Pixel Scroll 12/11/17 You Ain’t Pixelin’ Dixie!

(1) DEFENDANTS COMMENT ON COMIC CON VERDICT. Bryan Brandenburg has this to say about the verdict in the SDCC v, SLCC lawsuit.

I woke up this morning facing a bright new future. The weight of the world has been lifted from Dan [Farr]’s and my shoulders. We have successfully cleared our names and lifted the cloud of accusation that has been surrounding us for 3 1/2 years.

– We were accused of stealing and hijacking. The jury said we were NOT GUILTY of this. There was no willful infringement.

– We were accused of trying to associate our convention with the San Diego convention. The jury said that we were NOT GUILTY of this. They found no evidence of false designation of origin.

– We were accused of causing $12,000,000 damage to the SDCC brand. They said we were the very worst offender. The jury found no evidence of damage. They awarded San Diego $20,000 in damages, less than .2% of what they asked for sending a clear message that we didn’t hurt the San Diego brand and this is what will be paid out for the worst of the 140 comic cons.

– We were accused of infringing San Diego’s trademarks, along with 140 other “infringers”…other conventions that call themselves “comic con”. The jury said that we were guilty. San Diego said, “They’re all infringers, that we and 140 other conventions that use the term comic con were guilty.” So for now they have 3 valid trademarks. We think that they will still lose “comic-con”. We’re proud to be lumped in with some of the finest comic cons in the country.

Dan and I have no regrets about standing up for ourselves when we took action after receiving a cease and desist. In hindsight, we would not have taken the car down to San Diego. For that we apologize to San Diego Comic Con. They are a great event with great people.

This process helped me realize once again that we truly have the best fans in the world. You have been there for us and it was comforting to have so many pulling for us. We are glad that we were able to clear our names at a minimum. But there are a lot of things moving in the background which I cannot talk about. All good things.

We own the trademark for FanX. There are over 140 comic cons and one FanX. That’s not a booby prize. If we needed to drop comic con from the name and just be FanX we have a trademark for that and a lot of positive brand awareness. Almost all the hundreds of thousands of people that have attended our events are familiar with that brand and name.

We’re not sure exactly how things will play out. We may change our name. We may appeal. But one thing is for certain. 2018 will be our best year yet….

(2) NEW LOGO. Bubonicon 50 takes place August 24-26, 2018 in Albuquerque, NM with Guests of Honor John Scalzi and Mary Robinette Kowal, Toastmaster Lee Moyer, and Guest Artist Eric Velhagen. Bubonicon 49 Toastmaster Ursula Vernon has created a special logo:

(3) THE CUTTING ROOM. I was very interested to learn How Star Wars was saved in the edit – speaking here about the original movie.

A video essay exploring how Star Wars’ editors recut and rearranged Star Wars: A New Hope to create the cinematic classic it became.

 

(4) EXPAND YOUR MASHUP WARDROBE. Still gift shopping? A lot of places online will be happy to sell you the shirt off their backs!

(5) LONG LIST ANTHOLOGY IS OUT. David Steffen announced the release of the Long List Anthology Volume 3, available as an ebook from Amazon and Kobo, in print from Amazon. He said more ebook vendors are in the works, including Barnes & Noble, iBooks, and others.

This is the third annual edition of the Long List Anthology. Every year, supporting members of WorldCon nominate their favorite stories first published during the previous year to determine the top five in each category for the final Hugo Award ballot. This is an anthology collecting more of the stories from that nomination list to get them to more readers

There are 20 stories in the volume – see the complete list at the link.

(6) BEYOND PATREON. Here’s the hybrid approach that The Digital Antiquarian will take in the aftermath of Patreon’s problems.

I’ll be rolling out a new pledging system for this site next week. Built on a platform called Memberful, it will let you pledge your support right from the site, without Patreon or anyone else inserting themselves into the conversation. The folks from Memberful have been great to communicate with, and I’m really excited about how this is shaping up. I think it’s going to be a great system that will work really well for many or most of you.

That said, my feeling after much vacillation over the last several days is that I won’t abandon Patreon either. Some of you doubtless would prefer to stay with them, for perfectly valid reasons: for high pledge amounts, the new fee schedule is much less onerous; some of you really like the ability to pledge per-article rather than on a monthly basis, which is something no other solution I’ve found — including Memberful — can quite duplicate; some of you really want to keep all of your pledges to creators integrated on the same site; etc. And of course it’s possible that Patreon will still do something to mitigate the enormous damage they did to their brand last week. At the risk of introducing a bit more complication, then, I think the best approach is just to clearly explain the pros and cons of the two options and leave the choice in your hands

(7) VIRTUAL BEST OF YEAR – FANTASY EDITION. Jason, at Featured Futures, has completed the set by posting his picks for the Web’s Best Fantasy #1 (2017 Stories).

As with Web’s Best Science Fiction, Web’s Best Fantasy is a 70,000 word “virtual anthology” selected from the fifteen webzines I’ve covered throughout the year, with the contents selected solely for their quality, allowing that some consideration is paid to having variety in the reading experience. The contents were sequenced as best I could with the same concern in mind.

(8) RATIFYING STURGEON’S LAW. Fanac.org has added “Lunacon 15 (1972) – Theodore Sturgeon Guest of Honor speech” to its YouTube channel, a 38-minute audiotape, enhanced with numerous images and photos (including two taken by Andrew Porter.)

Isaac Asimov introduces Theodore Sturgeon’s Guest of Honor speech at the 1972 Lunacon. There are corny puns and jokes from both of them, but primarily the talk is a serious, constructive discussion of Sturgeon’s “best beloved field”, and a defense against those that would marginalize and dismiss it. There are a few poignant minutes at the end about the (1972) US government amassing citizens’ private data, without any ability to challenge it. More than 40 years later, it’s still important, and worth listening.

 

(9) TODAY’S THING TO WORRY ABOUT. Andrew Porter draws our attention to the fact that the German film Münchhausen came out in 1943. As he sees it, “We could have a Nazi film under consideration for a retro-Hugo!”

The complete film is available on YouTube, with English subtitles.

(10) BILLINGS OBIT. Harold Billings (1931-2017), librarian, scholar, and author, died November 29. (The complete Austin American-Statesman obituary is here.)

He spent fifty years at the University of Texas general libraries, rising from cataloger to Director of General Libraries, a position he held for the last twenty-five years of his career. … Harold also edited and wrote extensively about authors Edward Dahlberg and M. P. Shiel. Reflecting a long time interest in Arthur Conan Doyle, in 2006 he received the Morley-Montgomery award for his essay The Materia Medica of Sherlock Holmes. In recent years, Harold had turned to supernatural literary fiction, authoring such stories as “A Dead Church”, “The Monk’s Bible”, and “The Daughters of Lilith”.

(11) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY GIRL

  • Born December 11, 1922 — Maila Nurmi. (Vampira)

(12) HEROIC EFFORT. Reportedly, “New research finds that kids aged 4-6 perform better during boring tasks when dressed as Batman”. Hampus Eckerman says, “I’m sure this works for adults too.”

In other words, the more the child could distance him or herself from the temptation, the better the focus. “Children who were asked to reflect on the task as if they were another person were less likely to indulge in immediate gratification and more likely to work toward a relatively long-term goal,” the authors wrote in the study called “The “Batman Effect”: Improving Perseverance in Young Children,” published in Child Development.

(13) WITH ADDED SEASONING. Star Trek: The Jingle Generation.

(14) THAT FIGURES. This must be like Rule 34, only it’s Rule 1138: If it exists, something Star Wars has been made out of it. “Funko POP! Star Wars Trash Compactor Escape (Luke & Leia) Exclusive Vinyl Figure 2-Pack [Movie Moments]”.

(15) MORE MYCROFT. SFFWorld’s Mark Yon reviews The Will to Battle by Ada Palmer”.

Probably the thing I like the most about The Will to Battle is that we get to know in much more depth the inner workings of the political aspects of the world that Palmer has imagined. We learn much more about things that we have only seen mentioned before (the set-set riots or the difference between Blacklaws, Greylaws and Whitelaws, for instance) and we even witness a trial, a meeting of the Senate and the Olympic Games. I really enjoyed discovering how the author had planned with incredible care every little aspect and finding out that little details that seemed to be arbitrary are, in fact, of crucial importance.

(16) YOUNG UNIVERSE. Linked to this news before, but the Washington Post’s account is more colorful: “Scientists just found the oldest known black hole, and it’s a monster”

That hope is what drove Bañados, an astronomer at the Carnegie Observatories in California, to the Chilean mountaintop in March. It was not entirely clear whether he’d be able to find a quasar so far away. Supermassive black holes swallow up huge amounts of matter, squeezing the equivalent mass of several hundred thousand suns into a space so small that gravity wraps around it like an invisibility cloak and causes it to vanish. An object like that needs a long time to grow and more matter than might have been available in the young universe.

But the object Bañados and his colleagues discovered, called ULAS J1342+0928, was even bigger than they’d bargained for — suggesting that something might have made black holes grow more quickly. Scientists don’t yet know the underlying reasons for such rapid growth, or whether still older black holes are waiting to be found.

“This is what we are trying to push forward.” Bañados said. “At some point these shouldn’t exist. When is that point? We still don’t know.”

In a companion paper published in the Astrophysical Journal Letters, the scientists report another odd finding: The galaxy where ULAS J1342+0928 dwells was generating new stars “like crazy,” Bañados said. Objects the size of our sun were emerging 100 times as frequently as they do in our own galaxy today.

“To build stars you need dust,” Bañados said. “But it’s really hard to form all this dust in such little time on cosmic scales — that requires some generations of supernovae to explode.”

During the universe’s toddler years, there hadn’t been time for several rounds of stars living and dying. So where were the ingredients for all these new stars coming from?

(17) THE RISKS OF TALKING TO THE COPS. I saw Ken White’s  “Everybody Lies: FBI Edition” for Popehat linked by a FB friend and found it riveting. While it’s focused on criminal law, a lot of this advice is still good even if you’re only talking to someone about your taxes.

Dumbass, you don’t even know if you’re lying or not. When an FBI agent is interviewing you, assume that that agent is exquisitely prepared. They probably already have proof about the answer of half the questions they’re going to ask you. They have the receipts. They’ve listened to the tapes. They’ve read the emails. Recently. You, on the other hand, haven’t thought about Oh Yeah That Thing for months or years, and you routinely forget birthdays and names and whether you had a doctor’s appointment today and so forth. So, if you go in with “I’ll just tell the truth,” you’re going to start answering questions based on your cold-memory unrefreshed holistic general concept of the subject, like an impressionistic painting by a dim third-grader. Will you say “I really don’t remember” or “I would have to look at the emails” or “I’m not sure”? That would be smart. But we’ve established you’re not smart, because you’ve set out to tell the truth to the FBI. You’re dumb. So you’re going to answer questions incorrectly, through bad memory. Sometimes you’re going to go off on long detours and frolics based on entirely incorrect memories. You’re going to be incorrect about things you wouldn’t lie about if you remembered them. If you realize you got something wrong or that you may not be remembering right, you’re going to get flustered, because it’s the FBI, and remember even worse. But the FBI would never prosecute you for a false statement that was the result of a failed memory, right? Oh, my sweet country mouse. If you had talked to a lawyer first, that lawyer would have grilled you mercilessly for hours, helped you search for every potentially relevant document, reviewed every communication, inquired into every scenario, and dragged reliable memory kicking and screaming out the quicksand of your psyche.

(18) MRS. PEEL IS NO RELATION. Bananaman: The Musical is on stage at the Southwark Playhouse in the UK through January 20.

Bananaman is one of the flagship characters in the world’s longest running comic, The Beano. He was also the subject of the hugely popular TV cartoon that ran on the BBC during the 1980s. With a useless hero and some equally clueless villains, Bananaman’s riotously funny, slapstick humour has been sealed into the memories of those who saw him first, and will now spark the imagination of a new bunch of Bananafans.

In “A Call To Action” Marc Pickering is playing Bananaman’s nemesis Doctor Gloom. The song comes in the first half when Doctor Gloom is planning ways in which to deal with Bananaman who is thwarting his plans for world domination!!

(19) FIXED THAT FOR YOU. Damien Broderick says “A strange and terrible thing happened” with his book, now available in a modified 2018 version — Starlight Interviews: Conversations with a Science Fiction writer by Damien Broderick.

The first printing, also from Ramble House affiliate Surinam Turtle Press (owned by Dick Lupoff) turned out to have a botched variant of Russell Blackford’s chapter. My fault, I freely confess it! I only learned of this goof after I gave Russell his copy at the recent World Fantasy con in San Antonio.

Russell and I delved into the dark heart of several hard drives and managed to recompile his intended text. With the help of Chum Gavin, a repaired version of the book has now appeared on Amazon (although their website announcement has retained a mistaken pub date from earlier this year). If any Chum purchased a copy of the botched version, do let me know and I will hastily dispatch a Word doc of RB’s True Chapter. For those very few Chums who somehow forgot to rush their order for the book to Amazon, now is your near-Xmas chance to make good that lapse!

(20) OUTSIDE THE STORY. K. C. Alexander describes a variation on the classic writer’s advice in “Don’t Show, Don’t Tell”  at Fantasy-Faction.

You’re probably familiar with Welcome to Night Vale, so you’ll recognize the Night Vale Presents line in this incredible and fascinating podcast. The key difference, however, is this one presents more of a focused story, all delivered from a single point of view—Keisha; a truck driver (narrated by the matchless Jasika Nicole) searching for her dead wife. Named, naturally, Alice. (One other POV appears later in season, which I will not spoil here, but it is eerie af.) This is a creeping, haunting, sometimes lonely story about a heartbroken woman struggling with a mental illness—namely, a panic/anxiety disorder, and the paranoia and fear that comes with. After the death of her wife, an experience she was not there to witness, our fearful protagonist hires on with a long-haul trucking service to find answers.

Her story is narrated through snatches of narrative delivered on CB radio.

So what makes this podcast the keystone for “don’t show, don’t tell?”

It’s the outside stuff we never see. What’s going on outside her narration, what the people outside of our view are doing and why they are doing it. The ripples “shown” in Fink’s writing remain so subtle that you may not hear them, understand them, until your second or third listen. They are small ripples, hardly noticeable in black water, bringing with them an expertly woven sense of dread. But why? From where?

We don’t know.

(21) THE CLASSICS. The comments are fun, too. (If you need the reference explained like I did – clicketh here.)

(22) NETFLIX TRAILERS. New seasons for two genre shows on Netflix.

  • Sense8 — Finale Special First Look

  • Marvel’s Jessica Jones: She’s Back

Just don’t get in her way. Marvel’s Jessica Jones Season 2 coming March 8, only on Netflix.

 

(23) BEFORE THEY WERE FAMOUS. Marcus Errico, in “The secret history of ‘Christmas in the Stars,’ the bonkers ‘Star Wars’ holiday album co-starring Jon Bon Jovi” on Yahoo! Entertainment, discusses the super-cheesy and super-obscure Star Wars Christmas album that came out in 1980.

Unlike his previous cover-heavy albums, Meco started from scratch with the music. He and Bongiovi needed Star Wars-themed Christmas songs and they needed them fast, but they weren’t having much luck with the songwriters they approached. Enter a struggling composer named Maury Yeston, who was trying to put together the musical that would become Nine and could use some extra cash. “I met with Meco and I said, ‘Look, this may sound ridiculous to you, but if you want to do a Star Wars Christmas album you have to have a story,” Yeston told the CBC. “This is obviously Christmas in the world of Star Wars, which means this is in a galaxy far, far away, thousands of years ago. It’s not now. So call it Christmas in the Stars.” Meco was sold on the idea of the album having a through-line and recruited Yeston.

Yeston, who would go on to win a Tony Award for Nine and eventually write the smash Broadway musicals Titanic and Grand Hotel, cranked out nearly 20 Yule-appropriate tunes, nine of which made the final lineup. “The Meaning of Christmas,” minus Yoda, was radically retooled from the original version because Lucas didn’t want any of the traditional, religious-themed lyrics to be associated with the Force. It established the story of the album, set in a factory where droids make gifts for one “S. Claus.”

 

Playlist

[Thanks to JJ, Dave Doering, John King Tarpinian, Andrew Porter, Ed Fortune, Martin Morse Wooster, Chip Hitchcock, Carl Slaughter, and Cat Eldridge for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Kip W.]

No Lunacon in 2018

The New York Science Fiction Society, Lunarians (2), Inc., Board of Directors announced they will not be holding a Lunacon in 2018.

After skipping 2015, Lunarians succeeded in bringing back Lunacon, their proprietary convention, for each of the past two years, however it is going on hiatus again.

The press release says:

It was felt that, even though the 2016 and 2017 Lunacon’s were mostly creatively successful conventions, under the current circumstances, and looking at the time frame and other issues, the Board and the Membership of the organization felt that it would be difficult to present a convention of the high caliber and quality that the Lunacon attendees and its guests deserve and have come to expect.

“Lunacon has been a part of the New York area fannish community for over 60 years, but times have changed, fandom has changed and is more diverse, and, unlike years ago, there are many other events and conventions for our target audience to go to.”, said Stuart C. Hellinger, Lunarians (2) President.

“A complete reevaluation of what Lunacon can and should provide, its viability for the future, possibly expanding our offerings to draw in a larger audience that will encompass the interests of fandom today, is not only prudent, but necessary to create a possible successful future Lunacon that will meet everyone’s objectives while remaining financially viable.”

Mr. Hellinger continued, “Our organization has the future of Lunacon under complete review and evaluation. Once a decision has been finalized as to how and if to proceed, we will make an announcement to the public in all the appropriate venues.”

Lunacon information is available via social media at: www.lunacon.org/ , on Facebook, and on Twitter: @lunaconsf.

Lunacon 2017 Artist Guests

Marianne P;umridge and Bob Eggleton in 2008.

Marianne Plumridge and Bob Eggleton in 2008.

The New York Science Fiction Society – the Lunarians (2), Inc. – has announced Bob Eggleton will be Artist Guest of Honor and Marianne Plumridge will be Special Guest Artist at Lunacon 2017. They join others already on the marquee, Ben Bova as Writer Guest of Honor, Roberta Rogow as Fan Guest of Honor, and the Boogie Knights as Musical Guests.

Bob Eggleton is a multiple Hugo, Chesley and Locus Award-winning artist who first came to prominence for his awe-inspiring spacescapes. (Asteroid 13562 was named Bobeggleton in his honor.)

Over the years, Bob has done art for comics, collectible card games, and book covers for many well-known authors, as well producing as his own illustrated books and art books. “Publishers love artists that slam out the work and sell their books,” he says. Appropriately, his work will be featured on the cover for the upcoming novel by our Writer Guest of Honor, Ben Bova. The Lunacon 2017 Art Show will be exhibiting his work throughout the Convention weekend.

Marianne Plumridge, Special Guest Artist, and Bob’s wife, works mainly in the fields of fantasy and adventure, with occasional forays into science fiction. “When I embarked on a creative career,” she relates, “I started out as a writer. When I found that I could tell the story in paint, the writing sort of fell by the wayside.” Her art history started in her native Australia, where she honed her black and white illustration skills for fan magazines, and earned her the Australian Science Fiction Media (ASFMA) Award for Best Australian Media Fanartist.

Lunacon 2017 will be held on the weekend of April 7 – 9, 2017 at the Westchester Marriott Hotel, 670 White Plains Road, Tarrytown, NY 10591-5104.

Lunacon 2017 Names Guests of Honor

The Guests of Honor at Lunacon 2017 will be Writer Ben Bova and Fan Roberta Rogow. In addition, the convention will feature the Boogie Knights as Musical Guests.

  • Ben Bova is the author of some 124 works of science fact and fiction, including the John W. Campbell Memorial Award-winning novel Titan (2007, part of the Grand Tour series. He has also written the Exiles and Kinsman series. Bova is a six-time Hugo Award winner as Best Professional Editor for Analog, where he succeeded the legendary John W. Campbell, Jr. He went on to be editor of Omni Magazine. A scientist as well as a science writer, in the 1950s, Dr. Bova predicted a U.S. – Soviet Space Race and was involved in Project Vanguard as a technical writer during the early days of the U.S. Space Program. Additionally, he is a past president of both the National Space Society and the Science Fiction Writers of America. Other honors include the Lifetime Achievement Award of the Arthur C. Clarke Foundation, the Robert A. Heinlein Award, as well as the Lunarians’ Isaac Asimov Memorial Award. His latest novels (both available from Tor Books) are Power Surge and Death Wave.
  • Roberta Rogow is an omnifan. While perhaps best-known to Lunacon attendees as a filk singer-songwriter – where her achievements earned her induction into the Filk Hall of Fame – she was also a trailblazer in Star Trek Fandom, publishing some of its earliest fanzines and contributing fan-fiction to the genre. Additionally, she is a costumer (her most memorable efforts are “Art Show” and “Bag Lady of Gor”) and a dealer in many convention Dealers’ Rooms. Branching out professionally, she is the author of Futurespeak, a dictionary of sf, fannish and media terms, and of speculative fiction and historical murder mysteries, notably a series featuring Oxford don Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (aka Lewis Carroll) and a young Dr. Arthur Conan Doyle, and, more recently, a series set in an alternate North America ruled by Spain, the latest of which is Mischief in Manatas. She was also our Toastmistress at Lunacon 2002.
  • The Boogie Knights are a wildly popular, fan favorite filk group from Maryland who, since 1982, and with a varying membership, have been performing “songs of daring-do with nary a hey nonny nonny,” parodies of everything from commercial jingles to TV and movie themes, and from golden oldies to the latest top-40 songs, all done with a wicked humorous medieval or fantasy twist. Their newest CD, Wasted Days and Wasted Knights, is available via CD Baby.

John W. Upton, the Lunacon 2017 Chair, will also be inviting an Artist Guest of Honor.

Lunacon 2017 will be held on the weekend of April 7 – 9, 2017 at the Westchester Marriott Hotel in Tarrytown.

Lunacon 2017 Location and Dates

The Lunarians will hold Lunacon 2017 from April 7-9, 2017 at the Westchester Marriott Hotel in Tarrytown, NY.

The Marriott previously hosted Lunacons from 1986-1990.

Stuart C. Hellinger, Lunarians (2) President, outlined the reasons behind these decisions.

After Lunacon 2016, we spent some time reviewing everything that happened during the convention and we realized that even though our hotel had hosted 22 of the previous 24 Lunacons, it no longer fit the convention’s needs or that of our attendees. There were issues with the function space, the hotel layout, other concerns that worked against the convention and its enjoyment by our members. Accordingly, we decided to reevaluate what we were doing and reach out to other hotels to see if we could find a better property that would enhance the Lunacon experience.

The Westchester Marriott will nicely fits our needs. The primary function space is on one level, with only a handful of smaller, breakout rooms on another floor, easily accessible by the hotel’s elevators. In addition, the Marriott has more than enough bedrooms and two excellent restaurants on site. There is even a major supermarket practically next door. In the event that there are additional bedrooms needed, there are other hotels a short distance away, including a Courtyard by Marriott.

John W. Upton will chair the convention. His Guests of Honor will be announced as soon as they have been confirmed.

For information about memberships rates, follow the con on social media.

Hellinger also explained why the convention is being held in April, although past Lunacons have been in March.

When the Marriott advised that our preferred dates in March were not available, but offered the first full weekend in April 2017, we looked at a calendar and made the decision that, while the date change would not be ideal, the later dates had many advantages to benefit Lunacon and its attendees.

The April date means Lunacon 2017 won’t have a scheduling conflict with HELIOsphere, the new convention led by a former Lunacon chair Mark Richards which debuts March 10-12, 2017 – also in Tarrytown, New York.

2016 Lunacon Chair Filled

Little Loonie LunariansThe 2016 Lunacon chair position, vacant since Mark Richards resigned at the end of December, has been filled by a three-member Executive Committee of former Lunacon chairs: Mark L. Blackman, Stuart C. Hellinger and John William Upton.

The New York Science Fiction Society (Lunarians) board of directors’ announcement explained, “This way, the remaining management work will not be a burden on any one individual and we will be able to rely on their knowledge and experience.”

The directors also announced the deadline for convention pre-registration from February 22 to February 29.

The convention is scheduled to take place March 18-20 at the Hilton Westchester in Rye Brook, New York.

The Lunarians skipped the 2015 edition of the con in order to reorganize and address financial issues.

Lunacon Chair Resigns

Mark Richards has resigned as chair of Lunacon 2016. He made this public announcement on Facebook:

It’s with a considerable measure of sadness that I take this step. My position as Chair has become politically and organizationally untenable. While I can go into detail as to the whys and wherefores that have made it impossible for me to continue, I would prefer to leave that discussion for another time and place.

I do not feel that the circumstances under which Lunacon and Lunarians are currently operating will allow me to continue with the lead in presenting the type of convention I envisioned when I took on this task. I feel I am no longer in a position where I can contribute positively to Lunacon.

As I do not anticipate those circumstances changing in the immediate future (or at least soon enough to matter), I feel I must step aside. I am proud of what I have accomplished, such as the choices I made for guests of honor. I hope that what input I have made contributes to the success of the convention….

The convention is scheduled to take place March 18-20 at the Hilton Westchester in Rye Brook, New York.

Stuart C. Hellinger, President, New York Science Fiction Society – the Lunarians (2), Inc. wrote that the organization will soon make an official response.

Richards was named chair of Lunacon 2016 last January. The Lunarians skipped the 2015 edition of the con in order to reorganize and address financial issues.

Pixel Scroll 12/1 Beyond The Wails of Creeps

(1) BANGLESS. In the beginning…there was no beginning?

At Phys.org — “No Big Bang? Quantum equation predicts universe has no beginning”

The universe may have existed forever, according to a new model that applies quantum correction terms to complement Einstein’s theory of general relativity. The model may also account for dark matter and dark energy, resolving multiple problems at once.

The widely accepted age of the , as estimated by , is 13.8 billion years. In the beginning, everything in existence is thought to have occupied a single infinitely dense point, or . Only after this point began to expand in a “Big Bang” did the universe officially begin.

(2) KNOWING YOURSELF. Tobias Buckell supplies fascinating ideas for learning about yourself and your writing in his answer to “How do I know when to trunk my story or novel?”

… I have several writer friends who are what I would call Tinkerers. They write via a method of creating something, then they continue to tinker it into perfection. It’s amazing to watch, and as a result they often have skills for rewriting that are hard to match.

Some, like me, are more Serial Iterators. They do better writing something new, incorporating the lessons of a previous work. They depend on a lifetime of practice and learning. They lean more toward abandoning a project that hasn’t worked to move on….

When I wrote 150 short stories at the start of my career, I abandoned over 100 of them to the trunk. I did this by knowing I was interested in iteration and not interested in trying to rescue them. I had an intuitive sense of how long it would take for me in hours, manpower, to try and rescue a story, versus how many it would take to make a new one. That came with practice, trusted readers opinions being compared to my own impressions of the writing, and editorial feedback. But I am very aware of the fact that I’m not a Tinkerer.

(3) CONNIE AT SASQUAN. She makes everything sound like a good time no matter what. Her nightmare of a hotel was an especially good source of anecdotes — “Connie Willis Sasquan (WorldCon 2015) Report”.

But instead of being taken to rescue on the Carpathia–or even the Hyatt–we were transported to a true shipwreck of a hotel.

It was brand-new and ultramodern, but upon closer examination, it was like those strange nightmare hotels in a “we’re already dead but don’t know it yet” movie. The blinds couldn’t be worked manually, and we couldn’t find any controls. There was no bathtub. The shower closely resembled the one in a high-school locker room, and there was no door between it and the toilet. (I am not making this up.) The clock had no controls for setting an alarm–a call to the front desk revealed that was intentional: “We prefer our clients to call us and request a wake-up call”–and when you turned the room lights off, the bright blue glow from the clock face enveloped the room in Cherenkhov radiation, and there was no way to unplug it. We tried putting a towel and then a pillow over it and ended up having to turn it face-down.

That wasn’t all. If you sat on the edge of the bed or lay too close to the edge, you slid off onto the floor, a phenomenon we got to test later on when we began giving tours of our room to disbelieving friends. “Don’t sit on the end of the bed,” we told them. “You’ll slide off,” and then watched them as they did.

(4) CONNIE PRESENTS THE HUGO. Her blog also posted the full text of “Connie Willis Hugo Presenter Speech 2015”.

… This one year they had these great Hugos, with sort of a modernist sculpture look, a big angled ring of Saturn thing with the rocket ship sticking up through it and marbles representing planets, and brass nuts and bolts and stuff.

They looked great, but they weren’t glued together very well, and by the time Samuel R. Delaney got off the stage, his Hugo was in both hands and his pockets and on the floor, and mine had lost several pieces altogether.

“Did you lose your marbles?” I whispered to Gardner backstage.

“No,” Gardner whispered back in that voice of his that can be heard in the back row, “My balls didn’t fall off, but my toilet seat broke!”

(5) TAFF. Sasquan has donated $2,000 to the Trans-Atlantic Fan Fund.

(6) LUNACON. Lunacon’s Indiegogo crowdfunding campaign has ended, 58 people contributed a total of $6,127. The funds will be put to good use to make Lunacon 2016 a success.

(7) BEYOND NaNo. Amanda S. Green, in “NaNo is over. What now?” at Mad Genius Club, helps writers who missed the target deal with their results, and shows how her own experiences have taught her to adjust.

That collective sigh of relief and groan of frustration you heard yesterday came from the hoards of authors who met — or didn’t — their NaNoWriMo goals. Now they are looking at those 50,000 words and wondering what to do with them. Should they put them aside for a bit and then come back to see if they are anywhere close to a book or if they more resemble a cabbage. Others are wondering why they couldn’t meet the deadline and wondering how they can ever be an author if they can’t successfully complete NaNo. Then there are those who know they finished their 50,000 words, that they have a book (of sorts) as a result but aren’t sure it is worth the work they will have to put in to bring it to publishable standards.

All of those reactions — and more — are why I don’t particularly like NaNo. I’ve done it. I’ve failed more often than I’ve successfully concluded it….

I’ll admit, as I already have, that I usually don’t meet my NaNo goals. That’s because I know I can do 50k in a month and don’t adjust the word count. That is when Real Life tends to kick me in the teeth. Whether it is illness, either of me or a family member, or death or something around the house deciding to go MIA, something always seems to happen. It did this year. The difference was that I still managed to not only meet my 50k goal but I exceeded it.

So what was different?…

(8) SF POETRY. Here’s something you don’t see every day – a review of an sf poetry collection. Diane Severson’s “Poetry Review – Much Slower Than Light, C. Clink” at Amazing Stories.

Much Slower Than Light, from Who’s that Coeur? Press is currently in its 7th edition (2014) and is probably quite different than the 2008 6th edition (I don’t have a copy from which to compare); there are 6 poems, as far as I can tell, which have been added since then and the 6th edition apparently had poems dating back to 1984. This is a retrospective collection; representing the best Carolyn Clink has offered us from 1996 through 2014 and is likely to morph again in a few years when Clink has more wonderful poems to call her best. There is an astonishing variety in form and subject and genre. There are only 22 poems in all, but all of them are gems.

(9) HARD SF. Greg Hullender and Rocket Stack Rank investigate the “Health of Hard Science Fiction in 2015 (Short Fiction)”.

Now that 2015 is almost over as far as the Hugos go, we decided to look over all the stories that we or anyone else recommended and see which qualified as hard SF. In particular, we wanted to investigate the following claims:

No one is writing good hard-SF stories anymore.

Hard SF has no variety and keeps reusing old ideas.

Only men write hard SF.

Most hard SF is published in Analog.

Hullender noted in e-mail, “Lots of people talk about the health of hard SF, but I haven’t seen anyone give any actual numbers for it.”

(10) YA SF. At the Guardian, Laxmi Harihan analyzes “Why the time is now for YA speculative fiction”.

I write fantastical, action-adventure. Thrillers, which are sometimes magic realist, and which sometimes borrow from Indian mythology. Oh! And my young heroes are often of Indian origin. So yeah! My brand of YA is not easily classifiable. Imagine my relief when I found I had a home in speculative YA. There are less rules here, so I don’t worry so much about breaking them.

So, then, I wanted to understand what YA speculative fiction really meant in today’s world.

Rysa Walker, author of the Chronos Files YA series told me, “Anything that couldn’t happen in real life is speculative fiction.”

Speculative fiction is, as I found, an umbrella term for fantasy, science fiction, horror, magic realism; everything that falls under “that which can’t really happen or hasn’t happened yet.”

(11) WENDIG AND SCALZI. Chuck Wendig and John Scalzi’s collected tweets form “Star Wars Episode 3.14159: The Awkward Holiday Get-Together” at Whatever.

In which two science fiction authors turn the greatest science fictional saga of all time into… another dysfunctional holiday family dinner.

(12) “Anne Charnock, author of Sleeping Embers of an Ordinary Mind Discusses Taking Risks With Her Writing” at SF Signal.

I admit it. I’m a natural risk taker, though I’ve never been tempted by heli-skiing, free climbing or any other extreme sport. I’m talking about a different kind of risk taking. I’m a stay-at-home writer who taps away in a cosy lair, inventing daredevil strategies for writing projects. My new novel, Sleeping Embers of an Ordinary Mind, is a case in point.

Readers of my first novel, A Calculated Life, were probably expecting me to stay comfortably within the category of science fiction for my second novel. Science fiction offers a huge canvas, one that’s proven irresistible to many mainstream writers. But for my latest novel, Sleeping Embers of an Ordinary Mind, I wanted to crash through the centuries. The story spans over 600 years—from the Renaissance to the twenty-second century. It’s an equal mix of speculative, contemporary, and historical fiction.

(13) SUNBURST AWARD. A “Call for Submissions: The 2016 Sunburst Award” via the SFWA Blog.

The Sunburst Awards, an annual celebration of excellence in Canadian fantastic literature, announces that its 2016 call for submissions is now open.

The Sunburst Awards Society, launched in 2000, annually brings together a varying panel of distinguished jurors to select the best full length work of literature of the fantastic written by a Canadian in both Adult and Young Adult categories. 2016 is also the inaugural year for our short fiction award, for the best short fiction written by a Canadian.

Full submission requirements for all categories are found on the Sunburst Awards website at www.sunburstaward.org/submissions.

Interested publishers and authors are asked to submit entries as early as possible, to provide this year’s jurors sufficient time to read each work. The cut-off date for submissions is January 31, 2016; books and stories received after that date will not be considered.

(14) VANDERMEER WINNERS. Ann and Jeff VanderMeer announced the winners of their Fall Fiction Contest at The Masters Review. (Via SF Site News.)

Winner: “Linger Longer,” by Vincent Masterson

Second Place Story: “Pool People,” by Jen Neale

Third Place Story: “Animalizing,” by Marisela Navarro

Honorable Mentions:

The judges would like to acknowledge “The Lion and the Beauty Queen” by Brenda Peynado and “Linnet’s Gifts” by Zoe Gilbert as the fourth and fifth place stories.

The three winners will be published on their website, and receive $2000, $200, and $100 respectively.

(15) LE GUIN POETRY READINGS. Ursula K. Le Guin will be reading from Late in the Day: Poems 20-10-2014 in Portland, OR at Another Read Through Books on December 17, Powell’s City of Books on January 13, and Broadway Books on February 24.

Late in the Day poems Le Guin

As Le Guin herself states, “science explicates, poetry implicates.” Accordingly, this immersive, tender collection implicates us (in the best sense) in a subjectivity of everyday objects and occurrences. Deceptively simple in form, the poems stand as an invitation both to dive deep and to step outside of ourselves and our common narratives. As readers, we emerge refreshed, having peered underneath cultural constructs toward the necessarily mystical and elemental, no matter how late in the day.

These poems of the last five years are bookended with two short essays, “Deep in Admiration” and “Form, Free Verse, Free Form: Some Thoughts.”

(16) GERROLD DECIDES. From David Gerrold’s extensive analysis of a panel he participated on at Loscon 42 last weekend —

1) I am never going to be on a panel about diversity, feminism, or privilege, ever again. Not because these panels shouldn’t be held or because I don’t like being on them or because they aren’t useful. But because they reveal so much injustice that I come away seething and upset.

1A) I know that I am a beneficiary of privilege. I pass for straight white male. And to the extent that I am not paying attention to it, I am part of the problem.

1B) This is why, for my own sake, I have boiled it down to, “I do not have the right to be arrogant or judgmental. I do not have the right to be disrespectful of anyone. I must treat everyone with courtesy and respect.” Sometimes it’s easy — sometimes it takes a deliberate and conscious effort. (I have become very much aware when my judgments kick in — yes, it’s clever for me to say, “I’m allergic to stupidity, I break out in sarcasm.” But it’s also disrespectful. I know it. I’m working on it.)

(17) CANTINA COLLABORATION. Did you know J.J. Abrams wrote the Star Wars: The Force Awakens Cantina Band Music with Hamilton creator Lin-Manuel Miranda? Abrams told the story on last night’s Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon.

There are also two other clips on the NBC site, “J.J. Abrams broke his back trying to rescue Harrison Ford,” and “J.J. Abrams was afraid to direct Star Wars.”

(18) BOOK LIBERATION. A commenter at Vox Popoli who says he’s sworn off Tor Books was probably surprised to read Vox Day’s response (scroll down to comments).

I myself will not be purchasing, reading, and therefore not voting for anything published by Tor

[VD] Who said anything about purchasing or reading? Never limit your tactical options.

His answer reminded me of the bestseller Steal This Book. Although in that case, it was the author, Abbie Hoffman, who gave his own book that title.

(19) VOX LOGO NEXT? In a different post, Vox added a stinger in his congratulations to a commenter who bragged about being the point of contact for the outfit that does Larry Correia’s logo-etched gun parts.

I’m actually his point of contact at JP, so I’m feeling proud of myself today.

[VD] Good on you. Now tell them that the Supreme Dark Lord wants HIS custom weaponry and it will outsell that of the International Lord of Hate any day.

And it should look far more evil and scary than that.

(20) Not This Day in History

(21) LUCAS EXPLAINS. In a long interview at the Washington Post, George Lucas offers his latest explanation why he re-edited Star War  to make Greedo shoot first.

He also went back to some scenes that had always bothered him, particularly in the 1977 film: When Han Solo (Harrison Ford) is threatened by Greedo, a bounty hunter working for the sluglike gangster Jabba the Hutt, Han reaches for his blaster and shoots Greedo by surprise underneath a cantina table.

In the new version, it is Greedo who shoots first, by a split second. Deeply offended fans saw it as sacrilege; Lucas will probably go to his grave defending it. When Han shot first, he says, it ran counter to “Star Wars’ ” principles.

“Han Solo was going to marry Leia, and you look back and say, ‘Should he be a cold-blooded killer?’ ” Lucas asks. “Because I was thinking mythologically — should he be a cowboy, should he be John Wayne? And I said, ‘Yeah, he should be John Wayne.’ And when you’re John Wayne, you don’t shoot people [first] — you let them have the first shot. It’s a mythological reality that we hope our society pays attention to.”

(22) YOU WERE WARNED. Anyway, back in 2012 Cracked.com warned us there are “4 Things ‘Star Wars’ Fans Need to Accept About George Lucas”.

#4. Because They’re His Damned Movies

An obvious point, but it needs to be stated clearly: Star Wars fans don’t own the Star Wars movies. We just like them. If they get changed and we don’t like them anymore, that’s perfectly cool, because we don’t have to like them anymore. That’s the deal. All sorts of creative works come in multiple editions, director’s cuts, abridged versions, expanded versions. Lucas appears to be far more into this tinkering than other filmmakers, but he’s hardly unique. Take Blade Runner: …

(22) DUELING SPACESHIPS. Millennium Falcon or Starship Enterprise? There is no question as to which space vehicle Neil deGrasse Tyson would choose.

[Thanks to Gregory N. Hullender, Martin Morse Wooster, Andrew Porter, Brian Z., and John King Tarpinian for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Josh Jasper.]

Lunacon 2016 Asks for Crowdfunding

Little Loonie LunariansLunacon, New York’s longest-running sf&f convention, is making a comeback in 2016 but needs more seed money to make it happen. The committee has started an Indiegogo appeal to raise $8,000.

As you may also know, Lunacon has gone through some trouble recently. We almost lost the convention altogether, but we managed to save it at the last minute. A new Lunarians corporation was formed, and is now under the leadership of our new Board President (Stuart C. Hellinger) and our 2016 Lunacon Chair (Mark W. Richards). We’re restructuring the Lunarians club and the Lunacon convention. We’re trying to bring back some members who have drifted away in recent years, draw in some new blood, and revitalize both the convention and the club as a whole.

However, we need your help. That’s where this fund-raiser comes in. All of this is rather expensive: not only are we paying to store all of materials for the masquerade, the art show, and all our other events, but we need to give deposits to our hotel and vendors, purchase food and materials for things like the con suite, cover expenses to bring in our Guests of Honor, and generally have some cash on hand in case of emergencies. Right now, we’re looking for $8,000 for our base goal, but if it looks like we’re getting there, we might add in some stretch goals as well!

Lunacon 2016 will be held March 18-20 at the Hilton Westchester with Guests of Honor Robert J. Sawyer, Rick Sternbach and Naomi Novik.

[Thanks to James H. Burns for the link.]

2016 Lunacon Sets Dates, Adds GoH

The 2016 Lunacon will take place March 18-20, 2016 in a familiar venue, the Hilton Westchester in Rye Brook, New York.

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Naomi Novik

Chair Mark Richards also has some other good news:

Additionally, we’re pleased to announce the addition of Naomi Novik, the New York Times bestselling author of the Temeraire series, as a Guest of Honor, joining a stellar roster that already includes Robert Sawyer and Rick Sternbach.

Robert J. Sawyer is the author of 21 novels (and counting) and a celebrated and influential writer both in his native Canada and internationally. He has won numerous awards for his work (Nebula, Hugo, Campbell Memorial, Prix Aurora), including the Hugo for Best Novel in 2003 for Hominids and the 1999 Prix Aurora for Flashforward, which was made into a television series. We are pleased and proud that Rob has agreed to come to Lunacon as our guest.

Rick Sternbach is winner of the Hugo for Best Professional Artist in 1977 and 1978, and of an Emmy in 1981 for his work on the original Cosmos, hosted by Carl Sagan. He’s best known for his work on Star Trek, where he helped define the look of the 24th century in Star Trek: The Next Generation and the series that followed (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and Star Trek: Voyager). Lunacon was Rick’s first SF convention and we’re pleased to bring him back home to Lunacon as our guest.

Naomi Novik, winner of the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer in 2006, is author of the Temeraire series, the first book of which, His Majesty’s Dragon, was a Hugo finalist and winner of the 2007 Compton Crook Award. Her new novel, Uprooted, is coming out this May and the next volume in the Temeraire series is expected in 2016. She is also a founding board member of the Organization For Transformative Works, a non-profit that advocates for the transformative and legitimate nature of fan labor activities, including fan fiction. We are thrilled to have Naomi as our guest at Lunacon.

Lunacon is the premiere annual New York Metropolitan Area science fiction convention sponsored by the New York Science Fiction Society – the Lunarians (2), Inc., a New York State Not-for-Profit Corporation. Lunacon 2016 will be the 58th Convention in the series.