Pixel Scroll 12/28/23 Pixel’s Just Another Word For Nothing Left To Scroll

(1) LET LOOSE THE LAWYERS. The New York Times would like to be the first to tell you: “The Times Sues OpenAI and Microsoft Over A.I. Use of Copyrighted Work”.

The New York Times sued OpenAI and Microsoft for copyright infringement on Wednesday, opening a new front in the increasingly intense legal battle over the unauthorized use of published work to train artificial intelligence technologies.

The Times is the first major American media organization to sue the companies, the creators of ChatGPT and other popular A.I. platforms, over copyright issues associated with its written works. The lawsuit, filed in Federal District Court in Manhattan, contends that millions of articles published by The Times were used to train automated chatbots that now compete with the news outlet as a source of reliable information.

The suit does not include an exact monetary demand. But it says the defendants should be held responsible for “billions of dollars in statutory and actual damages” related to the “unlawful copying and use of The Times’s uniquely valuable works.” It also calls for the companies to destroy any chatbot models and training data that use copyrighted material from The Times….

(2) I FOUGHT THE LAW AND THE LAW WON. Meanwhile, the Guardian ponders the corporate trauma Disney will (or won’t) suffer as the “Copyright for original Mickey Mouse persona to run out 1 January 2024”.

…The loss of exclusive rights to the historically important first draft of a character who went on to capture the hearts of millions worldwide will cut deep, as proven by the decades of legal maneuvers the company made to try to preserve them.

The episode is also reflective of the turbulent waters in which Disney currently finds itself, including a bruising culture war fight with Florida’s Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, over LGBTQ+ rights, and strong financial headwinds from its loss-making streaming service Disney+, as well as a worrying series of movie flops.

“I always say any of us going past 100 years will usually have issues, but this whole original Mickey Mouse thing is something to think about as we look at Disney going into its second century with a good deal of troubles,” said Robert Thompson, a trustee professor of television, radio and film, and founding director of the Bleier center for television and popular culture at Syracuse University.

“Disney has a lot of things to worry about right now, and the expiration of Steamboat Willie’s Mickey Mouse probably shouldn’t be on the top of their list. The original Mickey isn’t the one we all think of and have on our T-shirts or pillowcases up in the attic someplace.

“Yet, symbolically of course, copyright is important to Disney and it has been very careful about their copyrights to the extent that laws have changed to protect them. This is the only place I know that some obscure high school in the middle of nowhere can put on The Lion King and the Disney copyright people show up.”…

(3) CREATING GAME CHARACTERS AS TRANS OUTLET. “Video Games Let Them Choose a Role. Their Transgender Identities Flourished.” The New York Times says, “Transgender people have turned to games, some with robust character creators, as places where they can safely express themselves.”

Nearly a decade before Anna Anthropy came out as a transgender woman, she was wearing a dress in the world of Animal Crossing on the Nintendo GameCube, leaving virtual bread crumbs for her family about information she was not prepared to share as a teenager.

“We were all playing in the same town, and I had chosen a female character,” said Anthropy, 40, now a professor of game design at DePaul University, in Chicago. “It wasn’t something we talked about, but it was my way of seeing a version of my family where I was the right gender.”

More than a dozen transgender and nonbinary people said in interviews that video games were one of the safest spaces to explore their queer identities, given the array of tools to modify a character’s appearance and a virtual world that readily accepts those changes.

Character creation tools in role-playing games like Starfield and Baldur’s Gate 3 are making fewer gendered assumptions than in the past, giving players more freedom to select pronouns, shape their bodies and select a vocal range. Those new options are leading some players to spend hours creating their virtual avatars….

(4) THE KING TOPS THE DOCTOR? UNBEEVABLE. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] When it comes to Christmas, if Nineteenth Century Britain gave us the Christmas Card then arguably the Twentieth Century gave us the tradition of watching TV at Christmas (as well as throughout much of the rest of the year). So, of 68 million in the United Kingdom, what were the Brits watching this Christmas day?

Well, according to B. A. R. B., (Broadcasters Audience Research Board) the UK broadcasting ratings bureau, the most watched programme over the 2023 Christmas was the King’s Speech. This is an annual address from the Monarch and this year it was King Charles III’s second such address. Some 7.5 million tuned in live (not counting catch-up viewers). The King was broadcast on both BBC1 (the UK’s principal state sponsored terrestrial channel) and simultaneously with ITV 1 (Independent Television) Britain’s leading commercial terrestrial channel.

Second was BBC1’s Strictly Come Dancing, a dancing competition, which garnered a little over 5 million viewers.

Third, was a programme that was broadcast immediately after Strictly on BBC1, so no need to get up from the sofa as the turkey with all the trimmings digested. It was Doctor Who and Ncuti Gatwa’s first solo outing as the new Doctor. Some 4.75 million tuned in to see him tackle the Goblin King. (Again, this figure does not include catch-up viewers.)

Of course Doctor Who was also broadcast in other countries including N. America’s Mega-Cities, so the global viewing figure would be much higher.

(5) THE APPAREL OF AFROFUTURISM. Visit the “Ruth E. Carter: Afrofuturism in Costume Design” exhibit at The Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History in Detroit anytime through March 31.

This new exhibition features over 60 of the Two-Time Academy Award winning costumer designer’s original designs from iconic films such as Black Panther, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, Malcolm X, Do The Right Thing, and more.

(6) MAN OF STEEL, FEET OF CLAY. [Item by Olav Rokne.] Polygon makes some good points about the phenomenon of “superhero fatigue,” which they argue has more to do with ill-considered studio decisions than with the core idea of superpowered guys in capes having adventures on screen. “People aren’t tired of superheroes, they’re tired of bad superhero movies”.

Companies considered the simple existence of an extended universe and the affection for recognizable characters as a core selling point, when it is, and should always be, the sauce and not the meat.

(7) FIFTEENTH DOCTOR, FOURTEENTH SERIES. “Doctor Who Series 14 Trailer Confirms a Returning RTD Character and Release Date Window “ at Den of Geek.

The Fifteenth Doctor era of Doctor Who is well underway with Ncuti Gatwa‘s first full episode helming the TARDIS. This year’s Christmas Special, “The Church on Ruby Road,” saw the Doctor not only face off with mischievous Goblins with a taste for baby scones (that is, scones made out of babies) but also meet his new companion, Ruby Sunday (Millie Gibson), who brings plenty of her own mysteries to the show. Who are her birth parents, what does her neighbor Mrs. Flood have to do with the upcoming season’s overarching plot, and what’s going on with the Hooded Woman who dropped her off at the church 24 years ago?

All questions we’ll have to wait to have answered in series 14, which is officially being marketed as Doctor Who season 1, marking the start of a new production era for the show, with returning showrunner Russell T Davies back at the helm. Fortunately, we won’t have to wait too long for season 1/series 14 to hit our screens. The very first trailer for the Fifteenth Doctor’s debut series confirms that the show will return in May 2024 with eight new episodes. Give the short trailer a watch below…

(8) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

Born December 28, 1932 Nichelle Nichols. (Died 2022.) So let’s us honor Nichelle Nichols on her Birthday. I’ll get her SF work eventually but she’s got a fascinating story long before that. She started off as a dancer and a singer in the bands of Duke Ellington and Lionel Hampton, very impressive indeed. This photo is her as a singer with Duke Ellington.

In 1959, she appeared as the principal dancer in Carmen Jones and performed in a New York production of Porgy and Bess

Did I mention Hugh Hefner briefly employed her to sing at his Chicago club? Well he did. No idea if she also danced there. 

Now we come to the Sixties. 

It said that she came to attention of Roddenberry when she was cast as Norma Bartlett in the “To Set It Right Episode” of his The Lieutenant military series. 

(The series was thick of actors who would later appear on Trek. The lead here, second lieutenant William Tiberius Rice, played by Gary Lockwood, who will appear in “Where No Man Has Gone Before”. Majel Barrett, Leonard Nimoy, and Walter Koenig also appeared as guest stars, along with Ricardo Montalbán and Paul Comi, of the “Balance of Terror” episode.)

She did an interesting bit of genre work appearing in the Tarzan’s Deadly Silence is a 1970 adventure film composed of an edited two-parter of Ron Ely’s Tarzan series released as a feature. The actual original air dates were October 28, 1966 and November 4, 1966. She played Ruana. I was even able to find a high-resolution image of her on location on Hawaii. 

Now Star Trek. What a wonderful character Lieutenant Nyota Uhura was! And yes, I realize that she wasn’t called by that full name until William Rotsler created the name it for Star Trek II Biographies, his 1982 licensed tie-in book. 

There’s little I could say here about her Trek years that haven’t been said before.  She had one of the best roles on the series bar none and the writers wrote her wonderfully.  The films give her an ever more active role and I applaud the writers for doing this..

The films give her a more active role and I applaud the writers for doing this. 

She did appear possibly in several fan video fictions, the first beinStar Trek: Of Gods and Men in which she was Captain, and a narrator role in Star Trek First Frontier (but not onscreen). Here she is as captain in Star Trek: Of Gods and Men, and yes, that is Walter Koenig as well. 

But you want to see her given a more expanded role as a character in the real Trek universe, that’s after the original series was long off the air. It comes into play in the matter of a hidden Star Trek: Picard season two Easter egg which reveals that she has become a starship captain after The Undiscovered Country.

(9) COMICS SECTION.

  • Peanuts from March 1, 1955 is the first day of 4 Martian jokes. (March 3 is my favorite.)
  • Pickles asks a sci-fi question.

(10) OLIVE & POPEYE. [Item by Daniel Dern.] ComicsKingdom takes you “Inside the Kingdom with Olive & Popeye: A Heartfelt Chat with the Creators of the New Comic Sensation”

Olive & Popeye are back with a new twice-weekly webcomic here at Comics Kingdom, where fans are family. The strip stars two of the most iconic and classic characters that have been around for nearly 100 years, with a rich history in comics.

Olive and Popeye, published twice weekly, is done alternately by webcomic creator Randy Milholland and comic writer and artist Emi Burdge (following Shadia Amin’s departure).

The new weekly comic was originally penned by Shadia Amin (Aggretsuko, Spider-Ham) and Randy Milholland (Popeye, Something Positive) and centers on both beloved pop-culture characters and their individual adventures, including Olive’s yoga classes, or Popeye’s messy family dynamic, which usually leads to brawls.

Comics Kingdom offers a 7-day free trial period — or (as of December 27, 2023, “four months free.” (To all Comics Kingdom’s strips etc., not just O & P.)

Or, if your library offers Hoopla access, Hoopla includes a Comics Kingdom Binge Pass (good for seven days).

(11) DRESSED FOR BATTLE SUCCESS. [Item by Steven French.] From Prince Caspian to Assassin’s Creed: on the use of brigandines in fantasy. “Brigandines” at The Secret Library, the Leeds Libraries Heritage Blog. There is a photo gallery at the link.

… A brigandine is a form of armour that became popular in Europe in the 15th century.  Constructed of overlapping plates that were riveted to fabric, it offered more flexible protection than plate armour, and could be produced at a lower cost….

(12) WEARING PROTECTION. Incidentally, here’s a whole article (from 2017) about “The armor sets of ‘Game of Thrones,’ ranked”, which are many and varied, at CNET.

Ranking the armor sets on “Game of Thrones”? Not exactly a walk in the water gardens of Dorne. But we gave it a shot anyway. Here are 21 different armor styles, ranked from worst to best.

Starting with No. 21: The Sons of the Harpy get points for being dramatic but their attire is going to do little to shield from them injuries on any actual battlefield…. 

(13) GONE IN A SPLASH. “Historic SpaceX Falcon 9 booster topples over and is lost at sea” reports Spaceflight Now. Without knowing what they expected, nineteen successful missions sounds like impressive longevity to me.

A piece of America’s space history is now on the ocean’s floor. During its return voyage to Port Canaveral in Central Florida, a SpaceX Falcon 9 first stage booster toppled over and broke in half.

This particular booster, tail number B1058, was coming back from its record-breaking 19th mission when it had its fatal fall. The rocket lifted off from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station on Dec. 23 carrying 23 Starlink satellites. The booster made a successful landing eight and a half minutes after launch on the drone ship ‘Just Read the Instructions’ which was stationed east of the Bahamas. SpaceX said in a statement on social media that it succumbed to “high winds and waves.”…

… The company stated that “Newer Falcon boosters have upgraded landing legs with the capability to self-level and mitigate this type of issue.

In a separate post, Kiko Deontchev, the Vice President of Launch for SpaceX, elaborated by added that while they “mostly outfitted” the rest of the operational Falcon booster fleet, B1058 was left as it was, “given its age.” The rocket “met its fate when it hit intense wind and waves resulting in failure of a partially secured [octo-grabber] less than 100 miles from home.”…

(14) CYBORG? [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] A hybrid bio-computer – combining laboratory-grown human brain tissue with conventional electronic circuits – has been built… and it has learned speech recognition.

Artificial Intelligence, cyborgs, replicants, positronic brains, are all allied SF tropes. Meanwhile, in real life we have in the past built computers part of whose electronic circuitry is based upon neural network structures and we have had computer-to-brain interfaces. This new development is different: it is an artificial intelligence computer made out of both electronic and purely biological components.

The biological component is a brain organoid. An organoid is a clump of cells created by stem cells next to brain cells. The stem cells grow and multiply taking on the properties of the neighbouring cells and turning into brain cells that are in effect similar to brain tissue. (This is different to growing a brain from an embryo.) A high-density multi-electrode array connects the electronic part of the bio-computer with the brain cell organoid. The researchers have only begun to explore the possibilities of this new technology, which they call ‘Brainoware’, but already they have trained it to recognise and distinguish speech from different speakers as well as solve non-linear equations.

(See the primary research Cai, H. et al (2023) Brain organoid reservoir computing for artificial intelligence. Nature Electronics, vol. 6, p1,032–1,039 and the review piece Tozer, L. (2023) ‘Biocomputer’ combines brain tissue with silicon hardware. Nature, vol. 624, p481.)

[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, Chris Barkley, Cat Eldridge, Olav Rokne, Kathy Sullivan, Lise Andreasen, Daniel Dern, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Steven French, Mike Kennedy, and Andrew Porter for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Andrew (not Werdna).]

Pixel Scroll 12/18/23 Happiness Is A Scrolled Pixel

(1) CAN YOU DIG IT? “And the winner for San Jose BART’s boring machine name competition is…” The Mercury News tears open the envelope.

After more than 400 submissions and 1,175 votes on a name for San Jose BART’s tunnel boring machine, we have a winner — and it’s sure to make sci-fi fans giddy.

“Shai-Hulud” came in first place, with 229 votes, a nod to the sand worm creatures in the popular “Dune” novels and movies that many readers say resemble the boring machine that will carve a nearly five-mile tunnel underneath San Jose for the future BART extension. The Valley Transportation Authority purchased the $76 million dollar device in November from Germany and it will be shipped to the South Bay in pieces before being reassembled. Construction is set to begin in 2025.

…In second place is “Boris,” with 220 votes. In third: “Chewy” with 200 votes.

Here are the names that didn’t make it into the top three for BART’s project:

– Diggy McDigface – 127 votes

– Dionne Warwick (Grammy Award-winning singer of “Do You Know the Way to San Jose”) – 114 votes

– Boring McBoringface – 87 votes

– Janet Gray (San Jose’s first female mayor) – 86 votes

– Sarah Winchester (Designer and resident of San Jose’s Winchester Mystery House) – 64 votes

– Susan Hammer (San Jose’s second female mayor) – 26 votes

– Dianne Feinstein (Former California senator) – 22 votes

(2) COURT SQUELCHES FANFIC PUBLISHER’S SUIT AGAINST AMAZON, TOLKIEN ESTATE. The BBC tells what the court decided after “Lord of the Rings fan fiction writer sued for publishing own sequel”.

A fan fiction writer has been sued by the estate of JRR Tolkien for copyright after publishing his own sequel to The Lord of the Rings.

US-based author Demetrious Polychron published a book called The Fellowship of the King in 2022.

He dubbed it “the pitch-perfect sequel to The Lord of the Rings.”

The court ruled that Polychron must stop distributing copies of the book and destroy all physical and electronic copies.

In April 2023 Polychron attempted to sue the Tolkein estate and Amazon, claiming the TV series, Rings of Power, infringed the copyright in his book.

The case was dismissed after the judge ruled that Polychron’s own book was infringing on Amazon’s prequel that was released in September 2022.

Judge Steven V Wilson called the lawsuit “frivolous and unreasonably filed” and granted the permanent injunction, preventing him from selling his book and any other planned sequels, of which there were six….

Deadline’s story has additional details: “The Tolkien Estate & Amazon Win ‘Lord Of The Rings’ Lawsuits”.

The Tolkien Estate and Amazon have been victorious in their court battle with an author who first published a book titled The Fellowship of the King and then demanded $250M after claiming Prime Video had stolen the idea for its TV series.

In court documents issued by the District Court of California on December 14, both cases brought by Demetrious Polychron were thrown out by Judge Stephen V. Wilson, who ordered Polychron to pay the Tolkien Estate and Amazon’s legal fees totalling around $134,000 (read the Tolkien order here).

In 2017, the same year Warner Bros and the Tolkien Estate settled their five-year $80 million rights legal battle, Polychron registered a fan fiction sequel book titled The Fellowship of the King, which he claimed to be the  “the pitch-perfect sequel to The Lord of the Rings,” according to the Tolkien Estate lawyers. Rather incredibly, he then commenced a $250M lawsuit against the Tolkien Estate and Amazon in April of this year, claiming that Amazon’s TV series The Rings of Power infringed the copyright in his book.

Wilson’s judgment threw out the claims around the Amazon TV series and granted a permanent injunction, which prevents Polychron from ever distributing any further copies of The Fellowship of the King, his planned sequels to that book, or any other derivative work based on the books of JRR Tolkien. He is also required to destroy all physical and electronic copies of his book and to file a declaration, under penalty of perjury, that he has complied. The judge also turned down Polychron’s requests to have his legal fees paid by Amazon and the estate….

(3) SLF WANTS ART. The Speculative Literature Foundation has put out a call for its “Illustration of the Year 2024” seeking a piece of original artwork, ideally combining fantasy and science fiction themes, to be featured as its cover art (Illustration of the Year or Artwork) for 2024.  Full guidelines at the link.

The Speculative Literature Foundation (SLF) announces an open call for original artwork combining fantasy and science fiction themes to be featured as its 2024 Illustration of the Year.

The winning artist will receive $750.00 (USD) and will be announced, along with the selected artwork, on SLF’s website and social media and in a press release. The winning artwork will be displayed on the SLF’s website and social media accounts and used as a visual element of SLF’s marketing material and swag.

Submission Dates: The deadline for submissions has been extended to December 31, 2023. The winner will be announced in January 2024.

Submission Instructions: Email submissions to [email protected] with subject line: “YOUR NAME – Illustration of the Year 2024.” In the body of the email, please include your name, email address, phone number, name of your artwork (if any), and short bio.

For more information and complete criteria and terms, visit speculativeliterature.org/ioty .

(4) JAPAN SCIENCE FICTION AWARDS FINALISTS. The Science Fiction Writers of Japan have announced the finalists for the 44th Japan Science Fiction Awards. Names and titles from computer translation.

  • Mitsunori Yuki, “Absolute Cold” (Hayakawa Shobo)
  • Yuki Shinsendo, “Kaiju” (Hayakawa Shobo)
  • Fumio Takano, “Graf Zeppelin: That Summer Airship” (Hayakawa Shobo)
  • Toshiji Hase, “Protocol of Humanity” (Hayakawa Shobo)
  • Mikihiko Kunaga, “Our Monster” (Tokyo Sogensha)

(5) OUTCOME OF ACTIVISION SEXUAL HARASSMENT ALLEGATIONS. The New York Times analyzes “The Questions Raised by California’s Dropped Sexual Harassment Suit Against Activision”.

On Friday, the California state agency that accused the video game maker Activision Blizzard of fostering a culture of sexual harassment against women withdrew those allegations in a $54 million settlement with the company.

The California Civil Rights Department found that “no court or any independent investigation has substantiated any allegations” about “systemic or widespread sexual harassment at Activision Blizzard.”

As part of the settlement, however, Activision agreed to pay as much as $47 million to address accusations of pay disparity and discrimination. All female employees who worked at the company between 2015 to 2020 will be offered a kind of monetary relief; they will get paid based on a formula. The company maintains it has offered equitable pay.

It is a stunning reversal. In 2021, the state agency estimated that Activision’s liability was about $1 billion, according to The Wall Street Journal. How the state agency went from accusing Activision of fostering a culture in which female employees were “subjected to constant sexual harassment” to withdrawing those claims a couple of years later isn’t clear.

Was it enforcement zeal? This all started with an anonymous complaint in 2018. That letter was followed by a lawsuit from the Federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in 2021 and shortly later another from the California Civil Rights Department, which was then called the Department of Fair Employment Housing. The state agency objected to the settlement reached in the E.E.O.C. case. And then finally came a scathing Wall Street Journal story about accusations that the company didn’t handle sexual misconduct allegations properly.

The journalist Matt Taibbi wrote about this investigation: “Corporate regulation often begins with an investigation and ends with a devastating headline, but California flipped the script.”

The settlement leaves big questions unanswered. In a news release, the California Civil Rights Department declared victory, heralding the $54 million payout and stating that “California remains deeply committed to promoting and enforcing the civil rights of women in the workplace.” That the agency found no legal wrongdoing doesn’t mean it found no wrongdoing at all.

But the case utilized vast resources. The chief counsel at the agency was fired last year. And it all comes about a year after Microsoft, which presumably conducted its own due diligence, paid $69 billion to acquire the gaming company, whose shares took a hit after the allegations came to light.

(6) SPECTRAL DOGS. The first episode of Rhianna Pratchett’s BBC Radio 4 program Mythical Creatures is “Black Dogs”. Hear it at the link.

Fantasy writer Rhianna Pratchett takes us across an enchanted British Isles to discover mythical creatures that lurk in all corners of the land. She uncovers what they can tell us about our history, our world and our lives today.

In the first episode of the series, Rhianna is on the trail of Black Dogs. She visits Suffolk, to hear a tale of a hellhound that left its mark on the small town of Bungay. It’s one of many spectral black dogs that are said to stalk coastal paths and lonely crossroads. Rhianna explores why Black Dogs appear so often in folklore, and their psychological link to fear and negative emotions.

(7) MEMORY LANE.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

1966 How the Grinch Stole Christmas! (the fuller name being Dr. Seuss’ How the Grinch Stole Christmas!) first aired fifty-seven years ago this night on CBS. It was directed and co-produced by Chuck Jones. Who of course did the stellar animation. 

Jones and Theodore Geisel (Dr. Seuss) had worked together on the Private Snafu training cartoons at Warner Bros. Cartoons during World War II. Jones’s considered Grinch the equal of Scrooge for Christmas villains. 

The show is based on the 1957 children’s book of the same name by Dr. Seuss, and tells the story of the pre-reform Grinch, who tries to ruin Christmas for the townsfolk of Whoville below his mountain hideaway. (Whoville which lives on the trunk of Horton.) Will Christmas be saved? Will the Grinch be getting a bigger heart? I’m assuming I don’t need any spoilers here.

Boris Karloff is the Grinch and the narrator, and Thurl Ravenscroft sings that song which you know all so well: “You’re a vile one, Mr. Grinch. You have termites in your smile! You have all the tender sweetness. Of a seasick crocodile, Mr. Grinch.” 

Additional casting here is June Foray as Cindy Lou Who, Dallas McKennon as Max and the MGM Studio Chorus as the ever so talented Citizens of Whoville. Damn I loved those voices.

And now I must go watch it again…

(8) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

Born December 18, 1946 Steven Spielberg, 77. One of my favorite directors ever. Not as risk-taking as say Terry Gilliam but definitely one who’s done a lot of work that I find pleasing and that in my book counts for a lot.

I’m going to do a rewatch of Columbo this winter, so I was delighted to discover that he directed the first non-pilot episode of the series, “Murder by the Book”. He is credited with giving us the mannerisms of the detective and the look of the series.

He got that gig for having worked with Rod Serling on The Night Gallery where in one episode he directed Joan Crawford, that being “Eyes”. What other episodes that he directed are unclear because as a new director credit may gone to more senior directors, so it is thought that “A Matter of Semantics” that featured Cesar Romero and was credited to Jack Laird might have been his work. 

His first major hit was Jaws which is not my fish and chips so I’ll pass by it here as we’re discussing what I like by him. 

He made up for Jaws with Close Encounters of the Third Kind which is simply brilliant, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial which still makes me sniff, and two out of three of the Indiana Jones trilogy. 

No, I vehemently did not like the Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. I saw it once and that was more than enough, thank you. 

Now Jurassic Park is one of the best monster films ever. Why it was so excellent that it even won a Hugo at ConAdian! Who came and accepted that Hugo? 

There is a lot of lot films next in his career that I didn’t care for until we come to the extraordinary undertaking that is The Adventures of Tintin from the French strip by Hergé. A true treat in animation this was. 

(Digression for a moment. He was an Executive Producer or Producer on way too many undertakings to list here that I liked. Who Framed Roger RabbitGremlinsAnimaniacs (both series), Pinky and the BrainFreakazoid! — that’s just a few I like.) 

Then there’s Hook with Robin Williams as an adult Peter Pan, Julia Roberts as Tinker Bell and the Dustin Hoffman as Captain Hook. Need I say more. Well there is the crocodile…

I think I’ll finish with The BFG, his adaptation of Roald Dahl’s children’s book. Fantastic film that’s true to the book, no mean feat.

(9) COMICS SECTION.

(10) MAIL FROM RAY. Critic Dwight Garner throttles the new Ray Bradbury letter collection and its editor, Jonathan R. Eller, in a New York Times review: “What Wonders Do Ray Bradbury’s Letters Reveal?”

…There is no sugarcoating it: Bradbury’s letters are amazing in their dullness and sterility. If I had to sum up their tone and content in a sentence, it would be: “Thank you for your eight tons of sycophantic bloviating, here are 16 tons in return.” While reading “Remembrance” I began to dream about cutting off my fingers, like Brendan Gleeson in “The Banshees of Inisherin,” one by one, so I wouldn’t have to turn another page.

You can’t blame writers for the quality of their letters — unless they sought to have them published. Apparently, late in life, Bradbury did so. This collection was edited by Bradbury’s biographer, Jonathan R. Eller, who is also a co-founder of the Center for Ray Bradbury Studies at Indiana University.

His trilogy of Bradbury biographies is comprehensive and sympathetic, but here he’s done his subject no favors. I am going to resort to making a short list of this book’s drawbacks, to provide scaffolding for my inchoate feelings of distress.

A) The introduction doesn’t introduce Bradbury. The reader requires a certain amount of core information — a gloss of Bradbury’s childhood, education, career, prizes, family, homes, travel, the themes of his work — so as not to enter blind. The introduction is instead a summary of what is to come in the book. This is the least felicitous type of introduction, for the same reason that “as I will demonstrate later” are the worst five words in the English language, after “brace for a water landing.”

B) This book is oddly sorted. Bradbury’s letters are presented not in chronological order but grouped by theme and then, in sub-groupings, by correspondent, so that we are always pinging around in time, like Bill and Ted on their excellent adventure. A letter from 1965 will be followed by one from 2004, and then we are suddenly back in the 1950s. This prevents us from charting the development of Bradbury’s voice and of his inner resources. The hero of our narrative is lost in a maze.

C) Many letters not from Bradbury but to him are included. These are filler and might have been summarized. More to the point, they’re confusing. It’s easy to forget, in a book of Bradbury’s letters, that you are not currently reading Bradbury….

(11) TUNED UP. Neil Gaiman will be singing in the Sydney Opera House reports the Guardian: “’Like a gothy yoghurt starter’: how Neil Gaiman and an Australian string quartet fell in love”.

Neil Gaiman is well known for his melodic, dreamy voice, which has been put to use on everything from audiobooks to voicing the Simpsons’s cat Snowball. But Neil Gaiman the singer? When he’d occasionally perform live with his ex-wife, the musician Amanda Palmer, his voice was described by the New York Times, perhaps a little unkindly, as “a novelist’s version of singing”.

Next month Gaiman is bringing that voice to the Sydney Opera House, where he’ll be performing with the Australian string quartet FourPlay. How is he feeling about singing on one of the most prestigious stages in the world?

“Terrified. Absolutely terrified,” Gaiman sighs. “I’ve had to learn to trust FourPlay. I’m always reassured by the fact that Lara can actually sing.”

“I’ve been a singer for 30 years and I’m equally terrified, Neil!” interjects Lara Goodridge, one part of FourPlay along with Shenzo Gregorio and brothers Tim and Peter Hollo. “We are all vulnerable on stage together. But I think that’s a really lovely part of it – we’re there to catch each other. It’s exciting to be that alive.”…

(12) SHORE THING. [Item by Steven French.] From Viking longboats to satellites: “Shetland island to house UK’s first vertical rocket launch spaceport”.

For centuries, Unst has been famous for its richly varied wildlife, pristine beaches and unspoilt sea views. Now the remote Shetland island is leading Britain into space.

A former RAF base on a remote peninsula of the island has become the UK’s first licensed spaceport for vertical rocket launches. It will allow up to 30 satellites and other payloads to be launched into commercially valuable polar, sun-synchronous orbits, which are in high demand from satellite operators for communications and Earth observation.

The site, SaxaVord spaceport, was identified in a 2017 report as a place where rockets carrying the greatest payloads could be launched into space with the lowest risk to people on the ground, if the spacecraft failed and crashed back to Earth.

The island, which has about 650 inhabitants, is at the northernmost tip of the British Isles and was one of the first Viking outposts in the North Atlantic. Its location means that rockets lifting off from the site do not need to pass over populated areas, unlike those launched from other sites, which have to perform dog-leg manoeuvres, limiting the weight of the payload they can carry…

…Developing the spaceport, which includes three launch pads and a hangar for assembling rockets, has cost just under £30m so far. There are also plans to build a hotel and visitor centre at SaxaVord….

(13) FIRST ONE SHOE DROPS, THEN THE OTHER. The actor who played Kang lost in court, then lost his MCU role. Variety reports: “Jonathan Majors Guilty of Harassment and Assault”.

Jonathan Majors was convicted of assaulting his ex-girlfriend, Grace Jabbari. A Manhattan jury found the Marvel actor guilty on Monday of two misdemeanor counts of harassment and assault but acquitted him on two other counts. 

The six-person jury found Majors not guilty on one count of intentional assault in the third degree and one count of aggravated harassment in the second degree. Majors, wearing a dark gray suit and seated in the courtroom with his attorneys and current girlfriend Meagan Good, did not react when the verdict was read….

…Majors was arrested in March in New York City after he assaulted Jabbari in the backseat of a private vehicle. Jabbari, a 30-year-old choreographer who met Majors on the set of Marvel’s “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania,” testified she grabbed Majors’ phone after seeing a text message from another woman. Jabbari described that as Majors attempted to forcefully retrieve his phone from her, she felt “a hard blow” across her head that resulted in bruising, swelling and substantial pain….

Variety followed with news that “Jonathan Majors Dropped by Marvel Studios After Guilty Verdict”.

Marvel Studios has parted ways with Jonathan Majors — the actor cast to play Kang, the central antagonist in the Multiverse Saga of the Marvel Cinematic Universe — after he was convicted on Dec. 18 of two misdemeanor counts of harassment and assault of Grace Jabbari, his ex-girlfriend. A source close to the studio confirmed the decision to Variety.

In the verdict, Majors was also found not guilty of one count of intentional assault in the third degree and one count of aggravated harassment in the second degree….

(14) FAST EXPOSURE. “MIT camera can capture the speed of light” at Upworthy.

A new camera developed at MIT can photograph a trillion frames per second.

Compare that with a traditional movie camera which takes a mere 24. This new advancement in photographic technology has given scientists the ability to photograph the movement of the fastest thing in the Universe, light.

The actual event occurred in a nano second, but the camera has the ability to slow it down to twenty seconds.

For some perspective, according to New York Times writer, John Markoff, “If a bullet were tracked in the same fashion moving through the same fluid, the resulting movie would last three years.”…

(15) THE FINAL GIFT. What the kids want to find under the tree. Humor or horror? “Pongo” on Saturday Night Live.

(16) VIDEO OF THE DAY. Ryan George takes us inside “The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes Pitch Meeting”.

[Thanks to SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, Kathy Sullivan, Steven French, John King Tarpinian, Chris Barkley, and Cat Eldridge for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Jayn.]

Pixel Scroll 12/12/23 Dancing With Pixels In Our Scrolls

(1) PAXSON ASSAILANT BYRON DECLES ARRESTED. The Berkeley Scanner reports that Byron DeCles, wanted for his attack on Diana Paxson and her son, Ian, was caught today and charged with attempted murder: “Berkeley double stabbing suspect arrested in Oakland”.

A man who had been wanted by police since Friday in connection with a stabbing in Berkeley that sent two people to the hospital is now in custody, according to booking records.

Byron DeCles, 21, was arrested shortly before 4 a.m. Tuesday in Oakland on a warrant from the Berkeley case, jail records show.

…On Tuesday, DeCles was arrested by OPD on suspicion of attempted murder, battery with serious bodily injury, elder abuse and burglary, according to booking records….

DeCles, who is unhoused, has no prior criminal cases in Alameda County, according to court records online.

According to preliminary information, he is related to the victims and has a history of mental health issues.

DeCles is now scheduled for arraignment Thursday at Wiley Manuel Courthouse in Oakland. He is being held without bail….

The Berkeley Scanner also got an update from Diana Paxson about her injuries: “Berkeley writer Diana Paxson on the mend after stabbing”.

… Reached by phone late Tuesday afternoon, Paxson said she had spent the whole day responding to the many well wishes she’d received from supporters and friends….

“We are currently being very, very grateful to the members of our community — our local community and the larger community — who have been sending us energy for protection,” she told The Scanner. “It’s been a very difficult time and we are also incredibly relieved and grateful to the Oakland Police Department for actually being able to find him.”

… Paxson said she and her son were “recovering well” from their injuries.

“We look forward to being able to resume our usual schedule of events with our community,” she said.

She said she and Grey now need to look into several home repairs stemming from Friday’s incident. They plan to call the Family Justice Center in Oakland, which helps victims with a range of services in the aftermath of crimes.

“We’re very happy to hear that there is such a thing,” she said.

Paxson said what happened Friday had been the culmination of “a series of difficulties” with DeCles over the past year, which may have stemmed from or been exacerbated by untreated head injuries linked to multiple vehicle collisions.

“He never went to the hospital to be checked out,” she said. “We’re hoping that at least he’ll get checked out now.”

Paxson said medication can also help with these types of issues, but only if people take it.

“The light bulb has to want to be changed,” she said, adding: “Our whole mental system needs a lot more support than it’s been getting. That’s something to think about.”…

Diana Paxson also said today in a public Facebook post:

What’s on my mind is overwhelming gratitude that our attacker was arrested by the Oakland police this morning.

Many, many thanks to everyone who has been sending energy for protection and aid in hunting him down.

(2) CORRAIN APOLOGY. Cait Corrain reopened her X.com account today to publish “A sincere apology”, which attributed her surreptitious campaign of one-star reviews against other debut authors to “depression, alcoholism, and substance abuse”, and a “complete psychological breakdown” after starting a new medication. (Click for larger image.)

Many responses in social media, not excerpted here, have been skeptical, or view the statement as inadequate.

Surprisingly, an author found Corrain’s book was still on Amazon, now with a 2027 publication date. Del Rey Books cleared the air.

The Washington Post covered the story today: “Author Cait Corrain loses book deal after ‘review bombing’ debut authors’ books via Goodreads”. (Gift link.)


Nnedi Okorafor’s notes about the shortcomings of Goodreads and the prevalence of this kind of misconduct are well worth thinking about. Thread starts here.

(3) DUNE TRAILER. “Dune Part 2’s Epic New Trailer Teases a War Across Generations” at Gizmodo.

… The main thing you get from that trailer is that Part Two is just a much, much bigger movie than Part One. Part One had to move all the pieces into place. Now, Paul is becoming the leader of an entire people and will use them to win back their planet. We’re talking war on a planetary scale, which—most excitingly—includes not just one, but multiple sandworms tearing through soldiers. Can you wait to see that shot in IMAX? We can’t….

(4) JURY SIDES WITH FORTNITE. The New York Times reports that a federal district court jury sided against Google: “Google Loses Antitrust Court Battle With Makers of Fortnite Video Game”.

A jury ruled on Monday that Google had violated antitrust laws to extract fees and limit competition from Epic Games and other developers on its Play mobile app store, in a case that could rewrite the rules on how thousands of businesses make money on Google’s smartphone operating system, Android.

After deliberating for a little more than three hours, the nine-person federal jury sided with Epic Games on all 11 questions in a monthlong trial that was the latest turn in a three-year legal battle.

The jury in San Francisco found that Epic, the maker of the hit game Fortnite, proved that Google had maintained a monopoly in the smartphone app store market and engaged in anticompetitive conduct that harmed the videogame maker.

Google could be forced to alter its Play Store rules, allowing other companies to offer competing app stores and making it easier for developers to avoid the cut it collects from in-app purchases.

Judge James Donato of the United States District Court for the Northern District of California will decide the remedies needed to address Google’s conduct next year. Google said it would appeal the verdict….

(5) RECOGNITION RESTORED. [Item by Steven French.] This sounds genre to me, especially as the author Yambo Ouologuem is described as writing in the style of Vonnegut. “African writer ruined by row with Graham Greene finally gets chance to shine” in the Guardian.

In 1968 the books pages of the French newspaper Le Monde excitedly praised an uncompromising new novel, Bound to Violence, going on to salute its author as one of “the rare intellectuals of international stature presented to the world by Black Africa”.

The newspaper’s words, written in tribute to the young Malian writer Yambo Ouologuem, sound condescending today. Back then, however, the intended compliment was genuine and many European critics soon agreed: the publication of Ouologuem’s strange novel really did mark the arrival of a major new talent.

But the literary world can be brutal, and particularly so for a young African novelist living in Paris who was attempting a fresh twist on conventional storytelling.

Fellow African writers began to express shock at Ouologuem’s harsh parody of his own culture. Three years later damaging accusations of plagiarism had also emerged, including a public skirmish with Graham Greene, which ended Ouologuem’s short career. He retreated into the life of a recluse, returned to Mali and died in 2017, having never published again.

Now, 50 years after this scandal, Penguin Classics is to bring out a new English edition of Bound to Violence in a bid to rehabilitate the gifted author and introduce him to new readers.

“I was so exhilarated when I read this book,” said Penguin editor Ka Bradley. “It’s the history of an imaginary African empire called Nakem and whole centuries are dealt with in just a paragraph or two. It’s dizzying.”

(6) WRITING WITH AI IS NOT A SPORT. This player has been ejected. “Publisher Of Sports Illustrated Ousts CEO Ross Levinsohn” reports Deadline.

The CEO of the parent company of Sports Illustrated was ousted on Monday.

The firing followed a scandal over the publication’s use of AI-generated stories from fake authors, although it was not immediately clear if that was related to the shakeup.

Ross Levinsohn, CEO of The Arena Group, was terminated and Manoj Bhargava was named interim chief executive officer, the company said. No other information was provided, other than that the board met “and took actions to improve the operational efficiency and revenue of the company.”…

(7) AUTHOR’S CANDIDACY SCOTCHED. [Item by Ersatz Culture.] The Tomorrow’s MPs Twitter account reported that a potential candidate for a constituency in Scotland was forced to stand down from the party selection contest, due to the content of novels he had previously written.  The tweet links to a piece in The Courier news website, which states:

A long-serving Fife Labour councillor has stood down from an internal contest to stand as the party’s candidate in Glenrothes after concerns were raised about fantasy books he has written.

Insiders expect Altany Craik to issue a statement saying he is withdrawing from the contest for “family reasons”.

But we can reveal that Mr Craik, a supernatural horror author, was directed to stand down because of party reservations about his novels.

Mr Craik had been seeking support from members to stand as the Labour candidate for Glenrothes at the General Election expected next year….

…A source said: “It’s absolutely disgusting.”

“They’re saying he’s not a suitable candidate because his books are too sexy and satanic.”…

…His profile on Amazon includes titles such as “Innocence Lost”, with readers praising the books and it’s (sic) protagonist, Father Andrew Steel.

One reviewer wrote: “This book has graphic descriptions of gore, mutilation, rape, and foul language. But getting past that, it is a worthwhile read.”…

(8) GUESS WHO HAS A NEW NEIGHBOR? [Item by John King Tarpinian.] John Waters’ star adjoins Ray Bradbury’s on the Hollywood Walk of Fame

(9) CHENGDU WORLDCON ROUNDUP. [Item by Ersatz Culture.]

Post about the Chengdu Worldcon receives complaint from con organizers

This November 13th post (archive.org backup copy) by an account using the name 四海朝阳/Sihai Zhaoyang is mostly about the history of the Chengdu Worldcon, although there’s some relatively brief coverage of the actual con itself – mainly the online aspects – towards the end.  Some extracts via Google Translate, with manual edits:

On January 17, 2022, the official WeChat public account of the Chengdu Worldcon released volunteer recruitment information. However, according to feedback from science fiction fans who submitted their resumes, there were no updates after their submission, and there was no mention of subsidies or compensation for volunteers. In actuality, volunteers during the conference were recruited from surrounding schools.

On January 20, 2022 [this is an error/typo, it should read “2023”], some science fiction fans on Twitter discovered that the Chengdu Science Fiction Conference had officially announced that the conference would be rescheduled from August to October 2023, and the location changed from the Century City International Convention and Exhibition Center to the Chengdu Science Fiction Museum. This news was not announced to Chinese fans at that time, nor were those who voted that year notified. (i.e. the group of science fiction fans who were also members of the 81st World Science Fiction Convention).  It was not until that night that the notice of the postponement and venue change was hastily issued.

In fact, this change had been known about for a long time. In May 2022, a science fiction fan discovered the news on a government bidding website that the Chengdu Science Fiction Museum and Qingrong Lake Science Fiction Park would be built in Pidu District, Chengdu, and posted this on Weibo. After making the news public, they received a message from the organizing committee, ordering them to delete their Weibo post. However, coverage of the same topic could still be seen in local Chengdu media.  At this time, the estimated completion time was the end of June [presumably 2023], and the exhibition completion time would be the end of July….

The organizing committee of the Chengdu Worldcon also began to travel to various cities to conduct research with local science fiction fans. However, of the university science fiction clubs with the largest number of science fiction fans, very few received relevant notifications. During this process, the organizing committee members who did not understand science fiction once again made a joke. Their main person in charge had never heard of such a thing as a “light saber” and vowed to invite Shinichi Hoshi,

Kobayashi Yasumi, Douglas Adams and others mentioned by fans, despite all those people passing away long ago…

[During the preparation period in the days leading up to the con] something ridiculous happened. A staff member from Science Fiction World entered the venue with Liu Cixin’s Hugo Award trophy from 2015, to set it up as an exhibit. However, they were stopped by the security guard at the door, because the trophy was too long and was a sharp object…

Of course, we cannot ignore the “good” side of this conference, and that side has nothing to do with this organizing committee and comes purely from the lovely fans. Thanks to the efforts of some of the staff from Science Fiction World, the science fiction associations of many schools took a group photo at the Galaxy Awards Ceremony for the “Best Science Fiction Society Award”. The number of participating societies has become the highest in history. Science fiction fans communicated with each other at the conference, from badges to ribbons, embodying the ingenuity and wonderful ideas of fantasy fans.  After RiverFlow was taken to hospital, many science fiction fans and science fiction authors rushed there spontaneously and waited all night. Online and offline, most of the problems encountered by science fiction fans were solved by other enthusiastic science fiction fans. No matter how many times a question was asked, they never tired of answering it…

Has the Chengdu World Science Fiction Convention had a good or bad impact on Chinese science fiction? In the short term, the answer does not seem to be available.

A couple of days later, on November 15th, there was a follow-up post (archive.org copy), stating that a complaint about the original post had been received from the Worldcon organizers.  A screenshot of the complaint was included; a Google Translate rendition to English is below, which I haven’t edited in any way.

The following content is not officially provided by WeChat and should be filled in by the rights holder when making a complaint. Please operate with caution.

This article involves malicious attacks against individuals, institutions and governments, seriously affects the government’s credibility, denies the work results of the Chengdu World Science Fiction Convention Organizing Committee, and misguides public opinion.

As the only legal entity of the 2023 Chengdu World Science Fiction Conference, the Chengdu Science Fiction Association strictly abides by the World Science Fiction Association charter and relevant regulations from application to hosting. The theme salon, guest reception, Hugo Award selection and award, and ticket sales all comply with relevant requirements. Said untrue situation.

The original poster responds by stating that their post was based on public information, whether from the con itself, or posted online by other members of the public, and argues that ‘it is precisely the organizing committee of the Chengdu World Science Fiction Convention itself that “seriously affects the government’s credibility.”‘ (via Google Translate, again with no manual edits).

It’s not clear to me whether this complaint had any weight behind it, legal or otherwise.  As I understand it, once a post has been made public on Weixin/WeChat, only a small number of edits can be made, so presumably any response would have involved taking the post down rather than removing any offending text.  Given that the post is still up a month later, the complaint seems to have had zero effect – other than provoking further coverage in this Weibo post by SF Light Year, and in issue 16 of the Zhejiang University SF association news summary, and now here, causing a Streisand effect.

Xingyun (Nebula) event to be held at the Chengdu SF Museum in May 2024

On the weekend of May 17th-19th next year, the 2024 Xingyun (Nebula) Celebration will be held at the Chengdu SF museum.  To the best of my knowledge, this is the only confirmed event or activity to be held at the venue post-Worldcon, other than Lukyanenko’s tour on December 1st.

This event appears to comprise three elements (via Google Translate, so these may not be the official English names):

  • The 2024 Children’s Science Fiction Conference
  • The 2024 International Science Fiction Summit Forum
  • The 15th Annual Xingyun (Nebula) Awards – I think these may have been previously announced, although I don’t think it was covered here on File 770.

Note: Looking at the dates of previous SFWA Nebula conferences, it wouldn’t surprise if both events take place on the same weekend.

Video of an SF themed bus in Chengdu

This three-minute video was filmed on the final day of the con, and posted to Bilibili a couple of days later.  It shows an SF-themed bus, followed by a timelapse sequence of the route it takes.  I’m sure people who attended the Worldcon may need to correct me, but I think the red and blue banners that hang from most of the streetlights were also promoting the con?

Note that these seem to be buses running a public route, different from the red ones that I think were dedicated to transporting Worldcon attendees, and which can be seen in the first photo.

(10) BUILDING A TOWN WITHOUT CGI. Not something many movie makers would do. “’Oppenheimer’ Production Designer Ruth De Jong – Featurette” at Deadline.

When location scouting for Oppenheimer, production designer Ruth De Jong was tasked with finding a location to recreate Los Alamos. Although the actual town of Los Alamos was too modernized to use for the period piece, De Jong and her team spent some time there for research. “I began laying out the expanse of the town with our set designer Jim Hewitt,” she says. “We took these drawings, with plans and elevations, and made foam core architectural models in a quarter-inch scale.”

De Jong and her team landed on Ghost Ranch, which is along the same mountain range as the existing Los Alamos. “We had this epic town that we wanted to do,” she says, “but the U.S. government had $2 million and a few years and I had nowhere near that.” Neither De Jong nor director Christopher Nolan wanted to use CGI for extensions on the town, so De Jong opted for building exteriors and shooting the interiors at the actual Los Alamos, like Oppenheimer’s house, which has been largely untouched since he lived there.…

(11) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

Born December 12, 1946 Josepha Sherman. (Died 2012.) Josepha Sherman was a remarkable woman. She was another individual who died far too young. Author, folklorist, and anthologist, I knew her for a number of years up to the time of her death, by email and phone, though I lost touch with her a few years before she died. 

She wrote dozens of short stories and novels, including her Compton Crook Award-winning novel The Shining Falcon. She was prolific with Child of Faerie, Child of EarthA Strange and Ancient NameWindleafGleaming BrightKing’s Son, Magic’s Son and Son of Darkness being some of her other novels. 

She also penned five novels set in the Trek verse co-authored with Susan Shwartz including Vulcan’s Forge and Vulcan’s Heart.  She wrote a lot of media tie dipping into the universes of Andromeda and BuffyBardic Choices (with Mercedes Lackey) and even Highlander as she told me she loved Adrian Paul there.

Oh, she was a superb anthologist. A Jewish woman, she put together several collections reflecting what she knew so well — A Sampler of Jewish-American Folklore and Rachel The Clever and Other Jewish Folktales. But my favorite work by her was isn’t an anthology, but a rather serious work she did with T.K.F. Weisskopf: Greasy Grimy Gopher Guts: The Subversive Folklore of Childhood. Yes, Green Man reviewed it as she sent us a copy. Actually we reviewed so long ago that it ran on our predecessor, Mostly Folk, but that is another story for another time.

So let’s finish off by telling you that she was a Winter Queen at Green Man as was Ellen Kushner and Jane Yolen. All it means is they get to write a Speech and get chocolate. Somehow that charms them, so here’s Joshepa’s meditation on Winter: “Josepha Sherman’s Winter Queen Speech”.

Josepha Sherman. Photo by and (c) Andrew Porter

(12) SHINY. Peer today posted a stunning improvement to that popular tune about a reindeer hero.  

You know Pixelsdasher and Pixeldancer
And Pixelprancer and Pixelvixen,
Pixelcomet and Pixelcupid
And Pixeldonner and Pixelblitzen.
But do you recall
The most famous scroll title of all?
Godstalk the click-boxed title
Had a very shiny scroll
And if you ever saw it
You would even feed the troll
All of the other titles
Used to laugh and scroll its names
They never let poor Godstalk
Play in any wordle games

Then one foggy Christmas Eve
Mike came to say,
“Jetpacks not working,
Won’t you scroll my File tonight?”

Then all the Filers loved it
And they shouted it out with glee,
“Godstalk as a scroll title
will go down in history!”

With apologies to … everyone I guess.

(13) FANAC’S APA PANEL NOW ONLINE.

APAs Everywhere with Fred Lerner, Christina Lake, Amy Thomson and Tom Whitmore

In this wonderful FanHistory Zoom panel, our speakers, all long-time participants (in multiple different APAs), speak about their experiences with APA life. During this 2-part recording, you’ll hear their personal fannish origin stories and APA experiences, along with a wealth of fascinating commentary on the nature and purpose of APAs. From “fanac in a corner” to “intentional community”, this video provides thoughtful, insightful discussion on why APAs have been a mainstay of science fiction fandom.

Of particular interest are the discussions of “standing waves” of cultural issues that run through our APAs and the ways that science fiction fandom has dealt with cultural challenges. Fandom had notable failures (and successes) dealing with social issues long before the general culture dealt with them.

Of course, it’s not all social commentary. You’ll hear the story of APAs used in divorce proceedings, APAs which may have been created to bedevil particular individuals, and the APA which didn’t live up to its banner of “the 13 nastiest bastards in fandom”.  You’ll learn why APAs thrive, even in this era of instant  online gratification. Other topics: privacy issues, digital preservation of APAs, a soft toy APA, APAs you wouldn’t join, Langdon charts, and of course, audience Q&A.

Part 1

Part 2

(14) THEY’RE NOT PLAYING AROUND. Turn out the lights, the party’s over. “E3 has entertained its last electronic expo” says TechCrunch.

E3’s decades-long history has been peppered with ups and downs. The annual Los Angeles-based gaming expo saw a decade of steady growth after it was founded in the mid-90s. The mid-00s, on the other hand, were an altogether different story, as the event struggled, downsized and moved out of the LA Convention Center.

Opening the industry-only event to the public breathed new life into the event the following decade, however, until 2020 saw E3 — and the rest of the world — suddenly grind to a halt. Since then, the show has, understandably, struggled.

The in-person event was canceled courtesy of COVID, and a virtual version failed to materialize by that summer. Show organizer, the Entertainment Software Association (ESA), did manage an online event in 2021, only to once again cancel things in full the following year. After failing to garner enough interest, there was no E3 2023, nor will the event return in 2024.

Given its recent history, there was little surprise this morning, when the ESA announced that E3 is now gone for good. Such decisions are never easy to make, and big organizations/events take a while to wind down. The group no doubt wanted to exhaust all feasible options before officially throwing in the towel for good….

(15) BEAR BEGINNINGS. The Guardian declares “Paws for applause: Paddington set to star in stage musical”.

Paddington, Michael Bond’s “very rare sort of bear”, is to star in a new stage musical. The production, announced on Tuesday, is being developed by Sonia Friedman’s company, whose hits include Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, and will have music and lyrics by McFly’s Tom Fletcher. It is currently being workshopped with the title Paddington: The Musical and has a UK premiere planned for 2025.

The show is adapted from Bond’s bestselling children’s books – the first of which was published 65 years ago – and from the popular live-action film versions which feature Ben Whishaw as the voice of a CGI Paddington. How the marmalade-loving, accident-prone bear will be represented on stage has not yet been revealed….

(16) SPEAKER FOR THE DEAD. The New York Times finds some are “Using A.I. to Talk to the Dead”.

Dr. Stephenie Lucas Oney is 75, but she still turns to her father for advice. How did he deal with racism, she wonders. How did he succeed when the odds were stacked against him?

The answers are rooted in William Lucas’s experience as a Black man from Harlem who made his living as a police officer, F.B.I. agent and judge. But Dr. Oney doesn’t receive the guidance in person. Her father has been dead for more than a year.

Instead, she listens to the answers, delivered in her father’s voice, on her phone through HereAfter AI, an app powered by artificial intelligence that generates responses based on hours of interviews conducted with him before he died in May 2022.

His voice gives her comfort, but she said she created the profile more for her four children and eight grandchildren.

“I want the children to hear all of those things in his voice,” Dr. Oney, an endocrinologist, said from her home in Grosse Pointe, Mich., “and not from me trying to paraphrase, but to hear it from his point of view, his time and his perspective.”…

… HereAfter AI was introduced in 2019, two years after the debut of StoryFile, which produces interactive videos in which subjects appear to make eye contact, breathe and blink as they respond to questions. Both generate answers from responses users gave to prompts like “Tell me about your childhood” and “What’s the greatest challenge you faced?”…

… StoryFile offers a “high-fidelity” version in which someone is interviewed in a studio by a historian, but there is also a version that requires only a laptop and webcam to get started. Stephen Smith, a co-founder, had his mother, Marina Smith, a Holocaust educator, try it out. Her StoryFile avatar fielded questions at her funeral in July.

According to StoryFile, about 5,000 people have made profiles. Among them was the actor Ed Asner, who was interviewed eight weeks before his death in 2021.

The company sent Mr. Asner’s StoryFile to his son Matt Asner, who was stunned to see his father looking at him and appearing to answer questions.

“I was blown away by it,” Matt Asner said. “It was unbelievable to me about how I could have this interaction with my father that was relevant and meaningful, and it was his personality. This man that I really missed, my best friend, was there.”…

(17) VIDEO OF THE DAY. “Doctor Who releases Christmas single The Goblin Song” and it’s on the Guardian’s radar. Warning for anthropophagy. Or maybe not. It’s goblins doing it.

For the first time in its 60-year history, Doctor Who is releasing an official Christmas single.

The Goblin Song, written by the show’s composer, Murray Gold, with lyrics by Russell T Davies, is raising money for Children in Need….

…The music video features a clip from the forthcoming Doctor Who Christmas special, in which Ncuti Gatwa will make his full-length debut as the Doctor, alongside Millie Gibson as Ruby Sunday, who joins as a regular Tardis companion.

During the video, the Doctor and Ruby are seen crawling through a pirate ship while goblins sing about eating a baby. Gold described the song as “fiendishly catchy”, adding: “I don’t like these goblins – and you won’t either.”

[Thanks to SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Mike Kennedy, Ersatz Culture, Rob Thornton, Rose Embolism, Anne Marble, Andrew Porter, John King Tarpinian, Chris Barkley, and Cat Eldridge for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Hampus Eckerman.]

Pixel Scroll 12/8/23 The File Next Time

(1) BEEP-BEEP. Deadline says the Wile E. Coyote movie might yet escape the tax accounting black hole that the head of Warner Bros. shoved it into. “’Coyote vs. Acme’: Paramount Circling, Amazon Possible Contender For Movie”.

It’s not just Netflix that made a bid for Warner Bros.’ scrapped Coyote vs. AcmeParamount, Apple and Amazon have seen the movie as well. Of those, Paramount has made a bid, and the plus there is a potential theatrical release. The Melrose lot could use it on the 2024 release calendar. Debt-laden exhibitors would want it, too.

Meanwhile, Amazon is mulling, I’m told, with no formal bid made. First, it takes longer over there to conduct business and get decisions through the proper channels. I also hear that marketing execs are trying to get their heads around the picture (seriously — there’s a lot of action scenes in the movie and hysterical jokes that easily could be used in trailers. I’ve seen the movie. Look out for the Porky Pig pant-less joke)….

(2) DIAGRAM PRIZE.“Danger Sound Klaxon! picks up the Diagram Prize gong” as the “Oddest Book Title of the Year” announced The Bookseller today.

Sound the trumpets, folks, ring the bells and most importantly crank up that old-fashioned noisemaker that goes “a-rooo-gha” for Danger Sound Klaxon! The Horn That Changed History has blown away the competition to win the 45th The Bookseller Diagram Prize for Oddest Book Title of the Year.

The book, in which author Matthew F Jordan charts the “meteoric rise and eventual fall” of the klaxon automobile horn, never fell out of the love with Diagramistas: it garnered 53% of the ballot, the greatest share since the award went to a public vote in 2000, and joins Is Superman Circumcised? (2022), The Joy of Waterboiling (2018) and Cooking with Poo (2011) as the only winners to ever grab a full majority of votes.

There is something of a wholesomeness to this year’s winner as voters have turned away from the slightly naughty and/or scatological tone of recent winners such as the aforementioned Is Superman Circumcised?, plus 2020’s A Dog Pissing at the Edge of a Path: Animal Metaphors in Eastern Indonesian Society and 2019’s The Dirt Hole and its Variations. And there were certainly those kinds of options to choose from on the 2023 shortlist, but Dry Humping: A Guide to Dating, Relating, and Hooking Up Without the Booze was a distant second, while early bookies’ favourite I Fart in Your General Direction: Flatulence in Popular Culture barely caused a stink with voters….

(3) GOODREADS REVIEW BOMBING ANALYSIS. Anne Marble provided a friends link to her Medium post “The Latest Goodreads Review Bombing Scandal” about the controversy at the top of yesterday’s Scroll.

…Every bit of information appalled me. Not only was [Cait] Corrain (“allegedly”) hurting other debut authors — she was also accused of downvoting a book from the same publishing imprint as her upcoming book. And books by authors who were with the same literary agency.

Perhaps the worst revelation of all? Corrain was in chat groups with some of the affected authors. Those authors had to be wondering what they’d shared with her in private. Talk about betrayal!

One of the targeted authors, Black author Bethany Baptiste, kept getting harassed on social media over her posts on this scandal. Why are people targeting her and not Cait Corrain?…

(4) STICK TO THE FACTS. Xiran Jay Zhao today posted a trio of videos with their own roundup about the Corrain news story, which counters some of the claims made about this debacle by some articles. 

(5) WHEELS WITHIN WHEELS.. “A Cultural Critique of the Tesla Cybertruck” at Road and Track. This vehicle sounds tailor-made to drive through the World of Null-A

…In the four years since the initial announcement of the Cybertruck and its release, Musk has doubled down on these comments. He has called the Cybertruck “what Bladerunner would have driven” and “the finest in apocalypse technology”. Press videos released by Tesla show entire MP5 magazines emptied into the doors to drive home the body’s bulletproof nature. Musk’s emphasis that the Cybertruck is an “armored personnel carrier from the future” is likely driven by his belief that “the apocalypse could come along at any moment.”

While Musk is, to say the least, well-known for outlandish statements, he does seem to genuinely believe society is on the precipice of a collapse. Over the past decade during his Tesla-fueled rise to prominence, he’s repeatedly expressed concerns that killer robots will threaten humanity in the near future and called artificial intelligence “our biggest existential threat.” His more recent embrace of right-wing rhetoric seems to have only deepened this belief; during a recent trip to the U.S.-Mexico border, he stated that undocumented immigrants will cause “a collapse in social services,” and he believes that falling birthrates—caused, in his view, by birth control and abortion—are a “much bigger risk to civilization than global warming.”…

(6) AND THE WATER BUFFALO YOU RODE IN ON. Sergey Lukyanenko, now on a make-up trip after skipping the Chengdu Worldcon where he was a GoH, posted this photo taken in Beijing.

Sergey Lukyanenko in Beijing.

His appearances are being covered in Chinese social media. Ersatz Culture collected the following daily links. Click through and you should be able to request a computer translation. However, the dates in the translations are not always accurate – such as those with photos of an event dated four days from now.

= 2023-12-01 (Friday) =

https://weibo.com/6045346855/Nv6xbjqOM
https://weibo.com/5127624884/Nv7Omw5DD

= 2023-12-02 (Saturday) =

https://weibo.com/6045346855/NvhKUtInN

= 2023-12-03 (Sunday) =

https://weibo.com/6045346855/NvrI7Dnll

= 2023-12-04 (Monday) =

https://weibo.com/6045346855/NvCkMjFwz
https://weibo.com/6045346855/NvABLdeRJ
https://weibo.com/1649394251/NvxWndiGJ

= 2023-12-05 (Tuesday) =

https://weibo.com/6045346855/NvHA2uP5o
  (Refers to a Shanghai event on the 10th)
https://weibo.com/6386527089/NvGGb164f
  (Refers to an event on the 8th with Baoshu)
https://weibo.com/1951071703/NvH0h4fbB
  (About the previous day’s event at Sichuan University)

= 2023-12-06 =

Nothing?

= 2023-12-07 (Thursday) =

https://weibo.com/6045346855/Nw4F6wIcf
https://weibo.com/1649394251/Nw4uXBANo
https://weibo.com/1649394251/Nw3FpvNju
https://weibo.com/1649394251/Nw3yjyJBt
https://weibo.com/1649394251/Nw3qOAcTA
https://weibo.com/1649394251/Nw3e6lHHa
https://weibo.com/1649394251/Nw2Ql1lpX

= 2023-12-08 (Friday) =

(With Baoshu in Beijing)

https://weibo.com/6045346855/Nwe0rbH4j
https://weibo.com/1649394251/Nwd6toSk3
https://weibo.com/1649394251/NwcWUbR9Z
https://weibo.com/1649394251/NwcJFbue1
https://weibo.com/1649394251/NwblZhMfn

(7) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

Born December 8, 1950 Rick Baker, 73. He won the Academy Award for Best Makeup a record seven times from a record eleven nominations, beginning when he won the first award given for An American Werewolf in London. It is one of my favorite horror films bar none. 

Rick Baker

The sequel, An American Werewolf in Paris, which until now I didn’t know existed, was not well received by either critics or fans. Audience reviewers at Rotten Tomatoes give it a seven, let me repeat that, a seven percent rating. 

So what else is he known for? Oh, I’m not listing everything but let’s look at some of his more extraordinary work.

One of his early gigs in the industry was on The Exorcist where he was an uncredited special effects assistant. That happened to him some early in his career as he’s uncredited as a special makeup effects artist on It’s Alive and uncredited as makeup effects on King Kong. More intriguing, he’s uncredited on The Empire Strikes Back even though he was credited on Star Wars. Interesting. 

I think his work on The Incredible Shrinking Woman where he is creator and designer of Sidney, the super-intelligent gorilla, as well as doing the makeup effects and being an actor in it is among his best ever. 

Starman. Oh one of my all-time films. He created and did the Starman transformation. May we give him a round of applause for that that feat?

Oh Beauty and The Beast. It was Baker who designed the stellar makeup that was Vincent. He was responsible for Perlman getting hired based on his previous experiences in prosthetics feeling he’d be a good fit for the role and fought hard for his casting.

I see he was special effects supervisor on the second Gremins films but not the first. 

Which that brings us to Men in Black, certainly we agree a career highly for him where he listed as special makeup effects and alien makeup effects. Cool indeed. 

I’ll finish with his work on Hellboy,  which I need not tell you I’ve watched so many times that I’m memorised it. And no, I’m not going to watch the new Hellboy film. 

(8) COMICS SECTION.

  • Hi and Lois is very educational, just not about the assigned lesson.

(9) HEIRS AND MARVEL AGREE. “Marvel Settles Fight Over Spider-Man, Doctor Strange Rights”The Hollywood Reporter says the battle is finished.

It looks like Marvel won’t be bringing its battle over the rights to Spider-Man and Doctor Strange into the new year. Attorneys for the company and the estate of Steve Ditko on Wednesday notified the court that they’ve reached an amicable settlement and expect a stipulation of dismissal with prejudice to be filed in the coming weeks.

This all started back in 2021, when Marvel filed a series of lawsuits in response to copyright termination notices from Larry Lieber and the estates of Gene Colan, Steve Ditko, Don Heck and Don Rico. A very long list of characters were at issue, including Iron Man, Captain America, Black Widow, Hulk and Thor. In June, all but one of the matters settled….

(10) TIMEY WIMEY PRESENTS. The Mary Sue has a list of “The Best ‘Doctor Who’ Gifts for Your Favorite Whovian”. Here’s what I need – and don’t forget to fill it with homebaked chocolate chip cookies!

TARDIS cookie jar

(11) AS WITNESSED FROM AUSTRALIA. Bruce Gillespie’s SF Commentary 114 is a free download in both portrait and landscape edition at eFanzines.

Covers by Dennis Callegari. Features Denis Callegari and Jim Burns on the possibilities of AI art; wakes for people much missed (Valma Brown, Lee Harding, and Jenny Bryce); and memories of Helena Binns, who left us recently, including her fannish autobiography. Rich Horton remembers Cordwainer Smith’s first story; C. June Wolf conducts the final interview with Michael G. Coney; and Kim Huett describes the unique problems of SF readers in Australia during World War II. Book reviews are by regular Colin Steele; and Anna Creer joins SFC with her Crime File.

If you missed out on No. 113, it also is at eFanzines.

(12) GENE-EDITING ANSWER FOR SICKLE CELL. “FDA approves first genetic treatments for sickle cell disease : Shots”NPR has the story.

…In a landmark decision, the Food and Drug Administration Friday approved the first gene-editing treatment to alleviate human illness.

The FDA approved two gene therapies for anyone 12 and older suffering from the most severe form of sickle cell disease, a brutal blood disorder that has long been neglected by medical research.

The decisions are being hailed as milestones for treating sickle cell and for the rapidly advancing field of gene therapy, which is stirring excitement for treatment of many diseases….

… For the CRISPR treatment, which was developed by Vertex Pharmaceuticals and CRISPR Therapeutics, both in Boston, doctors remove cells from each patient’s bone marrow, edit a gene with CRISPR and then infuse billions of the modified cells back into patients.

The edited cells produce a form of hemoglobin known as fetal hemoglobin, restoring normal function of red blood cells. While not a cure for the disease, the hope is the therapy, brand name Casgevy, is designed to be a one-time treatment that will alleviate symptoms for a lifetime.

In data presented to the FDA, the treatment resolved the severe pain crises for at least 18 months for 29 of the subjects — 96.7%. The treatment has produced similar results for patients suffering from a related condition known as beta thalassemia.

(13) THE TOP 10 MOVIES & TV SHOWS IN 2023. JustWatch finds this year’s movie streaming charts are dominated by titles available on Netflix and Disney+. Netflix secured rank #1 (The Super Mario Bros. Movie) and #2 (Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse) while Disney has the most original titles in the Top 10, including The Little Mermaid, Avatar: The Way of Water and Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3.

Interestingly, the three major streaming services (Netflix, Prime Video, Disney+) are not represented in the top 3 TV shows. Instead, this year’s podium belongs to MAX (The Last of Us), Peacock (Yellowstone) and AppleTV+ (Ted Lasso). [Based on a press release.]

[Thanks to Andrew Porter, John King Tarpinian, Chris Barkley, Daniel Dern, Anne Marble, Ersatz Culture, Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, and Mike Kennedy for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Kip W.]

Pixel Scroll 11/25/23 The Pixelman’s Scroll is Half-Constructed

(1) OVERCOMING REJECTION. Her rejection slips are a key part of the display: “Malorie Blackman’s career honoured in British Library exhibition” in the Guardian.

“To my great embarrassment, I’ve just discovered that I have been holding onto your novel, HACKER, since February 1990”, read a letter to Noughts & Crosses author Malorie Blackman from the senior commissioning editor of Simon & Schuster, dated nearly two years later. “I’m afraid we are not publishing any teenage novels in the near future”. The printed letter, addressed to “Marlorie”, with the extra “r” struck through in pen, was one of 82 rejection letters the writer received before her first book was published.

Hole-punched and stored in a ring binder, the letter is now on display at a British Library exhibition about Blackman, who has gone on to write more than 70 books for children and young adults, including the million-selling Noughts & Crosses series. The rejections folder is one of the artefacts that the author is most excited for the public to see, she says. “I hope that does encourage people.”…

…The exhibition traces Blackman’s young adulthood: the Lewisham homeless shelter she lived in aged 13 is pictured; the comics she turned to as a “shield against the real world” are displayed. In the local library, which she says “saved my life”, she would read novels, including classic fiction – the likes of Jane Eyre. Later, at 22, she came across Walker’s The Color Purple – the first novel she had read that was written by a Black author and featured Black protagonists. “It had a profound effect on me,” says Blackman. “She was a Black woman author. They existed!”…

(2) MEDICAL UPDATE. Jane Yolen suffered a fall the other day and required surgery. Her daughter Heidi has been posting updates on Facebook and says the surgery went great.

(3) REVENGE IS A DISH BEST SERVED BY PROCESS SERVERS. “‘Squid Game: The Challenge’ Contestants Threaten Lawsuit After Claiming They Suffered Hypothermia & Nerve Damage During Filming” reports Deadline.

Squid Game: The Challenge contestants are threatening legal action against Netflix and producers after claiming they were injured during the filming of the game show.

A British personal injuries law firm is representing two unnamed players who say they suffered hypothermia and nerve damage while shooting in cold conditions in the UK.

Express Solicitors said in a press statement that it had sent letters of claim to Studio Lambert, the co-producer of Netflix’s Squid Game: The Challenge.

The contestants’ allegations concern their experience shooting the show’s opening game ‘Red Light, Green Light,’ in which players must evade the attention of a menacing robotic doll.

The game was filmed at Cardington Studios, a former Royal Air Force base in Bedford, during a cold snap in Britain. Netflix confirmed at the time that three of 456 players required medical attention.

Express Solicitors, which specializes in no win no fee claims, said its clients risked their health by having to stay motionless for long periods during the shoot as they attempted to stay in the competition….

(4) AUTHORS’ RIGHTS IN THE AGE OF AI. [Item by Francis Hamit.] The Authors Licensing and Collecting Society is the UK outfit that manages the Public Lending Right. I’ve been a member for several years and get regular payments for my photocopying royalties, something that does not exist in the U.S. 

The ALCS’ two-page white paper “Authors and AI principles” is the most sensible thing I’ve seen yet about AI and Authors’ rights. 

First on the list of principles:

1. Human authors should be compensated for their work and have transparent information of uses of their work – new technologies and types of uses should respect the established precedent that there must be fair payment for use and transparency regarding how works have been used.  

There should be no use without payment. While many systems of remuneration reflect the ways in which we consume media at the time, the principles of copyright remain: that authors should share in the enjoyment of their work, especially financially. Licensing continues to be an effective way to adapt to, support and remunerate a wide range of uses of original works. As authors works are often used in ways to develop AI technology, authors must also have transparent information regarding when and how their work has been used….

(5) DIY DALEK. Dr. Glyn Morgan pays tribute to fans in a post to the UK Science Museum blog — “Building for the Fans: Daleks and Doctor Who”.

…Fans are the lifeblood of any creative endeavour, but this is particularly powerful point for science fiction: were it not for the continued enthusiasm from fans then Doctor Who might have died never to be regenerated after initially leaving the air in 1989, or after the underperforming TV-movie in 1996 (starring the criminally underrated Paul McGann)….

…Along with the Doctor’s equally iconic TARDIS, the Dalek is a firm favourite construction project for fans and has been since they first appeared, inspiring people’s creativity and technical innovation at home. Indeed, building your own Dalek became such a recognised rite of passage for fans that the BBC issued official instructions on how to build your own as part of a Radio Times special issue celebrating the tenth anniversary of Doctor Who in 1973. The article suggested that the project would be particularly good ‘as an exercise for a well-equipped school, using the resources and facilities of several departments- woodwork, metalwork, art and so on.’ The practicality of the design was tested by students of London’s Highbury Grove School (now City of London Academy Highbury Grove): ‘With help from their staff, they produced [a] magnificent black-and-orange specimen in two weeks, at a cost of £12’, which is a considerable saving on the approximately £250 the 1963 originals cost: although the Radio Times models were designed to be static, not operational TV props. Either way, I suspect it would cost a little more now…. 

(6) HOW HAS THE LAST WHO ANNIVERSARY SPECIAL AGED? Very well decrees Gizmodo’s James Whitbrook in “10 Years Later, Doctor Who’s ‘Day of the Doctor’ Still Hits”.

For a show that is about the capability to be everywhere and anywhere, any period in time, Doctor Who is a show that is arguably burdened with context. Now 60 years old today, the thought of navigating any of its stories without an awareness of its place in that history is almost unthinkable. But every once in a while, in a very long while, Doctor Who wields that context to set itself free.

That’s the paradox—as well as the philosophy of John Rawls—that sits at the heart of “The Day of the Doctor,” Doctor Who’s 50th anniversary special that climaxed a blockbuster period of celebrations for the series 10 years ago tonight. It is, of course, almost impossible to think of “Day” outside of this context—metatextually, we now know so much of what almost happened during its production and ideation that it’s almost a miracle to revisit the final product and not deem it miraculous for simply existing. 

…And it is about the weight of context. The tragic heart of “Day of the Doctor” is John Hurt’s aforementioned “War” Doctor: the regeneration that took part in the Time War, an incarnation left to banished memories out of the shame of what he had to do to end the conflict between the Time Lords and the Daleks once and for all, one petrified to even call himself a Doctor for the hurt he wielded to do so. Following him on the eve of the final days of the conflict as he steals a weapon of mass destruction from his own people—the Moment, a weapon so powerful, so horrifying, it developed its own conscience to almost stop itself from being—the War Doctor’s arc is one about wrestling with the weight of his own personal history, a push and pull that haunts him, and is compacted when he comes face to face with his future: two further incarnations of himself that yes, still feel the pain of the Time War, a pain muted in some ways, but still, a future for himself that exists beyond the horrifying task he has burdened himself with…

(7) TODAY’S THING TO WORRY ABOUT. “Robot Takes Order at Wendy’s. It Catches an ‘Attitude’” claims the Daily Dot.

Wendy’s has started rolling out its new AI chatbot system that is supposed to be handling customer orders at the drive thru. However, according to one TikTok video, what was intended to be a seamless transition turned into a comical and frustrating experience.

The video, which was posted by Macey (@maceitrain) this week, kicks off with Macey already mid-order, requesting a Coke. The Wendy’s robot promptly responds with a simple, “Anything else?”

The TikToker then proceeds to modify her order. “Can I make the junior bacon cheeseburger Biggie bag a medium, please?” she says.

After each update to the order, the robot mechanically repeats, “Anything else?”

…The video has since accumulated over 944,200 views with over 550 comments. Some commenters were not overly impressed by the speed of the new ordering system.

“I feel like that took longer than having a human take the order,” one commenter said….

(8) MARTY KROFFT (1937-2023). Marty Krofft, who partnered with his older brother Sid to build a kids’ TV empire around shows like The Banana Splits Adventure HourH.R. Pufnstuf and Land of the Lost, died November 25. The Hollywood Reporter profile is here.

The Kroffts followed Pufnstuf with The Bugaloos (1970-72), the Claymation series Lidsville (1971-73), Sigmund and the Sea Monsters (1973-75) and Land of the Lost (1974-76)…

Indeed, the Kroffts’ style was so popular that McDonald’s copied it to create Mayor McCheese and McDonaldland for an early ’70s advertising campaign. The Kroffts sued, winning a reported seven-figure settlement in 1977….

…Marty joined his brother full-time in 1958 after Sid’s assistant left, and they opened Les Poupees de Paris, an adults-only burlesque puppet show that played to sold-out crowds at a dinner theater in the San Fernando Valley….

Les Poupees went on the road and played world’s fairs in Seattle in 1962, New York in 1964 and San Antonio in 1968. It featured 240 puppets, mostly topless women, and Time magazine called it a “dirty puppet show.”

After that, it was so popular, “we couldn’t even get our own best friends in the theater,” Sid said. It drew an estimated 9.5 million viewers in its first decade of performances….

(9) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

Born November 25, 1926 Poul Anderson. (Died 2001.) Need I say that he’s one of my favourite writers? I’m reasonable sure that along with Heinlein, Bradbury and Le Guin that he was the first of the writers that I read extensively. And as Algis Budrys said in his Galaxy review column of February 1965, “we will all soon realize he has for some time been science fiction’s best storyteller.”

Poul Anderson

Poul was really, really prolific which will mean that I’m not going to detail everything he did here. Indeed, ISFDB list twenty-three novels and an amazing thirty-three collections of his short stories! So where to start? 

Well in my case, that is quite easy as my go to works by him when I want to be entertained at length by great storytelling is the Technic History stories with those of Nicholas van Rijn and Dominic Flandry being the ones I like the best. Not that other stories aren’t excellent in their own as they are. 

Now there’s the ever so fun Hoka novels (Earthman’s Burden and Star Prince Charlie) and the Hoka! short stories, a sequel to the first novel, that were co-written with Gordon R. Dickson. 

I’ve always enjoyed his Time Patrol stories as they’re some of the best such tales that were ever written. These of course, as are all of his short stories, to found in The Collected Short Works of Poul Anderson that NESFA published. All seven volumes are now available as epubs! 

What’s next?  Orion Shall Rise remains one of my most read novels by him. It’s part of his Maurai & Kith series, a most interesting future history. The short stories, also excellent, were collected in, not surprisingly, his Maurai & Kith collection. 

I was surprised to find that Operation Chaos and Operation Luna actually had a handful of short stories as well, six to be exact, one written by Eric Flint. I shall need to seek them out. Another set of novels that I’ve read several times. 

Let’s not forget The Unicorn Trade that he and Karen collaborated on. Such a wonderful collection it is.

Yes, there’s lots more, but I’m going to finish off with A Midsummer Tempest which is always a delight to experience. 

No, I didn’t forget he won seven Hugo Awards and three Nebula Awards. All well deserved. 

And if you go here, you get to hear the delightful story of Karen and her role role in filk songs. I’m told that Poul had a fine singing voice. I wonder if there’s any recording of him and her singing.  

(10) MONITORING WHO MEDIA. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] More from Beeb.  Alas you have to have a BBC Sounds account to download in this case… “Doctor Who: 60 years of Friends and Foes”.

As Doctor Who celebrates its 60th anniversary, Sue Perkins explores how the programme has reflected our social history across the decades both on and off screen. From advances in technology to politics, violence, gender and sexuality.

Featuring archive footage, interviews and new conversations with showrunner Steven Moffat, script editor Andrew Cartmel, former companions including Anneke Wills, Katy Manning and Janet Fielding, and the voice of the Daleks Nicholas Briggs along with Dalek Operator Barnaby Edwards. Also, there’s analysis from several academics who have published books on the subject.

Sue examines how progressive the show has been, questioning if our favourite time traveller has kept with the times.

Sue Perkins

(11) BEWARE SPOILERS. If you have already seen the newest Doctor Who special, or don’t care about spoilers, you’re a candidate to read this Inverse profile about the latest iteration of the sonic screwdriver: “54 Years Later, The Oldest TV Sci-Fi Hero Just Got A Massive Tech Upgrade”.

(12) CULTURAL CORNER. Lavie Tidhar tweeted a fresh humorous sendup of the classic poem.

(13) VIDEO OF THE DAY. “Tolkien explains on BBC how he started The Hobbit” is a brief clip from a 1968 interview.

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

Pixel Scroll 11/20/23 A Pierson’s Puppeteer And A Pushmi-Pullyu Walk Into A Bar

(1) X FILES. Deadline covers the courthouse as “Elon Musk Files Lawsuit Over White Supremacist Ads Placement On X/Twitter”.

It wasn’t exactly the “split second” the courthouse opened this morning as promised, but Elon Musk has now filed his self-described “thermonuclear lawsuit” against Media Matters.

“Defendant Media Matters for America is a self-proclaimed media watchdog that decided it would not let the truth get in the way of a story it wanted to publish about X Corp,” proclaimed the jury trial seeking complaint filed in federal court in Texas.  Musk and X’s three-claim disparagement suit primarily wants a preliminary and permanent injunction against Media Matters’ report on the alleged placing of corporate ads next “Pro-Nazi Content.” (Read Elon Musk’s lawsuit over the pro-Nazi ad placement allegations here)

Enraged about studies by the media watchdog that claimed X/Twitter is placing the advertising of major brands and big corporations aside such vile material, Musk lashed put with his legal threats late on November 17. As there was more fallout from the Media Matters study, AppleDisney Comcast, Paramount Global, Warner Bros Discovery and others suspend their ad buys and presence on X/Twitter.

It is worth noting that none of the media companies and others actual given a reason why they paused their ad campaigns on X/Twitter – and certainly one could speculate it had to do with Musk’s personal online amplification of antisemitic screech as much as the Pro-Nazi ad placement accusations….

(2) GETTING PAID. Publishers Weekly covers a lot of ground in “The PW Publishing Industry Salary Survey 2023”. But here’s an excerpt about the money people are making.

… There was little change in the gender pay gap, even as more women moved into management ranks; the survey found women in management had a median income of $120,000. Men in management had a median income of $110,000. Overall, however, median compensation for men was $89,000 in 2022, while median compensation for women was $70,000.

The reasons for the disparity haven’t changed: while 56% of managers who responded were women, women have an even greater presence in the lower-paying areas of editorial, sales and marketing, and operations. And the median length of time in the industry from male respondents was 21 years, compared to 10 years for women….

(3) WORM VS. MEATBALL. “NASA Celebrates the Worm Logo Designer, Richard Danne” in PRINT Magazine.

Do you remember the moment the core concept of the Worm Logo came to you? How did it develop? Did you immediately know that you’d created something brilliant, or was that more of a surprise?

This logotype and its evolution in our Danne & Blackburn studio was arduous and definitely not a quick-hitting surprise.

Back in 1974, the mountain of current visual material supplied to us by NASA was almost overwhelming. And, by any standard, poor! There were no designers at Headquarters or any of the Centers. So Bruce and I went back and forth and kept simplifying our symbols and logotypes as we tried to make them work in all two and 3-dimensional applications: from publications to signs to rockets and space vehicles! We even designed to survive the mediocre printing from GPO back then.

We just kept refining until we had a strong, progressive mark that spoke for aeronautics and space exploration. We had decided early on to present only one solution and back it up with multiple applications to show it was a real Program, not just a badge. It was the analog age, so Bruce (the lead designer) rendered the final logotype solution in a Pentel pen, and we were airborne!

(4) THE MARVELS. Finally, someone reviews the movie and not just its box office. Camestros Felapton also notes interesting parallels between the film and current events in “Review: The Marvels”.

…. There are a few missteps but there is a decent plot, an interesting antagonist and some innovative action scenes. Iman Vellani steals the show as Ms. Marvel, with an infectious charm as the starstruck teen with bizarre superpowers but Brie Larson and Teyonah Parris give more grounded performances as Captain Marvel and Monica Rambeau. Also, there are cats….

(5) MEMORIES. “‘I got to have an affair with Kylie!’ Stars share their best Doctor Who moments – part one” in the Guardian.

Simon Callow (played Charles Dickens, 2005-2011)

I was one of the very few children who had no time for Doctor Who. I saw the very first episode and said in scornful falsetto, “Science fiction? Ugh!” So when I appeared as Chas Dickens, I was a Doctor Who virgin. But I remember I was moved to tears, as was Christopher Eccleston, by our exchange at the end: “You seem to know a lot about the future,” says Dickens to the Doctor. “May I ask you a question?” “Go ahead.” “Will my books be read?” “Yes.” “How long for?” “For ever.” Exquisite.

(6) UNWRAPPED. Slashfilm is still traumatized by “Sci-Fi TV Shows That Were Canceled After A Cliffhanger”.

… With the stakes often so high for sci-fi television, that makes these unresolved plot threads all the more frustrating for fans following a series and invested in the characters. From being stranded across time and space to fan-favorite characters faced with mortal peril, these cliffhangers threaten to overshadow a show’s legacy. Here are the biggest television cliffhangers in the sci-fi genre that were left unresolved by cancelations from the studios or networks producing them….

One of those shows was —

Quantum Leap (1989)

Premiering in 1989, the original “Quantum Leap” rates as something of a television cult classic, running for five seasons on NBC until 1993. While conducting time travel experiments, scientist Sam Beckett (Scott Bakula) is flung through the space-time continuum, temporarily possessing figures throughout history. In each leap, Sam corrects different anomalies in the past, hoping to one day return to his own body and time period.

This hope is never fulfilled, with a title card in the series finale declaring that “Sam Becket never returned home.” The suddenness and finality of this statement, along with the show misspelling the last name of its own protagonist, gave “Quantum Leap” a laughably abrupt sendoff. A revival series, set in the same continuity as the original “Quantum Leap,” premiered in 2022, renewing hopes of closure for Sam Beckett. Unfortunately, series star Scott Bakula passed on an offer to return, with Sam described as lost in time at the beginning of the revival instead.

(7) WILLIAM B. ELLERN (1933-2023). Author, engineer and longtime LASFS member William B. Ellern died November 18. His daughter Jill made the announcement on Facebook.

With the permission of E. E. “Doc” Smith he extended the Lensman series. His first published story was “Moon Prospector” in Analog (1966). Later, “New Lensman” was serialized in 14 parts in Perry Rhodan #61-74 (1975) and “Triplanetary Agent” was serialized in 6 parts in Perry Rhodan #100-105 (1978).

Ellern worked as an engineer for JPL, Raytheon, Boeing, Hughes Aircraft and Northrop Corporation.

He was a member of the Los Angeles Science Fantasy Society board of directors for decades, ending his service in 2009.

He was married to Anne Morrel for 30 years; she predeceased him in 2015.

William Ellern and Anne Morrel in 2001. Photo by Dik Daniels.

(8) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

  • Born November 20, 1923 Nadine Gordimer. South African writer and political activist. Her one genre novel was July’s People which was banned in her native country under both governments. Her three stories are collected in Beethoven Was One-Sixteenth Black and Other Stories. She received the Nobel Prize in Literature, recognized as a writer “who through her magnificent epic writing has been of very great benefit to humanity”. (Died 2014.)
  • Born November 20, 1923 Len Moffatt. He was a member of First Fandom. Len and his second wife June helped organize many of the early Bouchercons, for which he and June received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Bouchercon staff. He was a member of LASFS. He wrote far too many zines to list here. Mike has an excellent look at his memorial here. (Died 2010.)
  • Born November 20, 1926 John Edmund Gardner. No, not the one that wrote that Grendel novel, and author of more Bond novels than one would think possible. He’d write fourteen original James Bond novels, more than Fleming wrote, and the novelized versions of two Bond films, License to Kill and GoldenEye. He’d also dip into the Sherlock universe, writing three novels around the character of Professor Moriarty. Rights to film them were optioned but never developed due to a lack of funding. (Died 2007.)
  • Born November 20, 1932 Soma Vira. Indian-born British citizen mostly remembered for her Planet Keepers space opera series began with Checkmating Aliens. She’s unusual in that she started writing late in life, in her sixties to be precise. (Died 2003.)
  • Born November 20, 1944 Molly Gloss, 79. Her novel Wild Life won the 2000 James Tiptree, Jr. Award. She has two more SF novels, The Dazzle of Day and Outside the Gates. Her “Lambing season” short story was nominated for a Hugo at Torcon 3, and “The Grinnell Method” won a Sturgeon.  She’s available at the usual suspects. 

(9) WORLDS OF IF BONUS MATERIAL. [Item by Jean-Paul Garnier.] In anticipation of the relaunch of Worlds of IF Magazine in February 2024, over the next several months the editorial staff is regularly rolling out free online bonus materials on the IF site.

Recent additions include a new YouTube channel and video, History of IF through Cover Art, featuring all 176 covers throughout the entire run of IF, plus an interview with Jeremy Brett, curator of the Cushing Memorial Library & Archives, Texas A&M University about the role that pulp magazines play in one of the largest SF archives in the world, and audio adaptations of classic Worlds of IF stories, most recently Time Enough at Last by Lynn Venable from the January 1953 issue (famously adapted into a Twilight Zone episode in 1959).  Find out more at Worlds of IF Magazine.

Jeremy Brett

(10) DON’T PANIC. Yesterday there reportedly were “Fears for Wallace and Gromit after clay manufacturer shuts up shop”

With innovative animation films featuring characters such as Wallace, Gromit and Shaun the Sheep, it was the production company that turned humble modelling clay into cinematic art.

But the closure of Aardman Animations’ only supplier of modelling clay has raised question marks over the future of the studio’s output, prompting drastic measures.

When Newclay Products announced it was closing its factory in Newton Abbot, near Torquay, in March this year, Aardman’s staff moved quickly to buy up all remaining stock of the clay, a specific type that is not made elsewhere, ensuring they could finish work in the studio’s production pipeline.

The Telegraph understands that the last remaining stock of “Newplast” clay was enough to allow Aardman’s animators to create one more film, a new Wallace and Gromit animation due to hit the screens next year….

But today Aardman told people not to worry:

(11) WERTHAM AGAINST THE COMICS. Bobby Derie looks at “’Beyond the Past’ (1953) by Lou Morales” and ruminates on the Necronomicon, Frederic Wertham, and the Fifties anti-comics crusade in a post on Deep Cuts in a Lovecraftian Vein.

… Wertham used the leading question about the Necronomicon more than once; a 1954 article titled “The curse of the comic books” appeared in the journal Religious Education Vol. 49, No. 6 a few months prior with essentially the same opening, and Wertham may have reused it elsewhere.

There is no surprise in this case that Wertham got the details wrong; there are numerous examples in Seduction of the Innocent where his apparent encyclopedic knowledge of comic characters and plots is shown to be superficial at best. What’s surprising is how he got ahold of a British newspaper article—possibly through a clipping service—and how swiftly and avidly he seized on the word Necronomicon, apparently in complete ignorance of its provenance….

(12) FRICKIN’ SPACECRAFT, WITH FRICKIN’ LASERS ON THEIR HEADS. [Item by Mike Kennedy.] NASA’s Psyche spacecraft is headed to the main asteroid belt to visit a metal rich body of the same name. While the journey will take about 3.5 years and cover over a quarter-billion miles, the craft has already started working on an interim task.

Psyche is being used to test deep space communication using near infrared lasers for both up- and downlink. These should prove to be more efficient than radio communications and provide 1-2 orders of magnitude improvement in bandwidth.

The narrower beam path of the laser (versus radio communications) does mean that the transmitting systems will need to more precisely predict where the receiver (spacecraft or Earth) will be when the beam arrives. Kind of like kicking a soccer ball to where the other player will be when the ball gets there rather than to where they are now. “NASA’s Psyche wins first deep space laser relay” at Popular Science.

… NASA also noted that, while similar infrared communications has been successfully achieved in low Earth orbit as well as to-and-from the moon, this week’s DSOC milestone marks the first test through deep space. This is more difficult thanks to the comparatively vast, growing distance between Earth and Psyche. During the November 14 test, data took roughly 50 seconds to travel from the spacecraft to researchers in California. At its farthest distance from home, Psyche’s data-encoded photons will take around 20 minutes to relay. That’s more than enough time for both Earth and Psyche to drift further along their own respective cosmic paths, so laser arrays on the craft and at NASA will need to adjust for the changes. Future testing will ensure the terrestrial and deep space tech is up to the task….

[Thanks to Andrew Porter, John King Tarpinian, Chris Barkley, Steven French, Jean-Paul Garnier, Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, and Mike Kennedy for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Daniel Dern.]

Pixel Scroll 11/16/23 Mobius, Larryus, And Curlyus, The Three Time Stooges

(1) THEY’RE THE TOPS. Charlie Jane Anders’ picks as “The 10 best science fiction and fantasy novels of 2023” are live at the Washington Post. (Registration required.)

People sometimes say science fiction basks in optimism for a better future, while fantasy is about nostalgia for an imaginary past. But this year’s most notable fantasy books worked to uncover historical crimes, while science fiction warned of coming evils.

The good news? The best sci-fi and fantasy books of 2023 will give you hope and strength in the toughest times….

This is Anders’ favorite:

‘To Shape a Dragon’s Breath,’ by Moniquill Blackgoose

This remains my favorite book of the year. An Indigenous girl, Anequs, becomes the first person on Masquapaug island to hatch a dragon’s egg in generations, which means she’s forced to attend the dragon-rider academy run by the Anglish colonizers. If Anequs can’t learn to behave like a proper Anglish girl, her adorable baby dragon will be put to death. A fascinating alternate history of North American colonization and a nuanced investigation of who gets left out of “civilization” form a worthy backdrop to a coming-of-age story that is cozy and hair-raising in equal measure.

(2) NOW AN EX-X USER. John Scalzi told Whatever readers today, “Yup, Done With the Former Twitter”.

Elon Musk, the most unfathomably insecure and pathetic billionaire the world has ever seen, has gone mask-off antisemite, and that means that while I had already reduced my participation on the former Twitter, now I’m off it entirely. I’m keeping the account so that no one can swoop in and take a screenname that’s been associated with me for the last fifteen years, but no more posting, and no more participation. Until and unless the service is sold to someone who isn’t Musk (and possibly even then, depending), I’m out, I’m through, I’m done….

4. Leaving the former Twitter is also at this point more than a little bit of a relief. I’ve noted above that I restricted my use of it recently to just career news and updates, but even doing that has become an increasing depressing and unpleasant chore, like having a storefront in a part of town where the windows are increasingly soaped up and the sidewalks are full of trash, and there are a bunch of Nazis on the corner, leering at cars driving by. It was no fun, in a place where I used to have fun. It was, finally, time to go. So I’ve gone….

Best Fan Writer Hugo finalist Örjan Westin also announced today that Micro SF/F is off of X:

And Thomas M. Wagner of SFF180 : Science Fiction and Fantasy Book Reviews will drop off tomorrow.

(3) WHERE TO FIND NEXT YEAR’S VIRTUAL WORLDCON. The Glasgow 2024 Worldcon has announced what platforms they will use for their “Online Convention” experience.

… Our technical platform will be based on Hopin Events from RingCentral for video streaming and Discord for text interaction and community forums.

We will be providing more details on the platform in January 2024…

For those who will be attending the Worldcon in person, Glasgow 2024 also has posted their “Disease Mitigation Policy”. It’s too long and detailed for an excerpt to serve, so please click through to read the document.

(4) A BOLT FROM THE BLUE. “The quest for Zeus’ lightning begins in new ‘Percy Jackson and the Olympians’ trailer” at MSN. Premieres Dec. 20 on Disney+.

Adapted from Rick Riordan’s “The Lightning Thief,” season 1 of the new Disney series sets our demigods on their first big journey — and introduces Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Hermes.

What do you do when one of the most powerful weapons in existence goes missing? If you’re the Greek gods of Olympus, the answer is simple: Have a bunch of kids go look for it….

Based on Rick Riordan‘s best-selling book series of the same name, Percy Jackson and the Olympians portrays a world in which the children of gods and humans gather at a sanctuary called Camp Half-Blood to hone their skills and learn how to defeat monsters such as the Minotaur, who makes its debut in the trailer. Season 1 will be drawn from Riordan’s first book in the series, The Lightning Thief….

(5) JMS Q&A. Gizmodo interviews “J. Michael Straczynski on Harlan Ellison’s Epic Sci-Fi Legacy”.

io9: How did you narrow down Ellison’s work for this collection? Considering how prolific and highly lauded he is, I’d think you couldn’t even collect his award winning stories without filling two massive volumes.

J. Michael Straczynski: It was a process. I started with the stories that won the most awards—and there are a lot of those. Then I asked, “What are the fan favorites?” and “Which were Harlan’s favorites?” Then, after aggregating all the material, I wrestled with the combination of stories that would provide readers with the best perspective on Harlan’s body of work. Because he wrote all kinds of stories, I think it’s important for readers to understand the breadth of his work. From the horror and bite of The Whimper of Whipped Dogs and I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream, to the humor of I’m Looking for Kadak, to the gentle fantasy of On the Downhill Side, and the semi-autobiographical storytelling in All The Lies That Are My Life—they’re all there. I wanted the stories to serve as an entry point for readers who might not be familiar with Harlan’s fiction, and my hope is that these stories will drive readers to his other works….

(6) EXTERMINATE! IN LIVING COLOUR. “Doctor Who reveals first look at new colourisation of The Daleks” – and the Radio Times posted BBC images from the work.

… The original episode’s black-and-white visuals have been colourised for the new version and it will also feature a new score from composer Mark Ayres and new sound design.

The new colourisation will air on BBC Four on Thursday 23rd November – the date that marks six decades since Doctor Who’s first transmission….

(7) STEM SCHOLARSHIP CREATED. The American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics’  AIAA Foundation is partnering with Blue Origin’s nonprofit Club for the Future to provide a $10,000 scholarship each year to one high school senior who has demonstrated an interest in pursuing a career in aerospace engineering. The scholarship is known as “AIAA and Club for the Future’s Resilient Student Scholarship.” Students can apply here. Applications are due by January 31, 2024.

Any high school senior enrolling in a STEM program at a college, university, or technical institution who matches other qualifying criteria will be eligible. In addition to the $10,000 award, the recipient will be matched with an AIAA professional member to serve as a mentor. The scholarship will be offered to high school seniors who are AIAA members; high school membership in AIAA is free. The scholarship is specifically designed to empower and inspire students who have faced unique challenges, including but not limited to: students with disabilities; from underrepresented racial and ethnic backgrounds, gender minorities, or disadvantaged socioeconomic circumstances; and first-generation college students.

Students who apply for this scholarship will be asked to describe why they are interested in aerospace and write about their vision for their future career in the aerospace field. They also must submit a short personal essay on their values of compassion, tenacity, and resilience, and how they have used one or all of these traits to problem-solve or accomplish something in their life.

This scholarship follows other support for aerospace young talent development provided to the AIAA Foundation by Blue Origin’s Club for the Future, including a $1 million grant in 2021 for educational programs….

(8) ASIMOV’S AD. Is there a way they can deliver on this? Three of these four writers are dead.

(9) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

  • Born November 16, 1939 Tor Åge Bringsværd, 84. 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 [held] the attendance record. He was made Fan GoH of Loscon 9 and Westercon 61.” (Died 2017.) (JJ)
  • Born November 16, 1952 Candas Jane Dorsey, 71. 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, 71. 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 SunshineChalice 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 penned hardboiled Parker novels. (Died 2016.)
  • Born November 16, 1976 Lavie Tidhar, 47. 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. Unholy Land is another of his fascinating alternate histories. The last work I read by him was Neom, a sequel of sorts to Central Station, which might be one of his best works, period. 

(10) COMICS SECTION.

(11) SCION OF GAMERGATE. [Item by Mike Kennedy.] The man just convicted of assaulting Nancy Pelosi’s husband has blamed his initial radicalization on anti-feminist gamers on YouTube. “Man Who Attacked Nancy Pelosi’s Husband Says Anti-Feminist Gaming YouTubers Radicalized Him” at Gamespot.

David DePape, who assaulted former US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband Paul, has stated that anti-feminist gaming content on YouTube led him to radicalization.

A report from KQED quotes DePape’s testimony on the third day of the federal trial against him, in which he described the process of his radicalization. DePape claimed that he once politically opposed Trump, until he began consuming right-wing conspiracy media. DePape was an avid gamer who encountered videos about the misogynistic harassment campaign Gamergate while looking up walkthroughs and tips.

DePape said, “I’d look up a [strategy to defeat a video game] boss, and it’d be a total different person, and these people would talk about how toxic Anita Sarkeesian is, over and over and over. I wanted to find out what was going on here. I wanted to get both sides of the story.”

This led to him consuming more and more right-wing internet content. DePape would listen to YouTubers and podcasters like James Lindsay, Jimmy Dore, and Glenn Beck for at least six hours a day, and even longer on weekends. While listening, he would play video games on mute in the Richmond garage where he lived without basic amenities like a bed and shower….

(12) USE THE TORT, LUKE. “Star Wars developer strikes back at class-action claim” reports Axios.

A class action complaint over a Star Wars video game’s missing content should be dismissed in part because the lead plaintiff already got a rebate, the game’s developer has argued in court.

Why it matters: The novel suit is seeking damages because a game maker didn’t deliver on the promise they offered when promoting their game.

Details: The case, Malachi Mickelonis v. Aspyr Media, Inc., revolves around the cancellation of the “Restored Content DLC,” a free update that had been planned for the 2022 Nintendo Switch re-release of beloved 2004 role-playing game Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II.

  • The update would have restored storyline content that was infamously cut before the original game shipped. Those missing bits have so far been available only on the PC version via a mod made by fans who salvaged the content from the game’s code.
  • Aspyr announced in June it was canceling the DLC, and offered download codes for other Star Wars games to compensate.
  • In July Mickelonis sued, saying he “felt completely duped” and sought damages over alleged violations of California consumer law. Late last month, the suit was modified to include 17 more plaintiffs.

Driving the news: Aspyr Media asked a court last month and this month to toss out the suit, according to court filings reviewed by Axios….

(13) AI SPEAKS FOR THE DEAD. The late French singer Edith Piaf will narrate her own biopic with a voice re-created by AI. The Piaf estate approved. “Edith Piaf AI-Generated Biopic in the Works at Warner Music” in Variety.

“La Vie en robots”? More than 60 years after her death, legendary French singer Edith Piaf will come to life in a new biopic that will use AI to recreate her voice and image.

Warner Music Group announced that it has partnered with Piaf’s estate for “Edith,” set to be a 90-minute film set in Paris and New York from the 1920s to the ’60s. (Piaf, known as the “Sparrow of Paris,” died Oct. 10, 1963.) The film will be narrated by an AI-generated facsimile of Piaf’s voice and promises to “uncover aspects of her life that were previously unknown.”

“Animation will provide a modern take on her story, while the inclusion of archival footage, stage and TV performances, personal footage and TV interviews will provide audiences with an authentic look at the significant moments of Piaf’s life,” the music company said in announcing the project….

(14) ARSENIC AND OLD PAGES. American Bookbinders Museum delivers a webinar about “The Poison Book Project” on November 18.

Dr. Melissa Tedone will discuss the discovery of arsenic in Victorian-era bookcloth and how this discovery influences our understanding of Euro-American bookbinding materials and manufacture. The Poison Book Project investigates the use of toxic heavy metals (including arsenic, chromium, lead, and mercury) in mass-produced 19th-century books. Come learn how and why toxic compounds were used in bookbinding and how the Poison Book Project is using crowd-sourced data to enhance our understanding of this aspect of book history. Melissa will also share how to identify potentially ‘poison books,’ tips for safer handling, and how interested bibliophiles can contribute to this research.

… Melissa is the lead conservator of the Poison Book Project, an investigation of toxic colorants in nineteenth-century Victorian bookcloth, and a founding co-chair of the Bibliotoxicology Working Group. “BibTox” is an international cohort of conservators, conservation scientists, librarians, and health and safety professionals who are developing best practices for the identification and management of historical bookbinding collections with potentially toxic components.

(15) VIDEO OF THE DAY. Fanac.org has posted a video conversion of a Sixties fan film “Frankenstein…[a not so gory version]” produced in 8mm by the Delta SF Film Group.

This 1963 fannish production of “Frankenstein … [a not so gory version]” from the Delta SF Film Group, starts with a panorama across a mad scientist’s lab featuring “Entrails of Aldiss” and “bheer”. It’s an entertaining and complete story in less than 4 minutes, starring British fans of the day. You’ll be (un)amazed at the special effects, the pathos of the story and its shocking ending. It’s good fun, and Delta group went on to produce many more short films. Bill Burns, who provided this and other Delta Films tells us “The individual films date from 1963 to 1970, and were made on 8mm silent film to which a magnetic stripe was later added and the sound dubbed on. They were then shown mercilessly at club meetings and Eastercons, and suffered accordingly.” For more about the Delta SF Film Group, see the Fancyclopedia article and see the text of Bill’s talk at Manunicon (2016 Eastercon) at https://efanzines.com/Alien/indexd.htm

[Thanks to Chris Barkley, Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Lise Andreasen, Steven French, Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, and John King Tarpinian for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Daniel Dern.]

Pixel Scroll 11/13/23 Yesterday, Upon A Scroll, I Met A Pixel Who Wasn’t There

(1) MAYBE “COYOTE” ISN’T DEAD YET. “I’m feeling better!”Deadline reports “Coyote vs. Acme: Warner Bros Showing Pic to Amazon, Apple For Acquisition”.

Screenings are being set up this week for streamers Amazon Prime Video, Apple and Netflix to check out and potentially acquire Warner Bros‘ axed Looney Tunes movie Coyote vs. Acme after the studio’s phone ran off the hook the entire weekend from angry filmmakers and talent reps over their third feature film kill after Batgirl and Scoob Holiday Haunt!

The more egregious Hollywood sin with Coyote vs. Acme is that it’s a finished film was intended for a theatrical release, while the other two movies were still in the works.

Of those kicking the tires, even though no deals have been drafted, I hear Amazon is a leading contender given the fact that Courtenay Valenti, the Head of Film, Streaming and Theatrical for Amazon Studios and MGM, was a big champion and linchpin for the movie while she was President of Production and Development at Warner Bros. All of this boils down to Head of Amazon Studios Jen Salke’s signoff, I understand. During the pandemic, Prime Video acquired Sony’s family titles Hotel Transylvania 4 and Cinderella, among other movies. Amazon has been known to take finished films off the table for $100M and turn them into events for Prime Video….

(2) SFPA OFFICER ELECTION RESULTS. The Science Fiction and Fantasy Poetry Association has tallied the votes and announced that starting January 1, 2024, John Philip Johnson will be SFPA Secretary and Jordan Hirsch will be SFPA Treasurer.

(3) ULTRAMAN ARRIVING IN 2024. “The First Ultraman: Rising Trailer Looks Incredible” says Yahoo!

Ultraman is one of Japan’s biggest superheroes – both figuratively and literally – but outside of Japan the hero’s popularity hasn’t quite hit fever pitch. Netflix’s newest film could change all that, if the first trailer for Ultraman: Rising is anything to go by, as it looks absolutely incredible.

Netflix released the first trailer for the CG animated film Ultraman: Rising last night, as part of its annual Geeked Week celebrations. The trailer shows off a rebooted Ultraman, a gigantic super-powered hero that’s the powered-up form of baseball superstar Ken Sato.

As the story goes, Ken comes back to Japan to take up his duties as the biggest superhero on the planet, promptly defeating a large, dragon-like kaiju. In the trailer, he retrieves a mysterious orb from the monster, only to discover it’s an egg — and it hatches into the child of his greatest foe…

(4) LEARNEDLEAGUE CALENDAR. [Item by David Goldfarb.] Here are LearnedLeague One-Day Special quizzes scheduled for 2024, that relate to SF and fantasy. Some are specifically SFF-related, some are genre-adjacent. I’ll list both.

SFF-related:

  • Spaceballs: The One-Day Special!  Jan 9
  • The Sandman  Jan 10
  • The X-Men   May 8
  • Folk Horror Films  May 13
  • Science Fiction Homeworlds  Jul 20
  • Mars in Popular Culture  Jul 23
  • Studio Ghibli  Jul 23
  • Faerie Tale Theatre  Aug 6
  • Brandon Sanderson’s Cosmere  Aug 7
  • Murderbot for Everyone  Aug 21
  • Elemental Masters (probably? Mercedes Lackey has a series with that title, but it could be about something else with a similar name)  Oct 7
  • The Silmarillion   Oct 10 (we’ve had 3 quizzes already about The Lord of the Rings, so now we move on to The Silmarillion)
  • Godzilla  Oct 14
  • Just Audio Horror Pairings  Oct 16
  • Jurassic Park  Oct 17
  • Just Images Portals  Oct 28
  • Romance Novels 3: Super Friendly Monsters  Oct 31
  • Science of Science Fiction 2  Nov 4
  • Star Trek: The Next Generation  Nov 7

Genre-Adjacent:

  • Polyamory  Jan 12
  • Video Game Weaponry  Jan 22
  • Homestuck  Feb 7
  • Year of the Dragon (possibly? not 100% clear what this one is about)  Feb 8
  • Secret Identities  Mar 25
  • DuckTales  Apr 9
  • Nanotechnology  Apr 10
  • Chemicals I Won’t Work With  Apr 13
  • Asteroids  Apr 15
  • Horror Hosts  Apr 15
  • Fictional Religions  May 15 (not clear how this will differ from Fictional Theology)
  • Science Theater  Jul 15
  • Tintin Comics  Jul 18
  • Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall Trilogy  Oct 10
  • Mercury 7 Astronauts  Nov 7

I’m particularly looking forward to Cosmere, Homeworlds, Murderbot, and Science of SF. (I was part of a 10-way tie for champion of the first “Science of Science Fiction” quiz.)

(5) WHO MAY GIVE YOUNG VIEWERS THE CREEPS? “Doctor Who showrunner Russell T Davies issues warning to parents ahead of anniversary specials” and The Independent boosts the signal.

Doctor Who’s returning showrunner Russell T Davies has issued a warning to parents about “dark” and “violent” content in the show’s forthcoming episodes.

… Of the three episodes, series opener The Star Beast, which airs on 25 November and centres on a furry creature called a Meep (voiced by Miriam Margolyes), is the most child-friendly, Davies explained.

“It is like a great big Pixar family film, like a bank holiday film – all the family watching, lots of laughs, a funny monster,” he said.

However, the following two episodes will not be appropriate for children, Davies warned. “The second one, Wild Blue Yonder, is darker. Not scary – it’s genuinely weird,” he said.

“We do very scary stuff. Some stuff is quite violent. It’s not for children, it’s about children.”…

(6) LOKI SEASON 2 BOX SCORE. Deadline has the viewership numbers: “’Loki’ Season 2 Finale Pulls In 11.2M Views, +3% From Opener”.

Marvel Studios’ season 2 finale of Loki went out with a blast attracting 11.2M global views over three-days, which is +3% from the season 2 first episode 3-day draw of 10.9M.

Loki‘s season 2 kickoff was the second most-watched season premiere this year on Disney+, behind March’s season 3 premiere of The Mandalorian.

The finale of the Marvel Studios series—which concluded last Thursday—was only behind the season three finale of The Mandalorian, which wrapped up its season in April….

(7) OUROBOROS Q&A. “Ke Huy Quan Discusses Loki Season 2 Finale & His Marvel Entry” at Deadline. Beware spoilers.

DEADLINE: It’s so great to get to talk with you about Loki. You haven’t really been able to talk about your role, due to the actors strike. What have you been waiting to say?

KE HUY QUAN: When I decided to become an actor again, [being part of the MCU] was at the top of my wishlist…They all welcomed me with wide open arms, and I was so happy. I was patiently waiting for the show to come out so we can go and celebrate it and tell the fans. Then, of course, the strike happened. I just want to tell everybody how proud of the show I am. How happy I am with it. And working with Tom Hiddleston, Owen Wilson, the entire Loki family has just been incredible. We made this last year in London. I was there for four months, my wife and I were there. It was one of the best four months of my life. I’ve done a few shows before, and this was the first time where I didn’t want it to end. I was so happy. In fact, I’ll tell you this. We were scheduled for reshoots this February, and I was waiting. My wife and I were looking forward to spending more time in London and with our Loki family. And all of a sudden we were told, ‘Oh, we don’t need any reshoots. It’s all good.’ I was kind of disappointed. I was actually disappointed that we didn’t get to go back because of how much fun we had… So we made history. We make history two times. One is the first series of Marvel getting a second season and the second is the first time a Marvel show didn’t have any reshoots. I’m so proud of that….

(8) MICHAEL BISHOP (1945-2023). Beloved sff author Michael Bishop died November 13, the day following his 78th birthday, after a prolonged stay in hospice care. His daughter made the announcement on Facebook.

…It is with great sadness (and yet relief for my dad) that I post with the news that Daddy breathed his last breath early this morning with my mom by his side. He is at peace and free from pain AND we miss him terribly already….

He made such an immediate and strong impression on the field that he was presented DeepSouthCon’s Phoenix Award for lifetime achievement in 1977, less than a decade after his first work was published.

By the time his career was over, Bishop was a 17-time Nebula finalist, winning Best Novelette for “The Quickening” in 1982 and Best novel for No Enemy But Time in 1983. He was also a 9-time Hugo finalist, though never won.

His versatility was proven by the other awards he received. His short story “The Pile” won a 2009 Shirley Jackson Award. His novel Unicorn Mountain won the Mythopoeic Award for Best Fantasy in 1989. His poem “For the Lady of a Physicist” won a 1979 Rhysling Award. He was also a four-time Locus Award winner.

(9) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

  • Born November 13, 1850 Robert Louis Stevenson. Author of Treasure IslandStrange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde and the New Arabian Nights collection of short stories.  Internet Movie Database gives over three hundred productions that have been based off of his works. What are your favorite ones? And I’m not even going to get into the deeps of genre fiction based off just the Strange Case of Dr Jekyll as I know Theodora Goss was making use of that story in one of her series and Simon R. Green had Hydes in his Nightside series. Not to mention Bugs Bunny… (Died 1894.)
  • Born November 13, 1887 A. R. Tilburne. Pulp artist who by 1938 was selling cover illustrations to Short Stories and Weird Tales such as the November 1938 issue of the latter, and in the 1940s he also drew many interior story illustrations for Weird Tales. In 1947 he painted the cover for H. P. Lovecraft’s The Lurking Fear, published by Avon paperback books. (Died 1965.)
  • Born November 13, 1888 Philip Francis Nowlan. He’s best known as the creator of Buck Rogers. While working in Philadelphia, he created and wrote the Buck Rogers comic strip, illustrated by Dick Calkins. Philip Nowlan working for the syndicate John F. Dille Company, later known as the National Newspaper Service syndicate, was contracted to adapt the story into a comic strip. The Buck Rogers strip made its first newspaper appearance on January 7, 1929, but the first appearance of “Anthony Rogers” was actually in Amazing Stories in August of 1928 in the “Armageddon—2419 A. D.” Story there with cover illustration by Frank R. Paul. (Died 1940.)
  • Born November 13, 1945 Pierre Pelot, 78. A French writer who wrote fourteen science fiction novels and seven horror novels including space operas. Only But What If Butterflies Cheat? (its English translation title) is available in English so far. It’s part of the might exist The Child Who Walked on the Sky / But What If Butterflies Cheat? omnibus as I failed to find it anywhere including Amazon and any of the places that resell books online. He was nominated for a dozen Grand Prix de l’Imaginaire Awards winning two. 
  • Born November 13, 1955 Brenda Clough, 68. She was nominated for a Hugo at ConJosé for her “May Be Some Time” novella. I’m very fond of her fantasy Averidan series. Though very much not genre, I recommend her A Most Dangerous Woman, a sequel to The Woman in White by Wilkie Collin. It’s a serial on Realm which you can find at the usual suspects. 
  • Born November 13, 1957 Stephen Baxter, 66. Ok I’m going to confess that the only thing I’ve read that he’s written is the Long Earth series with Terry Pratchett.  I’ve only read the first three but they are quite great SF!  Ok I really, really need your help to figure out what else of his that I should consider reading.  To say he’s been a prolific writer is somewhat of an understatement and he’s gotten a bonnie bunch of awards as well though no Hugos.  It’s worth noting that Baxter’s story “Last Contact” was nominated for a Hugo for best short story at Denvention 3 as were The Time Ships as L.A. Con III, “Moon Six” novellette at BucConeer, “On the Orion Line” novellette  and “The Gravity Mine” short story at the Millennium Philcon, and finally “The Ghost Pit” short story at ConJosé.

(10) COMICS SECTION.

  • Speed Bump checks the shelves of an interesting library.
  • Thatababy has a strange way of getting rid of autumn leaves.
  • Wallace the Brave gives a teacher a novel excuse.
  • Tom Gauld made a design with you in mind.

(11) HORRENDOUS PROBLEMS IN IRON FLAME PRINT BOOKS. Publishers Lunch learned that “Entangled Is Working On A Solution to ‘Iron Flame’ Misprints”.

Entangled Publishing said in a statement that it’s working to correct misprints in the new Rebecca Yarros novel Iron Flame that published on November 7. Entangled reportedly indicated the book sold more than half a million copies on its release day, and some of the copies had irregularities including damaged pages, missing pages, upside down pages, and more, which readers catalogued on TikTok.

In a statement to Variety, the company acknowledged that the misprints “have caused disappointment among those who eagerly awaited this release.” They write, “In keeping with our values of quality and responsibility, we are committed to making this right. We are actively working with our distribution partner to create a solution for those who wish to exchange their copy but are unable to do so at their original retailer. Our printing company is also working to produce the additional copies needed to facilitate this process. Entangled Publishing appreciates the patience and support of our readers as we work to swiftly resolve this issue. More details will be available on our social media platforms in the coming weeks.”

(12) AI COPYRIGHT LAWSUIT NEWS. Publishers Weekly reports“Judge Will Toss Part of Authors’ AI Copyright Lawsuit”.

At a hearing last week, a federal judge said that he will dismiss part of the lawsuit filed by a group of authors including comedian Sarah Silverman that claims Meta’s Llama AI application infringes their copyrights.

According to Reuters, judge Vince Chhabria said the authors’ allegations that text generated by Llama infringes their copyrights simply doesn’t stand up to scrutiny. “When I make a query of Llama, I’m not asking for a copy of Sarah Silverman’s book—I’m not even asking for an excerpt,” Chhabria observed, noting that, under the authors’ theory, a side-by-side comparison of text generated by the AI application and Silverman’s book would have to show they are similar.

However, the judge said he will not dismiss the case with prejudice, meaning the authors will be allowed to amend and refile their claims. Furthermore, a core claim of the suit—that Meta’s use of unauthorized copies to train its AI model is infringing—remains.

The judge’s decision was not unexpected. As PW reported in July, multiple lawyers said that the authors’ copyright claims face long odds in court.

The proposed class action suit before Chhabria was filed on July 7 by the Joseph Saveri Law Firm on behalf of authors Christopher Golden, Richard Kadrey, and comedian Sarah Silverman, just days after the Saveri firm filed a similar suit on behalf of authors against Open AI, with authors Paul Tremblay and Mona Awad as named plaintiffs (though Awad has since withdrawn). A third group of authors represented by another firm (with authors including Michael Chabon, David Henry Hwang, Matthew Klam, Rachel Louise Snyder, and Ayelet Waldman among others) filed a lawsuit in August….

(13) TOY-BASED MOVIE GETTING ANOTHER CHANCE. “‘Masters of the Universe’ Movie Eyes New Home at Amazon” reports Variety.

In “Masters of the Universe,” He-Man’s nemesis is the evil wizard Skeletor. In Hollywood, his greatest threat has been a list of studio partners that have sidelined him from the big screen for nearly two decades. 

The blond barbarian, based on a popular set of Mattel toys, may finally win the day. Amazon MGM Studios is in serious talks to mount a live-action “Masters of the Universe” movie from Adam and Aaron Nee, the writing and directing team behind “The Lost City,” according to multiple insiders. Conversations are taking place with Amazon after Netflix dropped a planned version of the Nee brothers film in July….

(14) TERMINATOR BEGINS AGAIN. Yahoo! says“Terminator is back with a new anime series coming to Netflix”.

Netflix is giving the Terminator franchise the anime treatment in a new series that’s set to hit the streaming platform “soon.” The company dropped the first teaser for Terminator: The Anime Series this weekend during its Geeked Week event. Details so far are scant, but we do know it’ll be produced by Production IG, the Japanese animation studio behind the original Ghost in the Shell movie and spinoff TV series.

Terminator: The Anime Series will take us back to August 1997, when the Skynet AI becomes self-aware and turns against humans. While there is no information on the cast just yet, Variety reports the series will feature entirely new characters….

(15) THESE GHOSTS ARE ON THE CASE. Variety is there when “’Dead Boy Detectives’ Netflix Series Drops First Trailer”.

The “Dead Boy Detectives” series is officially set to air on Netflix after originally being set up at Max.

The show, based on characters created for DC by Neil Gaiman and Matt Wagner, was originally ordered to series at Max back in April 2022. However, it was reported earlier this year that it would be moving to Netflix due to the fact it did not fit the new direction for Max-DC content being spearheaded by James Gunn and Peter Safran.

The official description for the eight-episode series states, “Do you have a pesky ghost haunting you? Has a demon stolen your core memories? You may want to ring the Dead Boy Detectives. Meet Edwin Payne (George Rexstrew) and Charles Rowland (Jayden Revri), ‘the brains’ and ‘the brawn’ behind the Dead Boy Detectives agency. Teenagers born decades apart who find each other only in death, Edwin and Charles are best friends and ghosts… who solve mysteries….

(16) MOON UNIT. “Rebel Moon Trailer: Part One A Child of Fire Kicks Off Zack Snyder Epic”Variety provides the introduction.

Netflix has debuted an explosive new trailer for Zack Snyder‘s “Rebel Moon – Part One: A Child of Fire,” set for a limited one-week theatrical release on Dec. 15 and a wide streaming release on Netflix on Dec. 22.

Snyder’s epic space adventure film stars Sofia Boutella, Ed Skrein, Cleopatra Coleman and Cary Elwes. The story centers on a young woman living on the outskirts of a galaxy who must find a group of warriors to save the galaxy from an invasion from a tyrant. Snyder revealed to Total Film that “Rebel Moon” takes place in the same universe as another Netflix film of his, “Army of the Dead,” though one is set in outer space and the other in apocalyptic Las Vegas….

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

Pixel Scroll 10/31/23 It’s Almost The Midnight Hour And All Good Pixels Are Wrapped Up Warmly In Their Scrolls

(1) SCAMMERS LIVE IN VAIN. …Or will if Amazon’s suit is successful. Publishers Weekly reports “Amazon Sues Scammers Targeting Authors”.

Amazon this week announced that it has filed a lawsuit in the Northern District of California against some 20 individuals scamming authors by falsely claiming an affiliation with Amazon Publishing and Kindle Direct Publishing. According to the suit, the scammers run fake Amazon knockoff websites designed to lure would-be authors into paying a fee to publish, and then deliver either substandard or no service at all….

The suit includes details of unnamed authors who were taken in by the scams, including one who visited one of the defendant sites thinking she was accessing Amazon’s legitimate self-publishing services. The authors “corresponded with Defendants or their agents, who not only claimed to be Amazon representatives, but sent documents making further uses of the Amazon Marks,” the complaint states. “Believing she was working with Amazon, [the author] paid Defendants $4,000.00 for purported editorial and publication services.” The woman learned she was scammed after the service failed to materialize….

(2) ROBERT BLOCH WEBSITE HALLOWEEN OFFERING. The Robert Bloch Official Website is celebrating the holiday by posting Bloch’s Halloween-themed tale, “Pumpkin”. Original Twilight Zone Magazine story art by George Chastain.

(3) PAYING HIS RESPECTS ON HALLOWEEN. John King Tarpinian visited Ray Bradbury’s grave today, and says “I left Frank to keep him company.”

(4) CHENGDU WORLDCON ROUNDUP. [Item by Ersatz Culture.]

Arthur Liu’s con report – part 3

This was supposed to be a series of four posts, but he told me it’s looking like it’s going to be five, as this third part only gets as far as the morning of Thursday 19th, leaving another three days still to be written up.  Disclosure yet again: I’m mentioned in this report.  I have asked Arthur if he knows of any other reports that other fans might have published, which could be featured here on File 770, to give a more varied impression of what the con was like.

As before, these extracts are via Google Translate with minor cleanup edits.

On the morning of October 18, at 8:40, [con liaison] L said that the required documentation was now available, and at 9:36, the surrounding map and traffic control map were updated, as well as the updated transportation shuttle plan. Just before 11am, we collected all the materials – excluding the participant manual, which was still not finished at this time – and set off to the con site. After getting off the bus, I took out my guest pass. It said “”天爵” in Chinese and “TIAN Jue” in English. I only have two pen names, one is Yang Feng [for fiction] and the other is HeavenDuke [for online and non-fiction].  Some of my friends think the latter is a bit difficult to pronounce, so I let them call me by the Chinese translation “Tianjue”, but my English name is always Arthur Liu. I asked L what was going on, and L said, “This was provided by the organizers,” and “[The badges for] All Chinese guests have names printed using Chinese characters and their Pinyin transliteration (into Latin letters), while foreign guests have English names. The registration process has now closed. ” In other words, it could not be changed.  I thought back to the controversy caused by George R.R. Martin’s mispronunciation of names at the Hugo Awards ceremony in CoNZealand in 2020, and couldn’t help but sigh…

After a while, Jiafeng arrived as promised (he had previously promised to help look after the table on the 18th). Surprisingly, [co-Hugo finalist for Zero Gravity SF fanzine] Ling Shizhen also came.  When I started the [Chinese website] “Science Fiction Encyclopedia” in 2017, he had helped with reviews, and provided a lot of reference information, but I’d never met him in person… Thankfully, when Ling heard that the

CSFDB table was short of manpower, because of the problems of the preceding two days, he immediately said that he would try his best to help over the next few days.  He even cancelled many of his scheduled activities for this reason, which was really touching. The exhibition on the 18th was held in such an atmosphere.

After a while, RiverFlow also came over – it was also our first time meeting offline – together with Zi Xuan. When everyone was greeting each other, two foreigners came over, one of whom was Helen Montgomery. She was working the site selection table at this convention, and before that she was, like me, an editor of the Hugo Award-winning fanzine Journey Planet. I introduced her to the work of the [CSFDB] database, showed her the physical version of the bilingual special issue “Chinese Science Fiction and Space” of “Journey Planet”, and introduced her to the several Hugo Award finalists present. She showed us her Hugo Award trophy, and while taking photos with us, she pulled us into a circle and said to us, “When the award ceremony comes, please use all your senses and thoughts to remember that moment. Because regardless of whether you win or not, it will become an unforgettable moment in your lives” 

Despite this, when holding a conference in China, there are always some unexpected developments: not long after the booth was set up, a copy of the “Zero Gravity Newspaper” disappeared… Some people will stare at you like a ninja, casually flip through the materials on the booth, then put them in their pockets and take them away. Other people will rudely interrupt your introduction and directly ask for ribbons and stickers. Can other materials be obtained for free? Considering that all the items at our table are basically distributed free of charge, and the main focus is to exchange materials for social interaction, it doesn’t feel good to encounter such people.

Even more embarrassing are the people who come up and ask, “What is your business model?  How does your product make a profit?”  Sometimes they would ask this of “Zero Gravity News”; sometimes asking CSFDB.  In China, science fiction enthusiasts and the science fiction industry have almost no possibility of dialogue on this issue, which highlights its inability to keep up with the airwaves [I think this is an idiom, but I couldn’t get information about it; I guess it reinforces the idea of an inability to communicate]. Whenever we try to explain that this is a voluntary charity project, they end up shaking their heads and walking away. There was also an old gentleman who, as soon as he arrived at the stall, said, “Let me test you.” He opened the database and searched for “Tong Enzheng”, in an attempt to find out the shortcomings of the database. I don’t know what it’s like at overseas science fiction conventions, but judging from my past experience of exhibiting at APSFcon and the 2019 Chinese Science Fiction Convention at the Beijing Garden Expo Park, this situation and the cultural generation gap behind it will continue to exist for a long time.

In this atmosphere, at 5:30pm on Wednesday 18th, the CSFDB table ended its first day of exhibition. Before closing the table, [con liaison] L, who was in charge of the tables, came over and said that before the opening ceremony at 7:30pm, local leaders would come to inspect the exhibition area. There would be many people visiting and we were asked if we could continue running the table. The answer was of course no. At this time, everyone’s physical strength was basically exhausted – RiverFlow had even come to the booth to take a photo at around 2pm, and then returned to the hotel to rest, due to breathing difficulties. Fortunately, the shuttle bus that day finally stopped at the right place and on time…

[On the morning of Thursday 19th] RiverFlow and I hadn’t yet had breakfast, so I went down to eat with him again. He ate very quietly and slowly, lowering his head and choking whilst eating. But even so, he still tried his best to make friends with every guest present, and gave his “Zero Gravity News” to them, which was admirable.

I don’t know how many moments there were in this conference that were worthy of being “remembered with all the senses and thoughts”, but if there were, that moment was definitely one of them. On the 18th, a reporter had asked me how I felt about being shortlisted [for Best Fan Writer] and whether I thought that had a high chance of winning. I said at the time that I wanted River to win.

(Note: As mentioned in an earlier Scroll, the unedited machine translation always renders 河流 (Heliu) – i.e. RiverFlow, editor of the winning Best Fanzine – as “Hehe”.)

(5) KING’S COMMENT ON THE MAINE SHOOTINGS. “Stephen King on Mass Shootings: We’re Out of Things to Say” – an opinion piece by the author in the New York Times. (King resides in Maine.)

There is no solution to the gun problem and little more to write, because Americans are addicted to firearms.

Representative Jared Golden, from Maine’s Second Congressional District, has reversed course and says he will now support outlawing military-style semiautomatic rifles like the one used in the killing of 18 people in Lewiston this week. But neither the House nor the Senate is likely to pass such a law, and if Congress actually did, the Supreme Court, as it now exists, would almost certainly rule it unconstitutional.

Every mass shooting is a gut punch; with every one, unimaginative people say, “I never thought it could happen here,” but such things can and will happen anywhere and everywhere in this locked-and-loaded country. The guns are available, and the targets are soft.

When rapid-fire guns are difficult to get, things improve, but I see no such improvement in the future. Americans love guns and appear willing to pay the price in blood….

(6) FUTURE TENSE. From Future Tense and Arizona State University’s Center for Science and the Imagination about how technology and science will change our lives comes the October 2023 entry in  the Future Tense Fiction series: “Void” by Julián Herbert, translated from Spanish into English by Will Vanderhyden. The story is about artificial intelligence, codependence, and various kinds of addiction, from gambling to exercise to information.

It was published along with a response essay, “If We’re Addicted to Technology, What’s the Cure?” by journalist Katherine Mangu-Ward.

…We are desperately afraid of becoming addicted to our machines—the theme of “Void,” Mexican novelist Julián Herbert’s moody and compelling Future Tense Fiction story—and are deeply convinced we already are. We are also painfully aware of the inadequacy of our tools for dealing with addiction.

Research on the proposition that our current tech poses the threat of a new addictive disorder is weak and incomplete. The American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5) considers “internet addiction” only a “condition for further study,” not an official mental disorder. The incompleteness of the research has not stopped governments—in China, South Korea, and the U.K.—from embedding assumptions about its prevalence and mechanisms into their laws. If the suits against Meta are successful, the U.S. may join the ranks of nations willing to use very expensive carrots and spindly sticks to combat the poorly understood problem of tech addiction with the slightly less poorly understood tool of the 12-step program….

(7) CON OR BUST ASSISTANCE FOR PALESTINIANS. Dream Foundry told readers today “We understand that the current situation makes applying for a grant, or planning for next year, extremely challenging,” but that the “Goldman Fund Applications for Palestinians Attending Glasgow WorldCon Are Open”.

Applications for the Con or Bust initiative to assist Palestinian creators and fans of speculative fiction in attending the World Science Fiction Convention are now open. We’ll be assisting self-identified citizens of Palestine and members of the Palestinian diaspora to pay for travel and membership expenses to five Worldcons beginning in 2024. If you qualify for the Goldman Fund and would like assistance attending 2024’s Worldcon, apply today! The preferred application window closes on November 5, 2023. Applications received after the window closes will be considered for any remaining funds.

We understand that the current situation makes applying for a grant, or planning for next year, extremely challenging. If at all possible, let us know you intend to apply for 2024 before November 5, even if you don’t have a budget prepared. We’ll work with you from there.

(8) WINTER IS (STILL) HERE. Katrina Templeton, whose cat Winter was featured in “Cats Sleep on SFF: The End of All Things”, and had medical problems that were the subject of a fundraiser in May, has an encouraging announcement:

I apologize for taking so long with this, but we’ve wanted to monitor Winter’s health a bit before we reported that he seems to be out of the woods. I was so certain we were about to lose him, but he pulled through. I’m not sure he would have without the help of everybody who took the time to help us out. His kidney values soared one day, but they dropped to normal the next and I spent a weekend giving him fluids four times a day. We were able to afford that thanks to everybody’s generosity. We’ve also started him on special urinary food. But, other than the time he tried to choke to death on a hairball, he’s been doing much better. I feel safe enough to say that we’re back on our usual course.

He is, of course, trying to learn how to live safely in this science fictional universe, and I figured everybody deserved a picture of him looking much more lively.

Thanks again, everybody. I hope that he can live a long healthy life from this point on without any more scares.

(9) JUDY NUGENT (1940-2023). Actress Judy Nugent, who gained fame as a child performer in the Fifties, died October 26 at the age of 83. The Hollywood Reporter’s obituary says:

…Nugent, however, is probably best known for her turn as Ann Carson, a blind girl who enters and wins a Daily Planet contest, on the episode “Around the World With Superman,” which aired on March 13, 1954, as the second-season finale (and last black-and-white installment) of the syndicated series. 

After an operation restores her sight — Superman (George Reeves) had spotted a piece of glass lodged near her optic nerve! — Ann gets an amazing bird’s eye view of the planet while being whisked around by a superhero.

“That was top secret. I was told never to tell anyone about how George Reeves flew,” she recalled in an undated interview for the website Western Clippings.

“Anyway, they put George on this cement thing and dressed him over it, form-fitting up to his chest. They had a huge fan that made his cape fly out. The special effects people did the ups and downs. There was a ladder underneath — I’d sit on the ladder and he’d hold me up. Even though I was still little, I got awfully heavy.”…

(10) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

  • Born October 31, 1923 — Arthur W. Saha. A member of the Futurians and First Fandom who was an editor at Wollheim’s DAW Books including editing the Annual World’s Best SF from 1972 to 1990 and Year’s Best Fantasy Stories from 1975 to 1988. And he’s credited with coming up with the term “Trekkie” in 1967. (Died 1999.)
  • Born October 31, 1958 — Ian Briggs, 65. He wrote two Seventh Doctor stories, “Dragonfire” and “The Curse of Fenric”, the former of which of which introduced Ace as the Doctor’s Companion. (The latter is one on my frequent rewatch list.) He novelized both for Target Books. He would write a Seventh Doctor story, “The Celestial Harmony Engine” for the Short Trips: Defining Patterns anthology. 
  • Born October 31, 1959 — Neal Stephenson, 64. Some years back, one of the local bookstores had an sf book reading group. One of the staff who was a member of that group (as was I) took extreme dislike to The Diamond Age: Or, A Young Lady’s Illustrated Primer. I don’t remember now why but it made me re-read that work (which was very good) and Snow Crash (which was equally good). My favorite novel by him is The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O. There’s a sequel to the latter work but it’s not written by him. 
  • Born October 31, 1972 — Matt Smith, 51.  No, not that Matt Smith. He’s the current and longest-serving editor of long-running 2000 AD, and also the longest-running editor of its sister title Judge Dredd Magazine. He written three Judge Dredd novels plus a number of other genre novels based off the properties he edits. Along with Alan Ewing and Michael Carroll, he’s written the Judge Dredd audiobook, a take on the newly deputized Dredd.
  • Born October 31, 1979 — Erica Cerra, 44. Best known as Deputy Jo Lupo on Eureka, certainly one of the best SF series ever done. She was artificial intelligence A.L.I.E. and her creator Becca on The 100. She had a brief recurring role as Maya in Battlestar Galactica,  plus one-offs in pretty much anything you’d care to mention. Seriously I mean that. 
  • Born October 31, 1993 — Letitia Wright, 30. She co-starred in Black Panther playing Shuri, King T’Challa’s sister and princess of Wakanda. She returned as Shuri for Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, which depicts Shuri becoming the new Black Panther following the death of T’Challa.  Before that, she was Anahson in “Face the Raven”, a Twelfth Doctor story, and was in the Black Mirror’s “Black Museum” episode. 

(11) COMICS SECTION.

  • The Argyle Sweater focuses on the bittersweet for Halloween.
  • But Nathan W. Pyle is in it for the sweets.

(12) SLINGING A LINE. “Something fishy: what’s the real story with Amber Heard and Aquaman 2?” asks the Guardian.

What’s the truth about Amber Heard and Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom? Was her widely-mooted leading role in the movie reduced because she had no chemistry with Jason Momoa’s sometime king of Atlantis? Or was it due to the media furore surrounding her legal battles with Johnny Depp, as the actor herself testified at trial in May last year?

Either way, we know that the second (and most likely final) solo Aquaman does not focus on Heard’s Mera, but instead a messy, shoehorned bromance between Aquaman and his half-brother, Patrick Wilson’s Orm. It is a weird storyline, given this pair spent most of the previous movie hating on each other, but that doesn’t mean it was only cooked up so Warner Bros could push Heard out of the picture. Aquaman has reportedly had numerous reshoots, but surely they didn’t involve changing the whole plot of the movie?

Interviewed in Empire magazine ahead of the sequel’s December release, director James Wan once again rolled out what has clearly become the studio line on Heard’s relegation to a minor role. Commenting on the actor’s suggestions that she had originally been due to play a bigger part in the follow-up to 2018’s $1bn-grossing Aquaman, the Saw director argued he always intended the sequel to go a different way.

“It’s fair that she [Heard] said that, because she wasn’t in my head as I was working on this movie,” said Wan, diplomatically. “Actors don’t necessarily know what we behind the scenes are thinking about. But this was always my plan. From the start, I pitched that the first film would be a Romancing the Stone-type thing – an action-adventure romantic comedy – while the second would be an outright buddy comedy. I wanted to do Tango & Cash!

(13) ONE OF HOLLYWOOD’S FAVORITE LOCATIONS. Driving there is barely an inconvenience.“From ‘Halloween’ To ‘Back To The Future’: Why Filmmakers Love Pasadena and South Pas” in LAist.

…The city of South Pasadena, Schuler says, is often a go-to destination when a film crew wants a location that has the feel of a small, Midwestern town.

And interestingly, the city does have a historical connection with the Midwest — the Anglo founders of South Pasadena and Pasadena, back in the 1870s, were from Indiana.

Probably the most well-known filming location in South Pasadena is the “Michael Myers” house at 1000 Mission St., which was featured in the 1978 horror classic Halloween. In the film, and subsequent sequels, it’s the home of the killer, Michael Myers…

…Another big challenge to filming in residential neighborhoods, Schuler says, is getting the support of a homeowner to use a specific house.

The first step is knocking on the door, then explaining why you’re there, but also not giving them too much information too quickly.

“What we would have to do is talk to the people [about] whether they want to do it,” Schuler says, “and then eventually [explain that] yes, we need to move you out into a hotel, we want to take all your stuff out and put it in storage, we want to bring our stuff in…”

And depending on what city you’re in and what time of day or night you want to film, productions also need to get sign off from a certain number of neighbors….

(14) TIPS FOR THE AFTERLIFE. “An exhibition at the Getty Museum [in LA] reveals the Egyptian Book of the Dead, long relegated to a dark vault, in the light of day.” “Now Showing, an Ancient Spell Book for the Dead” in the New York Times. The exhibit opens November 1 and runs to January 29.

 …A standard component in Egyptian elite burials, the Book of the Dead was not a book in the modern sense of the term but a compendium of some 200 ritual spells and prayers, with instructions on how the deceased’s spirit should recite them in the hereafter. Sara Cole, the curator of the Getty exhibition, called the incantations a kind of supernatural “travel insurance” designed to empower and safeguard the departed on the long, tortuous journey through the afterlife. Unlike today’s insurance policies, no two copies were the same….

…Compiled and refined over millenniums since about 1550 B.C., the Book of the Dead provided a sort of visual map that allowed the newly disembodied soul to navigate the duat, a maze-like netherworld of caverns, hills and burning lakes. Each spell was intended for a specific situation that the dead might encounter along the way. For instance, Spell 33 was used to ward off snakes, which had an unsettling taste for chewing “the bones of a putrid cat.”…

(15) VIDEO OF THE DAY. How It Should Have Ended brings us “Villain Pub – Five Nights at Freddy’s”.

Five Nights At Freddy’s in The Villain Pub?!? A Storm Trooper must survive the night from Freddy Fazbear, Bonnie, Chica, and Foxy during their late night shift as villain pub security in this Halloween Special Episode.

[Thanks to Andrew Porter, Ersatz Culture, John King Tarpinian, Rich Lynch, Steven French, Katrina Templeton, Joey Eschrich, Lise Andreasen, Chris Barkley, Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, and Mike Kennedy for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Cat Eldridge.]

Pixel Scroll 10/6/23 When You’re Dune And Tribbled, And Need A Gripping Hand…

(1) ARE THESE YOUR FAVORITE SPOILERS? “Doctor Who’s Alex Kingston on hiding River Song’s biggest spoiler” at Radio Times. Beware spoilers. Further warning: the one excerpted below is not the “biggest spoiler” referred to in the headline.

“She’s not a companion, she’s a wife!” Alex Kingston is quick to correct about her beloved Doctor Who character River Song.

And she’s completely right. River Song is unlike any other Doctor Who character, first introduced in 2008’s Silence in the Library and spanning multiple eras in one of the most complex and glorious timelines to ever grace the show.

“She’s the most incredible character to play, and certainly when the role was offered to me, I had obviously no idea of the journey that both she and I would be undertaking – because obviously in the very first Silence in the Library story, she dies,” Kingston exclusively tells RadioTimes.com….

(2) TEXAS BOOK RATING LAW REMAINS IN EFFECT PENDING HEARING. “Appeals Court Lets Texas Book Rating Law Take Effect, Orders Expedited Hearing” reports Publishers Weekly.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit will let Texas’s controversial new book rating law, HB 900, take effect while an “expedited” appeals process plays out—despite a district court finding the law to be “a web of unconstitutionally vague requirements.”

In a two-line decision issued on October 5, the Fifth Circuit said it would not hear the state’s emergency motion for a stay separately and will instead carry the motion to be heard with the state’s challenge of judge Alan D. Albright’s preliminary injunction on the merits. The court also ordered the appeal to be “expedited to the next available oral argument panel.”

But the appeals court also declined to lift an administrative stay placed on Albright’s order…

Signed by Texas governor Greg Abbott on June 12, HB 900 requires book vendors, at their own expense, to review and rate books for sexual content under a vaguely articulated standard as a condition of doing business with Texas public schools. The law includes both the thousands of books previously sold to schools and any new books. Furthermore, the law gives the state the unchecked power to change the rating on any book, which vendors would then have to accept as their own or be barred from doing business with Texas public schools….

(3) WHERE, OH WHERE IS THE CHENGDU WORLDCON BUSINESS MEETING AGENDA? No link — with less than two weeks until the Chengdu Worldcon business meeting agenda still hasn’t been released.

People want the agenda posted so they can read what business is coming before the meeting and think about the inevitable assortment of proposed rules changes. The rule requiring the agenda to be available 30 days ahead of the meeting is so that the movers don’t have the advantage of being able to organize in favor while depriving potential opposition of the same advantage.

(4) CHENGDU WORLDCON ROUNDUP. [Item by Ersatz Culture.]

Welcome to the hotel confusion-ia

This item is based on a Kevin Standlee blog post “More Worldcon Travel Plans”, and subsequent Mastodon exchange.

Some of the guests whose accommodation has been arranged by the con have been told they are staying in the “Chengdu Tianfu Hengbang Sheraton”.  However, it seems that this is a direct translation of the Chinese name of the hotel near the con venue (成都恒邦天府喜来登酒店), but it actually uses a different English name “Sheraton Chengdu Pidu”. (Compare http://www.sheraton-chengdu.com/ to http://www.sheraton-chengdu.com/en?pc )

Thus when searching Google for the first name, people are getting results for a Sheraton in the Tianfu area, which is roughly the opposite side of Chengdu from the Pidu district where the con is actually taking place, which resulted in this.

Per Kevin’s comments on Mastodon, some people have been told that they’ll be staying at the “Sheraton Lidu Pidu”, which does seem to be a different hotel from either of the two previously mentioned.

Here’s a Xiaohongsu post from a week ago showing views of the con venue from the Sheraton Chengdu Pidu: http://xhslink.com/HINobv

Video featuring the “Kormo” con mascot https://weibo.com/5516881774/Nly3wqo4Y

This 90-second video posted by the GoChengdu Weibo account is a week old, but I only came across it today.  Content-wise, it has only minimal connection to the Worldcon – it focuses more on the mid-Autumn festival that’s just gone by – but “stars” the Kormo con mascot.

(5) A HISTORY OF PEE-WEE HERMAN PRODUCTS. The Comics Journal continues a conversation: “The Artists and Cartoonists Who Designed Pee-wee Herman’s World – Part Two”.

…But by season two in 1987, by which time production of the show itself had moved from New York City to Los Angeles, any number of Pee-wee related products—toys, dolls, bed sheets, sweaters, pajamas, t-shirts, stickers, trading cards—were available for purchase. And like the Playhouse show itself, these products were chiefly designed by a group of young NYC artists under the direction of Gary Panter and Reubens himself. Cartoonists and illustrators working on Playhouse merchandise included Ric Heitzman, Mark Newgarden, Kaz, Charles Burns, J.D. King, Richard McGuire, Stephen Kroninger, Tomas Bunk, Norman Hathaway and others. When Reubens died of acute hypoxic respiratory failure on July 30th of this year, I reached out to a number of people involved in shaping the Pee-wee empire. In Part One of this series, I spoke with a number of artists who designed the visual aesthetic of the successful television program; in this second and final part, the focus will be on the many functional and ridiculous products created in its wake, including some that never made it to stores….

… The cartoonist Kaz, another frequent RAW contributor, was brought in early on.

“I can’t remember what came first for me, but I’d been visiting Gary Panter in his various studios around Brooklyn for quite a while,” Kaz said. “Seeing his paintings, sculptures and sketchbooks was always inspiring, and he was one of the sweetest guys and very generous with his time and ideas. I love the guy! So, at some point he asked me to help out with art on some of the Pee-wee licensing that was coming in hot and hard. I just aped his Pee-wee art style (which was not as easy as it looked). I did all the flat art on the inside of the Playhouse Playset. I did some art when they expanded the Pee-wee Colorforms set by adding two wings, thereby making it ‘Deluxe.’ A keen eye will see my cartoon character, Little Bastard, sitting on Pee-wee’s bed on that art.”

“In 1987, through Gary Panter and Mark Newgarden, I worked with Mark on the Topps Chewing Gum’s ‘Pee-wee’s Playhouse Fun Pak’,” Kaz continued. “I remember going into Topps’ offices every day for a few weeks. At the time, Topps was in a grimy industrial waterfront neighborhood in Brooklyn that was not a good place to be after dark. Mark did the bulk of the writing and editing on the “Fun Pak” as well as drawing. I wrote and did a bunch of drawings (in the Panter style). There was a lot to do, so some of the art was freelanced out to other cartoonists. Trivia: I got my full Lithuanian first name [Kazimieras] on the back of one card!”…

(6) PAEAN TO LOST. “Six Part Fan-Made Lost Documentary 815 Explores the Complicated Production of the J.J. Abrams-Directed Pilot Episode”Movieweb has the story.

Released in 2004 and created by J. J. Abrams and Damon Lindelof, Lost has become not only one of the most popular series of all time, but also a role model for many other shows. Its complicated and mysterious story, along with its constant reinvention and plots full of suspense, provided its viewers with a unique experience. Its unexpected twists and strange elements that appeared without any apparent explanation, turned it a legend.

The series follows the experiences of a group of survivors of a plane crash on what appears to be a deserted island. However, as they struggle to live with each other, it becomes apparent that the island is far from a safe place, and they are not the only ones inhabiting the place.

The pilot episode, directed by Abrams and filmed in Oahu, Hawaii, was at the time the most expensive in history, a title it held for a long time. For this reason, YouTuber and Lost fan kuhpunkt (who’s real name is Stefan Lensa) took the time to collect hours of video content about the making of the show’s pilot, transforming it into a six-part documentary titled 815, the number of the flight where the protagonists were traveling…

(7) NATO IN TIMES TO COME. In 2024, NATO will celebrate its 75th anniversary. The NATO Defence College asks writers, especially science fiction writers, for 1500 words on what NATO will look like in 2099. More details at the link. €500 if you are selected. “NATO 2099: A Graphic Novel”.

…Science fiction, while often discredited by dint of its creative and at times outrageous character, holds real added value for research purposes. Not only does science fiction influence the present by projecting inventions (i.e. headsets, mobile phones and tablets), science fiction can leverage the wisdom of the crowd effect: when several authors “see” a similar future, such a future becomes more likely. As such, science fiction has the power of making ideas acceptable. It can entertain a wider public, which under normal circumstances, might not entertain certain ideas, thereby broadening mindsets and fostering critical thinking. Of course, the precondition to this is that science fiction be not fantastical, but is rooted in evidence. (Hence the term FICINT, fictional intelligence.)

Harnessing these benefits, science fiction has been instrumentalized by military organizations in the United States and France to increase preparedness, train critical thinking, and even spot trends in technology and geopolitics. (For example, the idea of Russia attacking Ukraine appeared in Russian science fiction in the 1990s).

Your mission, should you accept it…

The year is 2099, NATO will be celebrating its 150th anniversary. For this reason, sci-fi and fictional intelligence authors are being asked to contribute about 1500 words on what this future might look like. Authors are asked to describe the end state, i.e. 2099, but are free to describe how we got there.

…The compilation of 32 written pieces will be transformed and published into a graphic novel or comic book that narrates a holistic story entitled, “NATO 2099”.

(8) MICHIGAN FAKE ELECTORS CASE. “Michigan judge rules defendants accused in false elector scheme will not have charges dropped” reports the Associated Press. We’re following this story because Michele Lundgren, wife of sff artist Carl Lundgren, is one of the sixteen charged, although she was not a maker of the motion covered here.

Michigan defendants accused of participating in a fake elector scheme will not have their charges dropped after the state attorney general said the group was “brainwashed” into believing former President Donald Trump won the 2020 election, a judge ruled Friday morning.

The decision comes after motions to dismiss charges were filed last week by two defendants, Clifford Frost and Mari-Ann Henry. The two defendants are part of a group of 16 Michigan Republicans who investigators say met following the 2020 election and signed a document falsely stating they were the state’s “duly elected and qualified electors.” Each of the 16 faces eight criminal charges, including multiple counts of forgery….

(9) STARLING HOUSE. At NPR: “Book review: Alix E. Harrow’s ‘Starling House’ Gothic fantasy novel”.

In Eden, Kentucky, the air is thick with dust.

The dying coal town is the fictional setting of Alix E. Harrow’s “Starling House,” and the smog of fading power and bad luck is enough to suffocate its residents, most of whom live in abject poverty.

For Harrow, writing a book about Kentucky was a long time coming.

“This is the first book that I set fully in, like committed to writing about Kentucky,” Harrow says. “One of the reasons that I had found that difficult to do before is because I find it to be a place of very mixed experiences that I love very, very, very much, and which has just an incredible violence and terror to it.”…

(10) CHRIS HADFIELD COMMENTS ON ‘FOR ALL MANKIND’. “Apple TV+ series For All Mankind Depicts Realistic Death in Space According to Renowned Astronaut” at Movieweb.

…Navigating through this cosmic portrayal, Chris Hadfield, an astronaut with feet firmly planted in both scientific and storytelling worlds, lent his expert gaze to scrutinize a particularly grim depiction of death in the aforementioned series. Hadfield, experienced in the authentic silence of the cosmos, put under the microscope a scene from For All Mankind in a special breakdown for Vanity Fair, where an American astronaut fiercely ends a Soviet astronaut’s lunar expedition—with a gun.

But is the rendering of a bullet speeding through the weightlessness and silence of the moon’s environment precise? Hadfield nods in unsettling agreement.

What permeates this acknowledgment is the recognition of the horrifying reality of how gunfire operates in the vacuum of the moon. Unlike its earthly counterpart, a bullet on the moon, devoid of air and oxygen to disrupt its trajectory, travels with haunting precision, straighter and farther into the abyss. The portrayal of such a scenario in For All Mankind doesn’t simply draw from a well of imagined horrors, but rather bathes in a chilling accuracy that aligns with the physical realities of our universe.

Moreover, the aftermath of such a bullet puncturing a spacesuit, according to Hadfield, is equally petrifying and authentic. A spacesuit, cushioning its inhabitant with a hundred percent oxygen, can turn into an infernal chamber when breached. History has witnessed this, as Hadfield recalls an incident during a test at the Johnson Space Center, where even aluminum, veiled in flames, narrated the horrors of what could transpire inside a suit, albeit thankfully unoccupied by a human during the incident. Oxygen, the life-giving force, transforms into a silent executioner in the blink of an eye when exposed to a spark in such an environment….

(11) START THE PARTY. Today is Francis Hamit’s 79th birthday and he’s celebrating at Amazing Stories by posting a 15,000-word excerpt from his novel: “Excerpt: STARMEN by Francis Hamit: Support the Kickstarter”.

Today is  Francis Hamit’s Birthday.  (Happy Birthday, Francis!)  He also informs us that the Kickstarter for his forthcoming “genre experiment” novel – STARMEN – closes on October 10th.  As his Birthday gift to all of our readers, he wants to make sure that you know that EVERYONE contributing to the project will be able to purchase the E-book edition of this 190,000-word epic for just one dollar ($1.00)….

“My mixed genre novel STARMEN is an embarrassment of riches when it comes to excerpts.  It’s about 190,000 words long and incorporates alternative post Civil War history, quantum mechanics, Apache Indian myths and some rather nasty Aliens.  It begins in 1875 El Paso, Texas at the Pinkerton National Detective Agency.  Some of the detectives are witches.  So are some of the Apaches.  There are also some romance elements. And politics.”

(12) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

  • Born October 6, 1911 Flann O’Brien. Irish novelist, playwright and satirist. He wrote three novels, At Swim-Two-BirdsThe Dalkey Archive and The Third Policeman. Though The Dalkey Archive was published before The Third Policeman, it was written after that novelso entire sections of The Third Policeman are recycled almost word for word in it, mostly the atomic theory and the character De Selby. (Died 1966.)
  • Born October 6, 1950 David Brin, 73. Author of several series including Existence (which I do not recognize), the Postman novel, and the Uplift series which began with Startide Rising, a most excellent book and a Hugo-winner at L.A. Con II.  I’ll admit that the book he co-wrote with Leah Wilson, King Kong Is Back! An Unauthorized Look at One Humongous Ape, tickles me to no end if only for its title. So who’s read Castaways of New Mohave, that he wrote with Jeff Carlson?
  • Born October 6, 1952 Lorna Toolis. Librarian, editor, and fan Lorna was the long-time head of the Merril Collection of Science Fiction, Speculation, and Fantasy at the Toronto Public Library and a significant influence on the Canadian SF community. She founded the SF collection with a donation from Judith Merril. She was a founding member of SFCanada, and won an Aurora Award for co-editing Tesseracts 4 with Michael Skeet. (Died 2021.)
  • Born October 6, 1955 Donna White, 68. Academic who has written several works worth you knowing about — Dancing with Dragons: Ursula K. LeGuin and the Critics and Diana Wynne Jones: An Exciting and Exacting Wisdom. She’s also the author of the densely-written but worth reading A Century of Welsh Myth in Children’s Literature
  • Born October 6, 1955 Ellen Kushner, 68. If you’ve not read it, do so now, as her sprawling Riverside series is stellar. And there’s cups of hot chocolate. I’ve read all of it. And during the High Holy Days, do be sure to read The Golden Dreydl as it’s quite wonderful. As it’s Autumn and this being when I read it, I’d be remiss not to recommend her Thomas the Rhymer novel which won both the World Fantasy Award and the Mythopoeic Award. 
  • Born October 6, 1967 Joshua Glenn, 56. Publisher who re-issued a lot of the scientific romances from the beginning of last century like J D Beresford’s Goslings, The Edward Shanks’ People of the Runs and E V Odle’s The Clockwork Man. He’s edited two anthologies, Voices from the Radium Age and More Voices from the Radium Age.

(13) CONNECTING SFF AND SCIENCE. The U.S. State Department website is hosting “From Science Fiction to Science Fact”. It begins with a video introduction by Mark Hamill.

About 400 kilometers above the Earth, the International Space Station orbits at 28,000 kilometers an hour. It’s the single largest structure humans have ever put in space and a football-field-size symbol of diplomatic cooperation.

Built over a decade with U.S. and Russian spacecraft, the station has been continuously occupied by an international crew since November 2000. The station isn’t owned by any one nation, but rather operates as a partnership among five space agencies — the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration, or NASA; the Russian State Space Corporation “Roscosmos”; the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA); the European Space Agency; and the Canadian Space Agency. There are regular crew handovers whereby some astronauts leave and new ones come aboard. Two hundred seventy-three astronauts from 21 countries have worked on the station….

DETECTING MICROBES

In the popular 1960s television show Star Trek, the starship Enterprise crew members depend on handheld tricorders. The devices seem to magically detect everything from unknown life forms to the nature of a crew member’s illness.

While the TV version seems fantastical, a real — if nascent — tricorder has been developed on the International Space Station. What’s more, the research that built it is already supporting human health here on Earth.

The impetus was NASA’s efforts to sequence DNA. Scientists aimed to simplify the multistep DNA sequencing process so that one device on the space station could handle it, working to move the tricorder from the realm of science fiction to real life.

Today NASA is looking at hand-held devices made by a U.S. company and a U.K.-based company that can amplify and sequence DNA. The devices identify microbes — bacteria, viruses, fungi and other organisms too small to be seen with the naked eye — growing throughout the International Space Station. The crew can monitor what microbes are on board, how the space environment shapes microbial behavior, and how that might affect astronaut health during long missions to the Moon or Mars.

Crew members gather microbes to sequence by rubbing swabs around the space station’s interior. They then process the genetic material by inserting the swabs into a hand-held device called a miniPCR, which makes copies of a targeted microbial DNA sequence. The copies are fed into another hand-held device called the MinION, which sequences the DNA.

(14) DOUBLE YOUR TIANGONG, DOUBLE YOUR FUN. “China to double size of space station, touts alternative to NASA-led ISS”Reuters has details.

China plans to expand its space station to six modules from three in coming years, offering astronauts from other nations an alternative platform for near-Earth missions as the NASA-led International Space Station (ISS) nears the end of its lifespan.

The operational lifetime of the Chinese space station will be more than 15 years, the China Academy of Space Technology (CAST), a unit of China’s main space contractor, said at the 74th International Astronautical Congress in Baku, Azerbaijan, on Wednesday….

… China’s self-built space station, also known as Tiangong, or Celestial Palace in Chinese, has been fully operational since late 2022, hosting a maximum of three astronauts at an orbital altitude of up to 450 km (280 miles).

At 180 metric tons after its expansion to six modules, Tiangong is still just 40% of the mass of the ISS, which can hold a crew of seven astronauts. But the ISS, in orbit for more than two decades, is expected to be decommissioned after 2030, about the same time China has said it expects to become “a major space power”.

Chinese state media said last year as Tiangong became fully operational that China would be no “slouch” as the ISS headed toward retirement, adding that “several countries” had asked to send their astronauts to the Chinese station.

But in a blow to China’s aspirations for space diplomacy, the European Space Agency (ESA) said this year it did not have the budgetary or “political” green light to participate in Tiangong, shelving a years-long plan for a visit by European astronauts.

“Giving up cooperation with China in the manned space domain is clearly short-sighted, which reveals that the U.S.-led camp confrontation has led to a new space race,” the Global Times, a nationalist Chinese tabloid, wrote at the time.

Tiangong has become an emblem of China’s growing clout and confidence in its space endeavours, and a challenger to the United States in the domain after being isolated from the ISS. It is banned by U.S. law from any collaboration, direct or indirect, with NASA….

(15) WHAT IS IMAGINATION? The Arthur C. Clarke Center for Human Imagination will host an in-person event “Imagine Otherwise: Featuring Stephen T. Asma” Tickets, Fri, Oct 20, 2023 at 6:00 PM | Eventbrite on October 20 at 6:00 p.m. at UC San Diego. Free registration and full information at the link.

Imagination is touted as a gift for artists or a vital skill for visionary thinkers and scientists. But what do we mean by the term “imagination,” and what has science revealed about the diversity of ways it shows itself in human minds?

In a conversation with Stephen T. Asma, philosopher and author of The Evolution of Imagination, Erik Viirre and Cassandra Vieten will explore the history of our understanding of imagination, how science has attempted to advance our understanding of it, and what is at stake for the future of imagination studies and the pathways it may open to advancing the imagination’s power for transformative change.

This event will take place at the Great Hall at UC San Diego and is free and open to the public. Light refreshments will be provided. RSVP required.

(16) UP ALL NIGHT. “The ‘Ghost Hunting Gays of Ohio’ find queer community in the search for the supernatural” at WVXU.

A small group of people huddled around Mirror Lake on Ohio State University’s campus on a September evening. Their black attire matched the night sky that stretched over the splashing fountain.

Nick Post stood at the center of the group. He leaned in as he told a ghost story about the so-called ‘Lady of the Lake.’

“On cold wintry nights she can sometimes be seen skating across the ice, warming her hands and wearing outdated clothing,” Post said. “Some reports say she wears white, others say she wears pink. But none have gotten close enough to see her face.”

This is just one of many apparitions that supposedly stalk OSU’s dorms and classrooms at night. Its these legends that brought ten members of the Ghost Hunting Gays of Ohio, the state’s newest paranormal investigators, to campus on a Sunday night….

…“I’ve always been obsessed with ghost-hunting shows and all of that good stuff, so I was like, what if we just go check out some haunted places?” he said.

Post said looking to the supernatural was only natural for him, and he thinks that’s true for a lot of queer people. He said the paranormal holds a special appeal to many in the gay community.

“When you are misunderstood your entire life, it intrigues you to understand other things that are misunderstood,” Post said….

(17) PAUL BUCKLEY’S GREATEST HITS. Steven Heller talks about “Layoffs in the Publishing Industry Sting” at PRINT Magazine, and the loss of one design director in particular.

When the latest round of publishing industry buyouts and layoffs were announced in mid-July, I was surprised to see a few friends and acquaintances on the hit list. Buyouts are the humane way to let go of employees, and some can be generous. But while many buyouts come at the end of careers, layoffs can particularly sting while in mid-stride.

At Penguin Random House, the biggest book publisher in the United States, veteran editors who have worked with many of the biggest authors in fiction and nonfiction are leaving the company. It is a changing of the guard. The New York Times reported that Penguin Random House lost both its global and U.S. chief executives in the past seven months alone.

Until this latest upheaval, 58 year old Paul Buckley was the longest serving (34 years) design director of Penguin Books. His layoff was a shock to those, like me, who greatly admired his work. If he of all people is this vulnerable, what about others who are not yet ready to take retirement?

Buckley leaves behind an incredible legacy of iconic, smart, clever and damn beautiful work. So upon hearing the sad news, I asked him to select 10 projects out of the thousands he’s created for Penguin that give him the most pride. It’s better to see and read about them now than in a later postmortem/historical reprise….

(18) QUANTUM PAULI ENGINE. [Item by Steven French.] “No-heat quantum engine makes its debut” at Physics World.

“All particles known to science fall into one of two categories: bosons or fermions. While bosons cluster in the same quantum state, fermions obey the Pauli exclusion principle, meaning no two fermions can share the same state. This doesn’t matter much at room temperature when particles are flying about at high speeds. Cool those particles down to just shy of absolute zero, though, and the difference becomes vast: the bosons pile into the lowest available energy state, while fermions stack on top of each other in a “ladder” of states. At such low temperatures, a collection of fermions will thus have much more energy than a collection of bosons.”

Until recently that energy difference couldn’t be accessed but in the early 2000s  a way was found to form bosons molecules from fermionic atoms which means you could switch from one form of statistics to another. Now researchers have used this to construct a ‘proof-of-principle’ quantum Pauli engine which offers an entirely different way of charging quantum batteries and powering quantum computers. 

That may be some years off yet but this is still very cool!

[Thanks to Chris Barkley, Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Nicholas Whyte, JeffWarner, Steven French, Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, Ersatz Culture, and John King Tarpinian for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Daniel Dern.]