Pixel Scroll 3/5/24 But The Pixels We Climbed Were Just Shoggoths Out Of Time

(1) COMING IN FOR A LANDING. Los Angeles Magazine tells why “George Lucas’ Billion Dollar Museum Is About Way More Than ‘Star Wars’”. A year ago this design looked unique. But today? I bet you can guess what building it reminds me of now.

We’re still maybe a year out from the grand opening of the new museum created by film director George Lucas and his wife, executive Melody Hobson. But anyone visiting the Coliseum, Natural History Museum, USC, or riding the Expo Line has seen the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art rising above Exposition Park. The absolutely massive structure by Beijing-based architect Ma Yansong encloses some 300,000 square feet over a building ranging from three and five floors set atop an underground parking garage (with 600 more spaces than the surface lot the building replaced) all nestled in a green garden….

Artist’s rendering of Lucas Museum of Narrative Art

(2) A SHORE THING. A trailer has dropped for The Wild Robot. Arrives in theaters on September 20.

The epic adventure follows the journey of a robot—ROZZUM unit 7134, “Roz” for short — that is shipwrecked on an uninhabited island and must learn to adapt to the harsh surroundings, gradually building relationships with the animals on the island and becoming the adoptive parent of an orphaned gosling.

(3) LEARNEDLEAGUE SFF QUESTION. [Item by David Goldfarb.] It’s the hundredth season of LearnedLeague. The first question of match day 15 asked us:

“What name is the last word uttered in the final installment of the Star Wars sequel trilogy from 2019, as well as the last word of the film’s title?”

Way to nerf the question with that last clause, eh? Although even with that, the question had a 67% get rate, with 12% giving the most common wrong answer of “Jedi”. (Presumably thinking of the second movie in the trilogy.)

My opponent quite rightly assigned me 0 points for this one, as did I for him.

(4) HANDS (OR LEGS) UP FOR “YES”? NO? [Item by Mike Kennedy.] Is the giant spider in Netflix’s Spaceman real or just a figment of the title character’s imagination? The main creatives each have an answer but it may not be your answer. Beware — spoilers ahead.

There’s an obvious question at the heart of Spaceman, Netflix’s science fiction movie where Adam Sandler’s forlorn astronaut character spends half the story talking to a tennis ball communing with a giant alien spider that he names Hanuš. But even without watching the movie, viewers may wonder: Is Hanuš actually real?

Normally, when a movie revolves around this kind of question, the director and stars hedge when asked for their opinions. For instance, No One Will Save You writer-director Brian Duffield has been clear that he wants viewers to interpret that film’s startling ending in whatever way they think fits best, without his input. Andrew Haigh has been careful about weighing in on the controversial ending of All of Us Strangers. And that’s entirely reasonable — often filmmakers want to keep viewers guessing, thinking, debating, and interpreting.

But not always. Polygon couldn’t resist asking Spaceman director Johan Renck and stars Adam Sandler and Paul Dano what they think about the movie’s central debate point — and we were surprised at how definitive their answers were. We’ll get into the details after a spoiler break….

(5) MPSE GOLDEN REEL AWARDS. The Motion Picture Sound Editors presented their Golden Reel Awards on March 3. Here are the winners of genre interest:

EFFECTS & FOLEY

  • Oppenheimer

DIALOGUE & ADR

  • Oppenheimer

ANIMATION

  • Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse

(6) IN THE YEAR 2024. “Plane commutes, world peace and 100-year-old predictions about 2024” at USA Today.

Well, we’re finally here. Is this the future that you envisioned?

Nearly 100 years ago, a group of visionaries dared to imagine what life would be like in 2024. Some of their prophecies fell woefully short while others proved to be strangely accurate. 

Join us now as we gaze into that crystal ball from 1924….

A growing problem

Arthur Dean, whose parental advice column appeared in newspapers across the country, expressed concerns about American dietary habits.

“I sometimes wonder what our stomachs will look like and be like 100 years from now,” he wrote. “Will we have any teeth at all? Will there be any color on our face except paint? Will the men have any height to speak of or will they be all girth? Will people have mostly an east and west appearance – all latitude and lassitude and no longitude?”

(7) SFWA ESTATES LEGACY PROGRAM. The Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers Association has informed members that Mishell Baker is stepping down from her lead position on the Estates Project but will remain available for consultation. Going forward, the remaining Estates Project volunteers will cover her duties as needed.

Mishell is a winner of the Kevin J. O’Donnell Service to SFWA Award, and she served as the primary contact for SFWA’s Estate Project since 2016. She liaised with publishers interested in reprinting works by science fiction and fantasy authors who are no longer with us and acted as an intermediary for individual heirs who wished to keep their contact information confidential. Mishell gained a well-deserved reputation for handling these communications with consistency and sensitivity, providing help in sometimes difficult and confusing situations.  

The Estates-Legacy Project wishes to thank Mishell for her many years of exceptional service on behalf of writers, their heirs, and the readers now enjoying the work of past masters as a result of her efforts.

(8) RICHARD BOWES (1944-2023). In “Richard Bowes—A Remembrance” at Uncanny Magazine, Lynne M. Thomas and Michael Damian Thomas, Christopher Barzak, Matthew Cheney, Sam J. Miller, and Matthew Kressel share their memories and feelings about Bowes, who died December 24. Here is an excerpt fro Kressel’s segment:

I’m fairly certain I met Rick Bowes at a Fantastic Fiction at KGB reading on November 15, 2006. That night, Lucius Shepard and Catherynne Valente were reading. This may seem awfully specific, but I have proof. Ellen Datlow captured this moment in a photo that resides on her Flickr stream. For a Halloween party I’d bleached my hair and dressed up as Roy Batty from Blade Runner. In the photo, Rick leans in, hands pressed like a sage, telling me something with authority, while I, with my Billy-Idol-blonde hair, listen rapt. (In the background, Rajan Khanna, whom in this moment I have yet to befriend, stares at the camera.) And this is how I will remember Rick. Telling stories. His depth of knowledge always astounded me. Right away, I knew I was in the presence of a sharp mind….

(9) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

Born March 5, 1951 Margaret Astrid Lindholm Ogden, 73. Let’s talk about Margaret Astrid Lindholm Ogden who writes under the pen names of Megan Lindholm and Robin Hobb. Thirty-six years ago at the age of thirty, as Megan Lindholm, her second novel, a fantasy set in Seattle was published. That was the extraordinarily excellent Wizard of the Pigeons, a novel that bring a smile to the face of even the Suck Fairy. 

In a sense, it is a direct evolution from her fiction as children’s writer which published in magazines as Jack and JillHighlights for Children and Humpty Dumpty as she notes. Her Robin Hobb persona, she claims is a little more gentle than her Meghan Lindholm persona which, as she told a Bookseller interviewer, is “a little more snarky, a little more sarcastic, a little less optimistic, less emotional”.

So let’s stay with her writing under the Lindholm name. Her first writing as that persona was short fiction was in 1979, “Bones for Dulath”, followed in 1980 by “The Small One” and in 1981 by “Faunsdown Cottage”. She’s written (and coauthored) twenty-six stories exclusively as Lindholm. That includes five works in Emma Bull and Will Shetterly’s Laivek franchise, some co-written with Stephen Brust or Gregory Frost. 

Lindholm’s first novel, Harpy’s Flight, was published forty-one years as ago, and was the first in her Windsingers series about the characters Ki and Vandien, and, yes, I like these novels a lot. 

Now remember these Birthdays are, if I choose, are what I’ve read by a given writer and this is what I’m doing here as I’ve read enough her to be reasonably knowledgeable about her.

The final novel by her that I’ve read is the one she did with Stephen Brust, The Gypsy. It’s based on Romany folklore, and it’s more or less a mystery. It got its own soundtrack courtesy of Boiled in Lead, vocals by Adam Stemple, son of Jane Yolen. Superbly crafted work. 

So now her other persona, Robin Hobb, and may I now say that I like both of the creators that she choose to be? Really I do.

Her first work as Hobb was the Farseer trilogy, narrated in first person, my favorite way to experience this sort of fiction, involves  FitzChivalry Farseer, illegitimate son of a prince. Great character, ever better series.  The first volume of the trilogy, Assassin’s Apprentice, sets up them well.

Ok, I’ll admit I’ve read much of the Realm of the Elderlings franchise, though by no means all, that talking about it coherently isn’t possible. What I will say is nothing by her is anything by really, really good.  I will say, despite Margaret Astrid Lindholm Ogden saying Hobb is the gentler of the two, that trigger warnings for brutality and even rape are necessary here. Really they are.

Both personas in the end aren’t, despite her claims, really that different. The only novel that is decidedly different I can say as a reader is The Gypsy but that was co-written with Brust as were the four Laivek works. Co-written works are such that one never knows how much that the one has influenced it and how much the other has.

(10) A NEW MEANING FOR WC. “What Is WcDonald’s, McDonald’s Anime Counterpart?” at Food Network. One of these comics was on my bag today!

… This month, McDonald’s is embracing what has become a common … homage, shall we say, to its golden arches in anime films and series: WcDonald’s.Swapping in a “W” — or, rather, an upside-down “M” — has become a cheeky way for animators and illustrators to let their characters dine at or otherwise interact with what the audience can immediately identify as a McDonald’s without licensing the actual name of (or getting sued by) McDonald’s itself. Starting next week, however, McDonald’s is embracing its cartoon counterpart at its real-life restaurants in the U.S. and beyond…. A New McNugget Sauce: To pair with “WcNuggets,” a new, limited-edition Savory Chili WcDonald’s Sauce is coming to the menu, described as a “unique combination of ginger, garlic and soy with a slight heat from chili flakes.” Manga-Inspired Packaging: Japanese illustrator Acky Bright designed original artwork of WcDonald’s crew members for the McDonald’s/WcDonald’s items. Packaging will also feature a QR code with access to digital WcDonald’s manga content weekly featuring Bright’s cast of WcDonald’s characters (yes, one is a mecha).

The promotional website WcDonald’s has a lot of content. Here are some of the newest characters.

(11) LAST DARKNESS FALL — PERMANENTLY. “Solar eclipse glasses: Why you need them, and why you should buy them right now” – advice from Slate. “The eclipse is happening on April 8—and last time, the glasses sold out many places.”

Few natural phenomena bring sci-fi-esque buzz like a solar eclipse. Some people talk about this astronomical event as if it comes straight out of a Ray Bradbury story. And those people are right! Solar eclipses are, without hyperbole, awesome. And just in case you haven’t heard, there’s one happening on April 8.

Of course, a cardinal rule of day-to-day life still applies to eclipses: You must absolutely not look at the sun directly—even if it’s partially obscured by the moon. It can cause permanent retinal damage.

Photoreceptors in the eyes register and convert light to electrical signals detected in your brain. The powerfully incandescent sun overwhelms those photoreceptors, bombarding them with far more light than they can convert. Any light your photoreceptors don’t absorb filters through to the back of your eye, producing heat. Although the moon partially blots out the sun, that doesn’t make the rays that are visible any less potent. Look at a partial eclipse long enough and you can burn the sun into your retinas, which can result in a permanent hole in your vision called a scotoma. Since your retinas lack pain receptors, you won’t know that the damage has been done until it’s too late. Looking through conventional binoculars or telescopes doesn’t mitigate this risk….

(12) ROLL THE CREDITS. “Superman movie to film in Ohio, hire more than 3,000 locals” at NBC4i. The state will reward this decision with a big tax credit.

It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s Superman! A new movie on the comic book hero is filming in Ohio this year and has been awarded about $11 million in tax credits, with plans to hire more than 3,000 locals.

The DC Studios movie titled simply “Superman” is filming in Cincinnati and Cleveland this spring and summer and will receive $11,091,686 in tax credits, according to an Ohio Motion Picture Tax Credit application filed under the project’s code name, “Genesis.” The film is expected to hire 3,254 Ohio residents to take part in the production.

DC’s Ohio-related expenses are projected to exceed $36 million, which makes up about 10% of the movie’s total budget of more than $363 million….

(13) TECH BROS. “’Musk needs to be adored … Zuckerberg is out of his depth’: Kara Swisher on the toxic giants of Big Tech” in the Guardian.

…In the book, Swisher says Zuckerberg is “the most damaging man in tech”. Elon Musk, by contrast, is maligned as the “most disappointing”, which reflects Swisher’s long period of thinking of the founder of Tesla and SpaceX as one of the tech industry’s most promising sons. In 2016, she contacted him ahead of the big meeting with Trump, warning that the president-elect would “screw” him; two years later, Musk told her she had been right. All told, she seemed to believe that he operated on a higher level than most of his peers.

“Here’s someone who actually was doing serious things,” she says. “There’s a lot of people in Silicon Valley who are always doing a dry cleaning app. He was thinking of everything from cars to space to solar. Even the silly stuff like [his imagined high-speed transport system] Hyperloop: what a great idea. What an interesting idea.” She also mentions Neuralink, the venture working on computer interfaces that can be implanted in people’s brains. “How could we upgrade our intelligence? That’s a big, fascinating problem.”…

(14) SFWA INSTAGRAM PROGRAM. The SFWA Instagram Program gives users a peek at members’ daily creative lives, pets, and works. In the past year and a half, SFWA has processed nearly 200 requests and created over 600 graphics that have been shared through its Instagram account. Here’s an example:

(15) A FINE IDEA. This month (only) “A Massachusetts Library System Will Let You Pay Fines With Cat Pictures” according to Mental Floss.

It’s not often that cat photos are accepted as currency. But for the month of March, public libraries in Worcester, Massachusetts, will wipe certain fines from your account if you submit any picture of a cat.

Branches in the Worcester Public Library (WPL) system don’t charge fees for overdue books, but they do charge for lost or damaged ones. The call for cat pictures is a way to keep those bills from preventing patrons from using the library. “We at the Worcester Public Library are always looking for ways to reduce barriers,” Worcester Public Library executive library director Jason Homer told WBUR. “We know that a lot of people, unfortunately, through being displaced in housing, or life getting in the way in the global pandemic, lost a lot of materials.” 

“Felines for Fee Forgiveness” is part of March Meowness, a month of cat-centric programming that includes a screening of the 2019 movie Cats, a cat-eye makeup tutorial, a “de-stressing” hour of playing with shelter cats, DIY crafts, and more events.

Before you show up to a WPL branch with a cat image at the ready, there are a few rules to know. For one, a book needs to have been lost for at least two months in order for its fee to be waived…. 

(16) PROTOPLANETARY SYSTEM. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] Last week’s issue of Science looks at the formation of other planetary systems.

This JWST infrared image shows the Orion Bar, which separates parts of the Orion Nebula containing cool molecular gas (lower left) from those containing hot plasma (upper right). The latter are ionized by ultraviolet radiation from massive stars (located beyond the image). The strong ultraviolet radiation field heats protoplanetary disks around young stars in this region, dispersing the gas needed for planet formation<

Primary research paper’s abstract here.

(17) VIDEO OF THE DAY. GamesRadar+ reports “Star Wars fans rocked by resurfaced beer adverts stitched directly into the original trilogy – including a bizarre replacement for Luke Skywalker’s lightsaber”. One video is embedded below, there are more at the link.

We all remember that iconic Star Wars moment where Obi-Wan Kenobi goes to give Luke Skywalker his father’s old, ice cold beer, right? 

Well, if you watched a specific version of the movie shown in Chile, you might remember things that way. The old ads are going viral once again thanks to the fact that the beer marketing is spliced directly into some of the original trilogy’s most famous moments – unintentionally creating the most hilarious advertising campaign ever. While these videos might seem like fakes, they are very much real: according to The Guardian, the campaign even won an award for its ingenuity…. 

[Thanks to Steven French, Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, N., Jeffrey Smith, JJ, David Goldfarb, 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 Jeff Jones.]

Pixel Scroll 7/31/23 Have Space Suit, Will Accessorize

(1) SERGEY LUKYANENKO WILL BE WORKING ON THE RAILROAD. Starting tomorrow, Chengdu Worldcon GoH Sergey Lukyanenko will join a whistlestop tour of Russia “Book beacons of Russia. Reading August 2023”. The TASS publicity release says:

“Reading August” [is] a book expedition from Murmansk to Vladivostok, which will be held for the first time from August 1 to August 20. The book expedition will light up the “Book Beacons of Russia” in cities along its way.

… For the first time in history, a unique book expedition by train and other means of transportation will travel with a cultural program throughout Russia and cover more than 30 regions of the Russian Federation, including St. Petersburg, Moscow, Nizhny Novgorod, Kazan, Yekaterinburg, Tyumen, Omsk, Novosibirsk, Krasnoyarsk, Irkutsk, Ulan-Ude, Chita, Khabarovsk, Vladivostok….

In another news item, Sergey Lukyanenko, appointed by Putin to the Russian Federation’s Civic Chamber in April, was on hand when the group convened on June 20. He appears for about two seconds in the video report on the session here.

Sergey Lukyanenko, smiling, at left.

Finally, Lukyanenko is a judge in “The final of the literary competition ‘Project of Special Importance’ 2023”. What makes it “special” is that one of the entries was produced with ChatGPT and has made the finals.

The neural network reached the final of the literary competition for authors and readers of audiobooks “Project of Special Importance”. It is not yet known which text from among the finalists belongs to artificial intelligence, the [ChatGPT] neural network. The name of the laureate will be announced at the award ceremony in October in St. Petersburg.

The works of the participants are evaluated by science fiction writers Sergey Lukyanenko, Andrey Vasiliev, Vadim Panov, Max Glebov, professional audiobook readers and dubbing actors Kirill Golovin, Marina Lisovets, Dmitry Cherevatenko, Inga Brik and others. A total of 644 applications were received for the competition, 50 readers and 39 writers reached the final, stories in the genres of production novel, post-apocalypse, science fiction and cyberpunk were accepted for participation. The evaluation took into account the plot, intrigue, language style and emotional impact on the reader. The full list of finalists can be found on the website.

… The winner of the competition – the author of the text, who took 1st place, receives 250,000 rubles, 2nd place – 150,000 rubles, 3rd place – 100 thousand rubles. A prize fund of 400,000 rubles is distributed among the finalists. Among the readers, 10 winners are determined, who receive 50,000 rubles each.

(2) HELP SEATTLE IN 2025 WORLDCON BID RAISE FUNDS FOR CANCER RESEARCH. The Seattle in 2025 Worldcon Bid has formed a Base2Space team to climb the Space Needle on October 1 and raise funds for cancer research. The climb is 832 steps from street level to the observation deck, rising 0.1 miles high, or about 1/620 of the distance to space. They promise to take pictures from the top, showing the city which members of the science fiction community will have the chance to visit if Seattle wins the (so far uncontested) site selection vote to host the 2025 Worldcon. The black and white image shows what the Space Needle looked like in 1961, the last time Seattle hosted a Worldcon. 100% of donations go to the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center. Please give generously: Seattle in 2025 Worldcon Bid – Base 2 Space.

(3) ON THE STREET WHERE YOU LIVED. “Octavia Butler Avenue Designated in Lake Forest Park, Wash.” reports Publishers Weekly.

The city of Lake Forest Park, Wash., dedicated a section of 37th Avenue NE to science fiction and fantasy author Octavia E. Butler on Saturday, July 29. Admirers of the author, who died in 2006, can now walk a three-block stretch known as Octavia Butler Avenue, passing the midcentury modern home where the author lived from 1999–2006 and wrote her final novel, Fledgling.

Lake Forest Park city councilmembers Phillippa Kassover and Tracy Furutani led the initiative to establish the honorary landmark, which covers three residential blocks, from NE 162nd to NE 165th Street. In the shade of an oak tree at the dedication ceremony, Kassover explained that Butler had moved to the Seattle suburb because she “wanted a home with a garden from which she could walk to a grocery store and had access to a cultural center and a good bookstore via bus, as she did not drive.” (Third Place Books Lake Forest Park is a short walk away.)

Kassover acknowledged Butler’s visionary fiction, “her prescient warnings about authoritarian leaders, and her many accolades, including being the first science fiction author to receive a Macarthur Genius Award.” Furutani called Butler’s novels “more Orwellian than we might suppose,” noting Butler’s Afrofuturist and social justice vision. Butler wrote KindredParable of the SowerParable of the Talents, and the Xenogenesis trilogy, and received Hugo, Locus, and Nebula awards.

Those honoring Butler at the ceremony included Kassover and Furutani, along with Lake Forest Park deputy mayor Tom French, councilmember Semra Riddle, Clarion West science fiction and fantasy workshop writer Caren Gussoff Sumption, scholar Sheila Liming, and musician Terry Morgan, who befriended Butler after she moved to the neighborhood.

(4) MEDICAL UPDATE. Sff author Michael Flynn, who was hospitalized with an infection early this month, was released from the hospital yesterday he announced on Facebook. Good news!

(5) CHENGDU AND UNCANNY MAGAZINE. Michael Damian Thomas and Lynne M Thomas, Editor-in-Chief/Publisher of Uncanny Magazine report that Uncanny Magazine was invited to send a representative to the Chengdu Worldcon “on the convention’s dime, but none of our team will be attending the convention.”

Of course, notes Michael, “In the case of Lynne and me, we are no longer able to attend any conventions that require flying or are too far away from a children’s hospital due to our daughter Caitlin’s palliative care.”

(6) SLIP-SLIDING AWAY. AV Club explains why “Loki can’t escape Jonathan Majors in season 2 trailer”.

…. After fracturing the Sacred Timeline at the end of the first season, Loki has lots of issues, including the fact that he’s “time slipping.” Unfortunately, the Time Variance Authority’s repairs guy (Ke Huy Quan) can’t fix it, although he does make for a delightful addition to the cast.…

(7) POOL PARTY FOR MICHIGAN FALSE ELECTORS. Michigan’s Grand New Party PAC announced a fundraising pool party in Oakland County this week for the false electors facing felony charges. There is no mention of Michele Lundgren by name in the publicity.

(8) ABOUT TODAY’S TITLE. [Item by Daniel Dern.] Heinlein’s Kip Russell wanted interoperable oxygen tank fittings, among other things. Larry Niven’s Belters [[IIRC, notes DPD]]] had designs painted on theirs. What would you add to yours?

(9) TROUBLE IN RIVER CITY. McSweeney’s Internet Tendency warns about “Dangerous Children’s Picture Books That Could Be Lurking in Your Home”. Like this one —

The Giving Tree
A story of handouts. Flat-out socialism. Not to mention the climate-thumper extremism of giving the tree feelings. “Oh no, a tree is sad. It turns into a pathetic little stump. Whatever will we do?” Ridiculous.

(10) PAUL REUBENS (1952-2023). Paul Reubens, the actor and comedian who gained fame in character as Pee-wee Herman, died July 30 of cancer.

An Instagram released after his death quotes him: “Please accept my apology for not going public with what I’ve been facing the last six years. I have always felt a huge amount of love and respect from my friends, fans and supporters. I have loved you all so much and enjoyed making art for you.”

The Los Angeles Times’ obituary describes his iconic character:

…Accompanied by a talking chair and pterodactyl named Pterri, Reubens established his place in the pop-culture zeitgeist with a maniacal laugh, form-fitting gray suit and red bow tie while embodying the man-child who ran amok on Saturday mornings during the TV run of “Pee-wee’s Playhouse.” The CBS series aired from 1986 to 1990 and then yielded the big-screen adaptations “Pee-wee’s Big Adventure,” directed by Tim Burton, and “Big Top Pee-wee” in the 1980s. Stage shows followed in more recent years., as did Netflix’s 2016 follow-up “Pee-wee’s Big Holiday,” produced by Judd Apatow….

However, Reuben’s’ career was derailed by criminal charges, first in 1991 — he ended up pleading no contest to a misdemeanor charge of indecent exposure — then in 2004, when he pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor obscenity charge in a plea bargain with prosecutors who agreed to drop charges concerning child pornography.

(11) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

  • Born July 31, 1932 Ted Cassidy. He’s best known for the role of Lurch on The Addams Family in the mid-1960s. If you’ve got a good ear, you’ll recall that he narrated The Incredible Hulk series. And he played the part of the android Ruk in the episode “What Are Little Girls Made Of?” on Trek and provided the voices of the more strident version of Balok in the “The Corbomite Maneuver” episode and the Gorn in the “Arena” episode. In The Man from U.N.C.L.E. “The Napoleon’s Tomb Affair” episode (SPOILERS), he was Edgar, who kidnapped, tortured, and repeatedly attempted to kill Napoleon and Illya. And failed magnificently. I watched a few months back. (Died 1979.)
  • Born July 31, 1950 Steve Miller, 73. He is married to Sharon Lee, and they are the creators of the vast and throughly entertaining Liaden universe. (And where would one would start? And go from there?  Do tell.) I was surprised though they’ve won both a Golden Duck and Skylark that they have never been nominated for a Hugo. 
  • Born July 31, 1955 Daniel M. Kimmel, 68. His essays on classic genre films were being published in The Internet Review of Science Fiction from 2005–2010 and are now in the Space and Time magazine. He is the 2018 recipient of the Skylark Award given by the New England Science Fiction Association. He was a finalist for the Compton Crook Award for Shh! It’s a Secret. And he was nominated for a Hugo for Best Related Work at Chicon 7 for Jar Jar Binks Must Die… and Other Observations About Science Fiction Movies.
  • Born July 31, 1956 Michael Biehn, 67. Best known in genre circles as Sgt. Kyle Reese in The Terminator and Terminator 2: Judgment Day, Cpl. Dwayne Hicks in Aliens and Lt. Coffey in The Abyss. He was also The Sandman in a single episode of Logan’s Run. Though not even genre adjacent, he was Johnny Ringo in the magnificent Tombstone film. Likewise he was in The Magnificent Seven series as Chris Larabee.
  • Born July 31, 1959 Kim Newman, 64. Though best known for his Anno Dracula series, I’d like to single him out for his early work, Nightmare Movies: A critical history of the horror film, 1968–88, a very serious history of horror films. It was followed up with the equally great Wild West Movies: Or How the West Was Found, Won, Lost, Lied About, Filmed and Forgotten.
  • Born July 31, 1962 Wesley Snipes, 61. The first actor to be Blade in the Blade film franchise where I thought he made the perfect Blade. (There’s a new Blade actor though their name escapes me right now.) I also like him as Simon Phoenix in Demolition Man. And he was Aman in Gallowwalkers, a Western horror film that is really, really bad. How bad? It gets an eleven percent rating by audience reviewers at Rotten Tomatoes.
  • Born July 31, 1976 John Joseph Adams, 49. Anthologist of whom I’m very fond. He did The Improbable Adventures of Sherlock Holmes and Dead Man’s Hand: An Anthology of the Weird West. He was the Assistant Editor at The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction for nearly a decade, and he’s been editing both Lightspeed Magazine since the early part of the previous decade. He is the series editor of The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy. Nominated for the Hugo many times, he won for the Lightspeed prozine at Loncon 3 (2014) with Rich Horton and Stefan Rudnicki, and at Sasquan (2015) with Horton, Rudnicki, Wendy N. Wagner and Christie Yant. 

(12) HORROR WRITING GENERATIONS. Brian Keene hosts a panel sponsored by the Horror Writers Association, “Back in the Day (part 1)”.

Back In The Day (Part 1) hosted by Brian Keene, he speaks with panelists about what has changed in publishing and horror fiction over the years… and what hasn’t

He’s joined by David J. Schow, John Skipp, Chet Williamson, and Douglas E. Winter. 

(13) OPPOSITE OF OPPENHEIMER. “Where are the ‘violet hues’ and ‘bath of heat’? Australian scientists review what Oppenheimer gets wrong” in the Guardian.  

Australian nuclear experts have reviewed Oppenheimer and say it is epic, intense and compelling – but not always accurate.

Its portrayal of the first atomic bomb detonation, for example, lacked the “violet hues” and heat wave of the real thing.

“Some characters even made comments like ‘quantum mechanics is hard’, which I disagree with – it’s only hard if someone hasn’t explained it properly,” says Dr Kirrily Rule, an instrument scientist who works with the thermal triple-axis spectrometer Taipan at the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation (Ansto).

Rule gives Christopher Nolan’s movie about the Manhattan project four stars, saying it’s exciting and suspenseful but the science is “brushed over”.

“As a physicist watching the movie, I think they could have been much clearer on the science involved … I believe Nolan used such high-level jargon as a confusing element to the film intentionally….

In an article where people complain about making science look too hard, it’s comical to see this as the last line:

This article was amended on 28 July 2023. An earlier version incorrectly stated that the sound wave boom resulting from the 1945 Trinity detonation travelled at the speed of light.

(14) REVISED OPINION. Robert J. Sawyer, author of The Oppenheimer Alternative, immediately went to see the movie and gave it an overall positive review.

We saw Christopher Nolan’s movie Oppenheimer last night as it was meant to be seen: in 70 mm IMAX.

It’s a very good film; I recommend it. That said, is it the best cinematic treatment of the subject? No, that’s still the 1989 movie Day One.

And is Cillian Murphy going to win the Academy Award for Best Actor? No, I don’t think so; his is an awfully one-note version of Oppie, who was much more complex (and much more charming) than Murphy’s portrayal would indicate….

However, a week later he told his newsletter subscribers that his enthusiasm has cooled:

…For all of Christopher Nolan’s posturing that his Oppenheimer is an important film, and how, in his own words, it “poses the most unsettling questions,” he completely cops out, showing us only the Trinity test explosion in New Mexico and not the dropping of the bombs on the living, breathing cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Yes, Nolan portrays the famous moment in which Oppenheimer says he fears he has “blood on his hands” to Harry S. Truman in the Oval Office, but, in his film, we never get any real sense of Oppenheimer’s regret or of the horrors of nuclear war. Sadly, despite the IMAX format, most scenes in Oppenheimer aren’t very memorable either visually or emotionally.

(15) EARLY DISNEYLAND. Shorpy recently posted “Moonliner: 1960”. Image at the link.

Circa 1960, the TWA “Moonliner” rocket at Disneyland’s Tomorrowland in Anaheim, California. (With Richfield Oil’s “Autopia” in the background.) At 76 feet, the Moonliner was the tallest attraction in the park. This medium format transparency is part of a recent donation to Shorpy from the family of California photographer Mary Baum (1925-2012). View full size.

I remember that rocket. And the ride — which was a circle of theater seats around a circular screen. The “launch” was b&w film taken by a camera on a V-2.

(16) SECOND SIGHT. “Queen legend Brian May helped NASA ace its asteroid-sampling mission” and Space.com tells how.

Queen guitarist Brian May and Dante Lauretta, the chief scientist of NASA’s asteroid-sampling OSIRIS-REx mission, have collaborated on a book about the asteroid Bennu — and it’s not a PR stunt.

OSIRIS-REx snagged a sample of Bennu in October 2020 and is currently speeding toward Earth with the precious space-rock material, which is scheduled to touch down here on Sept. 24.

Unbeknownst to the world, May, voted the greatest guitarist of all time by readers of Total Guitar magazine earlier this year, had actually been hard at work for years leading up to the sampling attempt, helping to process images captured by NASA’s flagship space rock explorer to find a suitable landing spot on the treacherous surface of asteroid Bennu. The work proved harder than Lauretta and May had expected, as the 1,722-feet-wide (525 meters) Bennu turned scientists’ understanding of asteroids upside down…. 

OSIRIS-REx wasn’t fitted with a stereo camera. May, however, knew a way around this limitation, as he had previously produced 3D images of Comet 67P, the target of the Rosetta mission, and of Pluto as seen by New Horizons, by carefully selecting and aligning images taken by a single camera from different angles. 

The OSIRIS-REx cooperation, however, put the musician’s commitment to science through a test. As data from OSIRIS-REx started pouring in, the scientists realized that Bennu’s surface was not at all what they had expected and designed their mission for. Instead of mostly smooth, beach-like plains of sand occasionally strewn with smatterings of bigger rocks, they found a body covered in boulders that sometimes rose against the asteroid’s barely existent gravity in formations tens of feet tall. Understanding what the researchers were truly facing from the two-dimensional snapshots captured by OSIRIS-REx’s cameras was nigh impossible. And so May quickly got to prove his scientific worth.

(17) STUCK TO THE FUTURE. “This Fusion Reactor Is Held Together With Tape” at IEEE Spectrum.

…What sets CFS’s technology apart is its use of high-temperature superconducting tape, which is layered and stacked to create extremely strong electromagnets that will shape and confine the unruly plasma and keep the bulk of the charged particles away from the tokamak’s walls. The company believes that this novel approach will allow it to build a high-performance tokamak that is much smaller and less expensive than would be possible with previous approaches….

Daniel Dern asks, “Yeah, but would it keep the Ringworld from breaking?”

[Thanks to Chris Barkley, Michael Toman, Daniel Dern, Kevin Black, Dann, Michael Damian Thomas, Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, 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.]

Uncanny Magazine Is Kickstarting Year Ten

Lynne M. Thomas and Michael Damian Thomas have launched a Kickstarter for Year Ten of their five-time Hugo Award-winning professional online Science Fiction and Fantasy magazine: Uncanny Magazine.

Each issue contains new speculative fiction, podcasts, poetry, essays, art, and interviews. Uncanny Magazine is raising funds via Kickstarter to cover some of its operational and production costs for its tenth year, with an initial goal of $30,000, plus added stretch goals of three original covers, flash fiction, and a novella. The Kickstarter will run through August 4, 2023. In the first few hours backers have already donated over $13,000. “Uncanny Magazine Year 10: A Decade of Delightful Defiance”.

Uncanny features passionate SF/F fiction and poetry, gorgeous prose, and provocative nonfiction, with a deep investment in our diverse SF/F culture. We publish intricate, experimental stories and poems with verve and vision, from writers from every conceivable background. With the hard work of the best staff and contributors in the universe, Uncanny Magazine has delivered everything as promised (or is in the middle of delivery) with our Years One through Nine Kickstarters. This year, four stories have been recognized as Nebula Award finalists (with two winning), and five stories, the editors-in-chief, and magazine have been recognized as Locus Award finalists (with two stories winning). We are deeply honored and grateful,” Lynne says.

“We couldn’t have done all of this without the amazing support of our Kickstarter community, who we call the Space Unicorn Ranger Corps after our logo mascot. This is their magazine; their support makes it possible for us to make all of this amazing content available for free on our website. We still feel Uncanny‘s mission is important, especially in these times. And hopefully, we will meet the stretch goals and be able to give everyone a spectacular tenth year of Uncanny,” Michael adds.

For its special tenth year, Uncanny has solicited original short fiction from Hugo, Nebula, Locus, and World Fantasy Award-winning and nominated authors and bestselling authors including: Lauren Beukes, John Chu, C.L. Clark, Tananarive Due, Greg van Eekhout, Jeffrey Ford, Arkady Martine, Annalee Newitz, Sarah Pinsker, Eugenia Triantafyllou, Valerie Valdes, and Nghi Vo. (There will also be numerous slots for unsolicited submissions.) Uncanny has also solicited original essays by Sophie Aldred, Amy Berg, Lee Mandelo, Brandon O’Brien, John Scalzi, Cecilia Tan, and G. Willow Wilson, and solicited poetry by Roshani Chokshi, C. S. E. Cooney, Tiffany Morris, Terese Mason Pierre, Ali Trotta, and Fran Wilde.

Uncanny Magazine issues are published as eBooks (MOBI, PDF, EPUB) bimonthly on the first Tuesday of that month through all of the major online eBook stores. Each issue contains 5-6 new short stories, 4 poems, 4 nonfiction essays, and 2 interviews, at minimum.

Material from half an issue is posted for free on Uncanny’s website (built by Clockpunk Studios) once per month, appearing on the second Tuesday of every month (uncannymagazine.com). Uncanny also produces a monthly podcast with a story, poem, and original interview. Subscribers and backers will receive the entire double issue a month before online readers.

For more information, interview requests, or guest blog invitations, please contact Lynne and Michael Thomas at [email protected].

[Based on a press release.]

Pixel Scroll 10/10/22 I Demand Satisfaction. Pixels At Dawn

Illo by Joe Pearson

(1) ASKING ABOUT BRAIN-COMPUTER INTERFACES IN SF. Prof. Brendan Allison has a question, and File 770 has volunteered to try and crowdsource the answer:

I am an academic researcher in the field of brain-computer interfaces (BCIs). I’m writing a book chapter about BCIs in science fiction, called BCI-fi. Among other academic pursuits, I’m looking for the first reference to an artificial brain interface. It must involve a device. I’m just writing you as a way to research this question.   

The earliest reference so far was the first X-Men comic in 1963. Professor X can “interface” with psychic power – which doesn’t count – but also uses a brain interface to bolster that ability. Frankenstein does use a device to stimulate the brain, but that’s arguably not an interface.

Prof. Allison also sent links to recordings of two recent workshops about BCI-fi where one of the participants was Andy Weir. (“BCI Thursdays Next Generations: BCI-fi Part 1” and “BCI Thursdays Next Generations: BCI-fi Part 2”.)

In this two-part event, we will have prominent speakers within the BCI-fi community to discuss their contributions to BCI-fi, their favorite examples of BCI-fi including movies, books, and podcasts, and next steps to develop, foster, or publicize “good” BCI-fi. We will be joined by Dr. Brendan Allison (UCSD), Andy Weir (author of The Martian), Dr. Eric Leuthardt (Washington University in St. Louis), Stephen Hou (host of Neurratives podcast), Dr. Richard Ramchurn (University of Nottingham), Dr. Jane Huggins (University of Michigan) and Dr. Robert Hampson (Wake Forest University).

(2) IS THERE AN IDEAL LENGTH? “Novels versus novellas in Speculative Fiction” are debated at A Deep Look by Dave Hook.

Many argue that the perfect length for speculative fiction is the novella, or short novel. Some believe that this is long enough to tell a successful story while not longer than needed. It is said that this length allows for character development and change, and perhaps multiple plot lines, while short enough to be taut and not meander or bog down.

I don’t know if it’s true that the novella is the perfect length for speculative fiction, but it is certainly true that many great works of speculative fiction are novella length, whether works such as “The Times Machine” by H. G. Wells right up to modern fiction such as “A Spindle Splintered” by Alix E. Harrow….

(3) SFWA SF STORYBUNDLE SUBMISSION CALL. The Independent Authors Committee of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association (SFWA) is open for submissions for their science fiction StoryBundle to be released next spring. Submissions will be accepted through October 31, 2022, at 11:59pm Eastern Time. The theme for the call is Space is Big. Really Big. They are looking for space opera and “other books that span large swaths of space.” Full guidelines for this submission call can be found here.

StoryBundles are curated collections of books offered at a discounted price. Proceeds go to the participating authors and StoryBundle, and a small cut is donated to SFWA. 

This is a great chance for independent and small press authors to gain more exposure and sell more books! Submissions of indie and traditionally published novels will be accepted, though publishers must give permission in writing. You do not need to be a SFWA member to apply! 

We welcome full-length science fiction novels of over 40,000 words. We ask that authors submit only one novel, and do not submit a novel that has appeared in any previous StoryBundle (SFWA or otherwise.) Please only submit novels that will be for sale by March 1, 2023. You must have full rights to enter your novel in the StoryBundle, and the novel must not be in Amazon’s KDP Select at the time that the StoryBundle is offered.  Participants will be notified by December 1, 2022, so that any books enrolled in KDP will have time to be brought out of exclusivity before the bundle is released on or about March 1, 2023.

Questions may be directed to [email protected]

(4) FUNDRAISING FOR THE THOMASES. The Gofundme for “Lynne and Michael Thomas”, who are facing the loss of their 19-year-old daughter Caitlin to medical complications from Aicardi Syndrome, had raised $58,486 when checked earlier today.  Jim C. Hines, who set up the appeal, explained what it’s for:

…I’ve spoken a bit with Michael. It sounds like the medical costs of Caitlin’s treatment are covered. End-of-life costs are another matter.

The goal of this fundraiser is to cover those end-of-life expenses, and to hopefully provide a financial cushion to allow the Thomases to spend their remaining time with Caitlin – and when the time comes, to grieve – without also having to worry about money. All donations will go directly to Michael and Lynne (with the exception of GoFundMe’s processing fee)….

(5) EKPEKI CROWDFUNDING. The Gofundme to “Send Oghenechovwe Ekpeki World Fantasy Con” has brought in $2,000 of its $4,000 goal as of this afternoon.  Jason Sanford outlined why it’s needed:

…A successful previous fundraiser brought Ekpeki to this year’s Worldcon, where he was a finalist for two Hugo Awards. However, his gruesome battle with the US embassy in Nigeria for a visa and exorbitant fees and repeated payments resulting from that (including last-minute changes to his international flights) resulted in costs far exceeding what that fundraiser brought in. So this new fundraiser would also mop up those expenses as well….

(6) NEVERTHELESS, A BRADBURY AND ASIMOV FAN. “Temple Grandin Is a Visual Thinker Who Hates Graphic Novels” according to a headline in the New York Times. Here’s an excerpt from their interview with Grandin.  

What kind of a reader were you as a child? Which childhood books and authors stick with you?

I was not able to read until I was age 8. Mother tutored me with phonics, and I quickly went from no reading to reading above my age level. My favorite books when I was in fourth grade were “Black Beauty,” “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz” and a children’s book about famous inventors. I really related to Black Beauty’s pain when he was forced to pull a heavy carriage with his head held up by a bearing rein. The inventor book appealed to me because I loved to tinker with my kites to make them fly better.

What genres do you especially enjoy reading and which do you avoid?

I avoid romance novels. The books I really enjoy are either about animals or science fiction. I loved “Merle’s Door,” by Ted Kerasote. Many dogs today live really restricted lives and they have no normal dog social life. Another favorite is “The Soul of the Octopus,” by Sy Montgomery. It really made me think about consciousness. When I received a review copy of “A Dog’s Purpose,” by W. Bruce Cameron, I could not put it down. In the science fiction genre, I am a fan of Ray Bradbury and Isaac Asimov.

(7) PICK SIX. How long has this variation been around? A spinoff from Nerds of a Feather’s “Six Books” interview series is “6 Games With Aidan Moher”.

1. What game are you currently playing?

Appropriately, I’m splitting my time between a couple of JRPGs—one current, one retro.

On the big screen downstairs I’m about 60 hours into Xenoblade Chronicles 3 and still mildly obsessed. I really love a lot of creator Tetsuya Takahashi’s older games—especially Xenogears, which I just finished replaying—but bounced hard off Xenoblade Chronicles 2, so I was a little hesitant when they announced the third game. It’s exceeded all of my expectations, though, and is probably my favourite game in the series now—an improvement on the second game in pretty much every way. Vast world, memorable characters, and Takahashi’s typical zany JRPG plot is a drool-worth combination.

Upstairs in my CRT corner, I’m playing Paper Mario for the Nintendo 64 for the first time. I’ve enjoyed many other games in the series—including Sticker Star, which has a bad reputation—but the original slipped past me for a variety of reasons. It’s wild to go back to the very beginning and see all of the series’s trademarks right there, fully formed, polished, and perfectly enjoyable 20 years later. It’s genuinely funny, the combat is simple but engaging thanks to its timing-based mechanics, and it’s got some of the best graphics on the system.

(8) WAS THE ZODIAC KILLER A FAN? [Item by Susan de Guardiola.] There’s a new theory that the Zodiac killer was a fan, Paul Doerr.

The news reports on this are the first time I’ve ever seen fanzines, filk, D&D, SCA, Renfaires, etc. paired with a Zodiac killer theory.

The evidence is circumstantial, but there’s an awful lot of it.

Los Angeles Magazine devoted an article to the question “Has The Zodiac Killer Mystery Been Solved (Again)”, discussing author Jarrett Kobek’s books Motor Spiritabout the misbegotten hunt for Zodiac, and How to Find Zodiacabout Paul Doerr. 

… As he studied Zodiac’s cryptic letters, Kobek brought a writerly attention to bear. He zeroed in on the killer’s habit of quoting forgotten bits of cultural ephemera (the well-known call-outs to The Mikado and to the 1924 short story “The Most Dangerous Game,” as well as a telling reference to an obscure 1950s comic book, identified by an anonymous online researcher, Tahoe27, several years back). Running other apparent quotations through Google Books and the Internet Archive, Kobek formed a picture of the killer as a fan of pulp novels, comics, and other nerdy touchstones. Kobek knew a bit about the early years of the sci-fi and fantasy fandoms, how these nascent communities had begun taking shape around an array of obscure self-published zines. On a hunch, he did a quick web search of “fanzines” and “Vallejo.”…

Paul Haynes has published a long Twitter thread about Kobek’s evidence, now collected in three parts at Threadreader: Part I; Part II; Part III.

I don’t know if anyone who knew Paul Doerr is still around.

(9) THE CORFLU AUCTION IS NOW LIVE! The catalog for the Corflu Pangloss auction is now online at Corflu.org and eFanzines.com. Anyone can bid on those 80 lots, including non-members – the catalog has instruction on how to bid. See the Pangloss Fanzine Auction Catalog and Bid Sheet at the links.

Corflu has a long tradition of raising funds to support the convention by selling and auctioning off vintage science fiction fanzines before, during and sometimes after the convention. As Corflu is a convention devoted to fanzines and the fans who create them, it has always been a natural place to buy, sell or trade zines, and the live auction has often raised very impressive sums.

For the 39th issue of the convention, taking place October 21st to 23rd, 2022 in Vancouver, British Columbia, we have taken a new approach…  By creating this catalog of auction items and publishing it some weeks in advance of the convention, we hope to allow fans not attending Corflu Pangloss to participate. Anyone interested in buying is invited to send their bids by email to [email protected] by midnight, Pacific daylight time on October 22nd, 2022.

(10) MEMORY LANE.  

1992 [By Cat Eldridge.] “Relics” was the one hundred and thirtieth episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation. I found it to be one of the more fascinating episodes that series did and I’ll tell why in a minute, but first let’s talk about the usual details. 

Ronald Dowl Moore was the writer of this episode and he was best known fleshing out the Klingons. He also wrote the series finale here, “All Good Things…” which won the Hugo Award at Intersection.  And yes, he’s done a lot more Great Things than that but I have an understanding with OGH that I’ll try to keep things reasonably brief.

So why do I like it? Look there’s a Dyson Sphere being depicted as far as I know for the very first time on a video series! Y’all know what that is so you know why I’m so excited by this.

And then there’s the matter of the idea of the Enterprise in responding to a distress signal having the singular honor of rescuing Capt. Montgomery Scott! 

So how do the two connect? 

Well, the Enterprise, responding to a distress call discovers a Dyson sphere where they the distress call to the USS Jenolan, a Federation transport ship that has been missing for seventy-five years, which they find crashed on the sphere’s outer shell. And in the transporter buffer field, jury rigged to keep working, are two signals, two patterns, one degraded to be saved, the other that of Doohan. 

He bonds with Geordie which is fortunate as together they need to figure out how to get the Enterprise out of that damn Sphere. Afterwards he’s feeling like a relic but Picard cheers him up. As the Enterprise returns to its mission, the crew of the ship give Scott a shuttlecraft “on extended loan” to do whatever he wanted. 

I thought the writers did a nice job of making him a believable character, much more to be honest than the original series often did. And critics agreed as they’ve consistently voted this to be one of the best episodes of the series.

(11) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

Born October 10, 1927 Dana Elcar. Most of you will remember him as Peter Thornton on MacGyver, but he has a long genre history including Russ in Condorman which was inspired by Robert Sheckley’s The Game of X. He also played Sheriff George Paterson in Dark Shadows, and showed up in 2010 as Dimitri Moisevitch. (Died 2005.)

Born October 10, 1924 Edward Wood Jr. Though known for Plan 9 from Outer Space, he did a lot of other bad genre films including Night of the Monster and Bride of The Ghouls. (Died 1978.)

Born October 10, 1929 Robin HardyWicker Man is the film he’s known for though he followed that up with The Wicker Tree, an adaptation of his Cowboys for Christ novel. Anyone seen it? (Died 2016.)

Born October 10, 1931 Victor Pemberton. Writer of the script for the “Fury from the Deep”, a Second Doctor story in which he created the Doctor’s sonic screwdriver. He had appeared as an actor in the series, in a non-speaking role as a scientist in “The Moonbase” story. In 1976, he wrote the BBC audio drama Doctor Who and the Pescatons which I remember hearing. Quite good it was. (Died 2017.)

Born October 10, 1931 Jack Jardine. A long-time L.A. fan who was present at many West Coast cons and who shared the dais on panels with some of the major names in SF. Under the pen name Larry Maddock he wrote science fiction and mystery stories in the Fifties and Sixties. File 770 has more here. (Died 2009.)

Born October 10, 1941 Peter Coyote, 81. He actually did two genre films in 1982 with the first being Timerider: The Adventure of Lyle Swann in which he appeared as Porter Reese and the second being E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial which he’s Keys, the Agent hunting E.T. down. Sphere in which he’s Captain Harold C. Barnes is his next SF outing followed by The 4400 and FlashForward series being his next major genre involvements.

Born October 10, 1947 Laura Brodian Freas Beraha, 75. While married to Kelly Freas, she wrote Frank Kelly Freas: As He Sees It with him along with quite a few essays such as “On the Painting of Beautiful Women or Ayesha, She Who Must Be Obeyed” and “Some of My Best Critics are Friends – or Vice Versa“. She’s credited solely for the cover art for the 1993 Easton Press interior art for The Left Hand of Darkness according to ISFDB. 

Born October 10, 1966 Bai Ling, 56. She’s Miss West in Wild West West and the Mysterious Woman in Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, she has a major role as Guanyin in The Monkey King which aired on Syfy.

(12) COMICS SECTION.

  • Annie has turned the “little orphan” into a time traveler!
  • Off the Mark shows “parts is parts” isn’t true if you’re Frankenstein.

(13) DRESSED FOR EXCESS. SYFY Wire shares a load of photos in the NYCC 2022 – Final Day Cosplay Gallery.

New York Comic Con saved some of its coolest news for the weekend this year, as studios dropped loads of fun facts and features surrounding The Winchesters, Marvel’s Moon KnightThe Walking Dead, and Back to the Future — just to name a few.

But the stage wasn’t the only place catching fans’ attention as the four-day event rolled on at the Javitz Convention Center: Down on the ground, the guests themselves kept the cosplay fit tight, lining the halls with creatively killer takes on Mysterio, Red Skull, Buzz Lightyear, Predator, and tons more….

(14) CRILLY Q&A. Stone Soup questions the writer about a new novel: “Exclusive Interview with Brandon Crilly: Catalyst”.

Catalyst features an incredible cast of characters with complicated, overlapping histories. One of these characters is a stage magician who performs illusory tricks in a world where “real” magic is very present. What made you decide to bring these two contrasting approaches to magic central to this character’s identity?

Thank you for that compliment! Catalyst actually went through several serious revision drafts, and originally Mavrin (my street magician) was much more skeptical and almost willfully dismissive of “real” magic. When I added magic-bestowing squid gods (the Aspects) literally in orbit around Aelda, that level of skepticism didn’t make as much sense – so instead, it became obstinance. Mavrin has a lot of issues with the Aspects and their worshippers, so becoming an illusionist is part of how he distances himself from both. “I can make my own magic, I don’t need you!” is probably percolating in his subconscious somewhere (even though he’s fifty and not, like fifteen). But thankfully, he can only stay obstinate and grumpy for so long….

(15) A MISSION ACCOMPLISHED. Nerds of a Feather’s Arturo Serrano, in “Review: Wolf at the Door by Joel McKay”, says the book does one thing well.

There’s danger in hosting a big social gathering. People you haven’t seen in years can still make your throat tighten. Various combinations of acquaintances can be in good terms with you but be mortal enemies to each other. You dread the thought of who may knock at the door next. Your pulse quickens and your survival instinct rings alarms urging you to flee. Once the tension reaches critical mass, too much honesty will rip someone’s heart. The exchange of bitter words becomes a series of rounds of mutual eviscerations. Arguments get heated until someone loses their head. A friend’s careless remark under too much alcohol may lead to you never seeing them again. At any moment, the air can get so heavy that some of those present will suddenly depart from your life.

In Wolf at the Door, by Canadian author Joel McKay, these emotions that tear people to pieces are materialized into tooth and claw….

(16) SOLAR POWER. “‘Eye of Sauron’: The Dazzling Solar Tower in the Israeli Desert” – the New York Times sees both sides.

…This is the great solar tower of Ashalim, one of the tallest structures in Israel and, until recently, the tallest solar power plant in the world.

“It’s like a sun,” said Eli Baliti, a shopkeeper in the nearest village. “A second sun.”

To backers, the tower is an impressive feat of engineering, testament to Israeli solar innovation. To critics, it is an expensive folly, dependent on technology that had become outmoded by the time it was operational.

…The tower is more than 800 feet high, one of the tallest structures in Israel. It’s visible even from space.

To some, it’s reminiscent of something out of J.R.R. Tolkien’s “The Lord of the Rings.”

“It’s the eye of Sauron,” said Uriya Suued, an engineer who lived in Ashalim until September.

Other times, the tower seems more like a gawky, gentle giant, awkwardly standing on the edge of a group photo. You can even forget it’s there — until you spot it hovering, almost comically, behind a garden wall or incongruously, even apologetically, over the swimmers in the village’s outdoor pool.

“A lighthouse without the sea,” said Ben Malka, who runs the pool….

(17) DEMONIC IMPRESSION. Netflix dropped a trailer for Wendell & Wild, the new film written by Henry Selick and Jordan Peele and directed by Henry Selick.

(18) GIBSON ADAPTATION. This trailer for The Peripheral Season 1 on Prime Video was unveiled at New York Comic Con. “On October 21, the future holds the key to saving the past.”

(19) VIDEO OF THE DAY. [Item by Martin Morse Wooster.] In “Pitch Meeting: Don’t Worry Darling,” Ryan George, in a spoiler-packed episode, explains that Don’t Worry Darling “feels like a “go to the theatre film” and not something you stay home and stream. But it’s “a string of random occurrences for about 90 minutes with little or no information revealed.”  And then in the third act we learn the film is “like The Matrix with 10,000 times less kung fu.”

[Thanks to Michael Toman, Cat Eldridge, Mike Kennedy, SFWA, Jerry Kaufman, Susan de Guardiola, Martin Morse Wooster, JJ, John King Tarpinian, Andrew Porter, and Chris Barkley for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Jayn.]

Gofundme for the Thomas Family

After spending over a month in the hospital, doctors have confirmed there’s nothing more they can do for Caitlin, 19-year-old daughter of Lynne and Michael Thomas. Jim C. Hines has started a Gofundme to help the Thomases: “Lynne and Michael Thomas”. Hines wrote in his appeal:

The Thomas family is facing one of the hardest things imaginable: the loss of 19-year-old Caitlin to medical complications from Aicardi Syndrome.

Caitlin has been hospitalized for more than a month. One or both of her parents, Michael and Lynne, have been with her the entire time. But medical tests have now confirmed there was nothing the doctors could do to resolve Caitlin’s recent complications. On October 7, Michael announced that they are in the end phase of Caitlin’s life.

Lynne and Michael are devastated, as are all of us who know them and Caitlin.

I’ve spoken a bit with Michael. It sounds like the medical costs of Caitlin’s treatment are covered. End-of-life costs are another matter.

The goal of this fundraiser is to cover those end-of-life expenses, and to hopefully provide a financial cushion to allow the Thomases to spend their remaining time with Caitlin – and when the time comes, to grieve – without also having to worry about money. All donations will go directly to Michael and Lynne (with the exception of GoFundMe’s processing fee).

Lynne, Michael, and Caitlin are well known and loved in science fiction and fantasy circles. Lynne and Michael are co-editors of the award-winning Uncanny Magazine. Caitlin is a familiar presence at SF/F conventions. Their family has touched countless lives.

Thank you for your support.

Donate here.

Pixel Scroll 3/8/22 I Think There Is A World Market For About Five Pixel Scrolls

(1) DONATE FOR A CHANCE AT A TIARA. Renowned artist Sara Felix says, “I am entering people to win this week’s Tiara Tuesday if they donate to a charity.” The full announcement from her Facebook page is below. Sara explains that while her Facebook shows the event has closed, “if someone donates and lets me know I will enter them in the giveaway.” Email: [email protected]. Here is the text:

Happy tiara Tuesday y’all!

A friend asked me to make a blue and yellow tiara as support for the Ukrainian people. Seeing all the gorgeous flower crowns that are a cultural tradition I thought marrying the tiara, the blue and yellow, and the flowers would be a fitting tribute.

I would like to auction the tiara and donate the money to Happy Kids Poland who supports orphaned children and kids with disabilities, I will pick a name from the donations. (Thanks Mariya for the suggestions!) Any amount is fine!

From their donation page:

“Together, we collect money for children from orphanages who have come and will be coming to Poland. The Foundation will also try to evacuate children who spent their last nights in the basement and Kiev. The evacuation of orphans from orphanages, foster families and other forms of foster care from Ukraine to Poland…To this day, the need for evacuation and safe admission of children has been declared to us by the guardians of 900 Ukrainian orphans from Lviv, Odessa, Chrust, Kherson and other cities. The numbers keep growing.”

If you don’t want to go through Facebook let me know, their website also takes paypal as well. (https://www.happykids.org.pl/aid-for-children-from…/...)  (Link on the main page: https://www.happykids.org.pl)

(2) CAROL PINCHEFSKY GETS (IN) WIRED. [Item by Daniel Dern.] Carol Pinchefsky isn’t just getting coverage for her new book, Turn Your Fandom Into Cash – A Geeky Guide to Turn Your Passion Into a Business (or at least a Side Hustle) here at File 770 (“Interview with Carol Pinchefsky”).

She’s also getting traction in WIRED, with a full-episode one-hour interview on WIRED’s weekly podcast Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy, episode #504, “Carol Pinchefsky Interview”, and a WIRED.com article, “It’s Not Easy Running a Geeky Business”, summarizing and linking to the podcast.

Carol notes: “I know David Barr Kirtley and have been on his show three other times. But this was the first time I’ve had an episode dedicated to myself.”

Could a nomination for Best Related Work Hugo be, if not next, soon?

(3) FREE EDITORS PANEL PART OF SLF MEMBERSHIP DRIVE. As part of the Speculative Literature Foundation’s Genesis Membership Drive they are hosting free virtual panels every week for the month of March.

This Saturday’s panel will be What do Editors Want? — March 12, 2:00–3:00 p.m. Central. RSVP here.

A panel of short fiction editors talk about what they’re looking for in stories right now — and what to avoid! What common mistakes do writers make? What makes a story stand out from the slushpile?

Panelists: Award-winning editors Lynne Marie Thomas, editor-in-chief of Uncanny Magazine, and Neil Clarke, editor-in-chief of Clarkesworld Magazine. Moderated by Mary Anne Mohanraj, SLF Director.

(4) SCANNING THE BALLOT. They were just announced six hours ago but Cora Buhlert already has her analysis of the Nebula finalists up. Quick work! “Some Comments on the 2021 Nebula Finalists”. A brief quote —

…A Desolation Called Peace by Arkady Martine is a sequel to the 2020 Hugo winner A Memory Called Empire and probably the most obvious finalist in this category. It’s also a great book.

Finally, Plague Birds by Jason Sanford is another very pleasant surprise on this ballot, since it got less attention than the other novels, probably due to being published by a small press, Apex Books. I’m also really happy for Jason, who’s one of the hardest working people in SFF. Plague Birds is a great novel as well, which hits a lot of my personal buttons….

(5) FLA IN THE OINTMENT. On the Orlando in 2023 NASFiC Bid Facebook page, Adam Beaton works to turn the current criticism of Chengdu into a political asset.

So, we’ve been seeing the recent chatter about letters and petitions about Chengdu WorldCon 2023, and here are our thoughts:

There isn’t an actual mechanism to take away the Worldcon based on the actions of what that committee’s government chooses to do or even not do. We can say, though, that the power of boycotting has always been a way for many diverse voices to be seen and heard, from the Cogadh na Talún in Ireland to the Swadeshi Movement in India. Such actions can and should always be considered by any of the members of WSFS.

The NASFiC can never be the Worldcon, and no one can promise you that. What we can promise you, however, is our deep commitment to running for you the best alternative to the Worldcon we can–a convention that celebrates the diversity and inclusivity that empowers us all as fans and commits our spirit to “keep moving forward,” as Walt Disney once said.

It’s also vital for us to recognize that some in the community have strong feelings about our own government here in Florida and perhaps even the American South at large. It would be hypocritical to not point that out in a statement like this, and we see and hear all of your opinions and feelings regarding this topic.

The WSFS community is a culture of creativity. We’ve never been afraid to express ourselves through any medium, and in the end, it’s the best advice we can give you all regarding this topic.

Be like Walt. Keep moving forward.

(6) ON GOTHAMER WINGS. Abigail Nussbaum assesses “The Batman” at Asking the Wrong Questions.

…The guiding principle was clearly “The Dark Knight, but more so”. The film is structured more as a crime story than a superhero story, with a strong presence for the Gotham police department, an emphasis on organized crime and institutional corruption, and a deranged villain—Paul Dano as the Riddler—who is obsessed with exposing the seedy underbelly of the supposedly respectable Gotham leadership. This is all well-executed as far as it goes, and to his credit, Reeves improves on the original where it was most obviously lacking. The action scenes are coherent and gripping, and the visuals—though eventually the brown and grey color palette becomes quite tedious—are rich and velvety. But where Nolan’s Batman movies were, for better and worse, putting their own stamp on the material, Reeves’s just feels like it’s turning up the dial on someone else’s work…. 

(7) BAT CAVING. In contrast, the Washington Post’s David Betancourt says that The Batman is, in his view, the best DC superhero movie since The Dark Knight because it isn’t part of the DC Extended Universe. “’The Batman’ with Robert Pattinson shows that it’s best when he works alone”.

…Batman is a superhero who looks cool next to other heroes on screen but doesn’t need them for relevancy.  Batman doesn’t need a co-star; he’s the star.  He doesn’t need a cavalry; he is the cavalry. This Caped crusader is the one card in DC’s hand that can beat anything Marvel can throw at them….

(8) EXPANDED POSSIBILITIES. Gareth L. Powell confesses “What I Owe to Bounty Hunter Leia”.

… But one of the key things that influenced me — and I only realised this recently — was the moment at the beginning of Return of the Jedi when Boushh the mysterious bounty hunter pulls off his mask to reveal… He was Leia all the time!

As a youngster, this seemed revolutionary. I thought it was so badass. I’d consumed quite a few 1960s and 1970s sci-fi movies and TV shows by that point, and those tended to feature scantily-clad love interests with poor survival skills, who regularly needed the hero to come and bail them out of trouble. But here, the princess got tooled-up and went to rescue her man. And she even managed to stare down Jabba the Hutt with a thermo detonator!…

(9) FOWLER PROFILE. The Guardian interviews Karen Joy Fowler about her non-sff book Booth, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t any genre gems: “Karen Joy Fowler: ‘I’m a bossy writer; I’m not going to not tell you’”

Booth is dedicated, among others, to the science fiction and fantasy writer Ursula K Le Guin.
She’s enormously important to me. I was living in Davis, California when I’d just begun to publish fiction, and the University of Davis invited her to do some events. I got a call: this lunch was being arranged, and she’d asked that I be included. I’d been reading her since college and was completely in awe – the Booker was great, but I don’t think anything matches the heady success of learning that Ursula K Le Guin wanted to meet me! We became friends and I wrote a couple of introductions to her books. One of them I wrote before she died, the other I wrote after. In the one I wrote before, I called her a genius and she made me take the word out; she said it made her feel squirmy. I did as she asked, but kind of put it back after she died, knowing she would not want me to. She’s a truly amazing voice; there cannot be another writer who has imagined more worlds in more interesting ways….

(10) GOODWIN OBIT. Laurel Goodwin, last surviving member of the first Star Trek pilot “The Cage”, has died at the age of 79 reports Deadline.

Laurel Goodwin, an actor who made her movie debut at age 19 opposite Elvis Presley in the 1962 feature Girls! Girls! Girls! and four years later played a crew member in the original, failed Star Trek pilot starring Jeffery Hunter, died February 25. She was 79.

… it was a performance in an episode that never made it to air for which she earned an enduring cult following: She played Yeoman J.M. Colt in “The Cage,” the unaired 1965 pilot for Star Trek that starred Hunter as Captain Christopher Pike. The pilot was rejected by NBC, though some scenes were recycled for a 1966 two-part episode (“The Menagerie”) after William Shatner had replaced Hunter as the Enterprise captain. (“The Cage” subsequently was released in various home entertainment formats.)

(11) MEDIA BIRTHDAY.

1968 [Item by Cat Eldridge] McCoy: “Fantastic machine, the M-5. No off switch.”

Fifty-four years ago this evening on NBC, Star Trek’s “The Ultimate Computer“ first aired. It was the twenty-fourth episode of the second season, and one of six Trek teleplays written by D C Fontana — the other five being “Catspaw”, “Tomorrow is Yesterday”, “Journey to Babel”, “Friday’s Child” and “By Any Other Name”. “Catspaw” was originally uncredited to her but she did the final teleplay based on what Robert Bloch wrote though it is said Roddenberry did further revisions.

The story is by Laurence N. Wolfe. This is his sole writing credit. Wolfe was a mathematician, who wrote the original story out of his fascination with computers. Later on Wolfe would give his original draft to Bradbury to pass on to Roddenberry. 

It was produced by John Meredyth Lucas who was involved with the series for its entire run in all aspects. He wrote three episodes (“The Changeling“, “Patterns of Force” and “Elaan of Troyius”). 

“The Ultimate Computer“ was also considered particularly important in the casting of an African American, William Marshall, as the inventor of the M-5 as well as the duotronic circuit which was the basis of all Star Fleet computer systems.

Reception for this episode is excellent. Michelle Erica Green said of it that, “Star Trek has never done a better ‘bottle show’ – an episode filmed entirely on standing sets, which usually means that all of the action is located on the ship itself.”  

And Jamahl Epsicokhan says “A wonderfully acerbic debate between Spock and McCoy about the role of computers is also well conceived, ending in Spock’s well-put notion to Kirk, “…but I have no desire to serve under them.” Following the M-5’s initial success, the scene where another captain calls Kirk “Captain Dunsel” is the episode’s best-played and simultaneously funny and painful moment. (In a word, ouch.)” 

Note the remastered episode recreates the entire battle between the Enterprise and the other Star Fleet ships with new ships. 

(12) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

  • Born March 8, 1921 Alan Hale Jr. The Skipper on Gilligan’s Island which y’all decided was genre, and he did show up in such films as Captain Kidd and the Slave Girl and The Fifth Musketeer. Series wise, I see he was on The Wild Wild West and Fantasy Island. He was also in the cast of The Giant Spider Invasion film which is most decidedly SF if of a pulpish variety and got the Mystery Science Theater 3000 treatment. (Died 1990.)
  • Born March 8, 1922 John Burke. He was active in Fandom in the Thirties, with work in The FantastThe Futurian and The Satellite. He went pro by the late Thirties in a number of pulp zines.  If you read nothing else by him, I recommend his late in life series The Adventures of Dr. Caspian and Bronwen, well-crafted horror. Ash-Tree Press collected much of his superb short fiction in We’ve Been Waiting for You And Other Tales of Unease. (Died 2011.)
  • Born March 8, 1931 Paddi Edwards. She’s here for two very different roles. First is for being the voice of Gozer in the Ghostbusters film. Second is having the lead role of Anya on “The Dauphin” of The Next Generation. The casting agents at Disney liked her so she had the role of Flotsam & Jetsam in The Little Mermaid franchise.
  • Born March 8, 1950 Peter McCauley, 72. I remember him best from the most excellent Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Lost World series where he played Professor George Challenger. He also showed as Mr. Spilett on Mysterious Island, another series shot in New Zealand and based off Jules Verne’s novel L’Île mystérieuse. Continuing the Verne riff, he was Admiral McCutcheon in 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, a Nineties TV version of the novel. 
  • Born March 8, 1970 Jed Rees, 52, Another Galaxy Quest performer, he played Teb, a Thermian. His most recent major genre outing was on Deadpool as Jared / Agent Smith / The Recruiter. He’s had one-offs in Ghost WhispererThe Crow: Stairway to HeavenThe NetX-Files,Outer Limits,The Sentinel and Sliders.
  • Born March 8, 1976 Freddie Prinze Jr., 46. I’m fairly sure his first genre role was in Wing Commander as Lt. Christopher Blair followed by the animated Mass Effect: Paragon Lost in which he voiced Lieutenant James Vega. Speaking of animated endeavors, I’ve got him in Kim Possible: A Sitch In Time voicing Future Jim / Future Tim followed by being in all in all four seasons of the animated Star Wars Rebels as Kanan Jarrus. And that’s a series which I highly recommend as it may well be the best Star Wars fiction ever done. 

(13) TOK SHOW. [Item by Martin Morse Wooster.] In the Financial Times behind a paywall, Nilanjana Roy discusses #BookTok, a branch of TikTok where readers post book reviews.

I quickly added Rebecca Roanhorse’s Between Earth And Sky fantasy series, inspired by the civilisations of pre-Columbian America, and Matt Haig’s The Midnight Library to my book-buying list. I was soon wondering if I should be reading more #enemiestolovers romance, and found myself developing an unhealthy fascination with the melodramatic thrill of ‘crying reader’ videos.  (BookTokers believe in sharing their motions, throwing books they don’t like across a room, screaming or lipsyncing to music,)…

…This brief immersion to #BookTok has inspired me to dust off my grandmother’s Mills & Boons, and allowed me to buy new romance novels without snobbish guilt.  BookTokers might be much younger than my generation, but they’ve built a place where we can all be #booknerds together.

(14) HAPPIER TIMES.  2006 KYIV EUROCON. [By SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] Happier times. Opening ceremony at the 2006 Eurocon, Kyiv. Jim Walker (who has reviewed a number of Eurocons for SF2 Concatenation) behind empty seat. Front bottom left: Ian Watson and Jonathan Cowie looking on.

If memory serves, picture by Roberto Quaglia.

Ditto if memory serves Harry Harrison (western GoH — who Eurocon liaised with SF2 Concatenation to get him there) was behind Roberto on the stage.

Also, this was early on, the hall was full for the actual opening ceremony and a government minister said a few words, there was the singing of the national anthem and the GoHs were introduced.

(15) TALKIN’ ABOUT MY INVESTIGATION. [Item by Martin Morse Wooster.] A former FBI agent turned crime novelist says that FBI agents could get new ideas if they read more horror novels. “What if the FBI Required Recruits to Read Paranormal Crime Thrillers?” at CrimeReads.

Over twelve intense weeks at the FBI Academy in Quantico, Virginia, I learned how to analyze crime scene evidence, elicit information from informants, and detect a liar from a hundred yards away. As a brand new intelligence analyst, however, my training curriculum (regrettably) did not include reading about immortal demons, parallel universes, or reincarnation. Because that would’ve been ridiculous. A complete waste of time. Right?

Well, maybe not.

Paranormal crime thrillers, where these fantastical concepts thrive, don’t obey the neat and tidy rules of the universe. And in my experience at the Bureau, neither do the cleverest of criminals or sneakiest of enemy spies….

(16) CLEARING THE OLD TUBES. NPR says “NASA is opening a vacuum-sealed sample it took from the moon 50 years ago”. The reason for the wait is mentioned in the article.

Fifty years ago, astronauts on one of NASA’s Apollo missions hammered a pair of tubes 14 inches long into the surface of the moon. Once the tubes were filled with rocks and soil, the astronauts — Eugene Cernan and Harrison “Jack” Schmitt — vacuum-sealed one of the tubes, while the other was put in a normal, unsealed container. Both were brought back to Earth.

Now, scientists at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston are preparing to carefully open that first tube, which has remained tightly sealed all these years since that 1972 Apollo 17 mission — the last time humans set foot on the moon….

Because the sample being opened now has been sealed, it may contain something in addition to rocks and soil: gas. The tube could contain substances known as volatiles, which evaporate at normal temperatures, such as water ice and carbon dioxide. The materials at the bottom of the tube were extremely cold at the time they were collected.

The amount of these gases in the sample is expected to be very low, so scientists are using a special device called a manifold, designed by a team at Washington University in St. Louis, to extract and collect the gas.

Another tool was developed at the European Space Agency (ESA) to pierce the sample and capture the gases as they escape. Scientists there have called that tool the “Apollo can opener.”

(17) WHEN GRAVITY FAILS. Netflix released this trailer for a new anime movie which begins streaming on April 28.

In a Tokyo where gravity has broken, a boy and a girl are drawn to each other… The story is set in Tokyo, after bubbles that broke the laws of gravity rained down upon the world. Cut off from the outside world, Tokyo has become a playground for a group of young people who have lost their families, acting as a battlefield for parkour team battles as they leap from building to building. Hibiki, a young ace known for his dangerous play style, makes a reckless move one day and plummets into the gravity-bending sea. His life is saved by Uta, a girl with mysterious powers. The pair then hear a unique sound audible only to them. Why did Uta appear before Hibiki? Their encounter leads to a revelation that will change the world.

(18) VIDEO OF THE DAY. [Item by Martin Morse Wooster.] In “Honest Trailers:  Scream (2022),” the Screen Junkies, in a spoiler-filled episode, say that the new Scream is, like most movies these days, “A self-referential circle jerk of fan service,” and is “the best Scream since the first one, because it basically is the first one.”  But the narrator is interrupted by Scream’s terifying killer Ghostface!  Will the narrator survive?  “You can’t kill off my friends,” he says, “because I don’t have any friends!”

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

Uncanny Magazine Welcomes New Nonfiction Editor, Senior Assistant Editor, and Assistant Editor

Uncanny Magazine has named Meg Elison as their new Nonfiction Editor. She takes over from Elsa Sjunneson, who stepped down after Uncanny Magazine Issue 42 to focus on other career opportunities.

Meg Elison is a science fiction author and feminist essayist. Her debut, The Book of the Unnamed Midwife, won the 2014 Philip K. Dick award. She is a Hugo, Nebula, and Otherwise awards finalist. In 2020, she published her first collection, Big Girl with PM Press, containing the Locus Award-winning novelette, The Pill. Elison’s first young adult novel, Find Layla was published in 2020 by Skyscape. Her thriller, Number One Fan, will be released by Mira Books in 2022.

Uncanny Magazine co-Editor-in-Chief/co-Publisher Lynne M. Thomas noted:

After an exhaustive search with a deep pool of applicants, Uncanny Magazine has chosen Meg Elison as the new Uncanny Magazine Nonfiction Editor. We were extremely impressed with Meg’s experience, preparedness, communication style, and vision for the position. We are certain that she will continue Uncanny’s tradition of publishing provocative, thoughtful, passionate essays.

Uncanny Magazine has also announced the promotion of current Assistant Editor Naomi Day to the newly created position of Senior Assistant Editor. Naomi started as Uncanny Magazine’s Assistant Editor with issue 37.

Naomi Day is a queer Black woman who primarily writes short Afro-centric futurist fiction, and her work has appeared in Black Warrior Review and The Seventh Wave. She is part of the Clarion West class of 2020/22.

Finally, Monte Lin will be the new Uncanny Magazine Assistant Editor. Lin edits and plays tabletop roleplaying games and writes short stories. Clarion West got him to write about dying universes, dreaming mountains, and singularities made of anxieties. He can be found tweeting Doctor Who news, Asian American diaspora discourse, and his board game losses at @Monte_Lin.

[Based on a press release.]

Pixel Scroll 1/3/20 Please Vasten Your Seatbelts

(1) A CENTURY OF THE GOOD DOCTOR. This week Asimov would have been 100. James Gunn marked the occasion in an article for Science “Asimov at 100”.

A case can be made that, like H. G. Wells, Asimov came along at the right time. (Wells once commented that he made his writing debut in the 1890s, when the public was looking for new writers.) But Asimov also had a restless and productive mind. His early experience of reading, and then writing, science fiction gave his popular science writing a rare narrative model, while his fiction similarly benefited from his scientific training.

(2) NOW A JOURNALISTIC TECHNIQUE. [Item by Olav Rokne.] The Columbia Journalism Review, in “Journalism and the foreseeable future”, takes note of the trend in mainstream publishing to look at contemporaneous and emerging issues through the lens of science fiction. It’s a welcome trend that is producing excellent work we’ve seen featured on the Pixel Scroll several times, and I’m very glad to see this getting attention within journalistic circles. 

Despite its dangers, [Sam] Greenspan sees the value of speculative journalism’s mix of the true and the fanciful. “I think the goal should be to use fiction or sci-fi to tell a better true story,” he says. “And I’m taking seriously the kind of emotional impact these stories have on people. By introducing even just the slightest amount of something fantastical, it gives your audience permission to have their minds wander a bit from what we know to be true, and really opens up this window into possibility and hope.”

(3) GUD LISTENING. On the latest Rite Gud podcast R.S. Benedict’s guest is Stephen Mazur, associate editor at The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. They talk about whether or not originality really matters in writing. Stephen also gets into a bit of inside baseball regarding F&SF publishing: the recent history of the magazine, how many submissions they get, what kind of submissions they get, the process, etc.

(4) ROMANCE WRANGLERS BEWARE. Who but Chuck Tingle would add “no sex” as a selling point? Or need to?

Gorblin Crimble is an aspiring romance author with a brand new novel that could be his first breakthrough hit. Of course, Gorblin is going to need some help getting his work out there, and starts by seeking likeminded creatives.

After attending a local writer’s group, Gorblin makes a new friend, Amber, who points him towards Romance Wranglers Of America. It sounds like this community is exactly the helpful, loving, supportive group that Gorblin is looking for, but when him and Amber arrive at the Romance Wranglers Of America headquarters, they quickly realize something is wrong. This once loving group has been taken over by a dark and mysterious force; lead by a man named Demon and his chanting coven of board members in jet-black robes.

Something horrible from the depths of the cosmic Void has taken hold, but is it too late to prove that romance is about love, not hate?

This important no-sex tale is 4,300 words of reasonable writers looking for a kind and supportive romance community that respects its members and treats them fairly.

(5) SFF ZINES. Jason Sanford today posted three more interviews with editors done in conjunction with his fine “#SFF2020: The State of Genre Magazines” report.

Jason Sanford: I suspect most people in the SF/F genre don’t understand the difficulties of publishing a magazine. What’s one aspect of running a genre magazine you wish more readers and writers knew about?

Lynne M. Thomas and Michael Damian Thomas: We think it’s important that people know the financial margins for magazines to stay in the black are razor thin, and that most of the magazines are unable to generate income for their publishers. (And many aren’t able to pay the editors.) Almost all of the income generated by magazines are going to the writers and artists….

Jason Sanford: Amazing Stories was the first science fiction magazine, and helped launch the pulp fiction era of the 1920s and ’30s. What is it like publishing a magazine with such history? Has that history presented any difficulties to your relaunch of the magazine?

Steve Davidson: Well, you get unexpected support and assistance;  a lot of people in the field are still very fond of both the magazine and its place in Science Fiction’s history.  But that brings with it two difficulties.  One, most younger fans among our potential market seem to assume that we’re publishing reprints of older works or new works in a golden-age style, despite the fact that promotion and discussion of the magazine – let alone our contributor’s own statements – clearly say otherwise.  We’re an old, venerable name in the genre publishing new, ground-breaking science fiction from the current era. …

Jason: In many ways Clarkesworld helped birth the current movement in online and genre magazines. How have things changed since the founding of Clarkesworld? Would you say it’s harder or easier to run a genre magazine these days?

Neil: It was a very different world for magazines in 2006. Online fiction wasn’t particularly respected. I remember having established authors tell me point-blank they wouldn’t publish online because it was the domain of “newbie writers and pirates.” The year’s best anthologies and various genre awards rarely featured works from those markets. With two-to-three years, that started changing and today, the awards have heavily swung the other direction – something you could reasonably argue is just as problematic….

(6) BURNED OUT. Australian fan Don Ashby, who lost his home to one of the fires now raging Down Under, was interviewed by The Age: “The sky turned black. The beast had arrived in Mallacoota”. (Via Irwin Hirsh.)

When Don Ashby caught a lift through town on Tuesday afternoon, he counted as many as 20 properties destroyed. One was his mother-in-law’s mudbrick cottage. Another was his own home of 20 years.

Ashby had evacuated his family to Melbourne and spent Monday night helping a friend to defend her house.

It had been an exhausting night and morning, punctuated by the rapid combustion of gas cylinders at a nearby storage business.

“It was like we were in the middle of the battle of the Somme,” he said.

When he returned to his own home, it looked unscathed. Then he realised it was just the facade that had been untouched by fire. The rear of the house was a blazing ruin. With no CFA tankers nearby and no water pressure left to fight the fire, he could only stand and watch it burn.

“It is all a bit grim really,” he said. “We really copped it.

“I have been in a few bushfires before but nothing like this. Nothing like this has happened before. The whole of Gippsland was on fire.”

(7) BABY IT’S GOLD OUTSIDE. Plagiarism Today reports from the front in “The Battle Over ‘Baby Yoda’”.

…However, those were just the first drops of a tidal wave that came crashing down on the internet. Etsy, for example, is swarming with unauthorized Baby Yoda merchandise of all types and eBay is much the same way.

This has become the subject of a lot of media coverage as well, such as this article on The Nerdist highlight a Baby Yoda plush toy.

This glut of unauthorized toys isn’t due to a lack of effort on Disney’s part. Several artists have reported receiving takedown notices after selling Baby Yoda merchandise on such sites and even the toy referenced above was also removed. Still, it’s clear that the Baby Yoda craze has outpaced even Disney’s capacity for control.

And the issues aren’t just related to physical items. Back in November, the popular gif website Giphy pulled all of its Baby Yoda gifs. Though Disney was initially blamed for this, it turned out it was a proactive move by Giphy that aimed to head off potential legal action by Disney. Disney hadn’t done anything.

(8) 2020 SIR JULIUS VOGEL AWARD NOMINATIONS OPEN. The Science Fiction and Fantasy Association of New Zealand (SFFANZ) is taking nominations for the 2020 Sir Julius Vogel awards until 11.59 pm NZT on March 31.

The awards recognise excellence and achievement in science fiction, fantasy, or horror works created by New Zealanders and New Zealand residents, and first published or released in the 2019 calendar year.

…A nomination made by a SFFANZ member carries a weight of two nominations, where non-members’ nominations carry a weight of one.

Full information about the awards, including the rules and criteria for the Sir Julius Vogel Award, can be found here. Eligibility list is here.

(9) PRO-ROWLING. Megan McArdle’s opinion piece in the Washington Post “Has J.K. Rowling figured out a way to break our cancel culture?” says that Rowling’s defense of Maya Forstater and her refusal to back down after social media protests shows that “the opinions of officious strangers, possibly thousands of miles away, who swarm social media like deranged starlings over and over again” can be safely ignored.

The censorious power of Mrs. Grundys always depends on the cooperation of the governed, which is why their regime collapsed the moment the baby boomers shrugged off their finger-wagging. If Rowling provides an unmissable public demonstration that it is safe to ignore the current crop, we can hope others will follow her example, and the dictatorship of the proscriptariat will fall as quickly as it arose.

(10) TODAY IN HISTORY.

  • January 3, 1970 Doctor Who’s “Spearhead from Space” serial started airing. The Third Doctor as played by John Pertwee first appears in this episode. It would also be the first appearance of companion Liz Shaw who’s played by Caroline John. She only lasted a season because the next showrunner decided she was too intelligent to be a proper companion.
  • January 3, 1993 Star Trek: Deep Space Nine premiered in television syndication. As you know, it would have a seven-year run with one seventy-six episodes in total. S.D. Perry wrote a sort of authorized ninth season in her Avatar novels. She’s written a number of Trek universe novels including a Section 31 one.

(11) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

  • Born January 3, 1892 J. R. R. Tolkien. I’m not going to waste my time detailing Tolkien to this group. My go-to book for him for him after over forty years of reading him remains The Hobbit. The book that still annoys me? The Two Towers. Best Tolkien experience? Seeing The Father Christmas Letters read live. (Died 1973.)
  • Born January 3, 1898 Doris Pitkin Buck. She’s got my feline curiosity aroused. Wiki says “She published numerous science fiction stories and poems, many of them in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction.” That’s fine but there’s little said about her or how she came to be a SF writer. ESF notes her “still unpublished tale “Cacophony in Pink and Ochre” has long formed part of the announced contents of Harlan Ellison’s The Last Dangerous Visions.” So what do y”all do about her? (Died 1980.)
  • Born January 3, 1930 Stephen Fabian, 90. He specializes in genre illustration and cover art for books and magazines such as H. Warner’s The Werewolf of Ponkert which you can see here. I see he got a World Fantasy Award—Life Achievement, and was nominated seven times for Hugo Award for Best Professional Artist. Is that the most times for being nominated without winning? His collected works include Ladies & Legends and Women & Wonders. Of course, they’re genre. 
  • Born January 3, 1937 Glen A. Larson. Triple hitter as a producer, writer and director. Involved in Battlestar Galactica, Galactica 1980The Six Million Dollar Man, ManimalBuck Rogers in the 25th Century, and Knight Rider. He also was responsible for Magnum, P.I. which I love but I’ll be damned if I can figure any way to claim that’s even genre adjacent. He also did a lot of Battlestar Galactica novels, some with Ron Goulart. (Died 2014.)
  • Born January 3, 1940 Kinuko Y. Craft, 80. She is a Japanese-born American painter, illustrator and fantasy artist. True enough. So why is she here?  Because she had an amazing run of illustrating the covers of the Patricia McKillip novels until quite recently. I’m linking here to our review at Green Man of The Bards of Bone Plain for a favorite cover she did. There’s a slim volume on Imaginosis called Drawings & Paintings which collects some of her work.
  • Born January 3, 1956 Mel Gibson, 64. I know the first thing I saw was genre wise involving him was The Road Warrior in a cinema which would be some forty years ago. Likewise I saw Mad Max 2 and Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome in cinemas, but I admit have mixed feelings about both of those films, though less about the latter as it’s at least fun. He’s in FairyTale: A True Story, a look at the the Cottingley Fairy photographs of the 1920s, and voices John Smith in Pocahontas. He plays Hamlet in Hamlet but I really don’t think I can call that genre, but I know some of you will. 
  • Born January 3, 1975 Danica McKellar, 45. From 2010–2013 and since 2018, she’s voiced Miss Martian in Young Justice. It’s just completed its third season and it’s most excellent! She’s done far, far more voice work than I can list here, so if you’ve got something you like that she’s done, do mention it. 
  • Born January 3, 1976 Charles Yu, 44. Taiwanese American writer. Author of How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe and the short-story collections, Sorry Please Thank You and Third Class Superhero. His novel was ranked the year’s second-best science fiction novel by the Center for the Study of Science Fiction at the University of Kansas — runner up for the Campbell Memorial Award. 

(12) ALL ROBOT DOGS GO TO THE CLOUD. BuzzFeed: “While Americans Worry About The AI Uprising, People In Japan Are Learning To Love Their Robots — And Be Loved Back”.

It was before 10 a.m. on a gray summer Sunday, but already a small crowd had gathered outside Penguin Café at the end of a block in residential Tokyo. A woman named Kyoko, dressed in a white T-shirt and apron, unlocked the doors and motioned for everyone to come inside.

Half a dozen or so people filed in, several with signature pink dog carriers slung over their shoulders. As more entered, the group clustered at the center of the café. Carefully, they unzipped the mesh panels of their carriers and removed the small white and silver dogs inside, setting them down on the wooden floor. One owner peeled back a yellow blanket over a baby carrier strapped to her chest where she held her dog, still asleep.

Some of the owners fussed with the dogs’ outfits before putting them down — straightening a necktie or pulling up the elastic band on a pair of shorts. One owner had dressed their dog in a Hawaiian shirt, while another was wearing aviator goggles and had a strong resemblance to Snoopy. Several had tiny straw hats affixed between their ears. All the dogs were plastic, powered by facial recognition and artificial intelligence….

(13) BOOKMARKS. Nerds of a Feather features “6 Books With Yoon Ha Lee”.

6. And speaking of that, what’s your latest book, and why is it awesome? 

Thor: Metal Gods
is a Serial Box serialized novel by Aaron Stewart-Ahn (the lead writer), Jay Edidin, Brian Keene, and myself.  It features Thor and Loki, both coming to terms with old sins and old friends, a Korean tiger goddess, and a genderfluid space pirate and astronomer.  There are black holes, eldritch abominations, heavy metal, and mayhem.  We had terrific fun writing it and we hope you’ll enjoy it too.

(14) CLEANER OR MEANER? Daily Beast writer David Axe contemplates whether “It’s the First Orbiting Garbage Collector—or a New Kind of Space Weapon”.

… The European Space Agency is about to pull one of the bigger hunks of garbage from orbit. But there’s a problem: The same tech that could help make space cleaner might, in the long run, also make it more dangerous.

That’s because the ESA’s ClearSpace-1 orbital garbage truck, as well as other spacecraft like it, could double as a weapon. 

Swiss startup ClearSpace designed the ClearSpace-1 vehicle to intercept a chunk of debris, latch onto it, and drag it back into Earth’s atmosphere where it can safely burn up. The ESA has scheduled the clean-up mission for 2025 and has even identified its target: a 265-pound piece of an old rocket orbiting 310 miles above Earth’s surface.

The 2025 mission will involve what ClearSpace CEO Luc Piguet called “non-cooperative capture.” That is to say, the targeted piece of debris wasn’t designed with an interface or any other system that might help a clean-up craft grab onto it. 

(15) AMAZONS! A growing body of archaeological evidence shows that legends about the horseback-riding, bow-wielding female fighters were almost certainly rooted in reality. The Washington Post has the story: “Amazons were long considered a myth. These discoveries show warrior women were real. “

…In a landmark discovery revealed this month, archaeologists unearthed the remains of four female warriors buried with a cache of arrowheads, spears and horseback-riding equipment in a tomb in western Russia — right where Ancient Greek stories placed the Amazons.

The team from the Institute of Archaeology at the Russian Academy of Sciences identified the women as Scythian nomads who were interred at a burial site some 2,500 years ago near the present-day community of Devitsa. The women ranged in age from early teens to late 40s, according to the archaeologists. And the eldest of the women was found wearing a golden ceremonial headdress, a calathus, engraved with floral ornaments — an indication of stature.

(16) WORDSMITH ALSO TUNESMITH. Don’t say you never got the chance to hear Norman Spinrad sing. Today on Facebook he reminded people about the time he performed at the Cirque Electrique in Paris.

Not that I’m planning to ever give up my day job, but I’ve had a long slow minor career with music, something around a dozen songs written or co-written, something less than that creating and recording, occasional live performances too such as this one, my best I think.

(17) 2019. Joe Sherry explains his choices for the “Top 9 Books of the Year” at Nerds of a Feather.

7. Middlegame: Middlegame is perhaps the most ambitious novels from Seanan McGuire and is a showcase for her skill at telling a good and complex story. Twins, math, alchemy, murder, time-bending, family, secret organizations, impossible powers, and just about everything McGuire can throw into this wonderous novel. Seanan McGuire has blended together as much as she possibly could stuff into one novel and she makes the whole thing work. It’s impressive. McGuire goes big with Middlegame. Doubt Seanan McGuire at your peril. (my review)

(18) IF IT WEREN’T FOR THE HONOR OF THE THING. Publishers Weekly declared “Dav Pilkey Is PW’s Person of the Year for 2019”.

Pilkey’s Captain Underpants and the Terrifying Return of Tippy Tinkletrousers, the ninth book in his popular children’s novel series, published in 2012, features a comic strip made by the book’s incorrigible pranksters George and Harold, the stars of the series. This comic-within-a-novel marks the first appearance of Dog Man, Pilkey’s lovable crime-fighting superhero, who is surgically constructed from the body of a cop and the head of his police dog companion after they were both injured in a typically Pilkey-style zany accident.

(19) VIDEO OF THE DAY.  From Savag Entertainment, “Timelapse Reveals How Clever This Billboard Ad For The BBC’s ‘Dracula’ Is.”

[Thanks to Andrew Porter, John King Tarpinian, Mike Kennedy, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Cat Eldridge, JJ, Michael Toman, Olav Rokne, Contrarius, Daniel Dern, Chip Hitchcock, R.S. Benedict, and Martin Morse Wooster for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Daniel Dern.]

Pixel Scroll 8/19/19 Click, Click, Click Went The Pixel, Post, Post, Post Went The Scroll

The Dublin 2019 juggernaut coasted slowly to a stop today. Here is a sampling of people’s farewell tweets.

(1) PROGRAMMING.

(2) RIBBONS.

(3) MEDALS.

(4) T-SHIRT.

(5) FEEDBACK SESSION.

(6) OOK OOK. Something from the HOAX daily newzine:

(7) CLOSING CEREMONIES.

(8) SLOW GETAWAY.

(9) COMPLETE AND UNINTERRUPTED. Ada Palmer, whose Campbell presenter speech was interrupted by absurdities appearing in the closed captioning behind her, has posted the text online: “2019 Campbell Speech + Refugee Charity Fundraiser”. This excerpt comes from the post’s introduction –

…I hope I find a video somewhere so I too can enjoy such disasters as “dog mechanism” for “dogmatic” and “Bored of the Rings and Cream of Thrown” for Lord of the Rings & Game of Thrones. More seriously, it was a great honor to speak again at this year’s Worldcon, and I couldn’t be more proud of Jeannette Ng‘s courageous acceptance speech, bringing attention to the crisis and violence happening right now in her home city of Hong Kong, and to the great responsibility we in the science fiction and fantasy community have to make sure that the theme of empire–which has numerous positive depictions in genre literature from space empires to the returns of kings–does not end up celebrating the dangerous, colonial, and autocratic faces of empire, and that as we explore empire in our work (including in my own work) we do so in ways which examine empire’s problems and advance versions of empire which reverse or rehabilitate it, and which affirm the greater values of free-determination, autonomy, and human dignity.

(10) GROWING UP. In an article for the September WIRED, “We Can Be Heroes: How the Nerds Are Reinventing Pop Culture”, Laurie Penny discusses how fandom–and, specifically, writing Harry Potter fan fiction–led her to a writing career, including stints as a writer for Joss Whedon’s HBO show “the Nevers” and “The Haunting of Bly Manor.”

But fandom also helped me meet people unlike myself, and that was just as important.  There comes a time in the life of very lonely, misunderstood, intelligent child of privilege when they must confront the fact that being intelligent, lonely, and misunderstood is not the worst thing that can befall a person, that some people have a great deal more to contend with on top of being an unsalvageable dweeb.  I was and remain a clueless Caucasian shut-in with a lot to learn, but that part of my education started when I began following fans and creators of color.  My first real friends who weren’t white lived thousands of miles away, and I knew them through jerky avatars and punnish screen names and an exhaustive knowledge of Tolkien lore.  I educated myself with the articles and books they linked to.  There were long, torturous flame wars.  I listened.  I took notes.”

(11) MORE ABOUT HUGO LOSERS PARTY. Marguerite Kenner pursued more information about why there were problems (Hugo finalists who couldn’t get in when they arrived). Thread starts here.

Ada Palmer also pointed out the effect on people with accessibility needs:

(12) ADMIRING UNCANNY. Their local newspaper covered the Hugo won by Lynne and Michael Thomas’ Uncanny Magazine in the Semiprozine category: “Urbana-based Uncanny Magazine lands another rocket at Hugo Awards”. Jim Meadows sent the link with a note: “Of course, you already know who the Hugo winners are, but I thought I’d pass along the local coverage from the Champaign-Urbana area, where the Thomases now live. Uncanny has received local coverage before, and I’m impressed by the degree of media support it gets in the area. I don’t think this would have happened to this degree a few decades ago, but even a print version of Uncanny would have been more difficult to do a few decades ago.” The article appeared on the website of the (Champaign, IL) News-Gazette on Sunday evening, and appeared on the front page (below the fold) of the paper’s print edition on Monday morning.

(13) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

  • Born August 19, 1807 Jane C. Loudon. A very early SF writer as her novel, The Mummy!: A Tale of the Twenty-Second Century, was published in 1827. If you’d like to read it, the Internet Archive has it available. (Died 1858.)
  • Born August 19, 1893 Hans Waldemar Wessolowski. An artist best remembered for his cover art for pulp magazines like Amazing Stories, Astounding Stories, Clues and Strange Tales. Wesso was the name most commonly cited wherever his art is given credit. Wesso painted all 34 covers of the Clayton Magazines Astounding Stories from January 1930 to March 1933.  (Died 1947.)
  • Born August 19, 1921 Gene Roddenberry. Oh, you know who he is. But did you know he wrote a lot of scripts for Have Gun – Will Travel? Indeed, his script for the show, “Helen of Abajinian” would win the Writer’s Guild of America award for Best Teleplay in 1958. (Died 1991.)
  • Born August 19, 1950 Mary Doria Russell, 69. The Sparrow series, The Sparrow and its sequel Children of God, are awesome. The Sparrow won the Arthur C. Clarke, BSFA, and Tiptree Awards, and it was the reason she won the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer. 
  • Born August 19, 1950 Jill St. John, 69. She’s best remembered as Tiffany Case, the Bond girl in  Diamonds Are Forever. She was the first American to play a Bond girl. She shows in The Batman in “Smack in the Middle” and “Hi Diddle Riddle” as Molly. And she played Jennifer Holmes in the 1960 film version of The Lost World. Fascinatingly, she’s an uncredited  dancer on Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In
  • Born August 19, 1952 Jonathan Frakes, 67. Best known for his portrayal of Commander William T. Riker in  Next Gen though I’m fond of his voicing David Xanatos on the Gargoyles series. Interesting bit of trivia: For a time in the Seventies, he worked for Marvel Comics at cons as Captain America.
  • Born August 19, 1988 Veronica Roth, 31. She’s best known for her Divergent trilogy, consisting of Divergent, Insurgent, and Allegiant; and also  Four: A Divergent Collection. The first two were made into films, a proposed series was cancelled.

(14) HIVES. LAist’s selections as “LA’s Coolest, Weirdest, Most Immersive Themed Bars” tilts heavily towards genre. For example —

Scum & Villainy

Theme: A Star Wars-inspired bar for geeks

Obi-Wan Kenobi promised a young Luke Skywalker that he would “never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy” than the Mos Eisley Spaceport. This Hollywood Boulevard bar does its best to top the cantina where Han shot first, complete with war room-style maps and customers milling about in their best First Order cosplay. It wouldn’t be accurate to say Scum & Villainy is only a Star Wars bar. All fandoms are welcome at weekly game nights, karaoke, trivia contests and occasional cosplay evenings. Leading up to the final season of Game of Thrones, it transformed into Fire & Ice Tavern, with a sad-faced Weirwood tree, an Iron Throne and Stark and Targaryen sigils. As for the menu, expect beer, themed cocktails and bar bites such as quesadillas, tots and chicken fingers, which were one of Greedo’s favorite snacks, as any real Star Wars fan knows.
6377 Hollywood Blvd., Hollywood. 424-501-4229.

(15) LUNCHTIME, AND YOU’RE IT. A Yahoo! reporter shares “What it’s like to see a blinking, breathing ‘Jurassic World’ dinosaur up close” on the Jurassic World Live Tour.

It’s actually not the teeth that get your attention first. 

It’s the eyes.

The velociraptor’s yellow eyeballs don’t exactly look at you but through you, a soul-piercing kind of stare that suggests she’s wondering just how salty your skin tastes.

At least that’s how I feel when I’m stalked by one of the dinosaur puppets from the Jurassic World Live Tour, a traveling stage show that arrives in dozens of U.S. arenas starting Sept. 26 in Columbus, Ohio, and runs through 2020. 

My raptor encounter takes place in a nondescript building that looks like a dentist’s office and smells like freshly baked bread. The first clue that I’m in the right location (which is located next to a bakery): A sign on a door that reads “DINOSAUR CROSSING.” I walk inside, and it turns out to be a portal to the Jurassic era where dinosaurs roam.

(16) VERSUS TROLLS. NPR tells how “Trolled Online, Women In Politics Fight To Hold Big Tech Accountable In The U.K.”

Lisa Cameron is a member of the British Parliament. She’s also a victim, and survivor, of online trolls.

Cameron was new to politics in 2015, when she was elected in East Kilbride, Scotland. She’d been a clinical psychologist, a wife, a mom, and a trade union representative — the kind of political newcomer democracies want to run for office.

But the sludge of the Internet began to attack her — and not just for her policy stances. Her inbox, Facebook and Twitter accounts filled with insults about her appearance, rape fantasies, pictures of decapitated bodies, threats to her family, and anti-Semitic slurs (Cameron is Jewish).

Cameron’s #MeToo story — and those of her female colleagues in Parliament — has helped usher in a new era in the United Kingdom: digital assault is understood as a real threat, one that is pushing the government to hold tech giants accountable for their role as hosts to these attacks.

Cameron says the ugliness got to her. “It makes you question whether you are doing something wrong in your job, whether politics is right for you.” She also wondered if running was unfair to her two children.

Then, a horrific attack — not against her, but against a female colleague who was sworn into Parliament in the same class — changed the conversation for Cameron, and for the entire country.

In 2016, Member of Parliament Jo Cox was gunned down and stabbed on the streets by a white supremacist. According to prosecutors, he was radicalized on the Internet, where he viewed Nazi materials and, on the eve of the attack, researched right-wing politicians and the Ku Klux Klan. The motive appeared to be policy-oriented. The killer was pro-Brexit. And Cox, a member of the Labour Party, wanted Britain to stay in the European Union. But some believed she was targeted because she was a woman.

The Prime Minister’s office reached out to men and women in Parliament to ask if they had been intimidated online. The final report, published in December 2017, coincided with the rise of the #MeToo movement in the United States. U.K. regulators didn’t set out to spotlight female leaders. But they did, because women had horrific anecdotes to share.

(17) SUPER-RESISTANCE. Art Spiegelman, in “Art Spiegelman: golden age superheroes were shaped by the rise of fascism” in The Guardian, is a discussion about the rise of superheroes in the late 1930s. 

…In late 1940, over a year before Pearl Harbor, while the Nazis were Blitzkrieging London, Simon, an entrepreneurial freelancer for Funnies, Inc, was hired by Goodman to write, draw and edit for him directly. Simon showed him the cover concept for a new superhero that he and Kirby had dreamed up – a hero dressed like an American flag with giant biceps and abs of steel has just burst into Nazi headquarters and knocked Hitler over with a haymaker to the jaw. Goodman began to tremble, knowing what an impact this book would make and remained anxious until the first issue of Captain America, dated March 1941, landed on the stands. Goodman had been terrified that someone might assassinate Hitler before the comic book came out!

Captain America was a recruiting poster, battling against the real Nazi super-villains while Superman was still fighting cheap gunsels, strike breakers, greedy landlords and Lex Luthor – and America was still equivocating about entering the conflict at all. No wonder Simon and Kirby’s comic book became an enormous hit, selling close to a million copies a month throughout the war….

A related article explains that this piece was originally written as an introduction to a Folio Society collection of classic Marvel comics but Spiegelman withdrew it because he had a reference to “an Orange Skull haunts America” in a discussion of the Red Skull and Marvel found this unacceptable.(“Spiegelman’s Marvel essay ‘refused publication for Orange Skull Trump dig’”).

(18) KILLING JOKE. The BBC covers “Edinburgh Fringe funniest joke: Vegetable gag wins top prize” and the also-rans. No, I don’t know what “florets” is a sound-alike to; anyone alse to enlighten me?

A joke about vegetables has made it to the top of the menu as this year’s funniest at the Edinburgh Fringe.

Swedish comedian Olaf Falafel has won Dave’s “Funniest Joke of The Fringe” award with the niche culinary pun.

He took the title with the gag: “I keep randomly shouting out ‘Broccoli’ and ‘Cauliflower’ – I think I might have florets”.

It is from Falafel’s show It’s One Giant Leek For Mankind at the Pear Tree.

In its 12th year, the prize rewards the funniest one-liner to grace the venues of the festival and celebrates the pool of talent the Fringe has to offer.

(19) TALK TO ABOUT THE HAND. Something CoNZealand-goers won’t have to travel to see: “‘Nightmare’ hand statue looms over New Zealand city”.

A giant hand which has been described as a “Lovecraftian nightmare come to life” has been lifted into place atop Wellington’s City Gallery in New Zealand.

Ronnie van Hout’s “Quasi” installation was carried by helicopter to its new home on Monday overlooking the city’s civic centre.

The artwork, which was created in 2016, originally stood on top of the Christchurch Art Gallery. It is on loan to Wellington, where it will stand for the next three to four years.

The operation has cost NZ$74,000 (US$47,000; £39,000), which includes transportation, designing the hoist, and “Wellington-proofing” the hand against the local elements, Stuff news website reports.

The relocation of the five-metre tall (16 feet) sculpture, which weighs 400kg (880 pounds), has stirred up a mixture of revulsion and civic pride in New Zealand’s capital.

[Thanks to Cat Eldridge, JJ, Hampus Eckerman, Chip Hitchcock, John King Tarpinian, Martin Morse Wooster, Mike Kennedy, Jim Meadows, and Andrew Porter for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Andrew.]

Editors Lynne & Michael Thomas Kickstarting Year Six of Their Uncanny Magazine

Uncanny Staff: Lynne M. Thomas, Michael Damian Thomas, Elsa Sjunneson-Henry, Chimedum Ohaegbu, Michi Trota, Angel Cruz, Caroline M. Yoachim, Erika Ensign, Steven Schapansky, and Joy Piedmont

Uncanny Magazine’s Hugo-winning editors Lynne M. Thomas and Michael Damian Thomas are launching a Kickstarter for Year Six of their – also Hugo Award-winning — professional online sff magazine: “Uncanny Magazine Year 6: Raise the Roof, Raise the Rates!”

Each issue contains new and classic speculative fiction, fiction podcasts, poetry, essays, art, and interviews. Uncanny Magazine is raising funds via Kickstarter to cover some of its operational and production costs for the sixth year, with an initial goal of $18,700. plus added stretch goals of raising contributor and staff pay rates. The Kickstarter will run through August 14, 2019.

On day one they raised $9,558 of their initial $18,700 goal.

Uncanny features passionate SF/F fiction and poetry, gorgeous prose, and provocative nonfiction, with a deep investment in our diverse SF/F culture. We publish intricate, experimental stories and poems with verve and vision, from writers from every conceivable background. With the hard work of the best staff and contributors in the world, Uncanny Magazine has delivered everything as promised (or is in the middle of delivery) with our Year One, Two, Three, Four, and Five Kickstarters. This year, the magazine has been recognized as a Hugo and Locus Award finalist, and three stories plus the editors-in-chief have been recognized as Hugo Award finalists,” Lynne says.

“We couldn’t have done all of this without the amazing support of our Kickstarter community, who we call the Space Unicorn Ranger Corps after our logo mascot. This is also their magazine; their support makes it possible for us to make all of this amazing content available for free on our website. Quite a few science fiction magazines have closed recently, but we would like to continue. We still feel Uncanny‘s mission is important. And hopefully, we will meet the stretch goals and be able to pay our phenomenal contributors and staff a little bit more,” Michael adds.

For Year Six, Uncanny has solicited original short fiction from Hugo, Nebula, Locus, and World Fantasy Award-winning and nominated authors and bestselling authors including: Elizabeth Bear, Aliette de Bodard, Jennifer Marie Brissett, Tina Connolly, Paul Cornell, A. T.  Greenblatt, Cassandra Khaw, Ken Liu, Vina Jie-Min Prasad, Bonnie Jo Stufflebeam, and Ursula Vernon. There will also be numerous slots for unsolicited submissions.

Uncanny Magazine Year Six plans to showcase original essays by Meg Elison, Hillary Monahan, Brandon O’Brien, Malka Older, Ada Palmer, Ebony Elizabeth Thomas, and Fran Wilde, plus poetry by Betsy Aoki, Leah Bobet, Beth Cato, Ada Hoffmann, Annie Neugebauer, D.A. Xiaolin Spires, and Hal Y. Zhang.

And if they get the support, after they hit the initial target here’s what comes next:

Year Six Stretch Goals:

  • $19,700- Original cover art from Galen Dara
  • $22,000- Original cover art from Nilah Magruder
  • $25,000- Original cover art from Kirbi Fagan
  • $26,000- Increase Essay Pay Rate to $75 per essay
  • $27,000- Increase Poetry Pay Rate to $40 per poem
  • $30,000- Increase Original Short Story Pay Rate to $.09 per word
  • $31,000- Increase Reprint Short Story Pay Rate to $.02 per word
  • $34,000- Increase Staff Payments 

Uncanny Magazine issues are published as eBooks (MOBI, PDF, EPUB) bimonthly on the first Tuesday of that month through all of the major online eBook stores. Each issue contains 5-6 new short stories, a reprinted story, 4 poems, 4 nonfiction essays, and 2 interviews, at minimum.

Material from half an issue is posted for free on Uncanny’s website (built by Clockpunk Studios) once per month, appearing on the second Tuesday of every month (uncannymagazine.com). Uncanny also produces a monthly podcast with a story, poem, and original interview. Subscribers and backers will receive the entire double issue a month before online readers.