Pixel Scroll 2/3/24 It’s Hot As Hell In Pixeldelphia

(1) DRAGON CON BANS AI ART FROM SALES AREAS. The Dragon Con 2024 Art Show Application Form includes this ban:

No AI artwork of any kind will be allowed to be sold or distributed in the Dragon Con Art Show, Comic and Pop Artist Alley, or Vendor Halls. Failure to comply with our AI Policy can lead to immediate removal from show floor.

(2) VOICE FOR HUGO CHANGE. Mary Robinette Kowal shared her knowledge of how Hugos are administered in a Bluesky thread that starts here. She contrasts how the disqualification of her audiobook novella “Lady Astronaut of Mars” was handled by the 2013 administrator versus the way those ruled “ineligible” have been treated by the 2023 administrator.

After providing more background history, Kowal makes a call for change in Hugo oversight.

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

A couple of Chinese language videos about the Hugos

Whilst looking for coverage of the Hugos on the Chinese internet, I came across this Bilibili video, posted Wednesday 31st.  It’s a compilation of 5 news items from a channel that I think I maybe submitted an item for last year.  The final item – from around 10:20 in – is entitled 

  • 雨锅奖余波 (yuguo jiang yubo – Hugo Award Aftermath).  

I don’t think there’s anything new there to anyone who’s been following File 770 coverage, but this is one of the few mainland China items I’ve seen on the subject, outside of user comments on various social media platforms, that – as previously covered – have had a tendency to disappear.

As I type this 3 or 4 days after the video was uploaded, it has received just over a quarter-of-a-million views.  I’ve got a local backup copy just in case it does belatedly vanish.

The below screenshots and Google Translated renditions thereof are included primarily for the bullet comments from users.  Filers might like to note that the video also includes a (machine translated?) screenshot of a Paul Weimer blog post.

A day earlier, I came across this video from a YouTuber in Taiwan, which was posted 4 days ago, and has just over 200 thousand views as I type this.  It’s another explainer for mainstream audiences, so again there won’t be much new to people who’ve been reading this site.

The video is edited in a snappy way, and very memey.  

(The place where I came across a link to this video is also worthy of a write-up, but that will have to wait for another day.)

(4) SAWYER’S STATEMENT ABOUT TIANWEN PROJECT. Robert J. Sawyer, a Chengdu Worldcon guest of honor, responded to discussion about the Tianwen Project and his participation in a launch ceremony at the Worldcon in a Facebook comment this week.

Elsewhere he answered some other questions about his guest of honor appearance.

And because people have been known to carelessly treat things others say in comments here as if they are my personal opinion (like Robert J. Sawyer, who recently blocked me in social media), I am going to quote what I wrote to a friend in October 2022 after passage at Chicon 8 of a resolution calling for Sergey Lukyanenko to be disinvited from the Chengdu Worldcon:

…Continuing a line of discussion I raised on FB — I want to be clear that I’m not demanding any action from Robert J Sawyer. If he volunteersto make a public statement, obviously I would run it. Otherwise, it’s not his fault that the other two GoHs are problematic. So while I expect at some point the Twitterati will try and railroad him because he’s the only English-speaker and the only GoH who answers his social media, I personally don’t think Sawyer has to take responsibility for the malfeasance of the committee or their refusal to clean up their GoH slate….

Which it seems to me is quite different from what some of his interrogators have had to say here and on FB. (And the malfeasance I had in mind in October 2022 was that the site selection voters who by then had been members for 10 months had yet to hear from the committee, people who wanted to buy new memberships complained that they couldn’t, and that the new Chengdu website had launched without any statement about who their Guests of Honor were, even though the names had been announced immediately after they won the bid.)

(5) NOT IF IT PUTS HIM OUT OF WORK. “Star Trek’s William Shatner Was Asked About His Stance On A.I. Replacing Him, And He Had An Interesting Response” reports Comicbook.com.

…Shatner recently spoke with Comicbook.com ahead of his upcoming appearance at Orlando’s MegaCon, and was asked about the possibility of his James T. Kirk one day being brought back to life, as it were, via A.I. Never one to shy away from hard questions, the actor gave his honest take on the situation, and how he’d respond to it depending on the situation:

“It’s an interesting question. The strike was all about getting permission to do that. And so if I’m alive, I don’t want A.I. to do that, but if I’m dead and they ask my family and they’re going to pay my family very well to sound like me, I would advise them to say yes.”

William Shatner isn’t so okay with allowing A.I. to take over his character or his own persona if he’s still alive, which is understandable. But if he’s no longer around to pass judgment, he’ll leave it to his family to decide. If a fair price is determined, apparently, he’s giving the green light to allow his likeness to be used for Captain Kirk.

(6) JENNELL JAQUAYS (1956-2024). Artist and game designer Jennell Jaquays, who created scenarios with myriad paths for Dungeons & Dragons, levels for video games like Quake II, and art that invited novices to try role-playing games, died January 10. The New York Times obituary is here.

… Over nearly five decades, Ms. Jaquays illustrated the covers and interiors of settings, modules, books and magazines for D&D and other role-playing games. In one of them, a red dragon roars while perched in front of a snow-capped mountain; in another, a nautiluslike spaceship floats above an alien world; in a third, two Ghostbusters prepare to tangle with a field of animated jack-o’-lanterns.

Ms. Jaquays also crafted scenarios of her own. Two of her earliest D&D modules, “Dark Tower” and “The Caverns of Thracia,” are renowned for their pathbreaking designs.

In the early days of D&D, many scenarios were fairly linear — enter dungeon, defeat monsters and plunder, assuming your characters survive.

Ms. Jaquays’s adventures were not so straightforward. They often contained several possible entrances and multiple avenues, some of them secret, by which players could accomplish their goals.

“The result is a fantastically complex and dynamic environment: You can literally run dozens of groups through this module and every one of them will have a fresh and unique experience,” the game designer Justin Alexander wrote about dungeons like Ms. Jaquays’s on his website in 2010…

(7) CHRISTOPHER PRIEST (1943-2024.) British sf writer Christopher Priest died February 2 at the age of 80. (Not to be confused with the comics author with the same name.) His novel The Prestige was a World Fantasy Award winner in 1996. His book The Islanders won the John W. Campbell Memorial Award and a British SF Association Award in 2012. Four other works also received BSFA Awards, Inverted World (1975), “Palely Loitering” (1980), The Extremes (1999), and The Separation (2003), the latter winning the Arthur C. Clarke Award as well. He was a Worldcon guest of honor in 1995, and received the Prix Utopia life achievement award in 2001.

In the late Eighties Priest also took time to pen The Last Deadloss Visions “an enquiry into the non-appearance of Harlan Ellison’s The Last Dangerous Visions”, which he called “a polemical pamphlet, written to express a point of view and to persuade others of that view.”

The British Council website’s “Christopher Priest – Literature” follows a long biography with a critical appreciation of his work. It says in part:

Christopher Priest was born in Cheadle, Greater Manchester, in 1943…. His first novel, Indoctrinaire, was published by Faber and Faber in 1970, beginning a stretch of two decades during which Priest’s novels appeared almost biennially. 1972’s Fugue for a Darkening Island saw Priest nominated for the John W. Campbell Award. His third novel, The Inverted World (1974), won Priest the first of his four BSFA (British Science Fiction Association) Awards. In the mid-1970s he was an associate editor of the UK semi-academic journal Foundations, which provided a distinctive platform for the criticism and popularization of science fiction at a time when the genre was not well established in the academy.

…Priest 1995’s epistolary novel The Prestige was a popular breakthrough. Winner of the World Fantasy Award and James Tait Black Memorial Prize, and nominated for the BSFA and Arthur C. Clarke awards, it was adapted into a film directed by Christopher Nolan, released to acclaim in 2006….

As time went by Priest generally was less interested in playing the role of elder statesman his accumulated honors had earned for him than he was in continuing to dish out the kind of fiery opinions he’d shared throughout his career. Consider that in 2012, before going on to win two major awards later in the year, he blasted the Arthur C. Clarke shortlist, saying he was dismayed that several quality books didn’t make the list, with sketches of the defects of the actual choices. (Although not all of the authors took it hard, judging from Charles Stross’ reaction, which was to issue a commemorative t-shirt.)

He is survived by his wife, Nina Allan, who followed her announcement of his passing with a chosen poem.

Christopher Priest at the 1980 Worldcon, NoreasCon Two. Photo by and (c) Andrew Porter.

(8) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

Born February 3, 1970 Warwick Davis, 54. This is not by any means a complete listing of everything he’s done. Just remember that before lodging the complaint that I forgot to include something. I didn’t forget. I just didn’t include it.

Warwick Davis is much loved for being the title character in Willow and really not loved for being Lubdan the Leprechaun in, errr, the Leprechaun film series. Look you really don’t need to see the latter even if you’re seriously drunk on cheap fake Irish beer on St. Patrick’s Day. They made him a lot on money but they’re really awful. Willow on the other hand is sublime. It brings a tear to my eye when I see it. 

He was the physical aspect of Wicket W. Warrick in Return of the JediCaravan of Courage: An Ewok AdventureEwoks: The Battle for Endor and Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker though the character was voiced by Darryl Henriques. 

Warwick Davis in 2007.

He also played a lot of other Star Wars characters. The Phantom Menace saw him play Wald, Weazel, and Yoda in the walking shots, and a street trader on Tatooine; The Force Awakens a Wollivan (and no, I don’t recognize all of these characters); A Star Wars Story saw him being Weeteef Cyubee;  then Star Wars: The Last Jedi got the sneeze-worthy character names of Wodibin / Kedpin Shoklop, the latter in a deleted scene. Think I’m done? No. Next is Solo: A Star Wars Story where he’s Weazel / DD-BD / W1-EG5 / WG-22 and finally there’s The Rise of Skywalker where he’s Wicket W. Warrick for the final time plus Wizzich Mozzer again. Whew!

He’s in all five of the Harry Potter films in one or more of three roles — Professor Filius Flitwick, Goblin Bank Teller and Griphook, the latter just as the voice of that character. I’ve only seen the first three films and yes, I’ve loved them deeply even though all I’ve read of the novels was the first hundred pages of the first which I found exquisitely, deeply boring. God, I found her a bad writer.

Now here’s one that I really didn’t expect. He was in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy as Marvin the Paranoid Android. (Love the voicing of that character in the BBC radio production!) Again he didn’t voiced the character as that was provided by Alan Rickman. 

He shows up twice in Narnia productions, once as Nikabrik in The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian film, and on the television film Prince Caspian and The Voyage of the Dawn Treader as Reepicheep. Loved those novels. 

Finally he voiced Sniff (Snufkin) in the English language track for the Finnish crown funded animated Moominvalley series. Really great books. The Estate just allowed the likeness of the characters to be commercially used less than a decade ago. Have you seen a Moomin plushie? Oh really cute! I want! 

(9) AND GOOD-BYE TO YOU TOO, OLD RIGHTS-OF-MAN. Bill Coberly asks “Are We All Too Cynical for Star Trek?” in a piece for The Bulwark, a political Substack, about the changing portrayal of Starfleet across the decades. 

…This is not to say that the ’90s shows never delved into the complexity and nuance of this ethos—indeed, playing at the edges of their internal morality was how they derived much of their interest. A number of Starfleet admirals throughout TNG are shown to be venal or corrupt. One of the greatest episodes of Deep Space Nine (1992–99), “In the Pale Moonlight,” is entirely about how, in times of crisis, moral compromise may be necessary, even for Starfleet. But such cases are treated as exceptional, unusual circumstances far beyond the norm; as a rule, Starfleet is good, and the best way to be a good servant of the true and just in the world of Star Trek is by being a good Starfleet officer. How does one be a good Starfleet officer? By doing one’s job, by being a professional, by following one’s duty.

THINGS ARE DIFFERENT IN modern Trek. By “modern Trek” I mean the five major TV shows that have aired since the franchise returned to the small screen in 2017: Discovery (2017–present), Picard (2020–23), Lower Decks (2020–present), Prodigy (2021–present)and Strange New Worlds (2022–present). Starfleet as an institution often plays a partially antagonistic role in each of these shows. By the time of Picard, the titular paragon has quit Starfleet in a huff because it no longer lives up to his principles, and in both seasons one and three it is revealed that Starfleet has been compromised by hostile alien agents and cannot be trusted. The first season of Discovery ends with Starfleet condoning genocide, only to be stopped by our heroic crew; Season 2’s villain was an out-of-control Starfleet AI that threatened all life in the galaxy; and Seasons 3 and 4 keep the crew in near-constant conflict with Starfleet and/or Federation brass. Lower Decks is centered on the adventures of a low-level officer who routinely defies Starfleet regulations to help nearby planets in ways that Starfleet would not condone. Even Strange New Worlds, the most archetypal of the modern shows, emphasizes how unjust some of Starfleet’s rules are: In the first episode of the second season, the crew is forced to steal the Starship Enterprise itself to rescue a comrade in defiance of Starfleet’s orders….

(10) SFF BOOKS ON SALE. [Item by BGrandrath.] Back with another Whatnot commercial. The other day someone posted asking about a good place to buy books this might be the answer… “Over 40 Science Fiction Books | Vintage Book Haul”.

BOB’S Books will be on my nomination list for Best Fancast this year.

(11) ROMANTASY. The Guardian discusses “A genre of swords and soulmates: the rise and rise of ‘romantasy’ novels”.

…It is unclear where the “romantasy” label originated: though Bloomsbury said it coined the term to “identify the genre [Sarah J. Maas] was spearheading”, the term was posted on Urban Dictionary as early as 2008. In any case, its usage has exploded in the last year on social media and in marketing copy for fantasy romance titles.

Romantasy authors are selling well in part because of their huge popularity on social media; Maas’ publisher, Bloomsbury, says that videos with hashtags connected to her books have more than 14bn views on TikTok alone. On “BookTok”, the corner of the platform dedicated to book-related content, fans share their rankings of book series, theories about what might happen in future novels, compilations of favourite quotes and outfits inspired by books.

Such novels are typically set in fantastical worlds, with fairies, dragons, magic, but also feature classic romance plotlines – enemies-to-lovers, soulmates, love triangles. “Romance readers have discovered that romantasy has all the tropes they adore, but set in a world they can escape to and get lost in,” explains Ajebowale Roberts, an editor at HarperCollins.

“The Bachelor meets The Hunger Games” is how Canadian author Nisha J Tuli describes one of her romantasy novels, Trial of the Sun Queen….

(12) BURNSIDE Q&A. [Item by Steven French.] John Burnside is an award-winning poet and author: “John Burnside: ‘My stoner friends were into The Hobbit, but Gormenghast was darker’” in the Guardian.

The book that changed me as a teenager

Mervyn Peake’s Gormenghast series. My stoner friends were into Tolkien’s The Hobbit, but that didn’t interest me. What Peake created was darker, more intricate, at once more sinister and more beautiful than anything else I had read up to that point. At the end, I was left with a powerful impression of the richness of language, of its magical power. As my father would say, “people like us” didn’t become writers, (or musicians, or artists) but Peake made me wonder if writing was maybe worth the risk of honourable failure.

(13) TOP 10 STREAMING SFF FOR JANUARY. JustWatch has shared its rankings of the Top 10 Sci-Fi streaming films and TV series for January 2024.   

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

Pixel Scroll 7/17/23 In Space, HAL Can’t Hear You Telling Him To Open The Pod Bay Door

(1) CULTIVATING HYBRIDS. Paul Kraus’ article on “Hybrid Conventions” begins with a statement of philosophy wrapped in the definitions of major terms. Then Kraus lists what’s needed to make a hybrid convention successful.

When the COVID-19 Pandemic hit, all of the Sci-Fi conventions I volunteer with had to cancel or switch to an online format. Since the Pandemic has stabilized, it is not over, we have just learned more or less how to live with it, conventions have gone back to in-person events. But, we realized that there is a demand for online Sci-Fi convention activities. There are people who cannot attend in-person for a variety of very good reasons, from health and age related to cost and time. There is a market for online Sci-Fi convention activities.

A couple notes on terminology before I go on. Many people refer to these online activities as ‘virtual‘, as in ‘virtual convention’, ‘virtual panel’, ‘virtual attendees’. I realized this is disrespectful to those involved. The people are not ‘virtual’, so they are not ‘virtual attendees’, they are real people who are online or remote attendees. I avoid the use of the term ‘virtual’ for this reason.

The other term I want to define is ‘hybrid‘. I have heard that term used to describe a whole variety of things related to in-person and online activities. In my view a true ‘hybrid activity’, be it a convention, panel discussion, reading, or anything else is an activity with both an in-person component and an online component where the goal is for the experience to be as similar as possible between the in-person and online activity. So a ‘hybrid panel discussion’ would support both in-person panelists as well as online panelists on an equal footing, the audience would also consist of both in-person and online people on an equal footing. Hybrid is not running a couple online tracks of programming at the same time as an in-person convention. Hybrid is not streaming a couple tracks of programming (or events) from an in-person convention. Hybrid is about creating, to the best of our ability, the same experience for people whether they are in-person or online.

You will notice that I use the term ‘activity‘ in many places below where you might think I should be using ‘convention’. I do this on purpose as a convention may be in-person but still have aspects or activities that are hybrid.

Should All Conventions Be Hybrid?

The answer to this an an unequivocal no! There are many different factors that should determine whether a convention should attempt to be hybrid. Beyond the obvious factors of staffing (hybrid does require more staff with different skill sets) there are factors such as cost (can the convention get good enough Internet at their hotel / facility at a cost they can afford) and impact on in-person attendance (will an online offering draw from the in-person attendance and the convention risks missing a hotel block commitment). Each convention is unique and needs to examine their individual situation to decide if they can successfully be hybrid. Some may think they can, and try for a year or two, only to decide they cannot. Others my know themselves well enough to know they cannot do a good job with a hybrid convention. Others may decide to not hold a hybrid activity but to hold, at different times, both an in-person activity as well as an online activity. I expect that a small percentage of SciFi conventions will be able to successful transition to being a hybrid convention. This is OK. Every convention needs to do what they can do well, without overtaxing staff….

(2) KGB PHOTOS. Ellen Datlow has posted her photos from the July 12 Fantastic Fiction at KGB Reading Series where Farah Rose Smith and Michael Cisco were the guests.

(3) SHORE THING. “Mystery object: Australian police warn public away from huge cylinder found washed up on WA beach”. The Guardian has educated guesses about what it is.

A giant metal cylinder has washed up on a beach in Western Australia, baffling locals and posing a mystery to police.

The huge copper-coloured cylinder was reported to police by local residents on Sunday, having washed up on a beach near Jurien Bay sometime earlier.

The cylinder looks to be substantially damaged and was found leaning on its side….

…Dr Alice Gorman, an expert in the field of space archaeology, said she believes the object is a fuel cylinder that came from the the third stage of India’s polar satellite launch vehicle rocket, as many have suggested on social media.

“It’s surprising because it’s such a large fragment,” she said. “And it makes you wonder what was going on at the time, if maybe a marine weather event dislodged it and brought it ashore….

(4) NERDS IN TRANSLATION. 2023 Best Fanzine finalist Nerds of a Feather has launched a GoFundMe appeal to pay for translating their Hugo Voter Packet selections into Chinese, understandably titled “Help translate Nerds of a Feather into Chinese!” (It’s already online, in English, here.)  Co-editor Joe Sherry says:

We’re hoping to be able translate as much of our voter’s packet into Chinese but apparently hiring a translator costs money (and time) and we’ve got a short novel worth of content in our voter’s packet.

Every dollar raised goes to translation with the goal of having the packet done by the beginning of September. We have a translator lined up to start early August. If for some reason we raise more than we need, we’ll donate the extra to charity.

(5) MAUREEN KINCAID SPELLER COLLECTION. A Traveller in Time: The Critical Practice of Maureen Kincaid Speller edited by Nina Allan will be released by Luna Press Publishing on September 12 and is available for preorder. The cover is by Iain Clark.

MAUREEN KINCAID SPELLER [1959-2022] was a reviewer, critic and lifelong science fiction fan. Active in SF fandom from the early 1980s, Maureen started reviewing for the BSFA magazine Vector in 1986. She served on the jury of the Arthur C. Clarke Award, chaired the Tiptree Award and taught the SF Foundation Critical Masterclass in 2016. Her criticism has appeared in a wide variety of venues, and her extended critical analysis of the 2012 BSFA and Clarke Awards was shortlisted for the BSFA Award for Best Related Work.

In 1999 she was nominated for a Hugo in the Best Fan Writer category. Her passionate advocacy of new critical voices saw her appointed Senior Reviews Editor of the groundbreaking speculative fiction magazine Strange Horizons in 2015.

Editor Nina Allan says, “When Maureen fell ill in the spring of 2022, my first reaction, like that of many, was one of profound shock. Her untimely death has robbed us all, not only of her presence, but of the work she was yet to do. Maureen had long spoken of her desire to put together a collection of her criticism, and the original intention for this volume was that she would personally be involved in the selection and curation of her favourite pieces. Time was sadly against us, but the desire to preserve Maureen’s work, to have it readily available to audiences old and new, has never felt more urgent. A Traveller in Time is by no means a complete collection – there is lots more out there to discover – but my hope is that it presents a faithful snapshot of Maureen as she was in life: spirited, passionate, knowledgeable and endlessly curious.”

(6) HE KNOWS OPPENHEIMER. Christopher Nolan’s summer blockbuster Oppenheimer will be released this week and Robert J. Sawyer is primed to give expert commentary to members of the media, having done two years of full-time research before writing his 2020 novel The Oppenheimer Alternative. He shared that knowledge in a File 770 interview, and other experts agree he knows what he’s talking about:

  • Martin Sherwin, co-author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning biography American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer (the basis for Christopher Nolan’s biopic Oppenheimer), says “Oppenheimer fans will be intrigued by Sawyer’s novel.”
  • Gregory Benford, physicist at University of California Irvine, says: “The feel and detail of the Manhattan Project figures is deep and well done. I knew many of these physicists, and Sawyer nails them accurately.”
  • Perimeter Institute physicist Lee Smolin, the author of The Trouble with Physics, agrees: “I know the history of this period well and I’m one or two degrees of separation from many of these people. Sawyer’s portrayals ring true to me. I loved it!”

For interviews, please contact publicist Mickey Mikkelson: [email protected] or 403-464-6925.

(6) NO FIGHTING IN THE WAR ROOM, PLEASE. “Stanley Kubrick Estate Approves ‘Dr. Strangelove’ Stage Adaptation”IndieWire tells how it happened.

Amid the “Oppenheimer” anticipation, another bomb has been dropped: Stanley Kubrick’s “Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb” will be adapted as a stage production on the West End.

The project, led by “Veep” and “Avenue 5” creator Armando Iannucci, is the first-ever adaptation of a Kubrick property. Kubrick’s widow, Christiane Kubrick, confirmed the upcoming play based on the 1964 political satire film starring Peter Sellers.

“We have always been reluctant to let anyone adapt any of Stanley’s work, and we never have. It was so important to him that it wasn’t changed from how he finished it,” Christiane told the BBC. “But we could not resist authorizing this project: the time is right, the people doing it are fantastic, and ‘Strangelove’ should be brought to a new and younger audience. I am sure Stanley would have approved it too.”…

(7) BEN KINGSLEY PHONES HOME. Jules opens August 11.

Jules follows Milton (Kingsley) who lives a quiet life of routine in a small western Pennsylvania town, but finds his day upended when a UFO and its extra-terrestrial passenger crash land in his backyard. Before long, Milton develops a close relationship with the extra-terrestrial he calls “Jules.” Things become complicated when two neighbors (Harris and Curtin) discover Jules and the government quickly closes in. What follows is a funny, wildly inventive ride as the three neighbors find meaning and connection later in life – thanks to this unlikely stranger.

(8) ALLAN SCOTT (1952-2023). UK author Allan Scott died July 17 reports Andrew Porter. The SF Encyclopedia notes his first pro genre publication was “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner” in Peter Davison’s Book of Alien Monsters (1982). He co-authored books The Ice King (1986) with Michael Scott Rohan, and also the fantasy novel A Spell of Empire: The Horns of Tartarus (1992) On his own, Scott wrote The Dragon in the Stone (1991).

(9) MEMORY LANE.

2007 [Written by Cat Eldridge from a choice by Mike Glyer.]

Michael Chabon is the source of our Beginning.  A fantastic writer, I’m going to also single out his work as writer and showrunner on Picard, and he has been working on a series adaptation of Kavalier and Clay for at least four years. 

So the novel that is the source of our Beginning is The Yiddish Policeman’s Union which Mike says it is very good.  It was published sixteen years ago by Harper Collins.

It won a Hugo at Devention 3 and a Sidewise Award along with being nominated for a John W. Campbell Memorial Award. 

So let’s see how this novel begin…

Nine months Landsman’s been flopping at the Hotel Zamenhof without any of his fellow residents managing to get themselves murdered. Now somebody has put a bullet in the brain of the occupant of 208, a yid who was calling himself Emanuel Lasker.

“He didn’t answer the phone, he wouldn’t open his door,” says Tenenboym the night manager when he comes to roust Landsman. Landsman lives in 505, with a view of the neon sign on the hotel across Max Nordau Street. That one is called the Blackpool, a word that figures in Landsman’s nightmares. “I had to let myself into his room.

The night manager is a former U.S. Marine who kicked a heroin habit of his own back in the sixties, after coming home from the shambles of the Cuban war. He takes a motherly interest in the user population of the Zamenhof. He extends credit to them and sees that they are left alone when that is what they need.

“Did you touch anything in the room?” Landsman says. 

Tenenboym says, “Only the cash and jewelry.” 

Landsman puts on his trousers and shoes and hitches up his suspenders. Then he and Tenenboym turn to look at the doorknob, where a necktie hangs, red with a fat maroon stripe, already knotted to save time. Landsman has eight hours to go until his next shift. Eight rat hours, sucking at his bottle, in his glass tank lined with wood shavings. Landsman sighs and goes for the tie. He slides it over his head and pushes up the knot to his collar. He puts on his jacket, feels for the wallet and shield in the breast pocket, pats the sholem he wears in a holster under his arm, a chopped Smith & Wesson Model 39….

(10) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

  • Born July 17, 1889 Erle Stanley Gardner. Though best remembered for the Perry Mason detective stories, he did write a handful of SF stories, all of which are collected in The Human Zero: The Science Fiction Stories of Erle Stanley Gardner. They were originally published in Argosy from 1928 to 1932: “The Human Zero”, “Monkey Eyes”, “New Worlds”, “Rain Magic”, “A Year in a Day”, “The Man with Pin-Point Eyes” and “The Sky’s the Limit”. It is not available from the usual digital suspects but Amazon has copies of the original Morrow 1981 hardcover edition at reasonable prices. (Died 1970.)
  • Born July 17, 1944 Thomas A. Easton, 79. SF critic and author who wrote the book review column in Analog from 1979 – 2009. His Organic Future series is quite entertaining and I’m reasonably certain I read Sparrowhawk when it was serialized in Analog
  • Born July 17, 1954 J. Michael Straczynski, 69. Best known rather obviously for creating and writing most of Babylon 5 and its short-lived sequel Crusade. He’s also responsible for as well as the Jeremiah and Sense8 series. On the comics side, he’s written The Amazing Spider-Man, Thor and Fantastic Four. Over at DC, he did the Superman: Earth One trilogy of graphic novels, and has also written SupermanWonder Woman, and Before Watchmen titles. There’s an animated Babylon 5 film soon, but the fate of the rebooted series, who knows?  
  • Born July 17, 1965 Alex Winter, 58. Bill in Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure and its sequels Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey and Bill & Ted Face the Music. And though I didn’t realize it, he was Marko in The Lost Boys. He directed two Ben 10 films, Ben 10: Race Against Time and Ben 10: Alien Swarm. He also directed Stephen Hawking + Zoe Saldana: Quantum is Calling, a short film that has cast members Keanu Reeves, Simon Pegg, John Cho, and Paul Rudd. 
  • Born July 17, 1967 Kelly Robson, 56. I just got done reading her brilliant “Gods, Monsters and the Lucky Peach”.  Her collection Alias Space and Other Stories has all of her short fiction up to 2020, so go feast up upon them. These and the “High Times in the Low Parliament” and “A Human Stain” novellas are to be had the usual suspects. 
  • Born July 17, 1976 Brian K. Vaughan, 47. Wow. Author of  Ex Machina, Pride of Baghdad, Runaways, SagaY: The Last Man, and his newest affair, Paper Girls. And yes, he’s won Hugo Awards. You could spend an entire summer just reading those series. In his spare time, he was a writer, story editor and producer of the television series Lost during seasons three through five. And was the showrunner and executive producer of the Under the Dome series.

(11) DOCTOROW WRITE-IN FOR CLARION. In support of Clarion’s summer  fundraising drive they’re hosting a series of Write-Ins, or hour-long writing sprints, with favorite SFFH authors and Clarion alums. These events will be free to any who are interested.

Tomorrow, Tuesday 7/18 we kick things off with the inimitable CORY DOCTOROW!

Join Cory and a group of your peers this Tuesday, July 18th 5PM PDT (8PM EDT), for a Write-In! We’ll engage in some timed writing sprints and, if we’re lucky, we’ll get a brief update on Cory’s WIP, “The Bezzle.”

Participation is FREE! Just register by 3PM PDT on Tuesday. Click the link to register.

(12) BY ALL MEANS. Last week Neil Gaiman was asked whether people should go see movies while the writers and actors are striking. His answer went viral.

(13) FROM TOY STORE TO SCREEN. JustWatch compiled a list of top 10 films based on toys, and compared the popularity of these productions finding out that the clear leader is the Toy Story franchise. Four movies of the series made the list, collecting a total of 35.6%. Its close competitor turned out to be Transformers franchise, with Transformers taking first place, followed by Bumblebee in 6th, and Transformers: The Last Knight in last place.

The following graphic contains the top 10 Barbie movies, with Barbie’s first ever movie: Barbie in the Nutcracker taking up third place and surpassing Barbie: Princess Charm School by only 1%. Barbie of Swan Lake and Barbie as Rapunzel go head to head, landing at 5th and 6th place with a difference of only 0.1%

(14) A NEW YORK DRAGONFLY MINUTE. [Item by Michael Toman.] A comparison of 138 species finds that dragonflies perceive changes in their environment five times faster than humans and 400 times faster than starfish. “Small and speedy animals perceive time faster than big, slow creatures” reports New Scientist.

Fast-moving animals – especially small ones, creatures that fly and top ocean predators – perceive time more quickly than others. That is, they can process more frames per second than slow-moving animals lower in the food chain, such as starfish, according to a comparison of more than 100 species.

“We already know that different animals perceive time differently from us,” says Kevin Healy at the University of Galway in Ireland, who presented the results at a meeting of the British Ecological Society on 20 December. But he wanted to find out, “If you’re a predator, do you have faster eyes than if you’re an herbivore?”

He and his colleagues began by reviewing previously published research on the flicker fusion test, a common measure of the rate at which animals perceive the passage of time. During the test, researchers increase the frequency of a flashing light until an animal sees it as a continuous glow, indicated by the reaction of light receptors in the animal’s retina.

“It’s kind of like measuring the frame rate of your eyes,” says Healy. Humans, for example, can detect light flickers at speeds up to 65 flashes per second. That means they can perceive changes in their environment 65 times per second….

(15) VIDEO OF THE DAY. Ryan George revisits the “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull Pitch Meeting”.

Step back into the pitch meeting and revisit the completely factual accurate conversation that led to Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull! Complete with commentary from Ryan George who is now several years older!

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

Pixel Scroll 5/22/23 A Pocket Full Of Pixels, A Universe Made Of Scrolls

(1) TREK CREWS SUPPORTING STRIKE. “Star Trek Actors Join Writers On Trek-Themed Picket Lines In LA And NYC”TrekMovie.com has the story.

…The WGA West and the WGA East both called for Star Trek writers to picket on Friday at the Paramount in Hollywood and at the Manhattan headquarters of Netflix. Star Trek writers showed up at both locations, joined by actors and others who have worked on the franchise.

Strange New Worlds writer/co-executive producer (and WGA strike captain) Bill Wolkoff shared a group photo from Hollywood. Writers and actors from Star Trek: The Original SeriesThe Next GenerationDeep Space Nine, Voyager, Enterprise, Discovery, Picard, Strange New WorldsLower Decks, and Prodigy can all be seen showing their support….

…In New York, Lower Decks voice actress (and Starfleet Academy writer) Tawny Newsome shared photos that included actors Anthony Rapp (Discovery) and Celia Rose Gooding & Jess Bush (Strange New Worlds)….

… TNG actress Denise Crosby met up with Picard showrunner Terry Matalas.

(2) WHEATON KERFUFFLE. Meanwhile, Wil Wheaton launched his own front by criticizing a Jeopardy! host. Comic Sands has the story: “Wil Wheaton Slams Ken Jennings For Crossing WGA Picket Line”.

Wheaton wrote on Facebook:

“This is a VERY small town, Ken Jennings, and we will all remember this. Your privilege may protect you right now, but we will *never* forget.”

The post has since blown up on social media, so Wheaton added some more information in an edit:

“This is getting more attention than I expected or wanted, and I don’t want this to be about me being disappointed by a choice Ken Jennings made.”

“I want attention and energy focused on supporting the writers who are fighting for their professional existence, opposed by billionaires who are keen to ruin my entire industry.”

This afternoon Wheaton told Facebook followers that The National Enquirer was trying to milk the story even more.

Hey, isn’t this neat? The National Enquirer asked me to comment on a story they are running, claiming I “publicly threatened” Ken Jennings.

Here’s what they sent:

To Whom It May Concern:

The National Enquirer is preparing to publish a story reporting Wil Wheaton has publicly threatened Jeopardy host Ken Jennings for crossing the writer’s picket line.

The story quotes Mr. Wheaton’s Facebook message which stated, “This is a VERY small town, Ken Jennings, and we will all remember this.”

It also points out that Mr. Wheaton is close friends with Mr. Jennings’ competition for permanent hosting duties on Jeopardy — Mayim Bialik.

Here is my entire response, in the *cough* unlikely event *cough* they edit it for space or somesuch:

Your clumsy efforts to misrepresent me, to mislead your readers, to distract from the issues underlying the strike, have not gone unnoticed. But since you asked, let me be clear: I didn’t threaten anybody. That’s laughable. I’ve been threatened. It sounds like, “be careful on your way home tonight.” It doesn’t sound like “I will remember that you betrayed us when it was convenient, and other people will, too.”

I support organized labor without exception and will never cross a picket line. I stood (and stand) with and for my fellow union members. Hollywood is a notoriously dishonest industry that runs on relationships and trust. We tell stories and make stuff up for a living! We need to know who we can trust and who we can’t; who stands with us, and who will sell us out. It’s not a threat; it’s a fact.

You would do well to inform your readers that regulatory capture, the monopolization of entertainment companies, and the incomprehensible greed of a handful of billionaires threaten my entire industry and countless people I love. WGA (and possibly my union, SAG-AFTRA) members are fighting for our careers, our families, our healthcare and the future of our industry. The billionaires across the table are fighting for bigger yachts.

I’m deeply disappointed with Ken. I think he’s a great host, an obviously sensational player, and the couple times I’ve met him, I’ve enjoyed our conversations. The fact is, he has an enormously high profile, and his choices affect the writers of his show and the entire WGA in a meaningful way that people pay attention to. He is certainly more influential, and can have a more direct impact, than me. I hoped he would use that privilege to put the needs of the many ahead of the greed of the few. He didn’t, and speaking only for myself, I will remember that. That isn’t a threat; it’s keeping a promise to my fellow workers, and honoring the sacrifices of all who came and fought before us.

Wheaton added a little snark in the comments.

(3) THE NUMBER OF YOUR DOOM. In “The Annals of Not So Terrible Fates”, Camestros Felapton has devised a foolproof table that you can use to foretell your terrible ending.

A doom awaits you! To learn your fortune you must meddle with the dark forces of pseudonumerology…

Here is my result:

15. Overtaken by Artificial Intelligence
A self-driving care overtakes you on the road in a way that you find disrespectful.

I suppose it’s completely in character that my fate contains a typo.

(4) THEY’RE HERE! [Item by Steven French.] Excellent list by Nina Allan, author of Conquest: “Top 10 strangest alien invasion novels” in the Guardian. At number nine:

9. Lagoon by Nnedi Okorafor
With its jump cuts and tessellations, Okorafor’s playful, almost filmic account of an alien expedition to the city of Lagos feels unlike any alien invasion story you might have read before. Science fiction cohabits with fantasy to produce a vigorous, gorgeous mutation teeming with deft postmodernist touches: chapters told from non-human points of view, snapshots of reportage, moments when Okorafor breaks the fourth wall to ask how readers might have reacted had they been there. A joyously experimental text, Lagoon shimmers with the delirium and chaos that might be expected from an alien visit.

(5) GRAPES OF WRATH. Jason Sanford devoted a Genre Grapevine to “the Sudowrite Controversy and the Increasing Pushback Against AI”, a free post on Patreon. It includes a brief interview with Amit Gupta, Co-Founder of Sudowrite.

…On May 17, Gupta’s fellow Sudowrite co-founder James Yu announced the launch of Story Engine. As Yu wrote on Twitter, “Our awesome team worked with hundreds of novelists for months to build the ideal interface for writers and machines to collaborate on a narrative. … Story Engine is the first serious tool for long-form AI writing.”

In the video attached to the announcement, Yu said Story Engine would allow authors to “write an entire novel in just a few days.”

As Yu noted, previous AI writing models had difficulty staying on track with a story “for more than a few paragraphs,” meaning most “AI products were optimized for short generations.” Story Engine evidently fixes this by allowing people to provide the system with character information, overall plot points, themes, and more data tailored for longer-form stories. This helps the AI remain focused on generating a story that would, in Yu’s words, stay true to the “author’s vision.”

And the reaction from the writing community to this development? Perhaps this headline in Gizmodo best sums that up: “Sudowrite Launches Novel-Writing AI Software for Pseudo-Writers.

To say that Yu’s announcement was ratioed hard is an understatement, with his tweet receiving by May 21 over 8.2 million views but only 182 regular retweets and 963 likes. Instead, there were over 4,500 quote retweets where people generally ripped into the announcement….

(6) TODAY’S 10,000. Horror movies were banned in Australia for two decades? News to me! Daniel Best tells that history in “Charles Higham and the Fate of the 1965 Bulletin Ban List”.

Horror movies were formally banned in Australia in mid-1948. This ban wasn’t announced with any great fanfare, rather it was a subdued series of articles in newspapers and tabloid magazines that stated the premise of the ban – all horror films from 1949 onwards would be subject to an instant ban, with no exceptions. Films already in the country, which had been passed by the censor and dated pre-1948, would be exempt from the ban. Thus the status quo was established, and it remained this way for over twenty years.

(7) MARTIN AMIS (1949-2023). Martin Amis died May 19 at the age of 73. His genre-related contributions include Time’s Arrow (1991), which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize. As described in the Wikipedia —

Notable for its backwards narrative – including dialogue in reverse – the novel is the autobiography of a Nazi concentration camp doctor. The reversal of the arrow of time in the novel, a technique borrowed from Kurt Vonnegut‘s Slaughterhouse 5 (1969) and Philip K. Dick‘s Counter-Clock World (1967), is a narrative style that itself functions in Amis’s hands as commentary on the Nazis’ rationalisation of death and destruction as forces of creation with the resurrection of Nordic mythology in the service of German nation-building

According to ISFDB he wrote a fair amount of short sff, featured in two collections, Einstein’s Monsters and Heavy Water and Other Stories.

He was the son of author Kingsley Amis.

(8) MEMORY LANE.

2013[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

Rebecca Campbell was not an author I was aware of before Mike picked her this afternoon for the Beginning. It turned that she is a quite fascinating person who, as she says on her most excellent site, writes “weird stories about climate change and ghosts, mostly, though aliens and parasites sometimes show up, too, and I will always love archives and libraries”. 

NeWest Press published her The Paradise Engine a decade ago. It’s her only novel to date according to ISFDB, though she has written some novellas and a generous amount of short fiction. Our Beginning is from The Paradise Engine

And for her Beginning…

A Ghost Story

The first ghost appeared at the end of August, when Jasmine had already been gone for months. That was too bad because she was the only person Anthea knew who would recognize a ghost when she saw one, or know what to do about it.

Anthea didn’t know a ghost when she saw one, though she was the one haunted. She also didn’t know what had happened to Jasmine, but whatever it was, it was probably over. She knew only this: Jasmine was last seen just northwest of the city, on a highway that curled uphill along the coast and the mountains. She was last seen early in June, in the company of a bearded Caucasian male apprx. 30 yrs of age, who carried an army surplus backpack and was otherwise without distinguishing characteristics. Anthea could determine, then, that Jasmine was last seen facing southeast, hitching northwest along a highway that grew pineapple weed on its shoulders. Pineapple weed smelled like chamomile tea when it bruised, as it would do under Jas’s runners when she stood for long stretches, one thin arm reaching out into the traffic and the other propped on her hip. Given how hot June had been, Anthea also knew Jasmine was kneecapped by heat waves that rose from the highway, so she seemed to float above the asphalt. To the drivers who did not pick them up, they might have been a mirage, or ghosts from the early ’70s.

Jasmine would have enjoyed being mistaken for a ghost, especially one that smelled of chamomile. She and the man walked northwest all day. Sometimes where the shoulder was narrow, she slithered halfway down the ditch and he’d turn around to help her to her feet. They were still walking when the sky turned purple and rusty orange over the mountains. Jas’s arms crossed over her chest. She shivered with dehydration and the sun-ache in her temples, the tight wrinkle of a burn on her nose and forehead. After that night no one saw anything, and so Anthea is unable to determine how much longer they walked north and west. This little film plays out in her head sometimes, unresolved.

That was months before the haunting, though, which had its start very early on a Sunday morning at the end of August. Anthea was asleep when it began, and she mistook the first visitation for a dream. In the dream a dark-haired man told her something very important she should not forget in a voice that had the texture of a shellac 78 on an old turntable. She listened politely to the man for a long time, unable to grasp his words though she felt their urgency. Just as she began to understand what the man wanted her to know, the squirrels in the attic started fighting, as they often did in the early morning. Half-awake and still listening to the distorted voice in her dream, she sat up and hit the angled wall above her head, and then stood and thumped the ceiling with the heel of her hand.

By the time Anthea was fully awake—still hitting the plaster, the squirrels still fighting overhead—the phone was ringing and she forgot even that she should not forget the antiqued voice of her dream, and so the second supernatural event of Anthea’s life passed her without remark. She picked up the phone beside the bed, but no one was there.

(9) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

  • Born May 22, 1859 Arthur Conan Doyle. I read the Holmes stories a long time ago. My favorite is The Hound of the Baskervilles as it allows him to develop a story at length. Favorite video Holmes? Jeremy Brett.  Looking at ISFDB, I’m see there were more Professor Challenger novels than I realized. And the Brigadier Gerard stories sound suspiciously comical… (Died 1930.)
  • Born May 22, 1900 Wallace West. His first two short stories were “Loup-Garou” in Weird Tales, October 1927 and “The Last Man” in Amazing, February 1929. He published continuously through the Sixties though only averaged a story a year. Interestingly his first two novels were about Betty Boop in the Big Little Books format: Betty Boop in Snow-White: Assisted by Bimbo and Ko-Ko and Betty Boop in “Miss Gulliver’s Travels”.  He wrote four genre novels, only a few of which are available from the usual suspects. (Died 1980.)
  • Born May 22, 1901 Ed Earl Repp. His stories appeared in several of the early pulp magazines including Air Wonder StoriesAmazing Stories and Science Wonder Stories. Some were collected in The Radium Pool (just three stories), The Stellar Missiles (another three stories) and Science-Fantasy Quintette (five this time with two by L. Ron Hubbard). He also had one SF novel written in 1941, Rescue from Venus. He turned to writing scripts for Westerns and never wrote any fiction thereafter. (Died 1979.)
  • Born May 22, 1907 Hergé. He is best remembered for creating The Adventures of Tintin which are considered one of the most popular European comics of the 19th and 20th centuries. He is much less remembered for Quick & Flupke, a short-lived series between the Wars, and The Adventures of Jo, Zette and Jocko which lasted well into the Fifties. (Died 1983.)
  • Born May 22, 1914 Sun Ra. As SFE says he “played and released a large quantity of music, mostly in the postwar period, all of it inflected by his fascination with outer space, Alien encounter, Ancient Egypt (whose Sun god inspired his working name) and Atlantis.” It’s well worth reading the fascinating SFE entry on him. (Died 1993.)
  • Born May 22, 1964 Kat Richardson, 59. Her Greywalker series is one of those affairs that I’m pleased to say that I’ve read every novel that was been published. I’ve not read Blood Orbit, the first in her new series, yet. Has anyone here done so? Her Blood Orbit novel won an Endeavour Award which is given for a science fiction or fantasy book written by a Pacific Northwest author and is given by a panel of judges chartered by Oregon Science Fiction Conventions, Inc. 
  • Born May 22, 1968 Karen Lord, 55. She’s a Barbadian writer. Her debut novel, Redemption in Indigo, retells the story “Ansige Karamba the Glutton” from Senegalese folklore; The Best of All Possible Worlds and The Galaxy Game are genre novels as is her edited New Worlds, Old Ways: Speculative Tales from the Caribbean.

(10) COMICS SECTION.

  • Free Range shows the moment of surprise in an alien robbery.
  • Macanudo has an equation that yields horror.  
  • Thatababy finds out what happens to a superhero who signs too many checks.

(11) SOMETHING FOR WAR GAMERS AND AUTHORS OF MILITARY SF. [Item by Francis Hamit.] We have the smartest military in the world.  Seriously.  You can’t attain flag rank now without a PhD or three Masters degrees.  This article is a very thoughtful analysis of urban combat and why it matters. “Decided among the Cities: The Past, Present, and Future of War in Urban Environments” at Army University Press.

Cities not only possess cultural and psychological value for combatants, but they are also sociologically and geographically anchored to multiple aspects of military key terrain. Cities sit astride, near, or encompass major ground routes (road and rail), major water crossings such as large bridges, and logistical and power projection hubs for sea and air. The ongoing conflict in Ukraine provides an immediate example of the importance of cities themselves and what cities contain. Moreover, the importance of cities is apparent with a study of history. However, even with history and current events, there is faint acknowledgement of the importance of the urban fight in military theory, and it has limited coverage in U.S. Army doctrine. When acknowledged, urban operations are largely discussed in commentary on their inherent difficulty, the natural aversion to costly fighting characteristic of urban combat, and with the recommendation to bypass or avoid city fights altogether. However, as history and recent examples in Ukraine demonstrate, conflicts often are decided among the cities. The physical and infrastructure characteristics of cities naturally and geographically can make control of them critical for victorious military campaigns. The one who can seize and hold the city controls, or just denies, crucial capabilities to military operations…

(12) 3 MOVIE ALERTS: THESE STREAMS YOU MIGHT WANT TO CROSS. [Item by Daniel Dern.] Within the past month or so I’ve finally been able to see a few films that had been on my “watch at home when they’re available at no additional cost” (as in, on streaming services I subscribe to, or as DVD/BluRay loans through the local library): Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves, Ant-Man & The Wasp: Quantumania, and Peter Pan & Wendy.

The first two I’m going to say close to zero about other than “now available this way” (nor should I need to say more):

Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves (Paramount Plus).

Lots of fun! It’s got dungeons! It’s got dragons! (But no dice or dice-rolling)

It’s nice to see a fantasy flick that doesn’t require backstory, doesn’t involve an orphaned/prophesied/etc. protagonist, is done-in-one (in terms of wrapping up the plot), and is focusing on a less-than-the-fate-of-everything plot.

One perhaps helpful note: If, like me, you’re on P+’s cheaper with-commercials tier, you’ll be happy to know they sensibly frontloaded a handful of commercials up front, and did not interrupt the movie (and included a note that they were doing it, just before the actual commercials).

Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania (Display+)

While clearly part of the Marvel movie universe too-many-moving parts flow chart/timeline, this movie doesn’t require you to know much. Having seen the two previous Ant-Man movies can’t hurt; beyond that, knowing about the Thanos “snap” (from the past two Avengers flicks) resulted in many characters (including Scot Lang/Ant-Man) missing five years of normal timeline.

Another nice aspect in Q-mania is that, by taking place mainly in the Quantum Realm, that solves the super-hero universe conundrum, e.g., “so where are all the other (Marvel) heroes when all heck is breaking loose?” Answer, in this case: not in Quantumville.

Recommended.

Peter Pan & Wendy (Disney+)

I’m not a fan of the original book — as I discovered some years back while volunteer-literacy-tutoring. The first 20-30 pages are treacly enough to rot out even the toughest teeth — for no clear-to-me reason I watch many of the films — perhaps Robin Williams and the rest of the superb cast of Hook (I’ve still got the DVD, and, I think, also the laserdisk) deserve credit for that (and have read many of the post-Barrie books).

PP&W is based on the original book/movie/story-that-we-know, with a fair amount of edits, deletions and additions, all of which I heartily applaud. Princess T Lily (played by Alyssa Wapanatâh, who is, per IMDB, a member of the Bigstone Cree First Nation). The Lost Boys, while retaining their group’s name, include girls. And there’s more backstory connecting Peter and Hook. (Not all watchers/reviewers felt positive about this, e.g., this ComicsBookReview one.)

To be fair, I don’t recall thinking much of the 2015 Pan; (starring Hugh Jackman as Blackbeard, FYI) was the one where the big rocky scene had pirates and singing “Smells Like Teen Spirit” (here’s the video excerpt, in case you doubted my memory).

Same memory says I liked the 2003 Peter Pan…probably one reason it didn’t do well at the box office was that some other pirate movie debuted around the same time, starring that guy who played Edward Scissorhands, which grabbed more attention.

Now, back to waiting for the The Flash movie.

(13) MASSED MINDS PRODUCTION. Can someone be an AI writing addict? “Sci-fi author ‘writes’ 97 AI-generated books in nine months” reports The Register.

Sci-fi author Tim Boucher has produced over 90 books in nine months, using ChatGPT and the Claude AI assistant.

Boucher, an AI artist and writer, claims to have made nearly $2,000 selling 574 copies of the 97 works.

Each book in his “AI Lore” series is between 2,000 to 5,000 words long – closer to an essay than a novel. They are interspersed with around 40 to 140 pictures, and take roughly six to eight hours to complete, he told Newsweek

Boucher’s superhuman output is down to the use of AI software. He uses Midjourney to create the images, and OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Anthropic’s Claude to generate text to brainstorm ideas and write stories…. 

(14) VIDEO OF THE DAY. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] It was Sci-Fi Sunday over at Isaac Arthur’s Futures and this month’s topic Co-existence with Aliens. He opines, “One day we may encounter intelligent aliens, but can we ever hope to understand their psychology and coexist with them if we do?”

[Thanks to Cat Eldridge, Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, Christian Brunschen, Kathy Sullivan, Daniel Dern, Juli Marr, Francis Hamit, Steven French, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, John King Tarpinian, Chris Barkley, and Michael Toman for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Cat Eldridge.]

Pixel Scroll 9/20/22 Crisis Of Infinite Credentials: The Anti-Timothy Rises

(1) NONFICTION SPOTLIGHT Q&A. Cora Buhlert’s new “Non-Fiction Spotlight” is an interview with Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki about his collection Bridging WorldsBridging Worlds: Global Conversations On Creating Pan-African Speculative Literature In a Pandemic, edited by Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki”.

What prompted you to write/edit this book?

It just seemed like often we were shouting into the void, and not being heard. The works we create were received with nary a thought for where they came from or the work that went into them. It might seem like a seperate issue, the origin of the work. But a creator’s identity is very valid to their creation. And you cannot properly value a body of work without knowing it’s history or it’s creator. I witnessed a lot of struggle during the pandemic year, from my perch in Nigeria. And interacted with a lot of writers and creatives of African descent. And I just knew that these experiences needed to be documented, seen and heard.

(2) LASFS WEBSITE REVIVAL. Kristine Cherry is bringing alive the latest iteration of the Los Angeles Science Fantasy Society’s website at LASFS.org. It includes a new blog whose latest feature is “A Letter to Forrest J Ackerman You Won’t Soon Forget”, which was written to Ackerman by Edgar Rice Burroughs in 1931.

(3) SUPPORT FOR INDIE AUTHORS. SFWA has added two sections to their “Indie Pub 101 Main Page”.

Launched in July, Indie Pub 101’s purpose is to provide up-to-date resources for indie authors so they can improve their craft, produce professional books, and promote their indie work competitively in the digital marketplace, using the best practices and innovations of successful indie authors. Of course, many of these resources are useful for creators using traditional publication paths as well.

The two new sections are:

(4) FREE READ. [Item by Olav Rokne.] Edify, a local affairs magazine in Edmonton, got Premee Mohamed to write a story for them. It’s odd, whimsical, and fairly short. “The Control of Certain Impulses”.

(5) 2022 ACFW CAROL AWARDS. The ACFW Carol Awards for Christian Fiction include a speculative fiction category. The complete list is of winners is here.

WINNER

  • Windward Shore by Sharon Hinck (Enclave)

OTHER FINALISTS

  • Secrets in the Mist (Skyworld Book 1) by Morgan L. Busse 
  • Cast the First Stone by Susan May Warren

(6) DNA OF CLASSIC TOYS. Fitting in with last week’s report about the 2022 National Toy Hall of Fame finalists, here’s an article about “How Do You Make the Perfect Toy?”, and why some toys last, from The Walrus.

… Speaking from her home in Chicago, Baxter explains that parents, not toy producers, were the ones driving these sales. “There is this nostalgic element of either wanting to share something from their own childhood or give something that they felt they lacked in their childhood, because they think it will be good,” Baxter says. Especially now, in a largely digital world, there is something about these analog toys “that parents see as desirable for their children [and] that we find desirable for ourselves.” In fact, when Fisher-Price tried to modernize its iconic toy phone by removing the rotary dial, there was a consumer revolt, and sales fell. Nostalgia, Baxter concluded, is what keeps certain toys alive…. 

(7) WILD OATES. [Item by rcade.] After hearing a talk by science fiction author Ted Chiang at the Seattle Book Festival, Joyce Carol Oates claimed that he called the fantasy genre “fundamentally young adult”:

The living American author with the most overloaded prize shelf, Oates is spending her eighties aggravating people on Twitter. In July, she tweeted that a literary agent friend told her young white male writers can’t get published any more: “Joyce Carol Oates claims White male writers are being shut out. The data disagrees” at CNN Style.

In a tweet published Sunday morning, the author of more than 50 books shared a New York Times op-ed criticizing the publishing industry as too sympathetic to the political left.

Along with the link, Oates wrote: “A friend who is a literary agent told me that he cannot even get editors to read first novels by young white male writers, no matter how good; they are just not interested. this is heartbreaking for writers who may, in fact, be brilliant, & critical of their own ‘privilege.'”…

Ted Chiang protects his tweets so his reaction (if any) to Oates’ characterization of his talk is not available, but Jason Sanford scoffed at her interpretation:

You don’t need to know what “that tweet about her foot” references. If it was a genre it would be fundamentally horror.

(8) CREEPTASTIC! Hailey Piper recommends stories by Barker, Gaiman, and Machado for crime lovers who want to read supernatural fiction. “10 Shadowy Meetings of Crime and the Occult” at CrimeReads.

…Sometimes the crime layer peels and reveals more horrific muscle underneath. Crime and horror, especially the occult, have a long-entwined history. Sometimes it’s a ruse like Sherlock Holmes faces in The Hound of the Baskervilles, or ambiguous like in True Detective, but stories of investigators and outlaws facing ghosts, witches, and devils dot the pages of genre-mixed stories in Weird Tales, movies, novels, and comic book characters like Batman, John Constantine, and more. It’s a fun mix, too; hard to predict whether the greater threat might come from and carrying the mix of noir elements suggesting an unjust universe….

(9) MORE TRIBUTES FOR MAUREEN KINCAID SPELLER.

Nina Allan mourns “Maureen Kincaid Speller” at The Spider’s House.

…Death is always difficult to come to terms with, but in the case of Maureen it seems doubly so. She had so much more still to give. Her indomitable spirit, her keen intellect, her wicked sense of humour and the all round pleasure in being in her company – these things make her loss all the more painful. I don’t think I will ever get used to the knowledge that she is no longer with us….

Paul Raven appreciated her inclusiveness: “maureen” at Velcro City Tourist Board.

… I found her an easy person to like, which is rarer than you might think. A lot of it probably had to do with the way in which she would just kinda include you in a conversation or event, even if she didn’t know you that well: an assumption not of friendship, exactly, but of the potential for such….

(10) MEDIA BIRTHDAY.  

1999 [By Cat Eldridge.] Before the Tomb Raider films kicked dust up, there was twenty-three years ago the Relic Hunter series, to put it politely, a ripoff of the Indiana Jones films with a much more sexy central character.

Starring Althea Rae Duhinio Janairo known as professionally when modeling, or acting as Tia Carrere, it has instead of a grizzled Professor, a sexy Sydney Fox, also a professor who is also a globe-trotting “relic hunter” who looks for ancient artifacts to return to museums and/or the descendants of the original owner. See rip off. Many of these relics have genre underpinnings to them, being supernatural in nature or being pieces of advanced technology.

Yes, the series was shot in the Toronto area like so many genre series before the Vancouver region became popular for reasons unknown though I assume it had to do with a shorter commute to the LA studios, and includes many familiar local landmarks among its locations. A sharp eye can spot that the European locations are actually still there. No, not blue screen was not done on this series. 

Jay Firestone who was the Executive Producer here is a Major Player on genre series responsible behind the scenes for such works as AndromedaFX: The SeriesLa Femme NikitaQueen of Swords and Mutant X. Some one hundred seventy shows are in his company holdings right now. 

The Relic Hunter series which premiered in 1999 really didn’t last that long as it went off the air after three seasons and sixty-six episodes. It’s streaming on Amazon, Freevee, Tubu, Vudu and YouTube right now. 

It holds among audience reviewers at Rotten Tomatoes a middling fifty-five percent rating. 

Ok, I’ve not seen it, so who has? 

(11) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

  • Born September 20, 1935 Keith Roberts. Author of Pavane, an amazing novel.  I’ve also read his collection of ghost stories, Winterwood and Other Hauntings, with an introduction by Robert Holdstock. Interestingly he has four BSFA Awards including ones for the artwork for the cover of his own first edition of Kaeti & Company. (Died 2000.)
  • Born September 20, 1948 JoAnna Cameron. I’ve previously mentioned in passing Shazam!, a Seventies children’s series done by Filmation. Well she was the lead on Isis, another Filmation children’s series done at the same time. Her only genre appearance was a brief one in the Amazing Spider-Man series. Anyone here seen it? I don’t remember seeing it. (Died 2021.)
  • Born September 20, 1950 James Blaylock, 72. One of my favorite writers. I’d recommend the Ghosts trilogy, the Christian trilogy and The Adventures of Langdon St. Ives which collects all of the Langdon St. Ives adventures together as his best writing, but anything by him is worth reading. I see the usual suspects don’t have much by him but they do have two Langdon St. Ives tales, Homunclus and Beneath London. He’s generously stocked at the usual suspects.
  • Born September 20, 1965 Robert Rusler, 57. Actor whose genre creds include Max in Weird Science, Ron Grady in the genre adjacent A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge, A.J. In the equally genre adjacent Vamp, Richard Lawson in Sometimes Trey Come Back off the Stephen King novel, a recurring role for twenty two episodes of Lt. Warren Keffer on Babylon 5 (see how many characters JMS would be recasting?), Enterprise’s “Anomaly” as Orgoth and I think that’s it. 
  • Born September 20, 1973 Cody Goodfellow, 49. Best known for his Radiant Dawn sequence which consists of Radiant Dawn and Ravenous Dusk which have more than a touch of the Cthulhu Mythos in them. Perfect Union uses bee genes to create a near perfect utopia that actually is a horror in the end. Very prolific with over ten novels to his name so far. 
  • Born September 20, 1974 Owen Sheers, 48. His first novel, Resistance, tells the story of the inhabitants of a valley near Abergavenny in Wales in  the Forties shortly after the failure of Operation Overlord and a successful German takeover of Britain. It’s been made into a film.  He also wrote the “White Ravens”, a contemporary take off the myth of Branwen Daughter of Llyr, found in the New Stories from the Mabinogion series.
  • Born September 20, 1986 Aldis Hodge, 36. He played Alec Hardison on the Leverage series which just got a reboot. Ok, I know it’s not precisely genre but if there’s a spiritual descendant of Mission: Impossible, this series is it. Both the cast and their use of technology in that series are keeping with the MI spirit. He’s also had one-offs on CharmedBuffy the Vampire SlayerSupernaturalThe Walking DeadStar Trek: Discovery’s Short Takes and Bones (which given that it crossed over with Sleepy Hollow…) He will play Carter Hall/Hawkman in the upcoming Black Adam assuming it doesn’t get cancelled.
  • Born September 20, 1989 Malachi Kirby, 33. His most noted was Stripe in the Black Mirror episode “Men Against Fire”, but he’s also been in the Twelfth Doctor story “Hell Bent” as Gaston. He had the recurring role of Spring Heeled Jack Burton in the Thirties-set version of Jekyll and Hyde which revolved around of the grandson of Dr. Henry Jekyll who has inherited his grandfather’s split personality and violent alter-ego.

(12) FORCES THAT FORMED TOLKIEN. Smithsonian Magazine will host John Garth’s talk “The Real World of J.R.R. Tolkien” on Wednesday, September 21 at 2:00 p.m. Eastern. Tickets $25 at the link.

In this insightful lecture, the British scholar John Garth will tell us about the real-life forces that shaped Tolkien’s imaginary world—particularly the upheavals of the interwar period, which shook Tolkien to the core and prompted him to create the story of a doomed Atlantis-like island, now the basis for a new Amazon Prime television series. Garth, author of a feature in the October issue of Smithsonian, will also take your questions about all things Tolkien in a Q&A with Smithsonian senior editor Jennie Rothenberg Gritz.

(13) CLOSING THE BARN DOOR BEFORE THINGS ESCAPE. A Colorado town library has a new solution to book bans: “Colorado Town Has A Plan To Tackle Censorship: Banning Book Bans” at HuffPost.

A group of residents who showed concerns about books in a Colorado library last month have sparked a ban they did not foresee this week: a ban on book bans.

The Wellington town board voted 5-2 to pass a resolution that barred the board from restricting access to materials at the Wellington Public Library on Tuesday, The Coloradoan reported.

The move followed an August town board meeting where residents, led by town board member Jon Gaiter’s wife, Christine Gaiter, referred to books ― what she called “pornographic materials” ― she said weren’t suitable for kids.

Gaiter’s list of 19 books included “The Bluest Eye” by Toni Morrison and “The Perks of Being a Wallflower” by Stephen Chbosky, according to the newspaper.

Gaiter told the board on Tuesday that she wanted restrictions on children accessing the books, not a book ban, but some residents said in August that they did want a ban.

A “majority” of residents “packed” a board room to support the resolution that would ban book bans on Tuesday, according to The Coloradoan….

(14) TOUGH TRIVIA. The Slate quiz from a couple days ago was on an SF theme: “Slate Quiz: The hardest trivia you’ll answer all week”. I got 10 of 12 quiz questions right. Knew 9 of them cold, guessed the rest but only one of my guesses was right. How about you?

(15) VAT GOT YOUR TONGUE? It’s the season for no reason…. There are 14 questionable flavors available at Archie McPhee’s “Candy Canes” headquarters page.

This year’s candy canes are here in three wonderfully terrible flavors. Butter Candy Canes have the taste of unsalted, but heavily sweetened, butter. Brisket is a holiday staple and Brisket Candy Canes are sure to become a tradition in your family. You can taste the meat! Last, and perhaps most disturbing, we have Caesar Salad Candy Canes. It tastes like salad with a hint of anchovy. Christmas is “yummy” again!

And let’s not forget “Sardine Candy Canes”.

(16) BAT-TIME TO WAKE UP. I think I would find this more palatable: Comics on Coffee’s “Dark Knight Roast”.

The ultimate team-up! Comics On Coffee & DC have joined forces to make your mornings more exciting and action packed with great tasting coffee! This Dark Knight Roast is an excellent cup of coffee, that will leave your taste buds begging for one more cup! Absolutely no bitter aftertaste, with a tiny hint of citrus and chocolate.

(17) VIDEO OF THE DAY. [Item by Martin Morse Wooster.] In “Honest Game Trailers: Outer Wilds”, Fandom Games says this game gives you a chance to explore fascinating new worlds, until the 20-minute timer causes the sun to go supernova if you haven’t completed a task. The narrator says this could be “the next game you annoy your friends about” but if you’re a gamer who likes to punch or blast things, this one is not for you.

[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, Andrew Porter, Chris Barkley, Cora Buhlert, Jennifer Hawthorne, rcade, Olav Rokne, Michael Toman, 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 Daniel Dern.]

Pixel Scroll 9/23/20 With Credential-Like Tread Upon Our Post We Scroll

(1) SURPRISE ENDING. [Item by PhilRM.] Here’s another very interesting piece by Nina Allan discussing the books on this year’s Clarke Award shortlist: “Clarke Award shortlist 2020 – the reckoning”.

 There’s a bit of irony in that it was written and posted prior to the announcement of the winner, and Nina clearly had no expectation that her favorite book from the shortlist, Namwali Serpell’s The Old Drift, would get the award!

…I was hoping to avoid bringing up the whole anxiety-of-American-influence thing because we’ve been there too many times before but this question of the Clarke/Hugo overlap means I cannot escape it. Part of my disappointment with this year’s shortlist lies in the lack of recognition for British talent. The Clarke is a British award, for novels published in Britain. This is one of the valuable and necessary ways it differs from the Hugos. The submissions list reveals a whole battery of British novels – M. T. Hill’s Zero Bomb, Vicki Jarrett’s Always North, Chris Beckett’s Beneath the World, A Sea, Temi Oh’s Do You Dream of Terra-Two, Jane Rogers’s Body Tourists, Ben Smith’s Doggerland, Will Wiles’s Plume, Jeanette Winterson’s Frankissstein – the presence of any one of which would have raised the overall quality of the shortlist by a substantial degree.

Which makes it all the more perplexing that the one British entry that was chosen by the judges is a journeyman work of genre fiction with no pretensions to innovation or radicalism whatsoever….

(2) WHOM THE FAIRIES NOTICE. WIRED Magazine adopts the author’s own metaphor: “The Madness of Susanna Clarke, Fairy Princess”.

…The official story was debilitating mental illness—housebound, couldn’t write—but clearly her fairy patrons had come for her, to reclaim their erstwhile princess. Or else they meant to punish Clarke for her betrayal, for spilling their precious secrets, by enfuzzing her beautiful brain. Something like that. The ways and reasons of the Fae are little known to common folk.

If this strikes you as cutesy, tidy, annoying, even a bit disturbing, a romanticization or fancification of what sounds like a period of immense torture for Clarke and her loved ones, consider their own words. “It was as though she’d been captured into the land of Faerie, as if she had been taken away from us,” Clarke’s editor told New York magazine. Clarke herself, in a rare interview, told The New Yorker, “You really shouldn’t annoy fairies, or write about them—they don’t like it very much.” Given that Clarke has now released a second dispatch from Faerie, called Piranesi, which plunges far deeper than Strange & Norrell ever did into those forbidden fortresses from which the un-mad and mortal among us are forever barred, perhaps there’s no better explanation. Clarke has indeed been there and back again….

(3) HELP MICHAEL HOGAN. Actor Michael Hogan, who appeared in the new Battlestar Galactica, The Man in the High Castle, Fargo, Teen Wolf and many others, suffered a serious brain injury due to an accident in January. He and his family need help and friends have started a GoFundMe: “Michael Hogan Fund”. To date they have raised $232,527 of the $300,000 goal.

In the words of his wife, Susan:  

“You probably know Michael as an actor.  Or maybe you know him as a friend, an acquaintance, a co-worker, a father, a grandfather, or a husband. My husband. I am Susan Hogan and I am married to this extraordinary man. We have been each other’s best friend for decades. 

On Feb. 17, 2020, everything changed drastically in our world.  Michael was in Vancouver participating in a Battlestar Galactica convention, and at dinner following his day’s work, he fell and hit his head. Hard. He went to bed that night not realizing that the impact had caused a massive brain bleed.  He was unable to be woken the next morning and was taken to Vancouver General Hospital and emergency surgery performed. It took 57 staples to close the part of his scull they had to remove in order to reach the damage.
 
The accident left him with complete paralysis on his left side, memory loss, cogntivie impairment and an inability to swallow. … 

(4) SE HABLA. Silvia Moreno-Garcia and Lavie Tidhar say “Spanish-speaking writers are producing ambitious science fiction and fantasy. Let these books be your introduction” in their latest Washington Post column.

Spanish is one of the world’s most-spoken languages, with a long, rich literary history extending all the way back to what many regard as the first modern novel, Miguel de Cervantes’s “Don Quixote.” With authors writing in Spanish from Madrid to Mexico City to Havana, what are we English speakers missing out on? And where do we start exploring?

Lavie: I recently got back from Celsius 232, a science fiction and fantasy festival in Asturias, Spain, which usually attracts hundreds of Spanish genre writers every year. This year, it felt somewhat apocalyptic, with compulsory face masks and authors signing books behind plastic screens while wearing gloves (and disinfecting them after each book). I did get to meet Sofía Rhei, a prolific novelist for both children and adults, who has one collection of stories in English, “Everything Is Made of Letters,” published by Aqueduct Press.

While Spain has a vibrant sci-fi and fantasy scene, it is only in recent years that there has been a push into the English-language market. Two fairly recent anthologies are “Terra Nova” and “Castles in Spain,” both edited by Mariano Villarreal. They showcase some of that talent, including the excellent Elia Barceló and Félix J. Palma, whose books in English translation include the internationally successful “The Map of Time.”…

(5) HE GAVE PEACE A CHANCE. [Item by Olav Rokne.]  In recent years, the DC universe has often had more success with television than with movies. Next year, that is likely to continue with a TV adaptation of Joe Gill’s Silver Age creation Peacemaker. John Cena will play the title character, who was originally written as a pacifist diplomat who uses non-lethal weapons to fight dictators, but eventually became an ultraviolent parody of tough-guy-with-a-gun comics. The Suicide Squad Spinoff Peacemaker, Starring John Cena, Ordered to Series at HBO Max; James Gunn to Write/Direct” at TVLine.

Peacemaker is an opportunity to delve into current world issues through the lens of this superhero/supervillain/and world’s biggest douchebag,” Gunn said in a statement. “I’m excited to expand The Suicide Squad and bring this character from the DC film universe to the full breadth of a series. And of course, to be able to work again with John, Peter, and my friends at Warner Bros. is the icing on the cake.”

(6) VERSUS ROWLING. “Judith Butler on the culture wars, JK Rowling and living in ‘anti-intellectual times’”, a Q&A conducted by Alona Ferber at New Statesman.

Thirty years ago, the philosopher Judith Butler*, now 64, published a book that revolutionised popular attitudes on gender. Gender Trouble, the work she is perhaps best known for, introduced ideas of gender as performance. It asked how we define “the category of women” and, as a consequence, who it is that feminism purports to fight for. Today, it is a foundational text on any gender studies reading list, and its arguments have long crossed over from the academy to popular culture. …

Alona Ferber: In Gender Trouble, you wrote that “contemporary feminist debates over the meanings of gender lead time and again to a certain sense of trouble, as if the indeterminacy of gender might eventually culminate in the failure of feminism”. How far do ideas you explored in that book 30 years ago help explain how the trans rights debate has moved into mainstream culture and politics?

Judith Butler: I want to first question whether trans-exclusionary feminists are really the same as mainstream feminists. If you are right to identify the one with the other, then a feminist position opposing transphobia is a marginal position. I think this may be wrong. My wager is that most feminists support trans rights and oppose all forms of transphobia. So I find it worrisome that suddenly the trans-exclusionary radical feminist position is understood as commonly accepted or even mainstream. I think it is actually a fringe movement that is seeking to speak in the name of the mainstream, and that our responsibility is to refuse to let that happen. 

AF: One example of mainstream public discourse on this issue in the UK is the argument about allowing people to self-identify in terms of their gender. In an open letter she published in June, JK Rowling articulated the concern that this would “throw open the doors of bathrooms and changing rooms to any man who believes or feels he’s a woman”, potentially putting women at risk of violence.

JB: If we look closely at the example that you characterise as “mainstream” we can see that a domain of fantasy is at work, one which reflects more about the feminist who has such a fear than any actually existing situation in trans life. The feminist who holds such a view presumes that the penis does define the person, and that anyone with a penis would identify as a woman for the purposes of entering such changing rooms and posing a threat to the women inside. It assumes that the penis is the threat, or that any person who has a penis who identifies as a woman is engaging in a base, deceitful, and harmful form of disguise. This is a rich fantasy, and one that comes from powerful fears, but it does not describe a social reality. Trans women are often discriminated against in men’s bathrooms, and their modes of self-identification are ways of describing a lived reality, one that cannot be captured or regulated by the fantasies brought to bear upon them. The fact that such fantasies pass as public argument is itself cause for worry.

(7) ANTHOLOGY CROWDFUNDING. A Kickstarter appeal to raise $4,000 to fund publication of “Vital: The Future of Healthcare (2020)” launched September 22.

The anthology, a collection of short stories featuring the future of health and medicine, will include works from notable authors such as Tananarive Due, David Brin, James Patrick Kelly, Paolo Bacigalupi, Seanan McGuire, Annalee Newitz, Caroline Yoachim, Alex Shvartsman, Eric Schwitzgebel, Congyun Gu, and others.

Backers will receive exclusive rewards such as advanced copies and other perks for early support of the project.

Proceeds from the book’s sale will be donated to the United Nations Foundation’s COVID-19 Solidarity Response Fund for the World Health Organization (WHO). WHO is a global leader coordinating the worldwide pandemic response.  

The idea for “Vital: The Future of Healthcare” was first conceived by RM Ambrose who will serve as editor of the book. He saw a need and opportunity to use fictional stories to address real life challenges during the pandemic and declarations of racism as a public health crisis. “Medical science continues to advance, but for many, healthcare has never been more broken,” says Ambrose.  “This book will use the power of storytelling to explore and inspire solutions to the problems that government and even the tech industry have struggled to fix.” 

The book will be available for purchase or download at Barnes & Noble, Amazon, Kobo, and independent bookstores.  Kickstarter backers or supporters will receive advance copies of the book, as well as other rewards for supporting the project.

The Kickstarter campaign will last until October 22, 2020. (A previous attempt in 2019 did not fund.)  

(8) MEDIA ANNIVERSARY.

  • Twenty years ago, Octavia E. Butler’s Parable of the Talents which was published by Seven Stories Press won SFWA’s Nebula Award for Best Novel.  (It would also be a finalist for the Clarke Award for Best Novel and would be nominated for the Otherwise Award too.) It was chosen over novels by Ken MacLeod, George R. R. Martin, Maureen F. McHugh, Sean Stewart and Vernor Vinge. It was the second in a series of two, a sequel to Parable of the Sower. She had planned to write a third Parable novel, tentatively titled Parable of the Trickster, but it never happened as instead she wrote her final novel, Fledgling

(9) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge and John Hertz.]

  • Born September 23, 1783 – Jane Taylor.  Wrote “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star” (1806).  So near and simple can be immortality.  (Died 1824) [JH]
  • Born September 23, 1897 Walter Pidgeon. He’s mostly remembered for being in the classic Forbidden Planet as Dr. Morbius, but he’s done some other genre work being in Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea  as Adm. Harriman Nelson, and in The Neptune Factor as Dr. Samuel Andrews. (Died 1984.) (CE) 
  • Born September 23, 1908 Wilmar H. Shiras. Also wrote under the name Jane Howes. Her most famous piece was “In Hiding” (1948), a novella that was included in The Science Fiction Hall of Fame anthology. It is widely assumed that it is the inspiration for the Uncanny X-Men that Stan Lee and Jack Kirby would shortly release. (Died 1990.) (CE)
  • Born September 23, 1920 – Richard Wilson.  A Futurian not barred from NYCon I the first Worldcon by the “Exclusion Act”.  Fanzines, The AtomEscapeScience Fiction News Letter.  Served in the Army Signal Corps; eventually director of the Syracuse Univ. news bureau.  Two novels, a hundred shorter stories; a Nebula; reviews, essays, in AstonishingLocusSF ReviewSuper Science.  Memoir, Adventures in the Space Trade.  (Died 1987) [JH]
  • Born September 23, 1929 – Balbalis.  Forty interiors for Galaxyhere is one from Aug 53.  Illustrator for John Wiley & Sons.  Freehand sketch of the Shroud of Turin image adopted as the logograph of the Turin Shroud Center of Colorado.  American Institute of Graphic Arts award.  (Died 1991) [JH]
  • Born September 23, 1948 Leslie Kay Swigart, 72. Obsessions can be fascinating and hers was detailing the writings of Harlan Ellison. Between 1975 and 1991, she published Harlan Ellison: A Bibliographical Checklist plus wrote shorter works such as  “Harlan Ellison: An F&SF Checklist“, “Harlan Ellison: A Nonfiction Checklist“ and “Harlan Ellison: A Book and Fiction Checklist”. Her George R. R. Martin: A RRetrospective Fiction Checklist can be found in the Dreamsongs: GRRM: A RRetrospective collection. (CE) 
  • Born September 23, 1956 Peter David, 64. Did you know that his first assignment for the Philadelphia Bulletin was covering Discon II? I’m reasonably sure the first thing I read by him was Legions of Fire, Book 1: The Long Night of Centauri Prime but he’s also done a number of comics I’ve read including runs of Captain Marvel , Wolverine and Young Justice. (CE)
  • Born September 23, 1956 – Romas Kukalis, 64.  Two hundred thirty covers.  Some fine-art work.  Here is Wizenbeak.  Here is The Squares of the City.  Here is The White Dragon (Resnick’s, not McCaffrey’s).  [JH]
  • Born September 23, 1959 Elizabeth Peña. Ok, these notes can be depressing to do as I discovered she died of acute alcoholism. Damn it. She was in a number of genre production s including *batteries not includedGhost WhispererThe Outer LimitsThe Invaders and even voiced Mirage in the first Incredibles film. Intriguingly, she voiced a character I don’t recognize, Paran Dul, a Thanagarian warrior, four times in Justice League Unlimited. (Died 2014.) (CE) 
  • Born September 23, 1959 Frank Cottrell-Boyce,  61. Definitely not here for his sequels to Chitty-Chitty-Bang-Bang. (Horrors!) He is here for such writing endeavors as Goodbye Christopher Robin, his Who stories, “In the Forest of the Night” and “Smile”, both Twelfth Doctor affairs, and the animated Captain Star series in which he voiced Captain Jim Star. The series sounds like the absolute antithesis of classic Trek. (CE) 
  • Born September 23, 1960 – Stephanie Osborn, 60.  Retired rocket scientist.  Nat’l Weather Service certified storm spotter.  Two dozen novels for us; nonfiction, A New American Space Plan (with Travis Taylor).  Ranks Delany’s About Writing above Gone With the Wind.  [JH]
  • Born September 23, 1974 – Cindy Lynn Speer, 46.  Five novels (The Key to All Things released in July), a few shorter stories.  Practices 16th Century swordfighting. Ranks Persuasion about the same as Nineteen Eighty-four.  [JH]

(10) SIGN UP FOR HORROR PANEL. “StoryFest 2020: Final Cuts – New Tales of Hollywood Horror and Other Spectacles”

StoryFest concludes with a panel dedicated to the nightmares of the silver screen. Legendary genre editor Ellen Datlow leads the discussion on her anthology, Final Cuts: New Tales of Hollywood Horror and Other Spectacles. She is joined by an all-star lineup of authors included in the anthology.

This is a virtual event. Click here to register and view the event.

Ellen Datlow is joined by a knockout list of panelists: Laird Barron, Christopher Golden, Stephen Graham Jones, John Langan, Josh Malerman, and A.C. Wise. 

(11) WRONG OUT LOUD. Oh, my God! First they pitch canon out the window. Now James Davis Nicoll makes this confession — “On Reading Book Series in the Wrong Order”. Think of the children!

We live in a glorious age when books are a click away. It may now seem incomprehensible that one might be forced to read a series of books out of order. Yet, in a dark age not so long ago, when we (and by we, I mean me) were dependent on the vagaries of book store and library orders, it was very easy to find oneself in a place where the choice was (a) read an intermediate book or (b) read nothing new.

By way of example, here are five F&SF series I began in what most people would say is the wrong place….

(12) ATWOOD. BBC Radio 4’s Start the Week features Margaret Atwood and another poet/author: “Claudia Rankine and Margaret Atwood”.

Claudia Rankine, one of America’s leading literary figures, and the double-Booker Prize winner Margaret Atwood look at the world afresh, challenging conventions – with Kirsty Wark.

In her latest book, Just Us: An American Conversation, Claudia Rankine reflects on what it means to experience, and question, everyday racism. Her poems draw on a series of encounters with friends and strangers, as well as historical record. Her work moves beyond the silence, guilt and violence that often surround discussions about whiteness, and dares all of us to confront the world in which we live.

Margaret Atwood recently won the Booker Prize for a second time with The Testaments, her sequel to the 1985 prize-winner The Handmaid’s Tale. Her story of the fictional Gilead’s dark misogyny has retained its relevance after more than three decades. The world of Gilead was originally sparked by an earlier poem, Spelling, and Atwood explores the importance of poetry in firing the imagination.

(13) FALSE AND FALSE. [Item by Jonathan Cowie.] Because it is the topic of the year and relevant to us all (especially SF fans as pandemics are something of a genre trope) a little science with BBC’s statistical programme More or Less and false positives in virus testing (especially in the latter half of the show): “Covid curve queried, false positives, and the Queen’s head”.

A scary government graph this week showed what would happen if coronavirus cases doubled every seven days. But is that what’s happening? There’s much confusion about how many Covid test results are false positives – we explain all. Plus, do coffee and pregnancy mix? And the Queen, Mao, and Gandhi go head to head: who is on the most stamps and coins?

Now, I have been told that my (pre-retired) job (of communicating science to non-scientists (often politicians)) is easy.

Though a little dismissive, actually, I take this as something of a compliment as anyone vaguely professional – be they a plumber, engineer. athlete or writer – tends to make their craft seem effortless. So, having listened to the afore programme, let me expand your horizons even further in just a couple of sentences.

Having considered false positives, what of false negatives? And, having pondered that, how does one balance the two? Welcome to the world of Type I and Type II errors. (That’s the real world which makes Johnson and Trump’s pontifications seem more like bluster. Hope I’m not doing them an injustice)

(14) RING DOWN THE CURTAIN. Looper combed through the movies and books to find “The last words of every fallen Lord of the Rings hero and villain”. Gollum’s, of course, is “Oops!” (Just kidding.)

We wanted to see just how legendary each deceased character’s final moments ended up being, based on the litmus test of what they were talking about when they perished. With that in mind, we decided to round up the last words of every fallen Lord of the Rings hero and villain to do some comparing and contrasting.

(15) THEY’RE DEAD, JIM. “Scientists Determine Explosive New Mass Extinction Event 232 Million Years Ago”SYFY Wire finds another evolutionary memory hole.

Mass extinction events on our planet have only occurred a handful of times in the 540 million years since life began. Most people are familiar with the Cretaceous-tertiary Extinction that occurred some 65 million years ago that led to the demise of the dinosaurs and 50 percent of all plants and animals, as well as the Permian-triassic Extinction 250 million years ago that wiped out 95 percent of all species.

But now scientists have reconsidered the impact of The Carnian Pluvial Episode, a significant climate change event that took place approximately 234 to 232 million years ago (Late Triassic epoch) that led to the age of the dinosaurs…

…Violent volcanic eruptions in the Wrangellia Province of western Canada are the smoking gun and the most likely cause of the devastation and sudden climatic shift, when abundant volumes of hot volcanic basalt were poured out to form much of what is now the western coast of North America.

“The eruptions peaked in the Carnian,” Dr. Dal Corso said. “I was studying the geochemical signature of the eruptions a few years ago and identified some massive effects on the atmosphere worldwide. The eruptions were so huge, they pumped vast amounts of greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide, and there were spikes of global warming.”

These humid warming periods lasting a total of one million years were accompanied by an intense spike in global rainfall, as discovered back in the ’80s by geologists Mike Simms and Alastair Ruffell. This gradual climate alteration is reflected in the major biodiversity loss in the ocean and on land. 

However, following the extinction event, diverse new groups flourished to produce more modern-like ecosystems. These climate changes were beneficial to the sustained growth of plant life, especially the expansion of conifer forests.

“The new floras probably provided slim pickings for the surviving herbivorous reptiles,”explained Professor Benton. “We now know that dinosaurs originated some 20 million years before this event, but they remained quite rare and unimportant until the Carnian Pluvial Episode hit. It was the sudden arid conditions after the humid episode that gave dinosaurs their chance.”

(16) HEAVY ARMOR. “It’s Alive! 25-Ton Gundam Robot Moves for First Time in Yokohama”Yahoo! News is there.

A 25-ton robot, inspired by the popular 1970s anime series Mobile Suit Gundam, has made its first moves in Yokohama, Japan.

Footage tweeted on September 21 shows the giant Gundam robot moving its arms and legs before lunging into an impressive squat at Yamashita Pier.

The robot is set to become the main attraction at Gundam Factory Yokohama, and was supposed to be officially unveiled on October 1, but the event has since been postponed due to the coronavirus pandemic.

[Thanks to JJ, Cat Eldridge, Michael Toman, Cora Buhlert, Martin Morse Wooster, John King Tarpinian, SF Concatention’s Jonathan Cowie, Mike Kennedy, John Hertz, and Andrew Porter for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Daniel Dern.]

Pixel Scroll 8/21/20 Pounded
In The Scroll By The Anthropomorphic Concept
Of Pixels

(1) COLUMBUS NASFIC OPENING CEREMONIES. [Item by David Doering.] Watching the Opening Ceremonies of the Columbus NASFiC, I noted the number of apologies for lack of the in-person meetings.

However, I also think we should celebrate that we are LIVING an SF novel. If we had written this 20 years ago, it would have been SF–real-time linkups with AV from around the globe!! Is that KEWL or what??

We did NOT have to cancel. We still have a great slate of programming. AND we still can get together to honor Mike Resnick.

I should add that we also don’t have worry about scaring each other with pathogens if we were in person. Thus potentially setting off a “War of the Worlds” scenario with all of us “aliens” descending on a single city only to be doomed by GERMS.

(2) ROGUE NASFIC. Chris Garcia is the virtual Columbus NASFiC’s Editor Guest of Honor. The con newsletter made everyone aware he’s also got some real-life concerns right now:  

Please share your positive thoughts, hopes, prayers – as appropriate – and spare a moment of contemplation for Christopher J. Garcia (GOH), his wonderful family Vanessa, John Paul and Ben, as they await news of their home, and neighbourhood, evacuated as they are from Boulder Creek in the Santa Cruz County CZU August Lightning Complex Fire. Certainly, we all wish them well. (submitted by James Bacon)

In better Chris Garcia news, check out his Rogue NASFiC YouTube channel of extra programming. As Chris explained on Facebook:

This is what happens when I’m given the power of Guest of Honor without oversight!

This YouTube Channel has some great videos of interviews and more! I’ll be adding as the Weekend (and beyond!) goes on!

Coming soon will be our Podcast channel!

I wanna thank the entire team of the NASFiC for letting me have a little fun!!!

Here’s one example:

(3) NINA ALLAN FIRES A CANON. [Item by PhilRM.] Here’s another very interesting piece by Nina Allan, discussing, among other things**, the notion of an SFF canon:  “Weird Wednesdays #11: the question of lineage”. There’s a well-known quote by Borges, from his essay on Kafka: “The fact is that every writer creates his own precursors. His work modifies our conception of the past, as it will modify the future.” Nina’s take (which I completely agree with) is that every writer creates their own canon; I’d extend this to say that every reader creates their own canon also.

**Her piece also convinced me that I really need to read William Golding’s The Inheritors and The Spire, which sound like fascinating books.

…I have explored and will continue to explore some of the ‘canonical’ works from science fiction’s so-called Golden Age – not because I feel I should but because I am interested. I enjoy thinking about these things, I enjoy writing criticism, and I happen to believe that the more widely you read around a subject, the more fiercely you can argue your corner, the more enjoyment you can derive. And having said that, I saw an interesting comment somewhere at some point during the post-Hugo furore with words to the effect that it is actually the middle generation of science fiction writers – Le Guin, Butler, Russ, Delany, Disch, Haldeman, Pohl – who are the true pioneers of the American tradition, who not only wrote better then but speak better now to the generation of writers currently winning Hugos. That definitely rings true for me, though it might not for you. But that’s the beauty of such contentions: they are there to be discussed.  

(4) SFF WRITERS ON AMW PODCAST. The American Writers Museum in Chicago is doing a series of science fiction-themed podcast episodes for the Ray Bradbury Centennial.

In celebration of Bradbury, the AWM will also air in August on its newly launched podcast four conversations with contemporary science fiction and fantasy writers. Each weekly episode of the podcast features one of the AWM’s past live programs and covers a range of topics including process, writing influences, and the life of a writer. J. Michael Straczynski, author of Becoming Superman headlines the August 10 episode. On the August 17 episode, Annalee Newitz, author of The Future of Another Timeline, is joined by journalist Dan Sinker. Hugo-Award winner John Scalzi, author of The Consuming Fire, is featured on the August 24 episode. Isabel Ibanez, author of Woven in Moonlight, closes out the month on the August 31 episode.

Episodes already online —

(5) THE POWER OF FIVE. James Davis Nicoll has assembled another listicle for Tor.com: “Five SF Books That Would Make Great Musicals”.

If there is one lesson to be learned from Hamilton’s Broadway success, it’s that a surprising diverse number of themes can be successfully turned into musicals. After all, who would have believed Ontario’s steel town—just a second—I have just been informed that the musical Hamilton is not in fact about Hamilton, Ontario, but rather about a significant figure in the American Revolution. I see.

Nevertheless, my point stands: almost everything can be turned into a musical, given sufficient talent. Even science fiction epics. Which brings me to the exciting topic of What Science Fiction Works I Would Like to See as Musicals.

(6)  HARRYHAUSEN SCULPTURE. This piece is up for bid at Nate D. Sanders Auctions until August 27. “Ray Harryhausen Original Bronze Sculpture — One of 12 in His Limited Edition Self-Portrait Entitled ‘Giving Life to Fantasy'”

Ray Harryhausen original sculpture, #10 in the limited edition of 12 created in the early 1990s, and then cast in 2010, the last work of fine art by the cinematic trailblazer before his passing. Entitled ”Giving Life to Fantasy”, this self-portrait sculpture depicts Harryhausen as he wanted to be remembered, filming the animated creatures of his imagination: the Cyclops and Dragon in their climactic battle in ”The 7th Voyage of Sinbad”. Other personal touches in this detailed sculpture include Harryhausen’s Giant Octopus from ”It Came from Beneath the Sea” in a box on the floor (along with his inspiration, the gorilla from ”King Kong”), and his Brontosaurus from ”The Animal World” on the side table. Signed and numbered by Harryhausen on the corner of the table, ”Ray Harryhausen 10/12”. Sculpture stands on a green marble and wooden base, with entire presentation measuring 19” x 11.5” x approximately 11” tall, and weighing nearly 50 lbs. Some light patina to bronze, overall near fine condition.

(7) HUNGER GAMES IN EVERYDAY LIFE. [Item by Martin Morse Wooster, Designated Reader, Financial Times.] This is the lede of an article by John Reed in the August 20 Financial Times about protests against the Thai government.

“It is a morning ritual at every Thai school, steeped in tradition and nationalist decorum: children stand still and sing the national anthem as the kingdom’s blue, white, and red flag is raised.

But this week, amid a growing ‘Free People’ youth protest movement, children across Thailand raised their hands during the ceremony to make the protesters’ trademark, defiant three-fingered salute.

The gesture originated in The Hunger Games, the dystopian young adult franchise of books and films, but has been adopted as an emblem of a movement that has spread from university campuses to secondary schools…

…”it has become a peacefully powerful symbol of anti-authoritarianism,’ said Viengrat Nethipo, assistant professor of political science at Bangkok’s Chulalongkorn University.  ‘Recently it’s been described among youth as symbolic of the French Revolution’s values of liberty, equality, and fraternity, so it’s easily adopted as a symbol.'”

(8) STATUE READY FOR PRIME TIME. [Item by rcade.] Medusa, a 2008 statue by the Argentine-Italian sculptor Luciano Garbati, is getting a seven-foot tall bronze version in New York City across from the New York Criminal Courthouse where Harvey Weinstein was put on trial. NSFW image in a tweet here

Garbati’s statue is a response to Benvenuto Cellini’s famous Perseus with the Head of Medusa statue and the idea that Medusa is the villain of the story.

Quartz explains in “The story behind the Medusa statue that has become the perfect avatar for women’s rage” – 

The original Greek myth of Medusa offers plenty to be angry about. The monstrous being with snakes for hair starts out as a human woman, who Poseidon rapes in Athena’s temple. The goddess then punishes Medusa by turning her into a Gorgon and exiling her. Perseus is later sent on an errand to bring Medusa’s head to King Polydectes. Equipped with a mirrored shield, winged sandals, and a special sack for her head, Perseus creeps up on Medusa while she lies sleeping, cuts off her head, and then uses it as a weapon for turning enemies into stone.”

Garbati says, “The representations of Perseus, he’s always showing the fact that he won, showing the head…if you look at my Medusa…she is determined, she had to do what she did because she was defending herself. It’s quite a tragic moment.”

(9) STEVEN UNIVERSE AND SHE-RA. “In Conversation: Rebecca Sugar and Noelle Stevenson” at Paper.

…With Steven Universe and She-Ra both having ended this year, PAPER invited showrunners Rebecca Sugar and Noelle Stevenson to sit down with one another and reflect on the legacies of their respective series, getting their start in comics, the state of representation in the animated field and where things go from here.

PAPER: Since you’re both wrapping up your respective series’, looking back at what each of you have accomplished, in those series what are you proud of, what do you wish you could have improved on or pushed further?

Rebecca Sugar: Okay, well looking back on everything, I’m really proud of what we were able to do with the characters of Garnet and Ruby and Sapphire. It really goes all the way back to the time I spent on Adventure Time and when I got a chance to do some of the earlier episodes with Marceline and Bubblegum. This was 2010 so Don’t Ask Don’t Tell was still a national policy. It would be half a decade before same-sex marriage was legal in The United States and I wanted to do something with the characters of Marceline and Bubblegum but figure out how to get it on TV. The strategy at the time that I pitched was that because they’re both centuries-old, millenniums-old, had a relationship sometime in the past and they’re unpacking that in a way that would be apparent. That was the only way to be able to do something with these characters and their relationship on screen.

As I was entering my show, I really wanted to find a way to be able to show characters actively in a relationship happening in real-time. We strategized the concept of fusion to be able to explore relationships and include queer relationships. Central to that, one of the things we were excited about was to have the character of Garnet have a ton of screen time and be a main character. There were a lot of things I wanted to explore with an active relationship to parallel my own relationship. I was inventing these characters with my co-executive producer Ian Jones-Quartey, who is also my partner. We wanted to explore an active, queer relationship that would parallel a lot of our experiences with bigotry as an interracial couple.

(10) N.K. [Item by rcade.] While discussing a project called Women’s Prize for Fiction Reclaim Her Name that asked to publish one of her stories for free, then asked to publish one of her novels for free, Nora Jemisin explains how she came to write novels under the initials N.K. Thread starts here.

“(And for those wondering, I’ve said this in multiple interviews, but I did it bc at the time I was an academic starting to publish papers, and thought the initials would separate my fiction writing from my academic writing. [Yeah, this was before natural language processing.])”

Read the whole thread for how she handles a question about what the K stands for.

(11) MEDIA ANNIVERSARY.

  • August 1998Blade premiered. With Wesley Snipes as Blade, this film, the first of a trilogy, was directed by Stephen Norrington and written by David S. Goyer as based on the Marvel character developed by writer Marv Wolfman and penciller Gene Colan. It was produced by Snipes along with Peter Frankfurt and Robert Engelman. Stephen Dorff, Kris Kristofferson, N’Bushe Wright and Donal Logue were the other principal cast. Marvel, along with Amen Ra Films and Imaginary Forces, were the producing film companies. It was generally well-received by critics though several thought it was way too violent. Box office-wise, it did fantastic but Marvel earned just a flat fee of $25,000. Audience reviewers at Rotten Tomatoes currently only give it a 55% rating. 

(12) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge and John Hertz.]

  • Born August 21, 1872 Aubrey Beardsley. Best remembered for his often highly erotic art, ISFDB lists him as having a genre novel, The Story of Venus and Tannhäuser, which bears one of the longest subtitles I’ve encountered (“The story of Venus and Tannhäuser in which is set forth an exact account of the manner of State held by Madam Venus, Goddess and Meretrix under the famous Hörselberg, and containing the Adventures of Tannhäuser in that Place, his Repentance, his Journeying to Rome, and Return to the Loving Mountain”). He has two genre novellas as well, “Catullus: Carmen Cl.“ and “ Under the Hill”.  And yes, he was just twenty-five when he died of tuberculosis. (Died 1898.) (CE) 
  • Born August 21, 1888 Miriam Allen deFord. Although it is said that she started writing SF when Boucher became editor of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, she only published five of her eighteen late Forties through Fifties works there. One published there, “Mary Celestial“, was written with Boucher. And one, “A Death in the Family”,  was adapted in Night Gallery‘s second season. Best remembered as a mystery writer.  I see no indication that she’s in print in any manner these days for her SF (but three of her mysteries are available from the usual suspects) though she had two SF collections, Elsewhere, Elsewhen, Elsehow and Xenogenesis.  (Died 1975.) (CE) 
  • Born August 21, 1911 – Anthony Boucher.  Co-founded The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction with Francis McComas, co-edited with him 1949-1954, alone through ’58; two Hugos for Best Professional Magazine.  Eight Best of F&SF anthologies 1952-1959 (’52-’54 with FM).  A Treasury of SF ’59, one of our best.  Six dozen short stories.  Translated into Dutch, French, German, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Russian.  Opera lover.  First translator of Borges into English, hello Evelyn Leeper.  Also detective fiction (a star there too), radio drama, poker.  (Died 1968) [JH]
  • Born August 21, 1927 – Arthur Thomson.  Fanartist.  Thirty covers, a hundred forty interiors.  Signature often read as “ATom”, some insist it’s just “Atom”.   Resident illustrator of Hyphen.  Back covers for Nebula.  Here is the Nov 64 Riverside Quarterly.  Here is Banana Wings 49 (repr. from An ATom Sketchbook).  TAFF (Trans-Atlantic Fan Fund) delegate, published ATom Abroad.  Official Artist of Boskone 15.  Two Novas.  Rotsler Award.  (Died 1990) [JH]
  • Born August 21, 1943 – Ron Walotsky. A hundred eighty covers, fifty interiors.  Gallery in Locus 500.  Interview in SF Chronicle 214.  Magic: the Gathering cards.  Ancient Warriors of Lost Civilizations series based on horseshoe-crab shells found near his Florida home.  Here is the May 67 F&SF.  Here is Lord of Light.  Here is Earth Ship and Star Song.  Here is The Shores Beneath.  Here is Houston, Houston, Do You Read? (Souls cover bound with it is by Dieter Rottermund.)  Here is the Nov 97 Analog.  Here is Jimi Hendrix.  Artbook, Inner Visions.  (Died 2002) [JH]
  • Born August 21, 1943 Lucius Shepard. Damn, I didn’t know he’d passed on. Life During Wartime which won him the Astounding Award for a Best New Writer is one seriously weird novel. And his World Fantasy Award winning The Jaguar Hunter is freaking amazing as are all his short collections. I don’t remember reading “ Barnacle Bill the Spacer” which won a Best Novella Hugo at ConFrancisco. (Died 2014.) (CE)
  • Born August 21, 1956 Kim Cattrall, 64. Gracie Law in John Carpenter’s amazing Big Trouble in Little China. She also played Justine de Winter in The Return of the Musketeers, Paige Katz in Wild Palms, Lieutenant Valeris in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country and Linday Isley in Good v. Evil. Series wise, she was one offs in Tales of the Gold MonkeyLogan’s RunThe Incredible Hulk and The Outer Limits. (CE);
  • Born August 21, 1957 – John Howe, 63.  A hundred sixty covers, two hundred fifty interiors.  The Maps of Middle-EarthThere and Back Again with Brian Sibley; A Middle-Earth Traveler.  Here is Rip van Winkle.  Here is The Lord of the Rings (presumably not meaning to imply Gandalf is he, aiee). Here is The Once and Future King.  Here is Fool’s Errand.  Here is Créatures.  Artbooks Myth & MagicSur les terres de TolkienJohn Howe Fantasy Art WorkshopForging DragonsLost WorldsColoring Dragons.  Website here.  [JH]
  • Born August 21, 1965 – Darynda Jones, 55.  Sixteen novels, three shorter stories.  Summa cum laude from U. New Mexico.  Sign-language interpreter.  RITA Award.  Admits to almost finishing a post-Apocalypse story while in a corner booth at a Tastee Freez, kindly has never shown the manuscript.  Lives in New Mexico with husband and two sons the Mighty Mighty Jones Boys.  Third Grave Dead Ahead NY Times Best Seller.  [JH]
  • Born August 21, 1968 Carrie-Anne Moss, 52. I first saw her as Tara McDonald in the Dark Justice series. Not genre, just her first video I think. Due later played Monica Howard in the “Feeding the Beast” episode of Forever Knight as her first genre role. Oddly enough her next role was as Liz Teel in the Canadian series called Matrix which has nothing to do with the Matrix film franchise where she’s Trinity. Her latest genre role was playing Jeryn Hogarth in the now defunct Netflix based Marvel Universe. (CE)
  • Born August 21, 1972 – Socorro Vegas, 48.  Premio Nacional de Poesía y Cuento «Benemérito de América»Premio Nacional de Novela Ópera Prima «Carlos Fuentes» (Mexico).  Five book-length works (Todos las islas is short stories).  We may claim “The Giant in the Moon”, see it in English here.  Other translations in CompressedConcho River ReviewThe Listening EyeLiteralThe Modern Review.  [JH]
  • Born August 21, 1975 Alicia Witt, 45. Her first role was at age eight as Alia Atreides in David Lynch’s Dune. Next, genre wise at least, voices Caitlin Fairchild In the animated Gen¹³ film. She has series one-offs in Twilight ZonePerson of InterestElementaryWalking DeadSupernatural and The Librarians. She showed up in an episode of the original Twin Peaks and reprised that role nearly thirty years later in Twin Peaks: A Limited Event Series. (CE) 

(13) DC FANDOME. In addition to everything else happening this busy weekend is the DC Fandome. It’s free and signing up is easy — here. The 24-hour event starts at 10 a.m. Pacific.

(14) GRATITUDES. In “i am grateful”, Wil Wheaton admits it’s hard for him to fall asleep because when he’s trying, that’s when anxiety works on him most aggressively. He shares a practice that has made it easier.  

…But I started doing something that’s been incredibly helpful, and I thought I’d share it.

Every night as I’m getting ready for bed, I focus on a list of things for which I am grateful. I call it “doing my gratitudes”. I just start somewhere, like “I am grateful that I am going to sleep in a warm, safe bed. I am grateful that I get to share this bed with Anne. I am grateful I have enough food.” Stuff like that. I remind myself that there is so much that is good in my life, and by thinking about those things, recognizing those things, and making space to feel grateful for them, I do not give my anxiety an opportunity to grab hold of anything and go to work on me.

… Those bright lights are so important right now, whether they are stadium lights turning night into day, or pinpricks that barely allow candlelight through black velvet. Spending time in gratitude makes it easier for me to find the light, and remember that it is there, even when I can’t see it.

(15) THE CAST IS IN HERE. SYFY Wire believes “The X-Files Cast Singing Its Theme Song On Zoom Is Now, Like The Truth, Out There”.

Did the iconic theme song for The X-Files need fan-written lyrics? If it got the cast of the sci-fi series to reunite for a musical Zoom call, then, perhaps — like the massive government archives secreting away the supernatural — it’s worth it for the greater good.

…Now how many government secrets are hidden in this song? The new lyrics — courtesy of contest winners Jennifer Large and Rebecca MacDonald — give composer Mark Snow’s classic eerie theme a twist, especially when sung by a wide-ranging collection of cast members and crew.

(16) A KIND OF WORLDBUILDING. Tiffany Meuret analyzes “Our Timely Obsession with Animal Crossing” at the SFWA Blog.

…Explanations abound for the game’s sudden explosion in popularity, but I have noticed a particularly common camaraderie among fellow writers. What is it about this game, with so many other open-concept games already in existence, that draws writers to it with such gusto? The timing of release and the sweetness of the game in such dark times are no doubt factors, but I believe it goes deeper than that, down to the very core of our creative hearts. 

…From that moment on, I unconsciously spun the narrative of my experience. From the clothes I wore to where I placed the coin-operated tourist binoculars I’d shot out of a balloon with a slingshot, I was crafting a story within this story-less game. This is the garden where I breed pink roses. Here is my carnival for when I need a bit of a thrill, outfitted with a popcorn machine and a teacup ride. There is the playground and community pool where I’ll meet my friends on the weekend, lined with color-coded tables for playing chess. Every piece of wallpaper, every color, every pair of jelly sandals I place on my chibi feet are dishing out tone and theme and mood. 

And then there are the villagers. They are a delight to witness as they flit about the island, munching on popsicles, singing, or sprinting Naruto-style on the beach. I’ve dedicated far too many hours to crafting and designing spaces on my island that my residents might enjoy, despite many of the items being stationary and non-interactive. My imagination does all the work the game does not. 

(17) TALL TYPO TALE. [Item by rcade.] The new version of Microsoft Flight Simulator maps the entire world so you can fly over it, using AI and lots of mapping data. Engadget reports “A typo created a 212-story monolith in ‘Microsoft Flight Simulator’”  

Alexander Muscat tweets, “In Microsoft Flight Simulator a bizarrely eldritch, impossibly narrow skyscraper pierces the skies of Melbourne’s North like a suburban Australian version of Half-Life 2’s Citadel, and I am -all for it-.”

(18) VANISHING POINT. BBC Documentary covers “Rulebreakers: How I disappear”.

In Japan, if you want to disappear from your life, you can just pick up the phone and a ‘night moving company’ will turn you into one of the country’s ‘johatsu,’ or literally ‘evaporated people.’ You can cease to exist. Meet the people who choose to disappear and the people who are left behind.

(19) NOT COYOTE AND ROADRUNNER. But there are prints from two animals. “Cliff collapses in Grand Canyon, revealing 313 million-year-old footprints, park says”Yahoo! News has the story.

A geology professor hiking in the Grand Canyon made a “surprising discovery” — the oldest recorded tracks of their kind.

After a cliff collapsed in Grand Canyon National Park, a boulder with fossilized tracks was revealed, park officials said in a Thursday news release. The fossil footprints are about 313 million years old, according to researchers.

“These are by far the oldest vertebrate tracks in Grand Canyon, which is known for its abundant fossil tracks” Stephen Rowland, a paleontologist at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, said in the news release. “More significantly, they are among the oldest tracks on Earth of shelled-egg-laying animals, such as reptiles, and the earliest evidence of vertebrate animals walking in sand dunes.”

(20) IT’S BACK. Like The Blob or The Thing, there’s no stopping Pumpkin Spice from showing up anytime it wants. Morning Consult takes notice: “With Seasonal Products Making an Early Return This Year, Consumers Weigh In on Sweet Spot for Promotions”.

Pumpkin spice came early this year — too early, according to majorities of consumers. 

Dunkin’ Donuts’ pumpkin-flavored coffee and other fall treats returned to the menu earlier than ever this year, the company said, arriving at participating locations Wednesday. Starbucks Corp. has yet to confirm the return date for its much-loved pumpkin spice latte, but one location reportedly said the product would launch on Aug. 28. 

While some social media users are eager for the early return of fall products — a silver lining in an otherwise difficult year — new polling from Morning Consult shows that many consumers would prefer to see products promoted closer to the seasons or holidays with which they’re associated….

(21) VIDEO OF THE DAY. Metal Monsterette is a fun family film made in 1957 with kids and cousins by Ed Emshwiller. His daughter Eve is the heroine and daughter Susan is the mad scientist Dr. Majenius. 

[Thanks to Cat Eldridge, Mike Kennedy, John King Tarpinian, John Hertz, Michael Toman, JJ, rcade, Martin Morse Wooster, and Andrew Porter for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Kip W.]

Pixel Scroll 8/6/20 The Scroll With The Twisted Pixel

(1) SHARKE SIGHTING.  Nina Allan has been doing an interesting series of posts on both Hugo nominees and Clarke Award nominees; she wrote one on all of the Hugo-nominated novellas, for example. Her most recent is on Kameron Hurley’s The Light Brigade. “Weird Wednesdays #9/Clarke Award #3: The Light Brigade by Kameron Hurley”.

…What a ride, what a charge. Kameron Hurley was last shortlisted for the Clarke Award back in 2014, for her debut novel God’s War. I enjoyed and admired God’s War, but had fallen somewhat out of touch with Hurley’s work since, so I was pleased to have the opportunity to read her latest within the context of the Clarke. What a delight it is to see a writer fulfilling her potential. What I loved most about God’s War and the short fiction from Hurley that I’d read in the interim was its densely textured language, and The Light Brigade is immediately, thrillingly identifiable as by the same hand. Time (and increasing fame) has done nothing to slow or flatten the vividness and immediacy of Hurley’s approach, nor compromise its intelligence or conceptual ambition.

… Although The Light Brigade works perfectly well as a standalone novel – you don’t need to have read any of Hurley’s other work or even any science fiction to get on board – it is important to note the many and clever ways in which it is directly in conversation with older works of SF. …

(2) SUBSCRIBE TO ASTROLABE. Aidan Moher will launch a new newsletter— Astrolabe — on Friday

Aidan Moher

Astrolabe covers all the stuff I love—from science fiction and fantasy, to retro gaming, parenting, and personal news about my work. It’s about talking my stuff and professional news, but also building a community of readers, and sharing the love by highlighting and sharing all the other great work and books I come across.

Why wait? Here’s the link to subscribe.

Aidan Moher, who won a Best Fanzine Hugo in 2014 for A Dribble of Ink, which really was a beautiful publication, has gone on to author  “On the Phone with Goblins” and “The Dinosaur Graveyard,” and write for KotakuVentureBeatEGMUncanny MagazineCast of WondersBarnes & Noble Sci-Fi & Fantasy BlogTor.com, and various other places. 

But Aidan has not forgotten my teasing from back in 2014. He ended his email:

I see your absolute glee that I’m starting a issue-based fanzine, Mike Glyer. I SEE YOU.

(3) NUMBER NINTH, NUMBER NINTH. NPR’s Jason Sheehan warns us that “Whatever You’re Expecting, ‘Harrow The Ninth’ Is Not That Kind Of Book”.

You know how sometimes people say, Oh, it’s okay. You don’t have to read the first book in this series to dive right into the second.

This is not that kind of book

You know how sometimes people say, It’s like everything you loved about the first book, only MORE.

This is not that kind of book.

Last year, Tamsyn Muir absolutely owned the lesbian-necromancers-in-space genre. She created a crumbly, dusty, deeply haunted and wonderfully goopy horror-universe with Gideon the Ninth, peopled it with creepy, sepulchral wizards, dipped it all in the reverential tones of quasi-Catholic religious fanaticism, wrote it like a science-fantasy parlor romance full of murder and then gave it to us, still warm and dripping, like a cat bringing home a particularly juicy mouse.

…I loved Gideon. Loved everything about it. It was just so much of a book — so strange, so full, so lush, so double-bats*** crazy and so unerringly cool — that I didn’t think anything could top it.

And Harrow the Ninth, second in the series, doesn’t.

Because it is not that kind of book.

Gideon was the perfect surrogate through which to experience Muir’s creation — a brash, foul-mouthed, anarchic guide who was just as wonderstruck as we were by the gory weirdness happening at every other breath, but never so serious about it that any piece of the story felt logy with funereal detail.

Harrow, though? Harrow is all black crepe and rosaries. She’s that one goth girl from high school gone full dark supernova with her sacramental face paint and unfathomable necromantic powers. A bone witch (and don’t think Muir doesn’t have some fun with that), she can construct a skeleton from a chip of tibia and have it tear your arms and legs clean off. She vacillates wildly between breathless (though exceptionally prudish) teenage passion for a corpse (that would take pages to explain), fervent prayer and drear musings on death — her own and everyone else’s. At one point, she carefully (and explosively) poisons someone with a soup made from her own bone marrow and it’s passed off like, Oh, that’s just Harry, exploding one of God’s own hit men at the dinner table, the kooky kid!

(4) FAN PIPES UP. Speaking of Tamsyn Muir, she did an Ask Me Anything on Reddit yesterday: “I’m Tamsyn Muir, author of HARROW THE NINTH, second book of the Locked Tomb trilogy. AMA!”

[Question] … I have been telling all my friends that Alecto the Ninth is going to be a heist novel. Can you please confirm this, and if so, also confirm that there will be many heart crimes. Thank you for writing these books, they are fantastic….

tazmuir

AMA Author Tamsyn Muir

I had to go back and look to see if I’d ever mentioned that I wanted a heist in Alecto, because otherwise you are 1. psychic or 2. hiding in my drywall — there IS actually a heist in Alecto. It’s not the world’s greatest heist, and is undertaken by idiots, but there’s a heist. If you’re in my house, can you tell me if turning off the boiler at night has helped the pipes? I assume you’re between the walls.

(5) OPENING A FRESH DECK. NPR’s Glen Weldon reports that “With ‘Star Trek: Lower Decks,’ A Venerable Franchise Loosens Up”.

The prospect of spoofing Star Trek represents nothing new under the (binary) sun(s). The franchise has become an institution, and mocking institutions remains a thriving American cottage industry. Saturday Night Live started taking whacks at Trek way back in the ’70s, as did MAD magazine, and the short-lived sitcom Quark. As a piece of cultural furniture, Star Trek’s ubiquity, driven by multiple television series, movies, books, games, comics and fan-fiction, means its tropes have entered the collective consciousness, and have thus become easy to recognize — and to make fun of.

Why, one could even construct an entire, very-good movie just by riffing on Trek (1999’s Galaxy Quest), as well as an entire, not-very-good television series (FOX’s mystifying The Orville).

The difference between all these previous efforts and the one represented by Star Trek: Lower Decks, premiering Thursday August 6th on CBS All Access, is a simple one:

This time, the comm signal is coming from inside the house.

True, the franchise has poked the gentlest of fun at itself, over the years — a throwaway line here, a winking reference to previous Trek series there. But Star Trek: Lower Decks is an official Trek property, its yuks are both nerdily meta and rigorously in-canon, and they go — more broadly than boldly, it must be said — where no Trek has gone before.

The premise is such stuff as comedy sketches are made on: Starships are huge, and staffed by hundreds of officers and crew members, so why does every Trek story need to revolve around the bridge, and the same 7 or so characters? Why not focus instead on the grunts doing the tedious, everyday work?

Creator/showrunner Mike McMahan made his bones on the animated series Drawn Together and Rick and Morty — shows whose darker, more cutting humorous sensibilities would seem to clash with Trek’s traditional commitment to ennobling, optimistic uplift. But that disconnect turns out to work for the new series, in most respects. For the nerds, in-jokes and easter eggs abound, testifying to the creators’ fondness for the source material, while viewers who don’t know a nacelle from a Jeffries Tube will likely appreciate the show’s sheer joke-density — and the fact that, as an animated series, it comes outfitted with an unlimited special effects budget.

That’s important, because despite its bright, broad, cartoony look, the planets of Lower Decks can appear legitimately otherworldly, instead of all looking like the Vasquez Rocks outside of Santa Clarita, California. Alien races can look alien — obviating previous series’ need to, as one wag (me) once put it, “Grab a dayplayer, slap a hunk of spirit gum between their eyebrows, paint ’em Prussian blue and shove ’em in front of the camera”.

(6) I WRITE THE WORDS. NPR reveals how “A New Documentary Shines A Spotlight On The Lyricist Behind The Disney Renaissance”.

Alan Menken composed the song “Prince Ali,” memorably sung by Robin Williams in Disney’s 1992 animated feature Aladdin, while sitting at the lyricist’s hospital bed. His friend, Howard Ashman, was dying.

“His life was pitifully cut short, unfortunately, as were many at that time,” says Menken. “But Howard’s [death], for me, is the most personally difficult and his spirit remains very, very present still; there’s something about Howard that is not just a statistic in the battle against AIDS. But as an artist, he’s extremely vital — even now.”

Howard, a documentary about Ashman and his work as an award-winning lyricist, is coming to streaming August 7 on Disney+. It also shows the friendship between Ashman and Menken, who met in New York City in the 1970s, where Ashman was the artistic director of a black box theater, the WPA, near Union Square. Menken had been working as an accompanist for singers and writing songs for Sesame Street, and they immediately gelled like Rodgers and Hammerstein. Together they wrote the musicals Kurt Vonnegut’s God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater and the unlikely hit, Little Shop of Horrors — a monster mash parody of American musical comedies, which won several Drama Desk Awards and was adapted into a film in 1986 – before going on to work for Disney.

The documentary tracks Ashman’s rise from a theater-obsessed kid in Baltimore, to his musical highs and lows (including the ill-fated Broadway show Smile with composer Marvin Hamlisch), and to his untimely death. It’s told through archival photos, song demos, new interviews with family and friends and a filmed recording session from Beauty and the Beast — a Disney-lover’s treasure trove….

(7) ABOUT ASIMOV. In the comments on LitHub’s article “What to Make of Isaac Asimov, Sci-Fi Giant and Dirty Old Man?”, posted in May, former SFWA President Marta Randall told about the time Isaac Asimov assaulted her:

“In general,” writes Nevala-Lee, “Asimov chose targets who were unlikely to protest directly, such as fans and secretaries, and spared women whom he saw as professionally useful.”

I have to take exception to this. In the mid-1980s I was serving my first term as president of the Science Fiction Writers of America (SFWA), the first woman to hold that office, and attended the Boskone convention, as did Dr. Asimov. He showed up in the organization’s suite and I thought it proper to introduce myself, so at a suitable break in the conversation, I held out my hand for a shake and tried to say, “Dr. Asimov, I’m Marta Randall, the president of SFWA.” I didn’t make it to the second syllable of his title before he grabbed my hand, jerked me to him, and tried to stick his tongue down my throat. We were in a suite run by our professional organization, but apparently it never occurred to him that his actions might be inappropriate. Luckily a number of members who knew me pried him off of me before I tried to deck him.

We met again years later, when I was protected by carrying a baby on my back. He was perfectly cordial, but never apologized, if he even remembered the assault.

The man was a pig.

(8) VIRTUAL OXONMOOT. The UK’s Tolkien Society will hold “Oxonmoot Online” from September 18-20. Full details at the link.

…Clearly Oxonmoot Online will be a very different event from a normal Oxonmoot, but our aim is to bring you a busy and engaging weekend of Tolkien related activities. In addition, the online nature of the event offers new opportunities for international members who are normally unable to travel to Oxford to take part….

…Thanks to the actions of Ar-Pharazôn at the end of the Second Age, we find ourselves living on a round world – which means we have to deal with the complexities of time zones. To make the event as accessible as possible to as many of our members as we can, the “core” time for the keynote events and larger activities will be 18:00-22:00 UK time.

Outside these hours, we will run an engaging programme of talks, papers, activities and social gatherings – the exact timing of which will depend on the offers we get from you, our members. We intend to record talks and papers so that delegates can watch the presentations which are delivered at a time which is difficult in their time zone…

(9) THE GOAL IS MONEY. Trailer for the Korean sff movie Space Sweepers. “Are lots of trash worth a fortune?”

(10) MEDIA BIRTHDAY.

  • August 6, 1955 Science Fiction Theater’s “The Stones Began to Move” first aired. Starring Truman Bradley, Basil Rathbone, and Jean Willie, a discovery inside the just-opened tomb of an Egyptian pharaoh may hold a clue as to the construction of the pyramids, but a murder is committed to keep that secret from being revealed. You can watch it here,

(11) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge and John Hertz.]

  • Born August 6, 1809 – Alfred, Lord Tennyson.  (His name was Alfred Tennyson; he was later made 1st Baron Tennyson.)  Poet whose engagement with quest and fantasy point us to him (“To follow knowledge like a sinking star, beyond the utmost bound of human thought” – speaking of which, don’t neglect the highly strange Frank Belknap Long story “To Follow Knowledge”, 1942).  See “Ulysses”, “Tithonus”, Idylls of the King (the Matter of Arthur).  (Died 1892) [JH]
  • Born August 6, 1874 Charles Fort. Writer and researcher who specialized in anomalous phenomena. The term fortean is sometimes used to characterize such phenomena. No, not genre as such, but certainly an influence on many a writer. The Dover publication, The Complete Books of Charles Fort, that collects together The Book of The Damned Lo!Wild Talents and New Lands has a foreword by Damon Knight. L. Sprague de Camp reviewed it in Astounding Science-Fiction in the August 1941 issue when it was originally published as The Books of Charles Fort. (Died 1932.) (CE)
  • Born August 6, 1877 John Ulrich Giesy. He was one of the early writers in the Sword and Planet genre, with his Jason Croft series  He collaborated with Junius B. Smith on many of his stories though not these which others would call them scientific romances. He wrote a large number of stories featuring the occult detective Abdul Omar aka Semi-Dual and those were written with Smith. I see iBooks has at least all of the former and one of the latter available. Kindle has just the latter. (Died 1947.) (CE)
  • Born August 6, 1911 Lucille Ball. She became the first woman to run a major television studio, Desilu Productions, which is where Star Trek was produced. Her support of the series kept it from being terminated by the financial backers even after it went way over budget in the first pilot. (Died 1989.) (CE) 
  • Born August 6, 1917 – Barbara Cooney.  Author and illustrator of a hundred children’s books, some fantastic.  Two Caldecott Medals.  National Book Award.  Here is a picture that might simply be entitled “Fantasy”.  Here is a cover for Snow White and Rose Red.  Here is Where Have You Been?  Here is “The Owl and the Pussycat” (note the runcible spoon).  (Died 2000) [JH]
  • Born August 6, 1955 – Judith Bemis, 65.  Co-chair (with husband Tony Parker), Tropicon 8-9.  Fan Guest of Honor (with Parker), Concave 16.  Treasurer of MagiCon (50th Worldcon), Noreascon 4 (62nd).  Active getting fanzines into FANAC.org database. [JH]
  • Born August 6, 1955 –Eva Whitley, 65.  Chaired Paracon 1, Disclaves 26 & 34.  Widow of Jack Chalker; says  ”Possibly the only person in fandom to meet spouse by making him GoH (Paracon 1)”.  Fan Guest of Honor at Balticon 17 (with Chalker) & 21, Norwescon XXII (with Chalker).  Active in WSFA (Washington [D.C.] SF Ass’n) and BSFS (Baltimore SF Ass’n).  [JH]
  • Born August 6, 1962 Michelle Yeoh, 58. Ok, I have to give her full name of Yang Berbahagia Tan Sri Dato’ Seri Michelle Yeoh Choo-Kheng. Wow. Her first meaningful genre roles were as Wai Lin in Tomorrow Never Dies and Yu Shu Lien in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. I actually remember her as Zi Yuan in The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor, the first film of a since cancelled franchise. And then there’s her dual roles in the Trek universe where she’s Captain Philippa Georgiou and Emperor Philippa Georgiou. The forthcoming Section 31 series will involve one of them but I’m not sure which one… (CE)
  • Born August 6, 1969 – Álvaro Enrigue, 51.  Novel Sudden Death for us, Herralde Prize.  Six novels, three collections of shorter stories and one of essays.  Mortiz Prize.  Carlos Fuentes said E’s novel Perpendicular Lives “belongs to Max Planck’s quantum universe rather than the relativistic universe of Albert Einstein, a world of co-existing fields … whose particles are created or destroyed in the same act.”  Translated into Chinese, Czech, French, German.  [JH]
  • Born August 6, 1972 – Paolo Bacigalupi, 48.  Six novels, a score of shorter stories, translated into French, German, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Romanian, Spanish.  Interviewed in Electric VelocipedeIntergalactic Medicine ShowInterzoneLightspeedLocusNY Review of SFSF Research Ass’n Review.  First novel The Windup Girl won Hugo, Nebula, Campbell (as it then was) Memorial, Compton Crook, Grand Prix de l’Imaginaire, Ignotus, Laßwitz, Prix Planète, Seiun; also a Printz, a Sturgeon, another Seiun.  Toastmaster at MileHiCon 42; Guest of Honor at ArmadilloCon 33, Capclave 2014.  Williamson Lectureship, 2014.  [CE and I found two different dates for his birthday; since he’s done and won much, we decided to let both notes stand – JH]

(12) COMICS SECTION.

  • Truer cartoon words were never spoken — Ziggy.

(13) US IN FLUX. The latest story from the Center for Science and the Imagination’s Us in Flux project is “Tomorrow Is Another Daze,” a story of Aztlán, creative reuse, and making technology work for you by Ernest Hogan (an Arizona-based writer, often called the father of Chicanx science fiction).

Lalo was in the middle of making Huevos Rancheros Microöndas when the doorbell rattled. The microwave buzzed less than a second after. Yet another quarantine for yet another virus was going on, so he wasn’t eager to answer the door. For all he knew it could be a terminal case, long past the early stages that are said to be similar to what they used to call future shock: the disorientation and hallucinations, the convulsions, foaming at the mouth, about to drop dead on his porch under the decorations his wife insisted on putting up, requiring the services of a hazmat team….

On Monday, August 10 at 4:00 p.m. Eastern, they will have another virtual event on Zoom, with Ernest and scholar, author, and editor Frederick Luis Aldama. Register at the link.

(14) EAR TO THE GROUND. Michelle Nijhuis, in “Buzz Buzz Buzz” at New York Review of Books, discusses four recent works about human responsibilities towards animals.

…The scholarly emphasis on negative rights, along with the work of animal-rights and animal-welfare activists, has arguably improved the treatment of domesticated animals in North America and Europe. Public opposition to animal cruelty is now widespread, and recent laws and policies have banned animal blood sports. The insights of advocates such as Temple Grandin have helped us imagine how other species experience the world, and begin to curb some of the most brutal factory-farming practices.

None of these advances, however, has changed our fundamental relationship with animals—which is hardly sustainable, ethically or otherwise. In Slime, when one of the translators finally succeeds in communicating with a bump-nosed parrotfish from the Pacific Ocean, the message is stark, delivered in dramatic terms: “Youare helping Slime to kill us You You You Land Monsters!!! Why? Stop? Why? Change your swimming! Change your swimming! Change your swimming!!!!” Were Slime written today, it might include a line from a pangolin or a bat, warning that our heedless exploitation of animals carries deadly risks for all.

… That animals are in this sense political actors is an underrecognized and, to my mind, potentially powerful point of convergence between the animal-rights and ecological-protection movements: both traditions hold that animals have needs and wants that humans are more than capable of understanding, and should attend to.

(15) BE CAREFUL OUT THERE AMONG THEM ENGLISH. James Davis Nicoll was pleased to get some egoboo from the letters to the editors in the August 4 Sydney Morning Herald:

Hold the phonics

Each of your “o’s”, Kevin Harris, represents different sounds because of the consonants in each word that have individual phonetic sounds; always have and always will (Letters, August 5). Otherwise, we’d all be speaking French, where half the letters aren’t ever pronounced. John Kingsmill, Fairlight

Thirty years ago, one James Nicoll observed that “English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and riffle their pockets for new vocabulary”. With that has come disparate rules of pronunciation, to the annoyance of Kevin Harris’ five-year-old and countless others. For English, basic phonics works for about 40 per cent of words, enough to make it a useful tool. For the rest, plenty of guided reading will make up most of the deficit. Richard Murnane, Hornsby

(16) SURPRISE! – NOT. “Hollywood censors films to appease China, report suggests” – BBC has details.

Hollywood bosses have been censoring films to placate the film market in China, a report has suggested.

The lengthy report says US film companies want to avoid losing access to China’s lucrative box office market.

It said casting, content, dialogue and plotlines were increasingly being tailored to appease censors in Beijing.

The report, compiled by the free speech charity PEN America, claimed China was therefore influencing movies released in cinemas around the world.

China holds the world’s second largest box office market behind the US.

According to the Hollywood Reporter, American films earned $2.6bn (£2bn) in China last year, with Disney’s Avengers finale, Endgame, making $614m (£466m).

PEN is a non-profit organisation that campaigns on free speech and it sponsors the Pinter Prize for literature.

The report said that Marvel’s 2016 superhero film Dr Strange whitewashed a major Tibetan character for fear of jeopardising the title’s chances of success in China.

The forthcoming Top Gun sequel, Maverick, was also criticised for the “mysterious disappearance of the Taiwanese flag” in a 2019 trailer.

“Our biggest concern is that Hollywood is increasingly normalising pre-emptive self-censorship in anticipation of what the Beijing censor is looking for,” said James Tager, author of the report.

(17) HEISENBIRDS. “Attaching Small Weights To Pigeons Helps Them Shoot Up In The Social Hierarchy”NPR transcript:

Scientists found that attaching small weights to pigeons causes them to shoot up in the social hierarchy. The finding is important because scientists often attach trackers to pigeons.

STACEY VANEK SMITH, HOST:

It turns out there is a social hierarchy among pigeons, and it definitely pays to be the big bird on campus.

STEVE PORTUGAL: Being top of the dominance hierarchy basically gives you preferential access to everything. It means you get priority access to food, priority access to mates.

SHAPIRO: That’s Steve Portugal, a zoologist and biologist at Royal Holloway, University of London. And contrary to what you may have heard about the early bird getting the worm, in the case of pigeons, it is heavier birds that get all the perks.

VANEK SMITH: So Portugal and his colleagues wondered what would happen if you made lighter pigeons feel heavier. If you beefed them up, would they punch above their weight?

SHAPIRO: They tested their theory in a captive flock of homing pigeons. They identified the birds in the bottom half of the hierarchy and loaded them up with tiny weights – little bird backpacks, actually.

PORTUGAL: And sure enough, when I did that, they became much more aggressive, started much more fights and won many more fights as well.

(18) EVRYBODY MUST BE STONE. ScreenRant luckily didn’t run out of fingers while counting the cast: “All 9 Star Trek Actors In Gargoyles The Animated Series”.

A number of Star Trek actors lent their voices to the animated series Gargoyles. The show followed the adventures of gargoyles, nocturnal creatures who turned into stone during the day. After being transported from their home in Scotland to New York City, the clan were awoken from their 1000-year-long magical slumber and took on the responsibility of protecting the city. The children’s series originally ran from 1994 until 1997, but has been finding new audiences thanks to Disney+.

… Like Jonathan Frakes, Marina Sirtis was a main character on both Star Trek: TNG as well as GargoylesSirtis played Deanna Troi, the empathetic, chocolate-loving counsellor onboard the USS-Enterprise. Troi is half-Betazoid, which grants her empath abilities — which often came in handy in dealings with other alien races. Also like Frakes, Sirtis played a villainous role on Gargoyles: her character Demona despised humans, and is possibly the most dangerous of all remaining gargoyles. She aligned herself with David Xanatos, and was largely responsible for him resurrecting the Wyvern clan, whom she had hoped would join her on her quest for vengeance.

(19) BEEB TRIVIA. Nicholas Whyte told the SMOFs list where they could see this Hugo-related feat:

The UK quiz show University Challenge had three questions about the Hugo Awards for Best Dramatic Presentation, Short Form last night, all correctly answered by the team from Strathclyde University – which, as it happens, is in Glasgow.

[Thanks to PhilRM, JJ, Chip Hitchcock, John Hertz, Mike Kennedy, Cat Eldridge, Michael Toman, John King Tarpinian, Peer Sylvester, Martin Morse Wooster, Joey Eschrich, and Andrew Porter for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day, verified, blue check Andrew.]

Pixel Scroll 7/15/18 Old Filer’s Scroll Of Practical Pixels

(1) AMERICA’S FAVORITE DOCTOR. Welby? Casey? Kildare? Guess Who….? Thursday on BBC America:

Have TARDIS, will time travel: The new special “Doctor Who: The Lost Episode” uses remastered footage and new animation to reconstruct an unfinished 1970s-era tale from the venerable British science fiction drama penned by “Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” author Douglas Adams and starring Tom Baker as the Fourth Doctor. 8 p.m. BBC America

(2) DEAL ALL THE CARDS. The Doctor figures in “The Pigs in Space” sketch at The Muppets Take the O2 (Arena) show, too.

(3) TASTE TEST. Cat Rambo turns in another sweet critique to The Green Man Review: “The Prettiest Candy: Albanese World’s Best Mini Gummi Butterflies”.

Having recently discovered that my favorite gummi bears were possibly made with child labor, I went looking for a substitute recently and picked up a bag of Albanese Mini Gummi Butterflies.

Candy is often not pretty, particularly when chocolate is involved, but these candies, shaped like butterflies, look like little stained glass jewels. The flavors are blue raspberry, cherry, grape, green apple, orange, and strawberry, with the usual scheme of color vaguely indicating flavor….

(4) SHADOW CLARKE JURY DELIBERATIONS. Fell a little behind linking to these posts…..

…I went a bit overboard (OH GOD HELP I CAN’T STOP) but you get the point. There’s a completely functional and immensely fun version of this story that puts it solidly in the Hunger Games/Limetown bracket of ‘tough heroic female lead discovers something terrible and vows to defeat it.’ I love stories like those, especially when they’re folded into this kind of post-apocalyptic subset of fiction.

But what Curtis does here is untidier, harder to achieve, newer and ultimately more rewarding. Nerissa is living day to day after losing everything, so she isn’t party to what would be the central plot in a more traditional dystopia. The parts she discovers, especially the transhumanism elements of the final act, feel earned and contextualized precisely because she discovers them when she does….

 As I said when making my selection of books to review for the Shadow Clarke, I didn’t expect to see Ian McDonald’s Luna: Wolf Moon on the shortlist. Having read it, I don’t have any direct criticism of the Clarke jury for neglecting it but that is not to say that I didn’t enjoy the novel. In fact, I enjoyed it very much and also its predecessor, Luna: New Moon, which I read immediately beforehand. That, of course, is one of the problems with considering a sequel or volume from a series for an award; it is going to be difficult to judge it without knowledge of the preceding story. Especially, when, as in this case, we are dealing with the middle volume in a trilogy which directly picks up strands from the first volume and also does recognisable work in setting up its successor. Therefore, despite the fact that Luna: Wolf Moon contains a strong narrative arc of its own and leaves the reader feeling as satisfied as if they have read a standalone novel, it is nonetheless not directly comparable because it is not entirely self-contained. Experience suggests that judges are generally inclined to favour the single-volume work (and on a practical level they are probably unwilling to read earlier series volumes on top of lengthy submission lists).

To kick off my Shadow Clarke experience, I’ve started with John Scalzi’s The Collapsing Empire, a novel based on a singularly intriguing premise. In a far distant future, humanity exists in an interplanetary empire called the Interdependency, its far-flung outposts connected by the Flow: a series of natural space-time currents that facilitate fast travel between different parts of the universe. As the Flow exists without concern for human planetary preferences – and as the Flow route to Earth was lost centuries ago – the majority of people live underground, in planetary habitats or in space stations along these Flow routes, with trade and travel controlled by aristocratic Guild families. Only one habitable world exists: the planet of End, so-called because it’s the most distant realm in the Interdependency, accessible only by a single pair of Flow streams connecting it to Hub, where the Emperox rules. But the Flow, so long assumed stable, is collapsing, threatening the survival of the entire Interdependency – and, as a consequence, of the human race….

…When I originally added Water & Glass to my short list, I suspected that the plot’s concern with a group of (largely European-coded) survivors onboard a submarine, the Baleen, would herald “an already present anxiety about intimacy, trauma, and reproductive concerns.” Given its thematic concerns from the blurb, I guessed that as a Noah’s Ark tale, the plot would likely revolve around questions of “precariousness and interdependent survival, resettling, and the possibility or repopulation or extinction,” though within the frameworks of the novel itself they were unable to gather more than a few animals, rather than any idea of two of a wide variety. Since reproduction felt central to Water & Glass’ concerns, the blurb itself led me to worry about the likelihood of queerphobia or eugenics in play, and unfortunately this assumption is almost entirely borne out. While queerness is entirely and frustratingly absented from this narrative (its own form of queerphobia), a concern with eugenics and human evolution through human-animal gene splicing is one of the grand revelations of the piece….

Dreams Before the Start of Time is beautifully written. The prose is clear, sometimes sparse, quite subtle in the way it provides a smooth emotional surface whilst signalling a great depth of feeling within the many characters. It is also an excellent science fiction novel-of-ideas, with clear themes and careful working out of the societal implications of new technology. How wonderful! …

American War has been short-listed for the 2018 Arthur C. Clarke award. A selection of our panel of shadow jurors respond to the novel below…

Rich with warmth and suspense and surprise, Spaceman of Bohemia is an exuberant delight from start to finish. Very seldom has a novel this profound taken readers on a journey of such boundless entertainment and sheer fun. It has been short-listed for the 2018 Arthur C. Clarke award. A selection of our panel of shadow jurors respond to the novel below…

HUMANKIND IS EXTINCT.

Wiped out in a global uprising by the very machines made to serve them. Now the world is controlled by OWIs — vast mainframes that have assimilated the minds of millions of robots.

But not all robots are willing to cede their individuality, and Brittle is one of the holdouts.

Left to my own devices, it’s rare for me to write criticism for books I haven’t finished. If I find a book boring or if it simply isn’t for me, there’s little motive to write a partial review to that effect, and so I don’t say anything; alternatively, if a work annoys me so much that I want to nitpick it in detail, I usually spite-read the entirety to be sure my facts are in order. In this instance, however, I feel justified in submitting criticism based on partial reads for two main reasons. Firstly, the Shadow Clarke jury is, by design and definition, reactive: we are here to pass judgement on award selections that have already been made by other people, and to do so in only 300-500 words per book. That being so, while we’ve certainly been given the scope and opportunity to write longer, more in-depth criticisms if we want, at base, we’ve been asked to provide a pass/fail grade on whether we feel a particular book merited its inclusion on the shortlist, with only a cursory explanation as to why.

Which leads to the second point: we are doing this on a fairly tight schedule which – for me, personally – overlaps with packing up my house and family in preparation for an international move. Work on the Shadow Clarke is unpaid, done as a labour of love for the genre; and while I’m happy to participate on those conditions, I am not a masochist….

Reading American War directly after Borne is an interesting experience, if not exactly a cheerful one. Where Vandermeer’s novel carefully files the comfort of specific geography off every element of it’s world, El Akkad builds his dystopian America in painful familiarity. North and South, Blue and Red. CNN and Fox. The political and ideological dividing lines that it’s impossible to avoid in the hourly news cycle are the frame work for El Akkad’s novel. Or at the very least, the foundation.

In a near-future London, Millie Dack places her hand on her belly to feel her baby kick, resolute in her decision to be a single parent. Across town, her closest friend—a hungover Toni Munroe—steps into the shower and places her hand on a medic console. The diagnosis is devastating.

In this stunning, bittersweet family saga, Millie and Toni experience the aftershocks of human progress as their children and grandchildren embrace new ways of making babies. When infertility is a thing of the past, a man can create a child without a woman, a woman can create a child without a man, and artificial wombs eliminate the struggles of pregnancy. But what does it mean to be a parent? A child? A family?

Through a series of interconnected vignettes that spans five generations and three continents, this emotionally taut story explores the anxieties that arise when the science of fertility claims to deliver all the answers.

It has been short-listed for the 2018 Arthur C. Clarke award. A selection of our panel of shadow jurors respond to the novel below…

…Cargill is a screenwriter first and foremost and its impossible not to see the influence of his primary craft here. That’s not a criticism either, there’s no sense of this being a lightly expanded movie treatment designed to be dropped onto a producer’s desk as an unusually fancy leave behind. Rather, this is a book steeped in the iconography and tempo of modern American cinema and that’s both interesting and not always a good thing for book or reader….

On a small isolated island, there’s a community that lives by its own rules. Boys grow up knowing they will one day take charge, while girls know they will be married and pregnant within moments of hitting womanhood.

But before that time comes, a ritual offers children an exhilarating reprieve. Every summer they are turned out onto their doorsteps, to roam the island, sleep on the beach and build camps in trees. To be free.

At the end of one of such summer, one of the younger girls sees something she was never supposed to see. And she returns home with a truth that could bring their island world to its knees.

It has been short-listed for the 2018 Arthur C. Clarke award. A selection of our panel of shadow jurors respond to the novel below…

…The greatest problem for me with Gather the Daughters is that no one is allowed to behave or think or speak like an adult. (We have only to think of the depth of field achieved by Margaret Atwood in her characterisation of The Handmaid’s Tale to see how Melamed’s novel is deficient in this regard.) A narrative that depends on compliance will inevitably run out of steam, as this one does. History has proved to us time and again that holding down a dictatorship is difficult work – sooner rather than later the peasants begin to uncover the injustices and deceptions perpetrated against them, and start to revolt. You have to kill a lot of people to keep these systems going, and even so your days as a despot are numbered from the beginning. On the island, the only reason nothing has come unstuck for the Wanderers so far is because everyone else in the community insists on behaving like characters in a YA dystopia….

It has been short-listed for the 2018 Arthur C. Clarke award. A selection of our panel of shadow jurors respond to the novel below…

What is it I look for in science fiction? The answer will be different for everyone, of course, and some who followed last year’s Shadow Clarke project may have come away with the impression that I don’t really like science fiction at all, that I’ll always find something to gripe about because that’s the kind of critic I am.

The truth is that I want books to be brilliant, and that’s what I go in hoping, every time. Most of all I hope to be shocked and surprised by a new voice or a new idea or a new way with words, to be seduced by science fiction all over again. Although Jeff VanderMeer can scarcely be described as a new voice, the effect of reading Borne has been transfiguring, like water after drought. After a long dry spell in which I honestly thought I’d had it with the genre, encountering Borne has left me on a high, inspired to join in the conversation once again.

(5) EXERCISE YOUR FRANCHISE. One of File 770’s self-imposed duties is to chronicle the many genre awards. Few are as exotic as Chuck Wendig’s — “Awkward Author Contest 2018: Winner, And Now It’s Your Turn”. He has picked JD Buffington as the first winner, and called on his blog readers to vote on the other entries.

Here are the rest — there are 40 more submissions.

They are utterly weird and wonderful. You will find some familiar faces in here, perhaps.

Your job now is:

Pick your favorite.

Just one.

JUST ONE.

Go to the comments section below.

Type in the number of your favorite photo — the number that corresponds with the photo in Flickr. Aka, the photo’s title.

That’s it.

Type nothing else, or your vote may not be counted.

Do not choose two.

Choose one, type only the number.

We’ll keep voting open till Wednesday, July 25th.

Enjoy. Vote. See you on the other side.

(6) COMICS SECTION.

  • A bad pun produced by a great mashup of comic and movie references in Brevity.

(7) BOOK RECOMMENDATIONS. Business Insider lists “15 books famous scientists think you should read”.

We compiled a list of book recommendations from a handful of illustrious minds by combing the web for quotes, checking out personal blogs, and just asking them directly. The picks below come from popular scientists including author and television personality Bill Nye, surgeon-turned-writer Siddhartha Mukherjee, and globe-trotting primatologist Jane Goodall.

The books they’ve recommended range from high fantasy, like Tolkien’s “The Lord of the Rings,” to canonical, like Plato’s seminal work “The Republic.”

Here are 15 books that brilliant scientists consider must-reads…

(8) AIR CAB. No discussion of what fares will be: “Rolls Royce develops propulsion system for flying taxi”.

Rolls said the initial concept for EVTOL used gas turbine technology to generate electricity to power six electric propulsors, specially designed to have a low noise profile.

Its wings would be able to rotate 90 degrees, enabling the vehicle to take off or land vertically. It could also use existing heliports and airports.

“We believe that given the work we are doing today to develop hybrid electric propulsion capabilities, this model could be available by the early to mid 2020s, provided that a viable commercial model for its introduction can be created,” the firm said.

(9) PROJECT LAUNCHED. The BBC reports — “Lift-off for Scotland: Sutherland to host first UK spaceport”.

Lockheed has made no secret of its desire to bring the Electron rocket to Scotland. Currently, this vehicle flies out of New Zealand.

A British version of the rocket would have an upper-stage developed and built at LM’s UK HQ in Ampthill, Bedfordshire.

“This is a defining moment for UK Space,” a spokesperson for the company told BBC News. “Lockheed Martin has been working with Britain for over 80 years and we stand ready to support the development of UK launch capability should our extensive experience in developing space infrastructure be called upon.”

(10) INFLUENTIAL ANIME. In the Washington Post, Hau Chu looks at the 30th anniversary of Akira (first released in Japan on July 15, 1988) and sees it as “inspiring a generation of works to come”, including “Stranger Things,” a Kanye West music video, and Rian Johnson’s Looper: “Why the pioneering Japanese anime ‘Akira’ is still relevant 30 years later”.

For the film’s cyberpunk look, Otomo drew from his own pop culture obsessions, including “Blade Runner,” which influenced the towering skyscrapers of Neo Tokyo, and “Tron,” whose neon-illuminated motorcycles inspired the hordes of biker gangs.

Otomo had been a respected illustrator of manga, Japanese comics. But for “Akira,” instead of trying to match his anime peers in Japan, he was working from European comic artists such as Moebius — an influential artist for the legendary Japanese animator Hayao Miyazaki. Otomo’s drawings for “Akira” were distinctive for their realism; he used lighting, color and an attention to detail to create a vivid, lived-in space.

(11) DRAGONS FOREVER. In August, the USPS will issue a set of stamps featuring dragons: “Postal Service to Feature Mythological Creatures on Stamps at APS National Summer Convention Stamp Show”.

The U.S. Postal Service will be joined by the American Philatelic Society (APS) to unveil four colorful stamp designs of 16 Forever stamps depicting dragons — the high-flying, fire-breathing mythological creatures that have roamed our imaginations for millennia — at the APS national summer convention and stamp show Aug. 9-12 in Columbus, OH.

“We’re very excited to bring these beautiful stamps to the 132nd annual APS convention,” said U.S. Postal Service Stamp Services Director Mary-Anne Penner. “This is one of the premier stamp shows in America and serves as an excellent platform to showcase these special stamps.”

…The new stamps will be issued as a pane of 16 stamps showcasing one of four designs: a green fire-breathing dragon towering over a medieval-inspired castle; a purple dragon with orange wings and sharp black armor on its back snaking around a white castle; a black dragon with green wings and green armor on its back swooping past a ship on the sea; and a wingless orange dragon weaving its way around a pagoda.

The stamps feature digital illustrations created by artist Don Clark of Invisible Creature studio.

(12) TRAILER PARK. 7 Splinters in Time — now in theaters.

Directed by: Gabriel Judet-Weinshel Detective Darius Lefaux is called to identify a body that is identical to him. As he dives into the harrowing case, different versions of himself begin to emerge and haunting memories of lives not lived fill his mind. Darius soon realizes that not all versions of himself are good and that he must find his other self, before it finds him.

 

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

2017 Kitschies Winners

The 2017 Kitschies Award winners were announced at a ceremony in England on April 9.

The prize, sponsored by Blackwell’s, is given to “the year’s most progressive, intelligent and entertaining science fiction.” The winners receive a total of £2,000 in prize money, as well as one of the prize’s iconic Tentacle trophies.

The Red Tentacle (Novel)

Judged by Jon Courtenay Grimwood, Leila Abu El Hawa, Joshua Idehen, Ewa Scibor-Rylska, and Alasdair Stuart.

  • The Rift by Nina Allan (Titan)

The Golden Tentacle (Debut)

Judged by Jon Courtenay Grimwood, Leila Abu El Hawa, Joshua Idehen, Ewa Scibor-Rylska, and Alasdair Stuart

  • Hunger Makes the Wolf by Alex “Acks” Wells (Angry Robot)

The Inky Tentacle (Cover Art)

Judged by Dapo Adeola, Sharan Dhaliwal, Jet Purdie, and Stuart Taylor.

  • The History of Bees by Maja Lunde; design by Jack Smyth and the S&S Art Department (Scribner)

The prize is now in its eighth year. More details can be found on the Blackwell’s dedicated Kitschies website.

[Thanks to Mark Hepworth and JJ for the story.]

Pixel Scroll 1/26/18 The Pixel Scroll Shadow Jury

(1) HE INTERRUPT THIS PROGRAM. Marissa Lingen praises the ConFusion committee’s handling of her report about a highly contentious audience member who tried to commandeer more than one panel at the con — “It’s not your turn, sir.” Here are a few excerpts from her step-by-step summary of what happened and thorough analysis of the issues involved.

…So let’s talk about my second panel, Disaster Response in SFF. I was moderating. A gentleman in the audience had enough of the free-flowing discussion provided by the panelists, apparently. He did not wait for Q&A or even raise his hand. He just jumped right in, interrupting the panel to lecture us with a long, hostile, rambling comment on his own theories of where this panel should go and how wrong we all were for not going there….

…Okay. So. I talked to some friends, some of whom were involved with the concom/staff, and given what I was saying and what they were hearing about his behavior, they encouraged me to file an incident report. ConFusion’s ops team did everything right here. Everything. They made sure that I was seated comfortably, offered water, offered my choice of report formats (written or out loud), that I had a person with whom I was comfortable with me for the whole time, that I could discuss my statement rather than just turning it in and not knowing whether it was getting any attention. They asked after my safety and comfort and what would make me feel safe and comfortable going forward at the con.

Here’s what felt like a sea change to me. Here’s what makes me write about this: they did not minimize OR maximize response. They were proactively interested in an incident of someone being rude and disruptive. At that point I was hoping that just having the incident report on file would be enough, that not having further confrontation would allow this person to go on with his con and simmer down, focus on time with friends, other panels, etc….

… 2. This was not sexual harassment. But it was gendered.

The person he approached to complain about me on Sunday was, like me, wearing some of the trappings of traditional femininity. The people who laughed in his face Friday afternoon with no complaints, no consequences to themselves? All male. All male and all masculine. And yes, I was the moderator on my panel–but he didn’t say a word about Patrick cheerfully saying, “Bye!” to him as he departed, or about Patrick backing up my moderating. There was no complaint about Patrick. It was all me.

I’ll cope with it. That’s fine. But see it for what it is.

Dealing with sexual harassment in convention spaces is hugely important. It has been hugely important for me personally. But don’t for a moment make the mistake of thinking that it is the only gendered interaction that matters. And don’t think for a moment that the dynamic would be the same if he’d decided to turn up glaring with Patrick or treat a male concom member the way he did the person on Sunday. It’s no accident he didn’t try–and so conventions need to be equally deliberate in their handling of this sort of thing. ConFusion was, and I thank them for it.

(2) GROWING EFFORT. John Picacio announced other pros have joined him and John Scalzi to fund Worldcon 76 attending memberships for Mexicanx creators and fans.

Ty Franck — one-half of the blockbuster literary team James S. A. Corey — has kindly joined my effort to improve #Mexicanx representation in sf/f. He’s now sponsoring one attending membership to Worldcon 76 in San Jose, while ace photographer Ctein is sponsoring two more attending memberships.

(3) NO-LONGER-SECRET AGENT. Scott Edelman lets you sink your teeth into Sicilian with Barry Goldblatt in Episode 58 of his Eating the Fantastic podcast.

Barry Goldblatt

At the suggestion of Barry Goldblatt, who founded the eponymous Barry Goldblatt Literary Agency in September 2000, we met at Bella Gioia, a Sicilian restaurant in Park Slope. A wonderful choice! But that’s to be expected when you get together with Barry, for he and I have eaten the fantastic many times before at such restaurants as Alinea in Chicago and Olo in Helsinki—though this is the first time you’re being invited to eavesdrop.

Barry’s clients including such writers as previous guest of the show Fran Wilde, Christopher Barzak, Libba Bray, Charles Vess, Nisi Shawl, and many others.

We discussed why he ended up as an agent rather than an astronaut, the happy accident that led to him being taught by the legendary science fiction writer James Gunn, the time Lloyd Alexander caused him to burst into squee-filled tears, J. K. Rowling’s first U.S. book signing and how she changed children’s publishing forever, what everyone thinks they know about agents that’s totally wrong, the sorts of things he’s told authors to help take their work to the next level, why it sometimes makes sense for him to submit a less than perfect book, whether the YA market is doing a better job with diversity than adult fiction, what he’s been looking for that he hasn’t been getting, and much more.

(4) FUN MUSEUM. The Interactive Museum of Gaming and Puzzlery near Portland, Oregon has these events coming soon:

  • 1-28 Sunday Noon – Introduction to Dungeons & Dragons
    Learn the basics of Role Playing with paper; how to create a character, roll dice, join an adventure, and more.
  • 2-1 Thursday 7 pm – Games Talk with Kyle Engen
    Our Steward of Research Kyle will be talking about graphic design in games, using selected items from the collection.

(5) STORIES OF FUTURE PAST. Rocket Stack Rank adds another way to find the good stuff – from 2016. Greg Hullender explains:

Not everyone uses Rocket Stack Rank to find things to nominate; some people just use it to find stories to read. Toward that end, we put together a look back at the best stories of 2016, combining results from all the different reviewers, anthologies, and awards that we follow to produce a comprehensive ranked list.

“2016 Best SF/F Short Fiction”

In the future, we’ll try to do this by August (so the 2017 version should be available in just six months). We’ll have a few follow-up pieces that play with the statistics in this data.ef

(6) MORE LE GUIN TRIBUTES. In the Paris Review

The thing about Ursula K. Le Guin was that she didn’t actually look like a rabble-rousing, bomb-throwing, dangerous woman. She had a gentle smile, as if she was either enjoying herself or enjoying what the people around her were doing. She was kind but firm. She was petite and gray haired, and she appeared, at least on first inspection, harmless.

The illusion of harmlessness ended the moment you began to read her words, or, if you were so lucky, the moment you listened to her speak.

She was opinionated, but the opinions were informed and educated. She did not suffer fools or knaves gladly, or, actually, at all. She knew what she liked and what she wanted, and she didn’t let that change. She was sharp until the end. She once reviewed a book of mine and was not altogether kind about all of it, and I discovered as I read her review that I would rather have been chided by Ursula K. Le Guin than effusively praised by any other living author.

  1. There is no reason a book of ideas can’t also be deeply moving, gorgeously written, and inhabited by people who take rooms in your heart and never move out.

(7) LE GUIN FAMILY NOTES A SUGGESTED CHARITY. Ursula Le Guin’s family has stated that the charity closest to her heart is the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge.

(8) REAL SPACE OPERA. Atlas Obscura lets you “Listen to Ursula K. Le Guin’s Little-Known Space Opera”, Rigel 9. Recording at the link.

If you’re an Ursula K. Le Guin fan, you’ve likely spent a lot of time in Earthsea, home to endless archipelagos and magical beings. You might have ventured to Gethen, with its glaciers and androgynes.

But you may not yet have made it to Rigel 9, a world that offers small red aliens, two-toned shadows from its double sun, and—depending on who you believe—a beautiful golden city. The planet is the setting of the little-known space opera, also called Rigel 9, released in 1985. The opera features music by avant-garde classical composer David Bedford, and a libretto written by Le Guin.

(9) JOHN CREASEY OBIT. Filker John Creasey died January 25. His wife, Mary, made the announcement on Facebook:

My husband, John Creasey, passed away this morning around 0915 or so. I hadn’t gotten there by then (he WOULD pick the day when I DIDN’T make my morning visit!). He was still on a ventilator until a doctor officially pronounces him. He had been going downhill for quite a while (multiple systemic infection organ failures), and hadn’t really recovered from the last septic shock crash. He had been non-verbal and non-communicative for at least the last two weeks. I will post later about funeral plans and such. I’m not going to collapse yet; he’s been effectively mostly out of our lives for over a year, and barely aware for much of the last six months, and that only occasionally, so this isn’t really much of a shock. I’m just glad he’s finally not hurting any more.

 

Joe Bethancourt (hat), Richard Creasey (young man in tie-dye) and John Creasey (larger adult man) perform Bethancourt’s filk song “Fishin’ for Chickens” at ConChord in 2005.

(10) TODAY IN HISTORY

  • January 26, 1964:  Hammer’s Kiss of the Vampire opens in its native United Kingdom
  • January 26, 1995:  Peter Weller stars in Philip K. Dick adaptation Screamers.

(11) TWO DAYS AGO’S BIRTHDAY BOY (SORRY WE MISSED IT!)

  • Born January 24, 1944 – David Gerrold

(12) THE SECONDS BLEED AWAY. The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists says it’s 2018 and time is running out:

IT IS 2 MINUTES TO MIDNIGHT

2018: The failure of world leaders to address the largest threats to humanity’s future is lamentable—but that failure can be reversed. It is two minutes to midnight, but the Doomsday Clock has ticked away from midnight in the past, and during the next year, the world can again move it further from apocalypse. The warning the Science and Security Board now sends is clear, the danger obvious and imminent. The opportunity to reduce the danger is equally clear. The world has seen the threat posed by the misuse of information technology and witnessed the vulnerability of democracies to disinformation. But there is a flip side to the abuse of social media. Leaders react when citizens insist they do so, and citizens around the world can use the power of the internet to improve the long-term prospects of their children and grandchildren. They can insist on facts, and discount nonsense. They can demand action to reduce the existential threat of nuclear war and unchecked climate change. They can seize the opportunity to make a safer and saner world.

(13) FREE COMIC ONLINE. Marvel is giving you the chance to dive into THANOS from rising stars Donny Cates and Geoff Shaw, the series that IGN is calling “one of Marvel’s most exciting titles” – for free.  THANOS #13, the first Marvel Legacy issue and the kick-off to Thanos Wins, is available now as a free digital comic for a limited time.

Head to www.marvel.com/redeem, enter the code THANOSWINS by Tuesday 1/30, and start reading now! Don’t miss the series that Comic Watch has raved is “the Mad Titan in all his power hungry glory.”

(14) WINTER WONDERS. Heavy Tokyo snowfall leads to snow-minions, snow-Jabba: “Japan’s amazing snowmen will blow your mind”. Photos at the link.

(15) INDIE PUBLISHER FOLDING. When Evil Girlfriend Media closes, it’s taking JDA’s Dragon Award-nominated novel with it  [link to Internet Archive]. Says JDA, “[it] will most likely not be available 30 days from now.” The publisher announced on Facebook they are ending the business:

Dear Readers,

I have notified our authors and editors that I am pulling their books from distribution. Their books will begin to drop from Kindle Select over the next 90 days with some as early as January 31. You can no longer purchase their books as an ebook but may borrow until the end of the 90 day period.

EGM went on hiatus last year for many reasons including that I took a new position with my employer. The commitments of this position make it impossible for me to continue in the publishing business. I hope you all support other indie publishers out there. It takes a lot of money, time, and dedication to create great books.

It has been a fast-paced and enjoyable couple of years. I look forward to the future and enjoying the great works the authors and editors I’ve worked with create.

Respectfully,

Katie Cord

(16) AN INDIE PUBLISHER STILL WITH US. The Kraken Collective is celebrating its anniversary this week — #KrakenFriends2018 Is Here!

The Kraken Collective is an alliance of indie authors of LGBTQIAP+ speculative fiction,  committed to building a publishing space that is inclusive, positive, and brings fascinating stories to readers.

 

(17) SHARKE REFLECTIONS. Shadow Clarke juror Nina Allan’s “Afterwards: thinking about the Sharke”, posted last September, may not have been mentioned here before:

The Sharke has changed me in multiple ways, most obviously as a critic and as a reader. Looking back on the self that first conceived the project, I now believe I had become as entrenched within a certain comfort zone as any hardcore space opera fan, accustomed to looking in the same places for what I deemed noteworthy, places that accorded comfortably with my expectations, which in their turn had mostly to do with style. How much more interesting to strip away one’s assumptions and see what happens. To come at things from a different angle. To stop feeling the need to fight a particular corner in terms of what is good and what is best. Personally, I’m still not a fan of The Underground Railroad. To my mind, it is possibly the most ‘commercial’ novel on the Clarke Award shortlist and its bland surface texture renders it ultimately forgettable to me as a reading experience. I find some of the sentence structure, not to mention the use of science fiction in Tricia Sullivan’s Occupy Me to be far more interesting. I have found the abstruse weirdness and raw vitality of Ninefox Gambit hanging around in my mind far longer than, for example, the sensitively rendered but ultimately predictable dystopian role-playing of Clare Morrall’s When the Floods Came. Viewed from this new perspective, the landscape of science fiction looks much more exciting to me than it did even before the Sharke was launched.

(18) LOVECRAFT COUNTRY. Lela E. Buis shares her “Review of Lovecraft Country by Matt Ruff”.

The year is 1954, and African American war veteran Atticus Turner is traveling north to Chicago. His dad Montrose has disappeared somewhere in New England, and with his Uncle George and his friend Letitia, Atticus sets out to find him…..

This is an entertaining read, as the characters are all resourceful and end up accomplishing what they need to do through the application of determination and common sense. Regardless of the Jim Crow setting, the characters feel contemporary, as if Ruff has set characters with modern sensibilities into the Lovecraft milieu.

I’ve read some other reviews that promote this book by saying racism is the real horror in the story. I didn’t really see that. If you’re unfamiliar with the facts of Jim Crow segregation and the kind of discrimination African Americans faced in the 1950s, then I suppose this could be a surprise. Presumably Ruff set his story in this period at least partly to display the racial issues, but actually he skims over it as fairly matter-of-fact. Everybody deals and nobody gets lynched.

What really stood out for me instead was the message that these black characters read and treasure the SFF classics of the day by Lovecraft, Burroughs, Bradbury, Asimov, etc., without any disconnect because of their race. Is that so? Currently these writers are all considered to be both racist and sexist because they reflect the attitudes of their era….

[Thanks to JJ, John King Tarpinian, Cat Eldridge, Chip Hitchcock, Cat Rambo, Martin Morse Wooster, Andrew Porter, Jay Byrd, Michael Toman, ULTRAGOTHA, Karl-Johan Norén and Carl Slaughter for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Hampus Eckerman.]