetta. Then came what I considered his finest work, the Mighty Mouse: The New Adventures series!  Then there’s Cool World… (CE) 
  • Born January 29, 1942 – Rosemary Wells, age 79.  Five novels for us, counting Voyage to the Bunny Planet and two sequels; ten dozen all told.  Illustrator too.  Daughter of a ballerina and a playwright, who “praised what I did well and didn’t care much about what I didn’t do well….  I drew uncannily for a youngster….  hunted rats with a bow and arrows….  fierce and devoted Brooklyn Dodger fan.”  [JH]
  • Born January 29, 1945 — Tom Selleck, 76. Setting aside the matter of if Magnum P.I. is genre which some of you hold to be true, he was Sgt. Jack R. Ramsay in Runaway which is most definitely SF.  He recently did some voice acting by being Cornelius, Lewis’ older self, in the animated Meet the Robinsons film, and he showed up as himself in the “What Do You Want to Be When You Grow Up?” of the Muppet Babies nearly forty years ago. (CE)
  • Born January 29, 1958 – Nic Farey, age 63.  Irreverent and valuable (sorry, Nic, but it’s true) fanziner.  Two first-rate fanzines, Beam with Ulrika O’Brien, This Here solo (I omit the TH ellipsis mark lest you think I’m eliding, but it’s there); both have won FAAn (Fannish Activity Achievement) Awards.  Chaired fanziners’ convention Corflu (named for mimeograph correction fluid, once indispensable) 19, co-chaired Corflu 31.  Likes association football.  [JH]
  • Born January 29, 1970 — Heather Graham, 51. Best known SF role was no doubt Dr. Judy Robinson on the Lost on Space film. She played also Felicity Shagwell that same year in Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me. And she was Annie Blackburn on Twin Peaks. (CE)
  • Born January 29, 1985 – Giovanna Fletcher, age 36.  Among writing, singing, acting, blogging and vlogging (I am not making this up), two novels for us with husband Tom Fletcher.  Sang “Moon River” with him.  Won Series 20 of I’m a Celebrity – Get Me Out of Here.  Nine other books, some nonfiction.  Website.  [JH]
  • Born January 29, 1988 — Catrin Stewart, 33. Jenny Flint in five episodes of Doctor Who. She was the wife of Madame Vastra and the friend of Strax with the three known as the Paternoster Gang who appeared first during the Eleventh Doctor and last during the Twelfth Doctor. Big Finish has continued them in their audiobooks. She also played Stella in two episodes of the Misfits series, and was Julia in a performance of 1984 done at London Playhouse a few years back. (CE)

(15) HAS THERE EVER BEEN SUCH A JOB? [Item by Bill Higgins.] Friends have alerted me to the announcement that Georgia Tech has a job opening for an Assistant or Associate Professor of Science Fiction Film Studies.

There are lots of professors of Film Studies or equivalent, and plenty of them have turned their attention to SF. But a hasty google does not reveal the exact title “Professor of Science Fiction Film Studies” at any other institutions.  Could this be the world’s first? And science fiction’s first?  Further research may be needed.

Though I myself am capable of droning on for hours and hours about SF films, the job requires “Ph.D in film studies or a related field,” which lets me out.  Also, they probably don’t want to hire someone with the “ink-and-paper SF is better” prejudice.

Thanks to Fred Scharmen and Bill Leininger for bringing this to my attention.

(16) SOUTHERN FANDOM STORIES. Fanac.org has announced another FanHistory Zoom session (in addition to the second Ted White segment already reported in the Scroll). RSVP to [email protected] for the Zoom link.

February 20, 2021, 7PM EST (4PM PST, 12:00 AM London, 11AM Sunday in Sydney) – An Anecdotal History of Southern US Fandom, with Toni Weisskopf, Janice Gelb and Guy Lillian III. Get a perspective on Southern Fandom from the inside. Topics expected to include history and impact of conventions and Worldcons, clubs and fanzines, and bigger than life individuals.

(17) CALDECOTT WINNER. Publishers Weekly’s “When They Got the Call: PW Speaks with the 2021 Newbery, Caldecott, and Printz Winners” includes this quote from an author genre interest:

Michaela Goade, illustrator of We Are Water Protectors by Carole Lindstrom, reflected on the experience of winning the 2021 Caldecott Medal; she is the first BIPOC woman and the first Indigenous artist to receive the award. “I felt a bit like a deer in the headlights and did not know what to say!,” Goade told PW.

(18) BIDEN CAN SEE THE MOON (ROCK) FROM HERE. CollectSpace shares the view —“A moon rock in the Oval Office: President Joe Biden’s lunar display”. Photos at the link.

Joe Biden was three weeks from taking office as a freshman U.S. senator when the moon rock that is now newly on display in the White House was collected by astronauts on the lunar surface.

Six terms in Congress, two terms as the Vice President of the United States and one presidential inauguration later, Biden and the lunar sample 76015,143 will now share the Oval Office.

The Biden Administration requested an Apollo-recovered moon rock for display as “a symbolic recognition of earlier generations’ ambitions and accomplishments, and support for America’s current moon to Mars exploration approach,” according to NASA. The 0.7-pound (333-gram) rock, held by a metal clamp and encased in glass, sits on the bottom shelf of a recessed bookcase beside a painted portrait of Ben Franklin and adjacent to the Resolute desk.

(19) THEY LOST ON JEOPARDY! Andrew Porter’s ears perked up when they had a Star Trek-related item on tonight’s Jeopardy! A contestant missed it.

Category: Poet-Pourri

Answer: George Herbert’s poetic query “Is there there in truth no” this? became the title of the “Star Trek” episode with the Medusans.

Wrong question: “What is stone?”

Correct question: “Is there in truth no beauty?”

(20) UNEXPECTED RING. Click through to see the intriguing image A Moon Dressed Like Saturn on the NASA website, photo by Francisco Sojuel.

Explanation: Why does Saturn appear so big? It doesn’t — what is pictured are foreground clouds on Earth crossing in front of the Moon. The Moon shows a slight crescent phase with most of its surface visible by reflected Earthlight known as ashen glow. The Sun directly illuminates the brightly lit lunar crescent from the bottom, which means that the Sun must be below the horizon and so the image was taken before sunrise. This double take-inducing picture was captured on 2019 December 24, two days before the Moon slid in front of the Sun to create a solar eclipse. In the foreground, lights from small Guatemalan towns are visible behind the huge volcano Pacaya.

(21) FRINGE PRODUCER’S NEXT SERIES. “’Debris’ Sets Premiere Date As Creator Of New NBC Sci-Fi Drama Draws Parallels To ‘Fringe’” reports Deadline.

Debris will premiere on Monday, March 1 at 10 p.m. ET/PT, NBC announced during its first TCA panel on Tuesday. In addition to teasing the upcoming series and unveiling the premiere date, the Debris team also talked parallels to Fringe. 

“There’s always going to be my DNA in the show,” [J.H.] Wyman, who serves as executive producer and showrunner said. “But it’s definitely its own thing.”

Like Fringe, Debris follows government officials as they investigate when wreckage from a destroyed alien spacecraft has mysterious effects on humankind. Riann Steele will star as MI6’s Finola Jones and Jonathan Tucker as the CIA’s Bryan Beneventi.

While the series will feature different stories driven by the odd effects of the alien leftovers, Debris will see the relationship between the two leads develop and gain complexity as the show continues.

(22) BREAK TIME. “30 Minutes of Relaxing Visuals From Studio Ghibli” on YouTube is a compilation of short clips about nature from Studio Ghibli films prepared by HBO Max.

[Thanks to John Hertz, JJ, Cat Eldridge, Bill Higgins, Andrew Porter, Michael Toman, Mike Kennedy, John King Tarpinian, PhilRM, David K.M. Klaus, and Martin Morse Wooster for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Andrew (not Werdna).]

Czech SFF Magazine XB-1 Dedicates Its Latest Issue to California

Posted on by

Czech monthly sci-fi magazine XB-1, founded in 1985 by newly appointed Consul General of the Czech Republic in Los Angeles Jaroslav Olša, Jr. XB-1 celebrates California’s contribution to science fiction with a special issue dedicated to the Sunshine State.

XB-1 (www.casopisxb1.cz, previously known as Ikarie) is the longest-running monthly publication in the Czech Republic devoted to science fiction, fantasy and horror. The magazine recently devoted its December issue to one of the historical centers of American science fiction – the state of California.

A significant part of its 64 pages are dedicated to three short stories from the West Coast. Alongside these works by Robert Silverberg, Kim Stanley Robinson and Gregory Benford, XB-1 also features an article examining California’s global contribution to science fiction, primarily through the medium of film.

The magazine also includes a number of other articles spotlighting the Golden State’s association with the genre. In that vein, XB-1’s cover presents original artwork depicting an alien spacecraft destroying the iconic Capitol Records building in Los Angeles, as featured in the 1996 movie Independence Day – the state flag of California proudly enduring the attack.

The spotlighting of California by XB-1 is far from a flight of fancy. The magazine was founded in 1985 by twenty-year-old science fiction fan Jaroslav Olša, Jr., and was named after the ship in the famous 1963 Czech science fiction film Ikarie XB 1 – also known to US audiences as Voyage to the End of the Universe. Following the fall of the Communist regime in 1989, the fanzine morphed into a professionally published monthly known as Ikarie, renamed after 2010 to XB-1.

The publication of a Californian-themed edition was the brainchild of Jaroslav Olša, Jr. After more than twenty-five years working in the Czech diplomatic corps, serving, for example, as the Czech Ambassador to Zimbabwe, South Korea, and the Philippines, Olša recently assumed a new post, serving as the Czech General Consul in Los Angeles. In the introduction to the December issue, Olša reflects on his relationship to the state of California and to the late Californian sci-fi fan Forrest J. Ackerman. Olša collaborated with Ackerman on various projects over the years, benefiting greatly from the US magazine editor (and science fiction fan No. 1) personal assistance during the earliest years of XB1’s history.

[Based on a press release.]