Pixel Scroll 3/5/17 I Could Not Scroll Thee (Dear) So Much, Scroll’d I Not Pixels More

(1) WEIN SCHEDULED FOR SURGERY. Wolverine co-creator Len Wein has made a public appeal for your good thoughts when he’s in surgery on Tuesday:

Hey, Gang–

I am about to impose on our online friendship for what I pray will be the final time. Then I can go back to posting endless videos of cute Golden Retriever puppies, of which there can never be too many.

Okay, so here’s the deal: About six weeks ago, I took a header while leaving my foot doctor’s office and bounced my head off the floor, which I may have talked about here. At first, they thought the damage was minimal, but further testing revealed I had fractured/broken my upper neck in several places, which need repair immediately or I run the risk of becoming a planter with a head on it. I’m going into the hospital tomorrow morning (March 6) for prep, with major all-day surgery scheduled for Tuesday (March 7) at 11AM PST.

So here’s where you come in. At that time on Tuesday morning, I’d really appreciate it if you just think good healing thoughts about me. I asked the same of you two years ago when I had my quintuple bypass heart surgery, and I believe to this day that’s a major reason I survived it.

So, if you think you can, please do. On the other hand, if you think I drink runny eggs through a straw, I’d rather you not think of me at all. After that, the rest is up to my talented surgeons and whatever Higher Powers That Be.

Thanks for listening, and I hope to see you on the other side.

(2) SPACEMAN SPIFF’S FRIEND. On The Verge, Andrew Liptak introduces readers to Brian Kesinger’s Tea Girls, which includes a series of  Calvin and Hobbes-style Star Wars cartoons.

(3) GANYMEDE BORNE ALOFT BY DEVELOPERS. “Tolkien’s favourite watering hole in line for a makeover: St Giles pub The Eagle and Child in major redevelopment bid”. The Oxford Mail has the story.

HISTORIC Oxford pub The Eagle and Child is in line for a major revamp.

Pub company Young’s and St John’s College plans to redevelop the Grade-II listed watering hole in St Giles.

Known as ‘The Bird and Baby’, it was the favourite meeting place of the 1930’s Inklings’ writers group, which included Lord of the Rings and Hobbit author JRR Tolkien and Narnia creator CS Lewis.

The makeover will span numbers 49-51, including Greens café next door and space above, which is vacant.

Under proposals submitted to Oxford City Council, the Eagle and Child will be expanded and upgraded, with distinctive eating and drinking zones created.

The two upper floors will be converted into seven hotel rooms, with en-suite bathrooms.

Leaseholder Young’s is working with St John’s College, which owns the building and both say they expect the redevelopment to be completed by 2018.

Young’s chief executive Patrick Dardis said: “The Eagle & Child is an iconic pub with huge potential and we are very excited to be working with St John’s on its redevelopment.

(4) THE HOME STRETCH. Radio Times says these three stars have a shot at becoming the next Doctor Who.

Former Death in Paradise star Kris Marshall may be the clear favourite to be the next Doctor – but he still has competition from two women according to one firm of bookies.

William Hill says money is still being taken on Tilda Swinton and Olivia Colman suggesting that the battle for the keys to the Tardis could now be a three-horse race.

(5) SUGGESTED READING. The SFWA Blog has posted the “2016 Andre Norton Award Jury Recommended Reading List” of young adult and middle grade fiction recommended by jurors Ellen Klages, Leah Bobet, Eugene Myers, Jei D. Marcade, and Fran Wilde. I have indicated 2016 award finalist with as asterisk (*).

2016 Andre Norton Award Jury Recommended Reading List

(in alphabetical order by author)

  • Kelly Barnhill – The Girl Who Drank the Moon (Algonquin) (*)
  • Frances Hardinge – The Lie Tree (Macmillan) (*)
  • A. J. Hartley – Steeplejack(Tor Teen)
  • Heidi Helig – The Girl From Everywhere (Greenwillow)
  • David D. Levine – Arabella of Mars (Tor) (*)
  • Katharine McGee – The Thousandth Floor (Harper Collins)
  • Philip Reeve – Railhead (Switch Press) (*)
  • Lindsay Ribar – Rocks Fall, Everyone Dies (Kathy Dawson Books) (*)
  • Patrick Samphire –  Secrets of the Dragon’s Tomb (Henry Holt)
  • Delia Sherman – The Evil Wizard Smallbone (Candlewick) (*)
  • April Genevieve Tucholke – Wink, Poppy, Midnight (Dial Books)
  • Diane Zahler – Baker’s Magic (Capstone Young Readers)

(6) NEWSWEEK TOLKIEN TRIBUTE. “The Road Goes On – The Making of J.R.R. Tolkien’s ‘Silmarillion’” is an article from Newsweek’s Special Edition: J.R.R. Tolkien—The Mind of a Genius.

The story of Bilbo Baggins and his quest to the Lonely Mountain was originally conceived with no connection with his vast and epic mythology. The Lord of the Rings, which began as a simple sequel to the immensely successful The Hobbit, also lacked concrete ties to The Silmarillion (at least in the book’s early stages). But the grip of Tolkien’s earliest tales on the rest of his oeuvre proved inescapable, and the author found himself adding references to his myths within The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, especially because several characters from the latter work, such as Galadriel, hailed from the time period described in The Silmarillion. Tolkien added these characters into his larger legendarium, and in doing so couldn’t resist the temptation to delve deeper into the myths he created and their implication for his world.

“He became more and more interested in what you might call the metaphysical aspects of his secondary invention,” Christopher Tolkien said. “Above all with the nature of the Elves.” The result was that Tolkien died with what he regarded as his most important work, the urtext of a universe loved by millions, in a state of frozen transformation.

Fortunately, Christopher Tolkien was intimately familiar with his father’s vision for Middle-earth’s mythology and proved capable of sorting through the reams of notes and journals the professor left, containing everything from the genealogy of Elf kings to poems to the details of life in Aman. Working with Guy Gavriel Kay (who later went on to become an accomplished fantasy writer in his own right), the younger Tolkien crafted the final version of The Silmarillion for publication in 1977. For the first time, fans of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings learned of the titanic clashes between good and evil and feats of heroism only hinted at in their favorite fiction.

(7) TOLKIEN, THE PSYCHIC PAPER EDITION. And for those of you with no intention of ever reading the book, eBay is offering the perfect collector’s first edition of The Silmarillion – a publisher’s pre-sale dummy copy – for a mere $945.  It has everything but that bothersome text.

TOLKIEN, J.R.R. The Silmarillion. London: George Allen & Unwin, 1977. First Edition. Publisher saleman’s dummy copy used in advance of the book’s publication. This sample book prints the half-title, title pages, copyright page and the first 32 pages of the text followed by a couple of hundred blank pages to fill out the book. With a long blank folded sheet at the rear as a mockup for the map that would be in the finished book. Bound in blue cloth with the stamping and decoration the same as that of eventually used in the finished book. Fine copy in a fine proof state dust jacket.

(8) TODAY IN HISTORY

  • March 5, 1943 Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man is released.

(9) THE FROZEN CHOSEN. As I reported earlier today, Vox Day released the Rabid Puppies 2017 slate. The slate comes with a brand-new logo.

Matt Y accepted the challenge of interpreting the new art.

Techgrrl1972

And could someone decode that logo?

I’ll try:

What you have is a title using a Heavy Metal font, giving it the look of a Def Leppard concert T-shirt. There’s a lot of ice, obviously a clear signal refuting climate change. There’s the castle from Frozen ironically in that they’ll never let it go. There are three puppies. The one on the left is sporting a ladies fur lined parka which might be seasonal however would seem odd to be wearing fur over fur. Not just in a PETA way but just in general. That puppy appears to be playing fetch with Mjolnir and is on it’s way to return it. The husky in the middle has it’s head cocked in stupefied confusion in a mirror image of how most people look when someone tries to explain Rabid Puppies to them. The one on the right didn’t get the melee weapons memo and is trying not to show the others how much that hurt it’s feelings.

The three of them will defend Elsa against the Duke’s evil plans, while desperately seeking a participation trophy once again.

(10) MAGICAL THINKING. Camestros Felapton, in “Tired Puppies 2017”, deconstructs Brad Torgersen’s latest column for Mad Genius Club.

In the comments, Brad even manages to have his cake and eat it by complaining about more ‘literary’ SF *not* having traditional SF covers (his specific example is All the Birds in the Sky) because that is a bad thing too for some reason. Yes, yes, you’d think that he would WANT non-nuggety SF to have non-nuggety covers but that would be applying far too much logical consistency to what is a fundamental objection to wrongbooks having wrongfun in the bookshop.

I think the best, most recent example of this, is All The Birds In The Sky. It’s packaged deliberately as a lit book. It desperately wants to escape the SF/F shelves and go live on the mainstream shelves where the “important” books live. (chuckle) I blame Irene Gallo, who is very much responsible for this trend at TOR. She wants the field as a whole to stop looking like it did during the high period. Because making all that amazing money with space art that actually looks like space art, and swords’n’sorcery art that actually looks like swords’n’sorcery art, was just so gauche.

Note how there is no ground for compromise here. If publisher market SF to a less-SF audience then for Brad this is bad, if they market the same SF to a SF audience then to Brad this is also bad. Would Brad *seriously* be happy if ALl the Birds in the SKy had a cover featuring space rockets (in the book), people descending from ropes from helicopters (in the book) and magical people casting spells (in the book)? Goodness no! That would be the other evil of somehow tricking the honest-SF-reader into reading a book with cooties.

We are back to the unspoken logic of much of what has consumed the right for decades. It is unspoken and avoided, an incomplete argument leads people to a conclusion that they would reject if spoken. By not following the logic they can retain a belief that they are moderate and reasonable. However, their argument always leads to the same spot. Brad would just rather these wrong books DID NOT EXIST. He doesn’t want to ban them or burn them or imprison their authors (although how else can his wish come true?) he just wants them to magically not be there.

(11) THUMBS DOWN. BBC calls live Beauty and the Beast overlong and pointless.

There are two obvious differences between the two versions, however. The first difference is that the current film is live-action, so there are lots of rococo sets and intricate digital creations to look at. And yet, despite the zillions of dollars that must have been spent on the Hogwarts-ish production design, the sad fact is that neither of the showstopping numbers, the title song and Be Our Guest, is as magical or imaginative as it was in a cartoon which came out over a quarter of a century ago.

Few of the actors live up to their predecessors, either. Buried as he is under layers of computer-generated imagery, Dan Stevens manages to make the Beast his own by finding the pathos in his aristocratic awkwardness. Ewan McGregor puts some oomph and ooh-la-la into Lumiere the candelabra. As for the rest of the cast, Emma Watson is prim and petulant as Belle; Emma Thompson’s Mrs Potts is no match for Angela Lansbury’s, who was as warm and soothing as the tea she brewed; and Kevin Kline is painfully mannered as Belle’s wittering father. In many cases, what it comes down to is that the voices in the cartoon were provided by musical and opera veterans who could really sing, whereas the same characters in the live-action film are played by movie stars who really can’t.

(12) DON’T BUILD THIS IN YOUR BASEMENT. The UK military misplaced what?

A north Wales town has a cold war thriller on its hands after nuclear submarine plans were found in a charity shop suitcase.

Staff at a Barnardo’s store in Porthmadog, Gwynedd, were amazed to discover the document showing details of the former £200m HMS Trafalgar.

“Someone said that if the phone rang and it was someone with a Russian accent, I should put it down,” joked manager, Stella Parker.

The plans will be auctioned off.

Charity store staff say the suitcase was donated anonymously and filled with books.

But hidden in the lining of the luggage was the impressive 6ft (1.8m) drawings of the former Royal Navy vessel.

Chip Hitchcock suggests, “Dave Langford is probably snickering at anyone who foolishly thought The Leaky Establishment was fiction….”

(13) VIRTUAL EXHIBITS. Twilight Zone Museum is celebrating 15 years online by hawking video from two TZ conventions held at the beginning of the century. (Remember when the 21st Century was the future?)

For those who missed our two Los Angeles-based TZ Conventions, you’re in luck! We have the 3 panel discussions done in 2002 available on DVD. The actor panel featured actors Cliff Robertson, Jean Carson, Jonathan Harris, Arlene Martel, Wright King, William Windom, Suzanne Lloyd, Kevin McCarthy, James Best, Anne Francis, and Suzanne Lloyd. The writer panel featured George Clayton Johnson, Earl Hamner, John Tomerlin (“Number 12 Looks Just Like You”), and Marc Zicree. The directors panel featured James Sheldon and Eliot Silverstein plus actors Susan Gordon and Ben Cooper (who appeared in their episodes). George Clayton Johnson’s historic keynote address at the VIP Dinner Celebration, which can be viewed for free right here on this page, is also available on DVD. The 2004 panels: Actor panel with George Takei, H.M. Wynant, Shelley Berman, Gail Kobe, Bill Mumy, and Lloyd Bochner. Director/Producer panel with Ted Post and Del Reisman (both of these panels were hosted by Tony Albarella). Writer panel hosted by Andrew Ramage, with Gloria Pall (TZ actor and writer of her own TZ scrapbook plus 14 other books), Sandra Grabman (author of “The Albert Salmi Story”), Chris Beaumont (son of Charles Beaumont, TZ writer extraordinaire), Roger Anker (biographer of Beaumont), and George Clayton Johnson. There was a fourth panel of folks involved with “The New Twilight Zone” (from the 80s), led by Alan Brennert and including Harlan Ellison, Rockne O’Bannon, and others. The charge is $60 for all four of the 2002 panels and the charge for all five of the 2004 panels is also $60. Shipping cost is $6 within USA; if you buy both sets, it’s still $6 total for shipping. Outside USA shipping – please inquire for cost, as we will have to look it up online. These are high quality Region 1 DVDs. Payment methods accepted are Paypal, cash, or USPS money order ONLY! If paying by Paypal, there is a surcharge of $6 if purchasing both sets, or $3 if purchasing only one set, due to Paypal’s processing fees. Note: it costs you nothing to send money by Paypal, but there is a fee for us to receive your money and a 2-3 day waiting period before it hits our bank account. Please email [email protected] to place your order or if you have further questions!

(14) DEADPOOL 2. A teaser for the next Deadpool movie is making the rounds.

[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, JJ, Cat Eldridge and Chip Hitchcock for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Kurt Busiek.]

Pixel Scroll 7/7

Four news items, a tweet and a trailer in this collection of clippings for today.

A.V. Club

“Grant Morrison is the new editor-in-chief of Heavy Metal magazine”  – July 6

Grant Morrison

Much like an obscure background character in an old comic book who very few people remember and even fewer care about, Grant Morrison has suddenly shown up to reveal that he’s actually very important and everyone needs to listen to him if they want to have any idea what’s going on. Also, the obscure background character is actually Morrison himself, and all of this takes place in a miniature pocket universe that Morrison created, and also all of us are actually Grant Morrison. Anyway, the important news that Morrison wanted to pass on—which comes to us from Entertainment Weekly and not, for once, Morrison inserting a fictionalized version of himself into this Newswire—is that Grant Morrison has been named the new editor-in-chief of famed sci-fi/fantasy/boobs magazine Heavy Metal.

 

Lawrence Watt-Evans

”Projects” – Updated July 6

Ever wonder why I gripe when I come up with a new story idea? Here’s why — I already have all these and haven’t had time to write them.

These are things I’ve started, but am not currently seriously working on. I do hope to get back to them all eventually. I’m not listing short stories because there are simply too many of them; only longer works. Except for the Bound Lands, I’m also generally not listing more than one volume per new series; I’m not going to write a sequel to, say, The Dragon’s Price before I finish The Dragon’s Price.

(I’m making an exception for the Bound Lands, and to a lesser extent for Ethshar, because stories in those settings don’t need to be read in order.)

I posted the first-draft openings of several of these on my blog, and I’m linking to those where they exist.

 

Newsarama

Len Wein informed his Facebook followers, “Well, the secret is out. I’m gonna be doing Swamp Thing again, after the terrific response the character had in Convergence. I’m also gonna be doing Metal Men finally, one of my all-time favorite books. 2016 is gonna be a fun year.”

“DC Reveals 8 New Limited Series – Metal Men, Sugar & Spike, Metamorpho, More” – July 6

In 2016, DC will launch Swamp Thing, Metal Men, Raven, Firestorm, Katana: Cult of the Kobra, Metamorpho and Sugar & Spike. Some of the series will be written by the characters’ original creators. The list of titles and writers are:

  • Swamp Thing by writer Len Wein
  • Metal Men by writer Len Wein
  • Raven by writer Marv Wolfman
  • Firestorm by writer Gerry Conway
  • Katana: Cult of the Kobra by writer Mike W. Barr
  • Poison Ivy: Cycle of Life & Death by writer Amy Chu
  • Metamorpho by writer Aaron Lopresti
  • Sugar & Spike by writer Keith Giffen

“We want the best writers working on our characters, and these are the best writers for these characters,” said [Dan] DiDio.

Of Raven, Marv Wolfman says it’s a way to to tap into the renewed popularity of the character from the Teen Titans Go! animated series.

“When I go to comic conventions it thrills me to see all the young fans cosplaying as Raven from the Teen Titans GO! cartoon show,” said the long-time Teen Titans writer. “Because so many comic fans are boys, it’s wonderful that there’s something about her that connects with both girls and boys.”

 

George R.R. Martin on Not A Blog

“Buy Tor Now” – July 7

In one of the more recent developments, the Rabid Puppies and some of their allies and fellow travellers have declared a boycott of Tor Books. I say “Rabid” here because Beale is backing the boycott, while Larry Correia says the Sad Puppies are not boycotting anyone… though Correia and some of the other Sads certainly seem deeply sympathetic to the boycott. I am not, needless to say. Neither is most of fandom. Which makes this a perfect time to BUY SOME TOR BOOKS!!

…And, hey, you can even buy some AUTOGRAPHED Tor books by me. My Wild Cards series is published by Tor, as it happens, and we have signed copies of INSIDE STRAIGHT, BUSTED FLUSH, SUICIDE KINGS, FORT FREAK, and LOWBALL available through the Jean Cocteau… along with hardcovers of our award-winning anthology, DANGEROUS WOMEN, also published by Tor. You can find them all at the cinema bookshop, here: http://www.jeancocteaubooks.com/

[How’d that get in here?]

 

 

[Didn’t you people get the memo either?]

 

Mr. Holmes – in US theatres on July 17

[This trailer was released in May. I just saw it at a movie theatre last week.]

[Thanks for these stories goes out to Rob Thornton, Hampus Eckerman and Will Reichard.]

That Green and Savageland

Ed Green as Gus Greer SavagelandEdward L. Green, actor and former president of LASFS, enjoyed the limelight a week ago at the LA screening of Savageland, a documentary-style horror film in which he plays right-wing talk show host Gus Greer.

savageland1 COMPThe independent film was made in 2013.

On the night of June 2, 2011, the largest mass murder in American history occurs in the off-the-grid border town of Sangre de Cristo, Arizona, just a few miles north of Mexico. The entire population of 57 disappears overnight, and the next morning nothing is left but blood trails into the desert…

The police arrest the lone survivor: an illegal immigrant, Francisco Salazar, who is found covered with the blood of a number of his fellow residents. Despite a lack of convincing forensic evidence, Salazar is charged with all the murders, against the backdrop of racial hysteria and paranoia that permeates the US/Mexico border.

During the trial, a compelling new piece of evidence emerges: something terrible and remorseless passed through the town that night, and Salazar was the only one who recorded it. On one roll of film – 36-photographs – is the record of a gruesome wave of horror, and quite possibly, a haunting glimpse of more bloodshed to come.

Len Wein, who also worked on the film, is briefly in the trailer at 1:26.

Welcome Len Wein Home
from the Hospital

Len Wein, who had multiple bypass heart surgery on February 10, was released from the hospital on Friday. Christine Valada, his wife, tweeted the good news —

And she says he’s back at work polishing his first script for DC’s Convergence event.

Len Wein Improving After Surgery

Continued best wishes to Len Wein who is in the early stages of recovery from his multiple bypass heart surgery on February 10.

Craig Miller told me, when we spoke for a moment this morning at Gallifrey One, that Len has been able to sit up in his hospital bed.

I don’t know whether Len has left the ICU. He was still there on February 12 according to his wife, Christine Valada.

And Len wishes his dog could visit —

Len Wein Hospitalized

Lein Wein on February 6. Photograph by M.C. Valada.

Lein Wein on February 6. Photograph by M.C. Valada.

Wolverine and Swamp Thing creator Len Wein, recently hospitalized with chest pains, will undergo triple bypass heart surgery on February 10.

Writer Gillian Horvath has been passing the word, calling on people to offer “your prayers, your white light, your Yops of any kind. Len can use it all.

“Like when Martha Jones saved the world by getting everyone on Earth to think of The Doctor all at once.”

That’s Not A Collectible, That’s a Paycheck

The last few years of Ray Bradbury’s life coincided with the first years of this blog, which is how I learned there was a corner of the publishing industry that thrived on mining his files to find material he’d written for Hollywood that had never been produced, or was drafted for some other purpose and never reached the public, that could be turned into a profitable small press project. New Bradbury material was always in demand.

Harlan Ellison is another writer with deep files who’s kept that Midas touch. The latest example is Ellison’s contribution to DC Comics’ Batman ’66 project based on an unproduced outline for the Adam West Batman series. Ellison’s episode would have introduced Two-Face.

Alex Ross cover for he Two-Face issue of Batman '66

Alex Ross cover for he Two-Face issue of Batman ’66

Len Wein told ComicsAlliance how the project came together:

ComicsAlliance: …Did you work from a full script, a pitch that never got used for the series…

Len Wein: It is an adaptation of a lost outline. Harlan Ellison – the legendary Harlan Ellison, I should say – had done an outline for this show back in the ’60s, which for reasons not important here, never got produced, and he’d put it in a drawer and forgotten about it.

So, several months ago he was cleaning out his files and went, “Oh my god, this old thing… Hey wait, DC’s doing a book on this [Batman ’66], maybe I can sell them the outline!” And he called up and said, “I’ve got this outline for an episode, are you guys interested?” and they all went, “Sure, yeah, uh-huh!” because, after all, it’s Harlan. So he sold them the outline, and called me up – Harlan’s my oldest friend, we’ve been buddies for forty-odd years – and he told me what I just told you, and said that now they needed to get somebody to script it. And I said, “I’m available!” So he said great, he called DC, they called me up and said, “you wanna do this?” and I said, “you bet.”

And then my dear old friend [José Luis] Garcia-López, one of the great artists in the history of the biz, got involved as penciller. And it started to snowball from there, it became this A-List thing. Joe Prado called up and said, “I hear there’s a Garcia-López job that needs inking” and we went, “sure, it’s yours.” Alex Sinclair called up and said, “I hear there’s this special thing going on that needs coloring.” And then Alex Ross calls up and goes, “You mind if I paint a cover for this?” And it just became this insane project.

See the complete interview here.

Help Rebuild Len Wein’s Comic Collection

Rebuild Len Wein's Comic Collection

When Len Wein and Christine Valada’s home burned on April 6, as Craig Miller explained, “The master bedroom and bath were burned out. The walls still stand but everything inside, including the ceiling, is gone. Nearby rooms had extreme heat and smoke damage and smoke damage runs throughout. DVDs, artwork, awards, etc. are gone forever.”

Wein’s friend Mark Evanier realized that even though insurance should provide the money to restore the house, many things, including Wein’s comics, were not covered.  Evanier thought it was a particular shame that Wein had lost the collection of comics he himself had worked on – and Evanier knew that, at least, could be fixed:

Some of us thought it would be grand if his friends and fans pitched in to help him recreate those shelves of the comic books he’s worked on.

So the crusade as been launched. At the “Let’s Rebuild Len Wein’s Comic Book Collection Project” site there is a frequently-updated PDF list of what they want, with lineouts of what’s been received. It looks as if half of the needed titles have already been secured, but dozens more are still being sought.

[Thanks to David Klaus for the link.]

Valada, Wein Home Burns

Christine Valada and Len Wein’s home burned to the ground on Monday. The escaped with Mike, but their dog was killed.

Harlan Ellison was over there turning the ashes with a shovel, trying to help them find anything left. (See Ellison’s long post from April 6.)

The fire was apparently caused by a power surge that shorted out a wall heater.

[Thanks to David Klaus for the story.]