Pixel Scroll 3/30/23 Yes! We Have No Pixels, We Have No Pixels Today

(1) NEW FUTURE TENSE FICTION PODCAST. The first episode of the Future Tense Fiction podcast series dropped this week. Produced by Slate, it’s hosted by science journalist Maddie Stone, and each episode features a voice actor reading one of the Future Tense stories, followed by a conversation with the author about how their own experiences with technology informed their writing and vision. The first episode features Sturgeon Award–winning story “When Robot and Crow saved East St. Louis,” by Annalee Newitz. The podcast is free and is available through any podcast service that people use (including but not limited to Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, and Radio Public).

(2) THE BIG EUROVISION READ. Catherynne M. Valente ecstatically told Facebook followers:

Decibel Jones and the Absolute Zeroes have finally made it to the blue carpet. WHAT.

I could not possibly be more excited to announce that Space Opera, the literary lovechild of @Eurovision & a drunk thesaurus, is officially part of the #BigEurovisionRead and #Eurofestival, sponsored by @bbcarts and @thereadingagency this year!

From a throwaway joke on Twitter to really being part of actual #Eurovision? Oh. My. God.

It truly isn’t possible to express how thrilling it is for an utterly cringe #Eurovision dork like me to be anywhere near the actual event, let alone a small official part of it. I am so honored, so grateful, and I hope Dess and the gang find a whole new galaxy of friends.

Space Opera has been such a ride, and the sequel is out this fall! Thank you so much to all the librarians that chose this book and everyone who has jumped on Mr. Jones’ Wild Ride over the last five years.

Life is beautiful and life is stupid. Truly.

(3) STARFLEET ACADEMY. “’Star Trek: Starfleet Academy’ Series Ordered at Paramount+” and Variety has details.

 “Admission is now open to Starfleet Academy! Explore the galaxy! Captain your destiny! For the first time in over a century, our campus will be re-opened to admit individuals a minimum of 16 Earth years (or species equivalent) who dream of exceeding their physical, mental and spiritual limits, who value friendship, camaraderie, honor and devotion to a cause greater than themselves,” Kurtzman and Landau said. “The coursework will be rigorous, the instructors among the brightest lights in their respective fields, and those accepted will live and study side-by-side with the most diverse population of students ever admitted. Today we encourage all who share our dreams, goals and values to join a new generation of visionary cadets as they take their first steps toward creating a bright future for us all. Apply today! Ex Astris, Scientia!”

The official logline for the series states that it “will introduce us to a young group of cadets who come together to pursue a common dream of hope and optimism. Under the watchful and demanding eyes of their instructors, they will discover what it takes to become Starfleet officers as they navigate blossoming friendships, explosive rivalries, first loves and a new enemy that threatens both the Academy and the Federation itself.”

… Production on “Star Trek: Starfleet Academy” will begin in 2024….

(4) GOODNIGHT MOON. Here’s a strange exercise: “Every Page of Goodnight Moon, Ranked” at McSweeney’s Internet Tendency. This page is ranked next to last – and the commentary is one reason I’m not sure this article succeeds at being funny.

21. And goodnight mouse (Page 16)
Separated from the toy house on page 3, we see this mouse for what it really is: a thinly constructed, two-dimensional character. What had once seemed whimsical now appears in stark reality: a mouse running around a child’s bedroom, the treatment of which should neither be celebrated nor encouraged.

(5) MIKE MIGNOLA’S VISION. On exhibit at the Society of Illustrators through July 8 is “Picturing Pinocchio: Mignola Makes a Marionette”.

Deep in the midst of pandemic lockdowns, a plan was hatched: a new illuminated edition of Carlo Collodi’s Pinocchio, engineered to unDisnify one of the strangest, most startling pieces of fiction ever to be beloved by generations of children worldwide.

The seed was planted by cartoonist and author Mike Mignola (Hellboy), who had been pondering his own take on the puppet for decades. With the world closed up due to COVID, he teamed up with idiosyncratic publisher Beehive Books and holed up in his studio to create a portfolio of over fifty original illustrations re-envisioning Collodi’s tale. When author Lemony Snicket (A Series of Unfortunate Events) got wind of the project, he couldn’t resist joining, offering elaborate hand-typed annotations of his own maddening encounter with this singular text.

Pinocchio, though one of the most popular literary works of all time, is somewhat paradoxically ill-remembered. Collodi originally published the story as serialized installments in a children’s magazine. The original series ended with Pinocchio hung from a tree, dead by the hands of assassins, and was continued only because of an outcry from readers who couldn’t stand to see such a beloved character reach such a dismal end.  This is the true nature of Collodi’s tale — who better than Mike Mignola to illustrate the unremitting darkness and strange whimsy that characterized this bizarre children’s classic?

This exhibition will feature his full portfolio of yet-to-be-published Pinocchio illustrations, including drawings, paintings, process work and other ephemera of Mignola’s pandemic Pinocchio project. The Land of Toys, the City of Catchfools, the Blue Fairy, Fire Eater, the feline Assassins – as seen through the eyes of a modern master of illustration and storytelling.

(6) SMALL WONDERS KICKSTARTER FUNDS. Stephen Granade reports that the “Small Wonders Magazine: Year One” Kickstarter has funded! As a result, he says, all of their Issue 0 stories and poems, including Beth Cato’s “She Seeks a Home” and Premee Mohamed’s “From the Journal of Sawyer L. Gibbs, Hero, Aged 13 1/2”  are available on the Small Wonders website. They will be opening for story and poem submissions on April 1, no joke.

(7) JOE GIELLA (1928-2023). Comics artist Joe Giella died March 21 at the age of 94 reports Heritage Auctions.

Joe Giella is best known for his work at DC in the 1950s and 60s as an inker. But his career spanned 60 years! He studied art at three different schools before his first gig at age 17 in 1946 where he did “Captain Codfish” for Hillman. After some free-lance at Fawcett, former classmate Mike Sekowsky helped him land a job at Timely as an inker. He met Frank Giacoia there and went with Frank when he took a job at DC in 1949. Over the next two decades, at one time or another, Joe inked nearly every feature that Julius Schwartz edited. 

By 1970, Joe had started working with the syndicates and drew or inked Batman, Flash Gordon, the Phantom, while still doing occasional work for DC. In 1991, he took over the Mary Worth strip, where he continued to work until his retirement in 2016. Joe passed away at age 94 on March 21, 2023.

(8) MEMORY LANE.

1972[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

Clifford Simak’s A Choice of Gods was published fifty-one years ago by G.P. Putnam & Sons with a simultaneous edition done by SFBC. The superb cover art was by Michael Hinge. 

Sixty years ago at Torcon II, it would be nominated for Best Novel though Isaac Asimov’s The Gods Themselves would take home the Hugo that year.

Without being explicit, I will say that I think it shares some similarity in themes to City

I think A Choice of Gods has one of the finest Beginnings that I’ve ever had the pleasure to read, so without further commentary on my part, here it is…

Aug. 1, 2185: So we begin again. Actually, we began again fifty years ago, but did not know it then. There was hope, for a time, that there were more people left and that we could pick up where we had left off. We thought, somehow, that we could hang onto what we had, once the shock was over and we could think more clearly and plan more cleverly. By the end of the first year we should have known that it was impossible; by the end of five we should have been willing to admit it, but we weren’t. At first we refused to face the fact and once we had to face it we became stubborn with a senseless sort of faith. The old way of life could not be revived; there were too few of us and none with special knowledge and the old technology was gone beyond all restoration. The technology had been too complex and too specialized and too regimented to be picked up and carried on without a large work force equipped with appropriate skills and knowledge that were necessary not only to operate the technology itself, but to produce the energy that went into it. We are now no more than scavengers feeding on the carcass of the past and some day we’ll be down to the bare bones of it and will be finally on our own. But over the years we have been recovering or rediscovering, whichever it may be, some of the older and more basic technology geared to a simpler way of life and these basic rudimentary skills should keep us from sinking into utter savagery.

There is no one who knows what really happened, which does not, of course, deter some of us from formulating theories that might explain it all. The trouble is that all the theories boil down to simple guesses, in which all kinds of metaphysical misconceptions play a part. There are no facts other than two very simple facts and the first of these is that fifty years ago last month the greater fraction of the human race either went somewhere or was taken somewhere. Out of more than eight billion of us, which was certainly far too many of us, there are now, at most, a few hundred left. In this house in which I sit to write these words, there are sixty-seven humans, and only that many because on the night it happened we had invited some young guests to help us celebrate the coming of age of our twin grandsons, John and Jason Whitney. Of the Leech Lake Indians there may be as many as three hundred, although we now see little of them, for they have taken up again, quite happily and to their great advantage, or so it would seem to me, their old tribal wanderings. At times rumors reach us of other little pockets of humanity still surviving (the rumors chiefly brought by some loose-footed robot), but when we’ve gone to hunt for them, they are never there, nor is there anything to indicate they ever had been there. This, of course, proves nothing. It stands to reason that elsewhere on the Earth there must be others left, although we have no idea where. We hunt for them no longer, even when the rumors come, for it seems to us that we no longer have any need of them. In the intervening years we have become content, settling down into the routine of a bucolic life.

The robots still are with us and we have no idea how many there may be. All the robots that were ever in existence must still remain. They did not go or were not taken as was the human race. Over the years a number of them have come to settle in with us, doing all the work and chores necessary for our comfortable existence, becoming, in all truth, a part of our community. Some of them at times may leave and go elsewhere for a while and there are occasions when new ones float in and stay, either for good or for varying periods. It might seem to someone unacquainted with the situation that in the robots we had the labor force we needed to keep at least a small sector of the more vital parts of the old technology alive. It is possible the robots could have been taught the necessary skills, but the rub here is that we had no one who was equipped to teach them. Even if we’d had, I have some well-founded doubt that it would have worked. The robots are not technologically minded. They were not built to be. They were built to bolster human vanity and pride, to meet a strange longing that seems to be built into the human ego—the need to have other humans (or a reasonable facsimile of other humans) to minister to our wants and needs, human slaves to be dominated, human beings over which a man or woman (or a child) can assert authority, thus building up a false feeling of superiority. They were built to serve as cooks, gardeners, butlers, maids, footmen (I have never got quite straight in mind what a footman is)—servants of all kinds. They were the flunkeys and the inferior companions, the yea-sayers, the slaves. In a manner of speaking, in their services to us, I suppose they still are slaves. Although I doubt the robots think of it as slavery; their values, while supplied by human agency, are not entirely human values. They serve us most willingly; thankful of a chance to serve, they press their services upon us, apparently glad to find new masters to replace the old. This is the situation as it applies to us; with the Indians it is different. The robots do not feel at ease with the Indians and the Indians, in turn, regard them with an emotion that borders upon loathing. They are a part of the white man’s culture and are readily acceptable to us upon the basis of our onetime preoccupation with machines. To the Indians they are unclean, something that is repulsively foul and alien. They will have no part of them. Any robot stumbling into an Indian camp is summarily hustled off. A few of the robots serve us. There must be many thousands more. Those that are not with us we have fallen into the habit of calling wild robots, although I doubt they, in any sense, are wild. Often, from our windows or while sitting on the patio, or while out walking, we see bands of wild robots hurrying along as if they had an urgent destination or were involved in some great purpose. We have never been able to determine where the destination or what might be the purpose. There are certain stories of them that we hear at times, but nothing more than stories and with no evidence, and not worth repeating here.

(9) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

  • Born March 30, 1904 Herbert van Thal. Editor of the Pan Book of Horror Stories series, twenty-four volumes that appeared from 1959 to 1983. Back From the Dead: The Legacy of the Pan Book of Horror Stories is a look at the series and it contains Lest You Should Suffer Nightmares, the first biography of him written by Pan Book of Horror Stories expert Johnny Mains. (Died 1983.)
  • Born March 30, 1928 Chad Oliver. Writer of both Westerns and SF, a not uncommon occupation at that time. He considered himself an anthropological science fiction writer whose training as an academic informed his fiction, an early Le Guin if you will. Not a terribly prolific writer with just nine novels and two collections to his name over a forty-year span. Mists of Dawn, his first novel, is a YA novel which I’d recommend as it reads similarly to Heinlein. (Died 1993.)
  • Born March 30, 1930 John Astin, 93. He is best known for playing Gomez Addams in Addams Family, reprising it on the Halloween with the New Addams Family film and the Addams Family animated series. A memorable later role would be as Professor Wickwire in The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr., and I’d like single out his delightfully weird appearance on The Wild Wild West as Count Nikolai Sazanov in “The Night of the Tartar” episode.  Years later I remember that episode and him in it. 
  • Born March 30, 1934 Dennis Etchison. As an editor, he received two World Fantasy Awards for Best Anthology, MetaHorror and The Museum of Horrors. As a writer, he’s best remembered as a short story writer of quite tasty horror. Talking in the Dark Is his personally selected collection of his stories. (Died 2019.)
  • Born March 30, 1948 Jeanne Robinson. She co-wrote the Stardance Saga with her husband Spider Robinson. To my knowledge, her only other piece of writing was ‘Serendipity: Do, Some Thoughts About Collaborative Writing‘ which was published in the MagiCon Program. (Died 2010.)
  • Born March 30, 1950 Robbie Coltrane. I first saw him playing Dr. Eddie “Fitz” Fitzgerald on Cracker way back in the Ninties. Not genre, but an amazing role none-the-less. He was Valentin Dmitrovich Zhukovsky in GoldenEye and The World Is Not Enough, with a much less prominent role as a man at an airfield in Flash Gordon being his first genre role. Being Rubeus Hagrid in the Potter franchise was his longest running genre gig. He’s also voiced both Mr. Hyde in the Van Helsing film and Gregory, a mouse, in The Tale of Despereaux film. (Died 2022.)
  • Born March 30, 1965 Maurice LaMarche, 58. Voice actor primarily for such roles as Pinky and The Brain (both of which Stross makes use of in The Laundry series) with Pinky modeled off Orson Welles, near as I can tell the entire cast of Futurama, the villain Sylar on Heroes, the voice of Orson Welles in Ed Wood, a less serious Pepé Le Pew in Space Jam, and, though maybe not genre, he’s voiced  Kellogg’s Froot Loops spokesbird Toucan Sam and  the animated Willy Wonka character in Nestlé’s Willy Wonka Candy Company commercials.

(10) COMICS SECTION.

  • Sheldon shows that the Vanishing Cabinet from Harry Potter may have had other uses of interest to Valdemort.
  • Sheldon, again, depicts Pippin explaining so clearly and simply why it’s time for another meal that even a future King should be able to understand.
  • Order of the Stick has a magic trap that makes it a bit difficult to determine when the trap has been tripped. 

(11) CAT CHAT. Did we do this before? Well, if so, let’s do it again. CatGPT. It seems to be a one-joke idea, so I won’t excerpt the answer I received to my question “What makes a good social justice credential?”

(12) MASSACRE IN THE EXECUTIVE SUITE. With great power comes sudden unemployment.“Marvel Entertainment Chairman Ike Perlmutter Out at Disney” reports Yahoo! and so are some other top Marvel brass.

Isaac “Ike” Perlmutter, chairman of Marvel Entertainment, has been laid off at Disney. Marvel Entertainment will be folded into the larger Disney business units, a Disney spokesperson confirmed.

The move comes as Disney looks to eliminate 7,000 jobs in multiple rounds of layoffs that kicked off this week, in what CEO Bob Iger calls part of a “strategic realignment.”

Rob Grosser, a longtime third-party Marvel security consultant who is also considered to be Perlmutter’s fixer, is also out, according to two insiders with knowledge of the situation. In addition, Disney has terminated the employment of Rob Steffens, who served as co-president of Marvel Entertainment, and John Turitzin, who held the position of chief counsel for the same division….

(13) KICKED OUT THE DOOR TO THE REAL WORLD. Another casualty of cutbacks is Disney’s metaverse division. TechCrunch has the story: “Disney cuts metaverse division as part of broader restructuring”.

…The metaverse division is headed by Mike White, who was promoted to the role from SVP of consumer experiences and platforms in February 2022 and charged with getting Disney deeper into the web3 space. The unit aimed to find ways to tell more interactive stories in immersive formats using Disney’s extensive library of intellectual property, according to WSJ. Aside from the Disney we all know and love, that extensive library includes Pixar, Marvel and all of the Star Wars movies and shows.

All 50 or so members of the team have lost their jobs, sources told WSJ. White will remain at the company, but it’s not clear in what capacity….

(14) WJW INTERVIEW. A 90-minute video interview with Walter Jon Williams has been posted on Tubi by the program “About the Authors TV”. The Q&A is conducted by author and biographer Jake Brown.

Williams posted the link along with a self-deprecating comment: “I’ve viewed only a few minutes of the interview, enough to be amused by the way Zoom’s filters kept making parts of my anatomy appear and disappear. If you’re looking for inadvertent hilarity, or possibly an epileptic seizure, this is the place for you!”

(15) RAISING THE BAR. “Man proposes to girlfriend using a personal version of ‘Everything Everywhere’ in viral TikTok” at NBC News. The TikTok video can be viewed at the link.

A wedding proposal in a movie theater went viral on TikTok for a creator’s rendition of A24’s “Everything Everywhere All at Once,” and viewers say they’re in awe of the effort.

“I rented out a theater room, did some photoshop, brought her inside, edited a fake video with trailers in the beginning,” TikTok user Daniel Le, who goes by @danyo_le, wrote.

The TikTok, which garnered over 2 million views and included a film Le named “Anniething Anniewhere All at Once” after his girlfriend, showed clips from the acclaimed film and parody versions edited in by Le…. 

(16) JEOPARDY! Andrew Porter did not touch that dial while contestant flailed on tonight’s episode of Jeopardy!

Category: Quoth the title

Answer: Philip Pullman quoted Milton, “Unless the Almighty Maker them ordain” these “to create more worlds”

Wrong questions: “What are men?” and “What are children of men?”

Correct question: “What is ‘His Dark Materials’?”

Answer: The title of this “Hainting” Noel Coward comedy comes from Shelley’s “To a Skylark”

No one could ask, “Shelley wrote, ‘Hail to thee, “Blithe Spirit’.”

(17) OCTOTHORPE. The eightieth episode of the Octothorpe podcast, “Four Constituent Blobs”, is now up!

John Coxon is jetlagged, Alison Scott is working, and Liz Batty is under pressure. We get excited about the upcoming Eastercon, barely even mention Chengdu at all, talk a bit about science fiction, and round it all out with Gaming Corner, sponsored by Mark Plummer. Art by the fabulous Sue Mason.

[Thanks to Cat Eldridge, Mike Kennedy, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Dann, Joey Eschrich, Stephen Granade, John King Tarpinian, Chris Barkley, Andrew Porter, and Michael Toman, for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Cat Eldridge.]

2021 Bob Clampett Humanitarian Award

Bob Clampett portrait by Milton Caniff

Mike and Christine Mignola are the 2021 recipients of the Bob Clampett Humanitarian Award Comic-Con International announced on June 8. The official presentation will be part of the Will Eisner Comic Industry Awards Ceremony on July 25. Bob Clampett’s daughter, Ruth Clampett, will make the presentation.

The Mignolas have been selected for their fundraising contributions to Chef José Andrés’ World Central Kitchen. Online auction sales of Mike’s sketches of characters from popular culture have raised over $420,000 for the charity. In addition, Dark Horse has published a collection of the sketches, Mike Mignola: The Quarantine Sketchbook, which is expected to increase the overall charity contribution to half a million dollars.

Comics writer/artist Mike Mignola is best known as the creator of the Hellboy series of comics and its spinoffs, including B.P.R.D., Lobster Johnson, and Abe Sapien. From April to December 2020, Mignola auctioned his sketches of such characters as Kermit the Frog, the Jolly Green Giant, and Astro Boy as well as DC and Marvel superheroes and villains and his own characters.

The Mignolas’ chosen charity, World Central Kitchen, was founded in 2010 by Chef José Andrés. WCK uses the power of food to nourish communities and strengthen economies in times of crisis and beyond. It has created a new model for disaster response through its work helping devastated communities recover and establish resilient food systems. WCK has served more than 50 million fresh meals to people affected by natural disasters and other crises around the world in countries including The Bahamas, Indonesia, Lebanon, Mozambique, Venezuela, and the United States.

Comic-Con’s Humanitarian Award is given in the name of famed animator Bob Clampett, who created the TV series Beany and Cecil, designed such popular characters as Porky Pig and Tweety Bird, and directed 84 classic Warner Brothers cartoons. Clampett was a regular guest a Comic-Con in the 1970s and early 1980s. After his death in 1984, the award was created to honor those people in comics and the popular arts who have worked to help others. Each year’s recipients are chosen by the Comic-Con committee.

2019 Harvey Awards

The winners of the Harvey Awards, honoring the life and work of comics creator Harvey Kurtzman,(1924-1993), cartoonist, writer, editor and founder of Mad Magazine, were announced October 4.  

The awards were voted on by eligible industry professionals including creators, in-house professionals, librarians, and retailers. The awards are presented under the auspices of New York Comic-Con.

Book of the Year

  • Hey Kiddo by Jarrett J. Krosoczka (Scholastic Graphix)

Digital Book of the Year

Best Children’s or Young Adult Book

  • Laura Dean Keeps Breaking Up With Me by Mariko Tamaki and Rosemary Valero-O’Connell (First Second)

Best Manga

  • My Hero Academia by Kohei Horikoshi (VIZ Media)

Best European Book

  • Waves by Ingrid Chabbert and Carole Maurel (Archaia)

Best Comics Adaptation Award

  • Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse by Columbia Pictures and Sony Pictures Animation, based on Spider-Man (Marvel Comics)

In addition, the Harvey Awards honored the 2019 inductees to their Hall of Fame and a Comics Industry Pioneer.

Hall of Fame

The seven recipients include two active creators, and five posthumous honorees who were Harvey Kurtzman’s core 1950’s MAD Magazine collaborators.

  • Mike Mignola (Hellboy)
  • Alison Bechdel (Fun Home), and
  • Will Elder
  • Jack Davis
  • John Severin
  • Marie Severin
  • Ben Oda

Comics Industry Pioneer

  • Maggie Thompson, on behalf of her work with her late husband Don Thompson as longtime editors of the Comics Buyer’s Guide.

[Thanks to Mike Kennedy for an assist.]

Seven Added to Harvey Awards
Hall of Fame

The Harvey Awards revealed the 2019 inductees to their Hall of Fame ahead of the annual event at New York Comic Con. The seven recipients include two active creators, and five posthumous honorees who were Harvey Kurtzman’s core 1950’s MAD Magazine collaborators.

  • Mike Mignola (Hellboy)
  • Alison Bechdel (Fun Home), and
  • Will Elder
  • Jack Davis
  • John Severin
  • Marie Severin
  • Ben Oda

Mike Mignola, began working as a comic book artist in 1982, working for both Marvel and DC Comics before creating Hellboy, published by Dark Horse Comics in 1994. Mike’s comics and graphic novels have earned numerous awards and are published in a great many countries. He said about his latest honor:

My very first comic industry award was the 1994 Harvey Award for Best Artist on Hellboy. I never expected that award, but I took it as a sign that I might actually be on to something. It is a great honor to be inducted into the Harvey Awards Hall of Fame—something I certainly never could have imagined. And I’ll take it as proof that I haven’t embarrassed myself too badly over the last 25 years.

Alison Bechdel, known for her pioneering work on the strip Dykes to Watch Out For, which ran from 1983 to 2008, is also the author of two graphic memoirs, Fun Home and Are You My Mother? The stage-musical adaptation of Fun Home opened on Broadway in 2015 and received five Tony Awards, including Best Musical. She is currently working on a graphic memoir called The Secret to Superhuman Strength. She acknowledged the award:

As someone who existed for so long on the crumbling newsprint margins, it’s surprising and a bit unsettling to receive this recognition from the corridors of comics power. Where did I go wrong? No, just kidding. If you had told me, when I was reading Kurtzman parodies in my playpen, that I would one day be inducted into the Harvey Hall of Fame, I would have plotzed. I cannot imagine a greater nor a more furshlugginer honor.

They also will recognize the historic contributions by a co-editor of one of the field’s leading publications:

Comics Industry Pioneer

  • Maggie Thompson, on behalf of her work with her late husband Don Thompson as longtime editors of the Comics Buyer’s Guide.

The inductees will be recognized at the 31st annual Harvey Awards ceremony at Friday, October 4 in New York.

Pixel Scroll 1/29/18 The Man Who Scrolled The Moon

(1) PAIN FOR PLEASURE. The sheer, greedy click-seeking that fuels this kerfuffle is being paid for by the pain of the targeted family, as Foz Meadows makes clear in “A Personal Note”.

And it is an insult, regardless of Freer’s claims that he’s only saying what anyone might think. It is also uniquely hurtful – and again, I say this with no expectation that Freer himself cares for my feelings. Manifestly, he does not, and will doubtless rejoice to know that he’s upset me. Nonetheless, I am upset. I’ve tried to pretend that I’m not, but I am, and having admitted as much to myself, I feel no shame in admitting it here. Before all this, I’d never heard of Freer at all, and while I’m aware that the public nature of my life online means that I am, in a sense, accessible to strangers, there’s a great deal of difference between having someone object to my writing, and having them construct malicious falsehoods about my personal life.

In the past few days, at least one person has asked me if I’m really sure that Toby isn’t Camestros; that maybe he’s doing it all behind my back. Freer, Torgersen and Antonelli have laughed at the idea that, if Camestros isn’t Toby, then surely I must be grateful for their alerting me to the presence of a stalker-impersonator – as though they aren’t the ones rifling through my marriage in pursuit of a link that is not, was never, there.

(2) HELLBOY’S DRAWER. The Society of Illustrators presents “THE ART OF MIKE MIGNOLA: Hellboy and Other Curious Objects”, a selection of works from the comic artist and writer behind the award-winning Dark Horse Comics series Hellboy, from March 6 – April 21.

In this exhibit, the Society will feature highlights from his fan-favorite Hellboy series, as well as other spin-off titles including work from B.P.R.D., Abe Sapien, and Witchfinder. The Society is also pleased to feature samples from his award-winning comic books including the Eisner Award winner The Amazing Screw-On Head (Dark Horse Comics) as well as Baltimore, or, The Steadfast Tin Soldier and the Vampire (Bantam Spectra), co-written by best-selling author Christopher Golden. This special exhibit will include an array of comic pages, covers, and rarely seen original paintings by Mignola.

An opening reception for the exhibit will take place on Tuesday, March 6th, beginning at 6:30PM.

In addition, Mike Mignola will be a Guest of Honor at this year’s MoCCA Arts Festival. This 2-day multimedia event, Manhattan’s largest independent comics, cartoon and animation festival, draws over 8,000 attendees each year. Held on April 7 and 8, the Fest will include speaking engagements, book signings, and parties. Further scheduling for Mignola’s appearances including a panel talk and book signings will be available in future announcements.

(3) CONDENSED CREAM OF 2016. If they’re short stories, does that mean they don’t fluff up your Mt. TBR pile quite as much as book recommendations? Greg Hullender notes Rocket Stack Rank is continuing its 2016 catch-up posts:

Here’s our next-to-last article about 2016 short fiction. This one focuses on which publications were most likely to run stories that earned recommendations/awards/spots in year’s-best anthologies.

“2016 Best SF/F Short Fiction Publications”

The two tables of publication coverage are actually a very compact representation of almost all the raw data for this and the final article, which will focus on the sources of recommendations (i.e. awards, reviewers, and year’s-best anthologies).

(4) EXPANDED UNIVERSE: At Featured Futures, Jason recaps the first month of the new year, discussing some new zines and some (old) news in the January Summation.

Covering January short fiction was exciting (and busy), as Featured Futures added Analog, Ares, Asimov’s, Cosmic Roots and Eldritch Shores, F&SF, and Galaxy’s Edge to its roster, resulting in significantly more stories read than usual (86 of 455K words) and a similarly larger than usual recommended/mentioned list. In webzine news, and speaking of Galaxy’s Edge, I was going to add coverage of it as a print zine but, coincidentally, it returned to webzine status, once again making all its fiction available on the web. The categorized “List of Professional SF/F/H Magazines” (which doubles as a list of the markets Featured Futures covers as well as being a sort of index of reviews) has been updated to reflect this.

(5) TOWARDS CANONISATION. The advocates of sainthood for J.R.R. Tolkien are calling for support of preliminary events, as well as the planned Tolkien Canonisaton Conference:

Please pray for the following intentions and dates for the upcoming Tolkien year in the lead up to the Tolkien Canonisation Conference in September 2018 in Oxford:…

  • Saturday 17th March – St Patrick’s Day Ceilidh Fundraiser 2018: raising funds for the Tolkien Canonisation Conference.
  • Friday April 13th – (provisional) Lecture on the Theology of the Body and J. R. R. Tolkien in London.
  • Saturday 1st September – Sunday 2nd September 2018 : Tolkien Canonisation Conference in Oxford.

(6) CHANGE AT TOR BOOKS. Publisher’s Lunch reports —

Liz Gorinsky is leaving her position as a senior editor at Tor Books on February 2. She will continue to handle some of her authors as a consulting editor at Tor and edit short fiction at Tor.com.

Gorinsky tweeted –

Catherynne M. Valente added –

(7) ROBERTS’ RECS. A thread by Adam Roberts is aimed at BSFA Award nominators but is interesting for everyone. Starts here —

(8) STORY SCRAPING AT LOCUS. Locus Online miraculously noticed the 2018 Darrell Award finalists today, one day after File 770 reported the story. Since Mark Kelly stopped doing the news posting there, Locus Online has become especially active scraping stories from File 770 without acknowledging where they got them. A little “hat tip” would be appropriate and appreciated.

(9) SUPPORT YOUR LOCAL PLANET. It’s time for any book blogger, podcaster, or “booktuber” to nominate for the 2017 Planetary Awards. Click on the link to learn how to participate. The nomination deadline is February 14th, 11:59PM US Pacific time.

The Puppy-influenced Planetary Awards were given for the first time two years ago.  The inaugural awards for 2015 work were posted in May 2016 –

  • Best Novel: Torchship by Karl Gallagher
  • Best Short Story: “Something in the Water” by C.S. Boyack

The awards for 2016 work were posted in May 2017 –

  • Best Novel: Swan Knight’s Son by John C. Wright
  • Best Short Story: “Athan and the Priestess” by Schuyler Hernstrom

The awards are administered by the Planetary Defense Commander, whose identity is findable with a little effort, but there’s no harm in having a handle, right Lou Antonelli? (Wait, maybe I should ask somebody else…)

(10) MORE ON MORT. The Washington Post’s Michael Cavna has an appreciation of the late Mort Walker, who he interviewed in 2010 and 2013: “‘Beetle Bailey’ creator Mort Walker, 94, created laughter ‘nearly every day of his life’”.  Cavna notes that Walker was around so long that Beetle Bailey was personally greenlit by William Randolph Hearst, and notes Walker’s efforts to create the Reuben Award and bring in more women into the cartooning field.

He was drafted into the Army Air Corps during World War II, but within the world of Walker, even that sometimes turned comically absurd. He spent time at Camp Crowder, which he said inspired “Beetle Bailey’s” Camp Swampy. “I signed up to go into psychiatry,” he told me in 2013 of the Army’s specialized training program, “and I ended up studying engineering. It was typical Army reasoning.”

(11) TODAY IN HISTORY

  • January 29, 1845 — Edgar Allan Poe’s poem “The Raven,” is published on this day in the New York Evening Mirror.
  • January 29, 1964 Dr. Strangelove: Or How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Bomb premiered.

(12) VOTING BOOTH ABOUT TO OPEN. The official Hugo Awards website announced “2018/1943 Hugo Award Nominations Opening Soon”. (Date not specified.)

Worldcon 76 San Jose advises us that they will open nominations for the 2018 Hugo Awards and 1943 Retrospective Hugo Awards within the next few days. They have been working with Worldcon 75 Helsinki and Worldcon 2018 Dublin to coordinate the combined membership information from all three Worldcons, and to do so within the limitations of the three countries’ data-protection laws. When testing of the online nomination form is complete, Worldcon 76 San Jose will release it on the Worldcon 76 web site and make an announcement. We’ll also announce the start of nominations here on The Hugo Awards web site. Paper ballots will also be distributed with Worldcon 76 Progress Report 2, which we understand is going to press in a few days and should mail to members of Worldcon 76 in February. Besides the online form, a PDF of the paper form will be available from Worldcon 76’s web site when it is ready for release.

(13) FAN HUGOS. Rich Horton, in “First Hugo Recommendations: Dramatic Presentation, Fan Writer, Fanzine”, is among the first to blog about prospective 2018 fan Hugo nominees. (Horton also covers the Dramatic Presentation – Long Form category.)

Best Fan Writer

The two fan writers I want to promote the most this year are a couple I mentioned last year as well: John Boston and John O’Neill. John Boston’s most publicly available recent stuff is at Galactic Journey, where he reviews issues of Amazing from 55 years ago, month by month. (It will be noted, perhaps, that I also review issues of Amazing from the same period, at Black Gate.) John’s work there is linked by this tag: http://galacticjourney.org/tag/john-boston/.

As for John O’Neill, of course his central contribution is as editor of Black Gate, for which he writes a great deal of the content, often about “vintage” books he’s found on Ebay or at conventions, and also about upcoming fantasy books….

Best Fanzine

As I did last year, I plan to nominate Black Gate, Galactic Journey, and Rocket Stack Rank for the Best Fanzine Hugo. I’m particularly partial in this context to Black Gate, primarily of course because I have been a contributor since the print days (issue #2 and most of the subsequent issues)….

I heartily agree with Horton’s interest in finding other fan publications than File 770 to put up for the Hugo (though he does have kind words for this site). It seemed a good opportunity to say so here.

(14) REAR VIEW MIRROR. Meanwhile, DB makes a start on the “Retro-Hugos for 1942” with a canvass of his favorite writers.

…Now for Lord Dunsany. In 1942 Dunsany published five stories, all very brief, and about a dozen poems, mostly in Punch. Most of the poems are hopeful gazes towards military victory, and a couple of them introduce the allegorical figure of Liberty, so they could technically be considered fantasy.

None of the stories are SF or fantasy, though the only one of them that’s worth reading could possibly squeeze in by courtesy. It’s a Jorkens story reprinted in The Fourth Book of Jorkens (1947), where it’s the shortest piece in the book. Jorkens is Dunsany’s long-running clubman character who’s prone to making outrageous claims or telling absurd stories which nobody can disprove. In this brief tale, “On the Other Side of the Sun,” that topic comes up – “I wonder what’s there?” – and Jorkens astonishes all by stating, “I have been there.” His regular patsy, Terbut, demands “When, may I ask?” At Jorkens’ reply, “Six months ago,” any red-blooded SF reader should know instantly how the story is going to end, but the penny doesn’t drop for the hapless Terbut until after he makes a large bet that Jorkens is lying…

(15) RETRO FANZINES. While Fanac.org marshals digital copies of 1942 fanzines in support of Worldcon 76’s Retro-Hugos, Robert Lichtman and Bill Burns have tracked down additional fanzines published in 1942 by Bob Tucker available elsewhere online – specifically, at the Internet Archive, which has scans of Tucker’s zine Le Zombie. Four 1942 are issues listed.

(16) SAVED FROM THE CUTTING ROOM FLOOR. WIRED Magazine’s “Cantina Talk: Finally, a Complete Guide to All of The Last Jedi’s Easter Eggs” not only covers the story in the title, but this even more compelling news —

The Last Jedi Adds Some More Material (But Not Onscreen)

The Source: An official announcement from Lucasfilm

Probability of Accuracy: It’s totally legit.

The Real Deal: So apparently, there was more to Star Wars: The Last Jedi than appeared onscreen—but fortunately for fans, it’s not going to remain a secret. Writer/director Rian Johnson is working with novelist Jason Fry to create all-new scenes for the book’s forthcoming novelization, as well as rescuing deleted scenes from the cutting room floor, to firmly place them in the canon. Amongst the things audiences didn’t see in theaters but will read about: Han Solo’s funeral. Prepare your tissues for March 6; you’ll get to read all about it then.

(17) FUTURE IMAGINED. BBC interview with 2016 Hugo winner — “Hao Jingfang: China’s award-winning science fiction writer” (video).

She tells the BBC a lot of her stories originate from thought experiments, and her latest novel imagines “a dark possibility for the future” where robots have replaced human’s jobs.

(18) THE MARKETPLACE OF THE INTERNET.  Kim Huett sent a link to “Boring Talks #02 – Book Pricing Algorithms” with a comment: “Those of you into buying books online (assuming some of you indeed are) might like to listen to the following cautionary tale brought to us by BBC radio. It will confirm everything you ever suspected about the practise…”

A book for $1.7 million? To a computer, it made sense. Sort of. Tracy King explains.

(19) WOULD YOU LIKE TO PLAY A GAME? If you play poker you may be interested in a new infographic, “Poker & AI: The Raise of Machines Against Humans”. It details insights and research about the evolution of poker-playing artificial intelligence.

But what about the poker industry? Surely there must be an AI capable of playing poker at high levels. The answer is yes, there is. This infographic will show you how the poker’s AI developed throughout the history, as well as where it is now. You can find a lot of interesting stats and information in this infographic, but if you are interested in reading more about poker related stuff, visit our website.

(20) WHERE THE BOYS ARE. This belongs in Connie Willis’ next satirical speech about things science fiction predicted (none of which ever were) — “U.S. soldiers are revealing sensitive and dangerous information by jogging”.

Strava says it has 27 million users around the world, including people who own widely available fitness devices such as Fitbit and Jawbone, as well as people who directly subscribe to its mobile app. The map is not live — rather, it shows a pattern of accumulated activity between 2015 and September 2017.

Most parts of the United States and Europe, where millions of people use some type of fitness tracker, show up on the map as blazes of light because there is so much activity.

In war zones and deserts in countries such as Iraq and Syria, the heat map becomes almost entirely dark — except for scattered pinpricks of activity. Zooming in on those areas brings into focus the locations and outlines of known U.S. military bases, as well as of other unknown and potentially sensitive sites — presumably because American soldiers and other personnel are using fitness trackers as they move around.

Not just men, of course, but it made a good headline.

(21) OH NOES! Just think what a career he might have had, if he hadn’t been muted by the Guild!

(22) DISCOVERY SPOILERS. There, that should be enough warning about — “‘Star Trek: Discovery’: Jason Isaacs Apologizes for Lying, Admits to Feeling Like a ‘Drunken Hippo’ When Fighting Michelle Yeoh”.

“I’ve done nothing but lie since September,” he said to IndieWire. “I knew, perfectly well, everything before we started. And that meant that every interview was a lie and every conversation I had with my friends… Actually, with quite a lot of my family, was a lie. Anybody on the street was a lie. Anybody in Toronto. So I apologize for all that, but that was the only way to tell the story well.”

(23) PEJORATIVE’S PROGRESS. Inverse’s Ryan Britt looks back on “How the Word “Terran” Became a Sci-Fi Slur”.

In the Mirror Universe of Star Trek, humans aren’t called humans. They’re called “Terrans.” The word “Terran” comes from the root Latin word “terra,” meaning “dry earth,” which is where we get the phrase “terra firma.” But the word “Terran” has been prevalent in science fiction long before it cropped up again on Star Trek: Discovery in 2018. As it turns out “Terran” has a long history of being a dirty word for “human.”

(24) BLACK PANTHER. Marvel Studios’ Black Panther – “Let’s Go” TV spot.

[Thanks to JJ, Chip Hitchcock, Andrew Porter, John King Tarpinian, Cat Eldridge, Kim Huett, Martin Morse Wooster, Standback, Jason, and Carl Slaughter for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Xtifr.]