Pixel Scroll 3/9/24 Spacetime Springers Ahead, Nightfallers Back

(1) OTHERWISE AWARD UPDATE. Sumana Harihareswara, Motherboard chair, has shared news about the Otherwise Award in “Our pause and interim plans”.

As has been the case for many volunteer-run organizations, the Otherwise Award has struggled since the start of the pandemic in 2020. Our (volunteer) board and other volunteers have had to juggle many more issues than previously around health, paid work, and caretaking concerns than previously, which has resulted in our falling behind on the administration and maintenance of the Award. We’re sorry that we didn’t communicate about this earlier—that made it hard for readers, authors, and publishers to know what to expect.

Our Motherboard met recently to discuss how to move forward. We remain dedicated to our mission: to celebrate science fiction, fantasy, and other forms of speculative narrative that expand and explore our understanding of gender . But we’re discussing how, as an organization, to continue to pursue that mission in a sustainable way, given our limited resources.

Here are the decisions we’ve made so far.

Most of our programs are paused. This is us acknowledging what’s already been happening. We were later than usual at deliberating and announcing the Awards for work published in 2020 and in 2021, and did not run a Fellowships process in 2021 or 2023. We have not yet convened a jury to consider works published in 2022, 2023, or 2024.

We intend to run the Fellowships this year. We will open applications in several months—August at the earliest, October at the latest.

We may honor 2022 and 2023 work in a different way. We’re exploring various approaches to celebrating work from those years. That celebration may end up taking a very different form than usual.

We’re considering alternative approaches to the Award in the future. It could be that we’ll convene a jury soon to read 2024 work and deliberate towards an Award, but if we do, we may change our practices to reduce the workload on individual jury members and to make our procurement system for recommended works less laborious. Also, we currently rely on volunteer work for almost all of the organization’s labor (exceptions being technological work on our website, and art commissioned to give to Award winners); we may try to find ways to focus more on paid labor.

We’ll be at Readercon. We usually honor the most recent Award winner at WisCon , but this year we have no new award winner, and WisCon is taking a break . So we will instead hold some Otherwise-related events at Readercon (July 11-14, 2024, near Boston, Massachusetts). Specifics to be determined.

(2) GET READY FOR THE OSCARS. Animation World Network has been running a series about this year’s Academy Awards nominees in the animation and effects categories.

Take a deeper look at ‘The Boy and the Heron,’ ‘Elemental,’ ‘Nimona,’ ‘Robot Dreams,’ and ‘Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse,’ all vying for the Best Animated Feature Oscar at the 96th Academy Awards coming March 10, 2024.

Take a deeper look at ‘The Creator,’ ‘Godzilla Minus One,’ ‘Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3,’ ‘Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One,’ and ‘Napoleon,’ all vying for the Best Visual Effects Oscar 

Take a deeper look at ‘Letter to a Pig,’ ‘Ninety-Five Senses,’ ‘Our Uniform,’ ‘Pachyderme,’ and ‘War Is Over! Inspired by the Music of John and Yoko,’ all vying for the Best Animated Short Film Oscar 

(3) MEETING BUTLER. Syrus Marcus Ware delves into memory to bring us “Octavia E. Butler, Remembered”, a 2022 article at Them.

When the novelist Octavia E. Butler entered a room, you felt it. Tall, commanding, yet soft-spoken, the author’s presence inspired as much comfort as attention; you couldn’t help but be enraptured by her. The first and only time I met her was on a rainy afternoon in 2005. She was in Toronto promoting Fledgling, a brilliant novel about a young racialized vampire who challenges the white supremacy of the wider vampire community. I had been granted an hour’s time to interview not only my favorite author, but the dreamer who inspired me to become a speculative fiction writer and artist. What was supposed to be an hour turned into an entire day in her bountiful presence….

(4) BARDS AND SAGES CLOSING. Walter J. Wiese writes, “I seem to have a track record of having publications close right before they’re about to print my work. I had a story due to appear in the April issue of B&SQ.”

Bards and Sages Publishing posted a “Closure Announcement” saying they were shutting down beginning this week.

Effective March 6, 2024, I will begin the process of winding down Bards and Sages Publishing. There is a lot that needs to be unraveled and sorted out before I can formally close everything down. The most immediate impact is the closure of the Bards and Sages Quarterly and ceasing publication of new issues.

If you are an author or artist who was previously published in an issue of the Bards and Sages Quarterly, those issues will remain on sale until the end of 2024. After that, all back issues will be removed from sale, and all rights will revert to their respective authors.

The same is true for back issues of The Society of Misfit Stories and all of our anthologies. These will remain on sale through the end of the year and then unpublished. At that time, all rights will revert back to their respective authors and artists.

I’ve already informed our authors that we have stand-alone publishing contracts with about the decision. I will work with those authors individually to make sure all of their rights revert to them in a timely manner, and provide them with any raw files we have of their books. They will be free to use those files to either self-publish or take to another publisher if they wish.

Regarding our RPG offerings: I own all rights to the RPG materials through work-for-hire agreements. If other publishers are interested in buying the rights to any of our RPG products or properties, I will entertain offers. Email [email protected] to discuss.

With that out of the way, I want to provide the reasons for this decision.

As I have noted previously, I have been struggling with mental health issues for some time now. I am being treated for generalized anxiety and depression, and though my condition has improved, I’m still not where I feel I need to be to properly commit the time and effort needed to being an effective publisher.

At the end of last year, I was diagnosed with additional physical health issues that will require surgery and treatment. While none of them are life-threatening, they are an additional weight that requires my attention.

As most people who have known me a while also realize, publishing has always been my love, but it has never been my primary income source. Like a lot of micro presses, I have a proverbial “day job,” and that day job has become increasingly more complex over the last few years….

All of these issues impacted my decision. However, I also have to confess to what may have been the final straws. AI…and authors behaving badly….

(5) CARR-LICHTMAN CATALOG. Mark Funke Books has posted an online SF Catalog of Terry/Carol Carr and Robert Lichtman Material – see it here: “Science Fiction Archives”. (Click for larger image.)

(6) KUNG FU PANDA PUTS MOVES ON DUNE AT BOX OFFICE. Dune: Part Two could not hold onto first place in its second weekend at theaters reports Deadline: “Box Office: ‘Kung Fu Panda 4’ Kicking Up $55M For Second-Biggest Franchise Debut”.

Universal/DreamWorks Animation’s Kung Fu Panda 4 is coming in higher with a $19.4M Friday (including previews) and $55M, which is the same amount that How to Train Your Dragon: Hidden World opened to back in 2019. Brand animation always opens big. That’s still the second best stateside start for the Kung Fu Panda franchise. CinemaScore is A-, the same grade as the first movie, but a notch down from the As earned on two and three.

Legendary/Warner Bros’ Dune: Part Two earned around $12.3M yesterday for what’s shaping up to be a $44M second weekend, -47%, for a running total of $154.7M. With those two movies leading the pack, it’s shaping up to be a $133.3M weekend, +13% over the same frame a year ago when Scream VI bowed. Wow. It’s been a while since we’ve seen an up weekend.

Lionsgate/Blumhouse’s Imaginary is third with $3.6M yesterday (including previews) at 3,118 theaters for what’s shaping up to be a $9.3M opening. Not shocking to see this movie below its $10M-$14M projection, nor saddled with a C+ CinemaScore and 57% on PostTrak. It is rather slow for a PG-13 horror film and there’s nothing really hip to hook the girls ala M3GAN. But it was cheap to make at $10M. Still more product means depth at the box office….

(7) GROW UP? TO HECK WITH THAT. “Miriam Margolyes Says Harry Potter Fans Should Be Over Films By Now” in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter.

Harry Potter actress Miriam Margolyes has some thoughts about the people who are still superfans of the famous film franchise.

During an interview with New Zealand’s 1News network, Margolyes was asked how Harry Potter and Blackadder fans approach her differently when they see her in public. She explained that fans of the British sitcom that starred Rowan Atkinson usually ask her to say “Wicked child.” But instead of answering the question about Harry Potter, she decided to share how she feels about the fandom.

“I worry about Harry Potter fans because they should be over that by now,” Margolyes said. “It was 25 years ago, and it’s for children,” clarifying, “think it’s for children.

The actress portrayed Professor Pomona Sprout in the film franchise. Her character taught herbology and was the head of the Hufflepuff House. While speaking with the host, Margolyes seemed confused about the fact that those who grew up with the books and movies are still so engrossed in the Wizarding World, despite being adults at this point.

“They get stuck in it,” she explained. “I do Cameos, and people say, ‘We’re having a Harry Potter-themed wedding, and I think, ‘Gosh, what’s their first night of fun going to be?’ I can’t even think about it. No.”

She did note, “Harry Potter is wonderful. I’m very grateful to it” but doubled down on her original thought, which is that “it’s over.”…

(8) IT’S IMPOSSIBLE. One of the audiobooks up for the British Book Awards is Impossible Creatures by Katherine Rundell, narrated by Samuel West (Bloomsbury Children’s Books). Publishing Perspectives reports: “British Book Awards: 2024 Books of the Year Shortlists”.

(9) FIVE TO DRAW TO. Lisa Tuttle’s “The best recent science fiction and fantasy – reviews roundup” for the Guardian covers The Mars House by Natasha Pulley; Annie Bot by Sierra Greer; The Warm Hands of Ghosts by Katherine Arden; Jumpnauts by Hao Jingfang; and Alien Clay by Adrian Tchaikovsky.

(10) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

Born March 9, 1955 Pat Murphy, 69. What work do I like most that Pat Murphy’s done? Well that’d be There and Back Again, by Max Merriwell if only because it, a) was indeed a lovely and playful take off The Hobbit, and b) shows how bloody obstinate, well I had another phrase in mind, that the Tolkien Estate can be at times which is why it’s no longer in print though copies are available at I think are still reasonably priced rates. 

Pat Murphy. Photo by Scott Edelman.

Of her first two novels, The Shadow Hunter had Neanderthals and time travelling, and oh my!, her second, The Falling Woman, was about an archaeologist who sees the spirits of ancient people while she walks at dusk and dawn. Fascinating. Thirty-six years on, it’s still perfectly readable. And it won a Nebula which it most definitely deserved. 

Now I get to The City, Not Long After, the novel that I love nearly as much for its depiction of an empty magical San Francisco as I do for the characters and the story set there. Don’t get me wrong — both of those are stellar too. I get tingly thinking of this novel, something that I admit is rare.

Let’s me finish off the novels I like by her with Adventures in Time and Space with Max Merriwell about a cruise that gets, shall I say, delightfully improbable near or even within the Bermuda Triangle? Yes, it’s written by the same writer who penned by the story that the Tolkien Estate took umbrage to.

As for her short fiction, it is excellent. Both the “Rachel n Love” novelette and the “Bones” novella that first appeared in Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine would win a Nebula, the former would also win a Sturgeon — the Award, not a fish. Sorry I couldn’t resist. Her 1990 Points of Departure anthology, which won a Philip K. Dick Award, is a generous sampling of her short work and has the “Rachel n Love” novelette and the “Bones” novella in it. 

She’s hasn’t published anything in five years, so let’s hope something is forthcoming. 

(11) COMICS SECTION.

  • Baldo’s Gracie is an example of many of us.
  • Herman has an unidentified problem.
  • Lio meets some offworld fans.
  • Macanudo points out a problem for Batman.
  • Free Range suggests writing peer pressure goes way back.
  • Non Sequitur has an early editor.

(12) SHE’S A ROCKETGIRL. [Item by Steven French.] Andrew Rovenko, a Ukrainian born photographer now living in Australia was named Australian Photography Magazine’s photographer of the year for this wonderful shot of his daughter in her home-made spacesuit. His photos have been collected in The Rocketgirl Chronicles – see a gallery at the link. Full story at the Guardian: “Rocketgirl on her sixth lockdown: Andrew Rovenko’s best photograph”.

During the pandemic, Melbourne held the world record for the highest number of days spent in lockdown. That’s not really a record you want to have. My family – me, my wife Mariya and our daughter Mia who was four at the time – had done all the standard things: puzzles, daily walks, baked sourdough. By lockdown number six, options for new activities were scarce. But Mia’s obsession with space gave us an idea – to make her a spacesuit. My wife had trained as a costume designer and she thought it might brighten Mia’s day to show her how something can be created from scratch. The best bit was making the papier-mache helmet: they blew up a little balloon and then stuck newspaper cuttings around it.

At the time, we were allowed outside for only two hours each day, and we had to keep within a 5km radius of our home. Having this suit as a prop had a transformative effect on our outings, turning them into space exploration missions. Even as adults, if you put a bold piece of clothing on, you start to play the role of the costume….

(13) JEOPARDY! [Item by David Goldfarb.] The second round of the Jeopardy! Tournament of Champions semifinals featured two questions involving SFF. The very first clue of the game was Literary Awards for $600:

Octavia Butler got the inaugural Infinity Award by the Science Fiction & Writers Association at these star-studded awards

Emily Sands knew this was the Nebula Awards.

Later we had Literary Awards for $1000:

The Hugo Award isn’t named after Victor Hugo, but this Hugo who founded the sci-fi magazine Amazing Stories

Yogesh Raut responded “Who is Luxembourg’s Hugo Gernsback?”

Did you know that Gernsback was from Luxembourg? I did, but only because I had previously learned it from listening to one of Yogesh’s podcasts.

(14) AREA 51 EIGHTY-SIXED. “Pentagon Review Finds No Evidence of Alien Cover-Up” – the New York Times discusses the report.

In the 1960s, secret test flights of advanced government spy planes generated U.F.O. sightings. More recently, government and commercial drones, new kinds of satellites and errant weather balloons have led to a renaissance in unusual observations.

But, according to a new report, none of these sightings were of alien spacecraft.

The new congressionally mandated Pentagon report found no evidence that the government was covering up knowledge of extraterrestrial technology and said there was no evidence that any U.F.O. sightings represented alien visitation to Earth.

The 63-page document is the most sweeping rebuttal the Pentagon has issued in recent years to counter claims that it has information on extraterrestrial visits or technology. But amid widespread distrust of the government, the report is unlikely to calm a growing obsession with aliens.

Maj. Gen. Patrick Ryder, a Defense Department spokesman, said the Pentagon approached the report with an open mind and no preconceived notions, but simply found no evidence to back up claims of secret programs, hidden alien technology or anything else extraterrestrial.

“All investigative efforts, at all levels of classification, concluded that most sightings were ordinary objects and phenomena and the result of misidentification,” General Ryder said in a statement.

While many reports of what the government now calls Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena remain unsolved, the new document states plainly there is nothing to see. The Pentagon’s All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office concluded that if better quality data were available, “most of these cases also could be identified and resolved as ordinary objects or phenomena.”…

(15) VIDEO OF THE DAY. FirstShowing introduces the “Final Trailer for Netflix’s ‘3 Body Problem’ Mind-Bending Sci-Fi Series”.

“I have to tell you something… something insane, but true, about all of us. It started a long time ago. Back in 1977 they detected a sequence…called it the wow signal.” Netflix has revealed their final official trailer for 3 Body Problem, an adaptation of the sci-fi books of same name from Liu Cixin, which many believe are near impossible to adapt. 3 Body Problem is a series inspired by the renowned story about discovering we are not alone in the universe. From the Game of Thrones creators David Benioff and D.B. Weiss. A young woman’s fateful decision in 1960s China reverberates across space and time to a group of brilliant scientists in the present day. As the laws of nature unravel before their eyes five former colleagues reunite to confront the greatest threat in humanity’s history. 

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

Pixel Scroll 7/28/23 I’m Sure Painting Pixels The Color Of Stars Was Considered A Good Idea

(1) KUANG CONSIDERS ONLINE BOOK COMMUNITIES. “I don’t choose books based on the aggregate rating as if they are skincare products, nor do I think any critical verdict is the final one,” Rebecca F. Kuang tells Guardian readers in “Goodreads is right to divide opinions, wrong to boil them down”.

…Which brings us to what has been dubbed “review-bombing” by the New York Times – that is, critical pile-ons that can derail a book before it releases. Frankly, authors have been sighing and shrugging about this for years. It’s unclear whether Goodreads can make any meaningful fixes, or whether they have any incentive to. Authors have limited options – it rarely ends well when authors barge into spaces meant for readers. So the duty is left to readers to think carefully about how we write and engage with reviews. I am certainly a naive idealist here, but I retain this faith we could wrestle with online toxicity by taking our own arguments seriously before we post them. What purpose does our outrage serve? Who benefits if this book tanks? Who is making claims about this book? What passages do they cite? Do we agree with their interpretation? Are those passages represented in good faith, or are they plucked out of context? For that matter, how many people leaving these reviews have actually read the book?…

(2) DIRDA AT READERCON. [Item by Evelyn C. Leeper.] Michael Dirda, a mainstream reviewer who is also an unabashed science fiction fan, published his Readercon Report in last Thursday’s Washington Post: “At Readercon, print is still king — and thank goodness for that”.

…As its name implies, Readercon focuses on books. Nowadays, many science fiction conventions — not just San Diego Comic-Con and its offshoots — emphasize what one might call spectacle: blockbuster films, television series, video games, cosplay. But at Readercon, print is still king. At the entrance to the booksellers’ room, a little table displayed a memorial photograph of David Hartwell, the most important science fiction book editor of the past 50 years, who died in 2016. It bore the legend “Hero of Readercon.”…

…I also caught up with Gil Roth, literary podcaster and interviewer extraordinaire (check out “The Virtual Memories Show” and his zine, “Haiku for Business Travelers”), and short-story writer Eileen Gunn, who in her earlier years was director of advertising at Microsoft — one of her best-known stories is the appropriately wry “Stable Strategies for Middle Management.” At various times, I bumped into horror writer Scott Edelman, who in his youth worked at Marvel Comics, and exchanged greetings with Paul Witcover, author of that provocative mash-up “Lincolnstein,” and Neil Clarke, editor of the magazine Clarkesworld. During a Saturday night mixer called “Meet the Pros,” I gratefully sipped a gin and tonic with the distinguished anthologist Ellen Datlow and met a dozen young writers….

…My lively Machen panel was moderated by the eminent antiquarian book dealer Henry Wessells and comprised Michael Cisco, a professor at the City College of New York and author of “Weird Fiction: A Genre Study”; the fantasy artist known as The Joey Zone; Hand and me. On the Verne panel, I sat next to Sarah Smith, a novelist and pioneer of hypertext (“King of Space”) who has spearheaded the recovery of my late friend Thomas M. Disch’s long-lost computer game “Amnesia” and brought out its full text and programming notes in the book “Total ‘Amnesia.’”…

(3) EATING THE FANTASTIC. Scott Edelman invites listeners to bite into baklava with Charlie Jane Anders in Episode 203 of his Eating the Fantastic podcast.

Charlie Jane Anders

My guest this time around is Charlie Jane Anders, who’s won the Hugo, Nebula, Sturgeon, Lambda Literary, Crawford and Locus Awards. The final volume of her Unstoppable trilogy, Promises Stronger Than Darkness (the first two were Victories Greater Than Death and Dreams Bigger Than Heartbreak), was published just shortly before our chat. Her 2016 novel, All the Birds in the Sky, won the Nebula, Locus and Crawford awards. Other books include the Locus Award-winning short story collection Even Greater Mistakes, and the Hugo Award-winning And Never Say You Can’t Survive, about how to use creative writing to get through hard times. Her novelette “Six Months, Three Days” won a Hugo Award, and her short story “Don’t Press Charges and I Won’t Sue” won a Theodore Sturgeon Award.

Charlie Jane is also the co-creator of the transgender mutant hero Escapade, who was introduced in Marvel Voices: Pride 2022, and has been appearing in the long-running comic New Mutants, with Charlie Jane writing. She was a founding editor of io9.com, a blog about science fiction and futurism, and went on to become its editor-in-chief. With former guest of this podcast Annalee Newitz, Charlie Jane co-hosts a podcast about the meaning of science fiction called Our Opinions Are Correct.

We discussed how her childhood fantasy of aliens whisking her away from Earth gave birth to her Unstoppable trilogy, the way writing a YA meant she had to completely change the way she writes, the challenges of bringing a large cast of characters to life while giving them their own inner lives, why she has problems with Clarke’s Third Law but was willing to roll with it for her new trilogy, the difficulties of still being at work on the third book of a trilogy when the first was already in the hands of readers, how growing as a writer means embracing the messiness of the process, her reaction to being called “this generation’s Le Guin,” what she had to learn to be able to write comics, and so much more.

(4) IN THE PINK. Leonard Maltin’s Movie Crazy reviews this summer’s blockbuster in “Barbie: It’s About Time”.

…America Ferrera plays the human whose disaffection for Barbie sets the story in motion, and she gets to deliver a remarkable screed about woman’s role(s) in society that I suspect will be excerpted and quoted for years to come. Ariana Greenblatt is very good as her sullen adolescent daughter.

When I became a father I searched for movies that would show my daughter positive role models, and it was tough going. Barbie makes up for lost time and should warm the hearts of parents and daughters alike—even if the girls don’t get every gag or reference in the script….

(5) LEARNEDLEAGUE. [Item by David Goldfarb.] The One-Day Special quiz on Iain M. Banks’ Culture novels is now over: you can see the questions here. There was also a quiz on comic books, which tend to be at least genre-adjacent: Just Images Comic Book Covers.

(6) MEDIA DEATH CULT. Moid Moidelhoff interviews Tim Powers on writing, researching and being friends with Philip K. Dick.

(7) HEAR FROM RAY NAYLER. Alan Bailey and Cat Rambo interviewed Ray Nayler for the If This Goes On (Don’t Panic) podcast.

In this episode, Alan and Cat talk with author Ray Nayler about his novel the Mountain in the Sea, Secular Buddhism, animal behavior, interconnectedness, AI, and much more.

(8) EMMY AWARDS BROADCAST BEING RESCHEDULED. “Emmy Awards Will Be Postponed Because of Actors’ and Writers’ Strikes” reports the New York Times.

The fallout from the Hollywood actors’ and writers’ strikes continues.

The 75th Emmy Awards will be postponed because of the strikes, according to a person briefed on the plans. The ceremony, originally planned for Sept. 18, does not yet have a new date but will most likely be moved to January, the person said.

Emmy organizers are hopeful that would give the Hollywood studios enough time to settle the labor disputes. A new date will be finalized in the next few weeks….

(9) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

  • Born July 28, 1866 Beatrix Potter. Probably best known for Tales of Peter Rabbit but I’d submit her gardening skills were second to none as well as can be seen in the Green Man review of Marta McDowell’s Beatrix Potter’s A Gardening Life.(Died 1943.)
  • Born July 28, 1926 T. G. L. Cockcroft. Genre bibliographer of some note such as The Tales of Clark Ashton Smith, and despite being resident in New Zealand, he was a prolific fanzine contributor and kept in contact with fandom everywhere from an early age. None of his works are currently in-print.  Mike has an excellent look at him here. (Died 2013.)
  • Born July 28, 1928 Angélica Gorodischer. Argentinian writer whose Kalpa Imperial: The Greatest Empire That Never Was got translated by Ursula Le Guin into English. Likewise Prodigies has been translated by Sue Burke for Small Beer Press. She won a World Fantasy Award for Lifetime Achievement. You can read Lightspeed Magazine’s interview with her here. (Died 2022.)
  • Born July 28, 1931 Jay Kay Klein. I’ll direct you to Mike’s excellent look at him here. I will note that he was a published author having “On Conquered Earth” in If, December 1967 as edited by Frederik Pohl. I don’t think it’s been republished since. (Died 2012.)
  • Born July 28, 1941 Bill Crider. Primarily a writer of mystery fiction, his extensive bibliography includes three stories in the Sherlock Holmes metaverse: “The Adventure of the Venomous Lizard”, “The Adventure of the St. Marylebone Ghoul” and “The Case of the Vanished Vampire”. He also wrote a Sookie Stackhouse short story, “Don’t Be Cruel” in the Charlaine Harris Metaverse. His “Doesn’t Matter Any Matter More” short story won a Sidewise Awards for Alternate History and his “Mike Gonzo and the UFO Terror” won a Golden Duck Award. (Died 2018.)
  • Born July 28, 1966 Larry Dixon, 57. Husband of Mercedes Lackey who collaborates with her on such series as SERRAted Edge and The Mage Wars Trilogy. He contributed artwork to Wizards of the Coast’s Dungeons & Dragons source books, including Oriental AdventuresEpic Level Handbook, and Fiend Folio. Dixon and Lackey are the CoNZealand’s Author Guests of Honour.
  • Born July 28, 1969 Tim Lebbon, 54. For my money his best series is The Hidden Cities one he did with Christopher Golden though his Relics series with protagonist Angela Gough is quite superb as well. He dips into the Hellboy universe with two novels, Unnatural Selection and Fire Wolves, rather capably.

(10) HOWARD THE DUCK TURNS 50. In November, Marvel will host a birthday blowout for Howard the Duck.

Howard the Duck’s 50th anniversary one-shot will be a giant-sized spectacle that will reunite writer Chip Zdarsky and artist Joe Quinones, the sensational creative team behind Howard’s smash hit and critically acclaimed 2015 ongoing series. …This collection of all-new tales will tackle all the different paths Howard could’ve taken during his offbeat adventures, and pose fascinating questions for this furious fowl’s future! 

 Meet Howard. He’s a hard-boiled P.I. with problems by the duckload. But a cosmic, all-seeing friend(?) known as the Peeper(!) is giving him a chance to see what his life COULD be! The joys he COULD have! All the ways his life COULD suck way less than it does now! In other words: “Whaugh If?”

 Here’s some of the craziness that readers can look forward to:

 Emmy-nominated writer and comedian Daniel Kibblesmith and acclaimed artist Annie Wu put Howard in the Oval Office! Inspired by a classic tale from Steve Gerber and Gene Colan’s 70s’ run, Howard the Duck has been sworn in as President. Find out if how gutsy he is as Commander in Chief when the Earth is invaded by aliens in this startling political satire!

Popular video game designer and writer Merritt K makes her Marvel Comics debut alongside artist Will Robson with a cosmic comedy that sees Howard the Duck leaving the chaos of Earth behind to take over as leader of the Guardians of the Galaxy! Playing Star-Lord is all fun and games for Howard until some of his most iconic classic villains band together to take him out once and for all!

For more information, visit Marvel.com.

(11) RUH-ROH! “Scooby-Doo! and Krypto, Too Release Date Announced”Comicbook.com knows when it is.

Almost a year after a data breach revealed plans for a Scooby-Doo! original movie featuring Krypto the Super-Dog, Warner Bros. Home Entertainment has officially announced Scooby-Doo! and Krypto, Too!, a direct-to-home release that will be available in September on Digital, as well as on DVD at Walmart stores in the U.S. The cast list does not immediately reference the Legion of Super-Heroes, who were spotted in screenshots in the 2022 leak, but it seems likely this is the same film. That movie, reportedly titled Scooby-Doo! Meets Krypto, appeared to use character designs from the 2006-2007 Superman and the Legion of Super-Heroes show.

Confirmed to appear in Scooby-Doo! and Krypto, Too! are Superman, Lex Luthor, Lois Lane, Mercy Graves, Joker, Harley Quinn, Solmon Grundy, and Wonder Woman. Tara Strong, who became famous for playing Harley Quinn, will return to the role for the movie.

… The movie will be available in the US to purchase Digitally at retailers everywhere, and on DVD only at Walmart on September 26, 2023 …

(12) BETTER THAN LINEN? “Energy-efficient fabric helps wearers beat heat waves and cold snaps”Physics World has the story.

A new thermoregulating textile keeps its wearers comfortable with a minimal amount of energy input thanks to a conductive polymer that can be modified to adjust how much infrared radiation it sheds. According to the textile’s developers at the University of Chicago, North Carolina State University and Duke University (all in the US), the new “wearable variable-emittance device”, or WeaVE, could be used to make next-generation smart thermal management fabrics.

Many animals are good at manipulating infrared (IR) radiation to heat themselves up and cool themselves down. Saharan silver ants, for example, dissipate excess heat thanks to triangular hairs on their bodies that reflect differing amounts of near-IR rays depending on the position of the Sun. Human bodies, in contrast, absorb and lose heat mainly through IR radiation with a wavelength of 10 microns, and our skin is not capable of controlling this wavelength range in real time to help us regulate body temperature. Researchers  are therefore developing textiles that can do this for us….

(13) VIDEO OF THE DAY. Daniel Dern spotted this parody, “Harry Potter But A Barbie Trailer (Barbie Potter)” from SynthCinemaX.

Our new trailer “Harry Potter But A Barbie” (Barbie Potter)! In this amazing fantasy video, you’ll get to see familiar wizards from the world of Harry Potter in unexpected roles. Imagine Robert Downey Jr. as Albus Dumbledore, Ryan Gosling as Ron Weasley, Emma Watson as Hermione Granger, and, of course, Daniel Radcliffe returning as Harry Potter!

And also “Star Wars directed by Guy Ritchie”, put together with an assist from Midjourney.

(14) VIDEO OF OTHER DAYS. Somtow Sucharitkul reminded readers today they can see a video of his appearance on SF Vortex in the Nineties discussing Dracula with Dr J Gordon Melton and Norine Dresser.

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

In the SFF Crisis Over AI, It’s Humans You Can’t Trust

A silhouette of five editors seated at a table sits over a dark starry sky. Multicolored fish, some with markings like burglar masks, swim behind and between it all.

The DDOS Panel at Readercon expressed caution and reassurance, while circling the heart of what Story is, and whether AI could ever do it well.

By Melanie Stormm: On Saturday, July 15, 2023, a panel of SFF editors, writers, and experts convened to discuss the current situation and approaches used to address the waves of AI spam submissions. The participants were John P. Murphy, current SFWA vice president; Matthew Kressel, author of King of Shards and creator of the Moksha system; Scott H. Andrews, editor of Beneath Ceaseless Skies; Sheila Williams, editor of Asimov’s, and the editor for Clarkesworld, Neil Clarke.  

The panel expressed both uncertainty and reassurance. Writers looking to sell their short fiction to the genre’s most celebrated publications need not worry that months of painstaking labor can be outdone by an AI submission cooked up with the click of a mouse. Yet. AI fiction offerings are just plain terrible and terrible in new and innovative ways not yet discovered by humans. That’s the good news.

Particularly inspiring were the alacritous approaches that award-winning editor Neil Clarke (As Seen On TV), and award-nominated writer, editor, and creator of the Moksha submissions system, Matthew Kressel, have developed to address the crisis that the burst of AI spam submissions has created. Stretching over all of this, a pall of uncertainty.

Maybe pall isn’t the right word. Maybe describing the uncertainty as an ocean through which we all move would be more apt. Or perhaps it would be better to say the fish themselves are the sources of uncertainty.

If you’ve been hiding under a subaquatic rock or writing a book—two acts that produce similar outcomes—forget the fish for now and let’s catch you up on things.

Neil Clarke, Scott H. Andrews, Sheila Williams, Matthew Kressel, and John P. Murphy at Readercon.

The Swarm

In February 2023, one of the highest-paying markets for short speculative fiction closed to submissions for a then undetermined period for the first time since opening in 2006. Spoilers: it was Clarkesworld magazine. A swarm of five hundred-plus AI-written stories overwhelmed a system that necessarily relies on reading to discover new stories.

Clarkesworld was not alone. Sheila Williams experienced an onslaught of AI subs. Asimov’s uses the same submission system designed by Neil Clarke. Instead of slush readers digging through the seven hundred or more story submissions Asimov’s receives monthly, Williams personally handles each story.

In April, AI submissions initially peaked for Asimov’s. Things improved in May, but by June, the submissions shot up again; over 235 were AI spam submissions. When the media interviewed Williams in early spring, she reflected that she still had a sense of humor about the whole thing. But later, when the Wall Street Journal knocked on her door, she had run out of jokes. “It isn’t as time consuming [for me] as it would be for someone who isn’t an expert, but it is awful…By the time the WSJ interviewed me, I was so annoyed. I had no humor. I want to spend that time looking for new writers.”

Editor of the award-winning online fantasy magazine Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Scott H. Andrews, has similar struggles. However, due to the uniquely narrow submission guidelines, Beneath Ceaseless Skies has been spared the mass swarm of AI spam submissions at the time of the panel. Instead, writers of AI-assisted stories targeted the publisher of literary adventure fantasy, a kind of submission on a level all its own.

Firefighters

Before detailing the responses editors and developers are creating to respond to the AI spam crisis, it’s advantageous to describe how the SFF short fiction donuts get made and the toll such submissions have on the process. One of the best descriptions of how human slush readers handle volume is in a viral Twitter thread by Matthew Kressel. The thread was written in October 2022, just one month before ChatGPT became popular.

The Moksha submissions system is used by over forty publishers to receive, reject, and accept fiction, non-fiction, and poetry from writers around the world.

In the thread, Kressel writes:

Assuming a modest submission rate of 50 stories per day (which is pretty average for Moksha publishers), and an average length of 5,000 words, thats 250,000 words per day, or approximately 2 novels per day…

Yes, most publishers hire slush readers to help them sift through incoming submissions, so lets assume they have 10 readers total (which is more than average), that means each reader needs to read 25,000 words per day.

That slush reader, who is most likely an unpaid volunteer, has to read ~175,000 words per week, because people submit on weekends too (often more),

This while keeping their day job and trying not to estrange their significant other and hopefully having some time to eat and sleep and maybe even a moment to relax and unwind.”

For the record, the original prompt for Kressel’s post was explaining to new writers why publishers must issue many story rejections without comment. The moral is there isn’t enough time in the day, and slush readers and editors don’t necessarily read your entire story.

One of the first replies to this thread was that the answer to these swift and impersonal rejections was that AI should be fed previous submissions to sort and manage the volume of human submissions. As it turns out, Story is far more complex than many people know, and current AI can only do so much so well. It stands to reason that if AI can’t write a good story, it can’t recognize one.

During the panel, Sheila Williams illustrated such a point. “Twenty-five percent of submissions in June were AI. We had 935. I try to get rid of these very fast. Neil [Clarke] has designed something that helps me and has shared places with me to help me identify those submissions, but I’m faster than those places.”

For others, relying solely on human expertise to identify and extract AI submissions quickly became impossible.

By the numbers, Clarkesworld was slammed. According to Neil Clarke, Clarkesworld receives an average of 1100 monthly submissions. In December, after ChatGPT first achieved widespread use, Clarkesworld identified fifty AI spam submissions.

“These were unusual stories showing up,” Clarke said. “Bad in ways no human was bad before.”

In January, this number doubled to one hundred. By February 20, 2023, five hundred submissions hit Clarkesworld’s system. Fifty new AI submissions arrived the morning Clarkesworld announced its closure.

First, Neil Clarke, who has a professional background in computer science and designed the Clarkesworld submissions system used by several publications, made adjustments to the firewall and the software. “That was far more effective than we thought it would be,” Clarke said. By March, Clarkesworld reduced AI spam submissions down to about two hundred.

SFF stories have diligently shown us that the Empire Strikes Back, and so did the AI submissions. Neil Clarke concluded, “By May, they had figured out what we had done, and we were then up to seven hundred.”

That is seven hundred surplus AI spam submissions, not including the submissions blocked by the firewall and software defenses.

The Second Wave

Spammers in the second wave were no longer flying in the dark. They had Clarkesworld in their sites, and the internet became rich with posts guiding people on using science fiction prompts to send AI stories to Clarkesworld.

Other experts in network security, credit card fraud, and spam contacted Clarkesworld, giving tips and further advice on reducing attacks that have doubled Clarkesworld’s already high submission volume.

Clarke spoke to the nature of the submissions. “And that’s how I would qualify these. These are spam.” And yet Clarkesworld, Asimov’s, and other publications are reluctant to rely entirely on firewalls, software, and AI tools to identify and automatically ban suspicious submissions.

Suspicious submissions are now relegated to the bottom of the pile so that editors can quickly read and release or accept submissions from human authors. After all, many of these publications don’t accept simultaneous submissions. This means that when an author submits a work for consideration, they must either wait for the editor to respond before submitting it elsewhere or withdraw the piece if time goes on too long. This practice works, and in the wider writing world, genre magazines have some of the fastest and most considerate turnaround times in the business (and are among the highest-paying, too.)

The careful ways in which each panelist identifies and considers suspicious content speaks to how passionate they are about giving new authors a chance, but also how little AI tools can be trusted to identify AI. Detectors have falsely flagged authors for whom English is a second language as AI-generated content.

Another takeaway was how considerate editors are of their slush readers, frequently working to ensure first readers are spared having to wade through spam.

Neil Clarke (Clarkesworld) and Scott H. Andrews (Beneath Ceaseless Skies).

It’s no secret that more spam comes from a handful of geographical regions than anywhere else. While some have suggested banning submissions originating in those locales in the interest of the greater good, no editor on the panel wants solutions like this. For Sheila Williams, the chance to bring exciting new SFF stories from unknown writers worldwide is too important. She reads each suspicious entry first and bans only once she’s positive it’s AI. 

Neil Clarke described the human toll. “This is a constantly evolving state; we’re in this never-ending battle. It’s a lot of extra work. It would be great if these were legit stories, but it’s very frustrating. I found [reading spam] was beginning to interfere with the way I was reading submissions. Being irritated is not a good state of mind to be in when evaluating someone’s work.”

In describing the specifics of his approaches, Clarke was decisively vague. Matthew Kressel echoed the same strategy of playing cards close to the vest. One thing is clear: the sources of the AI spam don’t want to write good SFF stories; they want to trick genre editors into handing over their wallets.

The Ceaseless Submissions at Beneath Ceaseless Skies

As seen at Beneath Ceaseless Skies, AI submissions pose a threat on more than one front. Beneath Ceaseless Skies is among the most respected and coveted publication credits in the genre today—a status that puts a target on its back for AI spammers. Still, within a niche genre, it occupies an ultra-niche space.

A writer with a few years of practice may quickly identify a character-driven story from a plot-driven one. Still, in a world where genre lovers cut their eye teeth on film and TV as much as on the written form, many readers and young writers aren’t aware of the difference. 

BCS qualifies what it will publish in almost every category. BCS only publishes (1) character-driven (2) adventure stories that (3) take place in secondary world (4) fantasy settings that (5) exhibit technologies no more advanced than those available during the 1930s. Furthermore, (6) the stories must be literary in craft. This craft is characterized by an intentionality and awareness within the prose that takes years to master.

And editor Scott H. Andrews has to like it (7).

Beneath Ceaseless Skies receives an average of three hundred submissions each month. They currently have five first readers, but Andrews reads the first page or so of every submission before assigning them to first readers. Once ChatGPT became more mainstream, Andrews started seeing an influx of submissions with cover letter mentions that the stories had been written with the assistance of AI. Andrews’ stance on AI submissions, assisted or otherwise, is informed by ethical and legal grounds. None of these submissions could ever be seriously considered for publication. Still, with curiosity and prudence, Andrews took a closer look at these new offerings.

Andrews explained there are many ways an author might use AI to “assist” a story; some are less harmful. Spellcheck is one, Grammarly is another. He and Matthew Kressel both warned against over-reliance on apps like Grammarly, which in the wrong hands, can flatten a writer’s voice and turn strong writing into hollow, mediocre text. These AI-assisted submissions weren’t specific as to how authors used AI in creating the story, but it was quickly apparent to Andrews that it went beyond Grammarly.

“Even though at BCS I’m not seeing the spam ones so much, I’m seeing the assisted ones, I still felt a sheen in those that was like nothing I’ve ever read from a human writer,” says Andrews.

By his description, AI-assisted stories sound slightly better than those that qualify as spam but also present different ethical and legal questions.

Andrews says: “I had to think of what exactly I should say. Different folks have different views so I fumbled around a bit and saw some things that Neil [Clarke] had written. I went with the definition that the US Copyright office put out this spring. Their quote was something to the effect that ‘the traditional elements of authorship can’t be done by a language model.’”

An AI approach to “writing” that relies on Language Learning Models is not copyrightable. The author doesn’t own the story and hence cannot license it to a publisher.

Legality feels like a firm foundation on which to build a stance for or against AI-assisted work, but even here, the ocean injects uncertainty.

“Some zines in our field are publishing LLM-created fiction anyway; it’s unclear how they’re handling the legal side of things,” Andrews points out. “The legal status would change if courts or laws deemed these LLMs’ use a legal fair use or deemed LLM-created works copyrightable.” The decisions of the Supreme Court or US Copyright Office are beyond any SFF publisher’s control.

Beneath Ceaseless Skies updated submission guidelines in March to reflect that AI-assisted works were unwelcome. Moksha also offers users an option that requires writers to declare if the stories they’re submitting are created using AI, and BCS avails itself of a similar tool.

The result? Cover letters stopped declaring AI assistance while stories containing that unnatural sheen continued to flow in. At the time of this writing, BCS has also seen an uptick in spam submissions.

Uncertain Fish

AI spam and AI-assisted submissions have threatened our publication communities in multiple ways, and all involved agree this is far from over. But it’s not the AI that poses a threat; it’s the humans involved at nearly every level that makes it so malignant. Enter the uncertain fish from earlier.

LLMs are fed copyrighted material at the developer level without authors’ permission. Regardless of legality, taking and using something without someone’s permission is stealing.

On Saturday, July 22nd, Matthew Kressel tweeted:

None of the so-called commitments by the seven AI companies addresses illegal scraping and theft of copyrighted content. Why? Because their business models would collapse if they had to pay people for the terabytes of content they are stealing.”

Most SFF writers shudder at thinking of LLMs illegally scraping their published work to populate AI stories, crappy or otherwise. But published work isn’t all that’s exposed to scraping.

When interviewing Kressel for this post, he highlighted the following: “The issue we have now…is that data is forever. Previously, when you submitted a paper manuscript in the mail to a publisher, it is most likely going in the dump when they’re done…But now, it’s easy to keep stuff around forever.”

In other words, Kressel had to take specific strides on behalf of Moksha to protect unpublished and rejected submissions from illegal scraping. Who scrapes what is an ethical call by developers who often have their own best interests at heart. Writers should not assume the content of their Google Doc files are safe, although Kressel hasn’t personally stopped using Google Docs just yet. “Moksha’s manuscripts are locked behind an encrypted firewall, only accessible by the publisher, but even then, we need to have firm safeguards.”

Who scrapes what threatens emerging writers and SFF readers, too. Many writers make their name writing short fiction. Getting publication in top mags is a path to attracting agents and publishing longer works either independently or traditionally. But agents and publishers are only part of a writer’s career path—readers are the most essential. Publishing short fiction, especially in publications that make work available eternally online, can allow writers to build readership quickly. A reader who discovers a writer could access several of their stories with a mouse click and become a dedicated fan.

Without legal protections, all of this is scraped for free. Established writers may be the most prone; the more they’ve published, the more their unique voice can (and is) being replicated without permission. Sarah Silverman is among the first to sue OpenAI (the creators of ChatGPT) and Meta over copyright violations. Don’t hold your breath on whether this amounts to robust protections for writers.

SFF is experiencing a new golden age created partly by online publication opening doors to a global readership. Global readership speaks not only of previously unreached audiences on the Asian and African continents but also of reaching more readers on continents that SFF already enjoys community. Rural and remote areas often lack bookstores offering copies of the Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction or Clarkesworld. Online presses have carried some of our most loved stories to excited new fans who would not otherwise have access to them.

Several SFF editors and writers have expressed worry over the future of online SFF publications if authors don’t feel sufficiently protected. If authors start preferring print-only models or having stories locked behind bullet-proof paywalls, the inroads our community has created could crumble quickly. Whatever our disputes, this community exists because there are enough positive, trusting relationships between writers, readers, and publishers. 

So what about all the bad AI-generated stories? Who are they, and where do they get off? The SFF ocean is flooded with schools of spammers who don’t come from the global SFF community.

“They have no idea there’s a community,” said Sheila Williams. “This is not their dream. They just found a way to make some money.” Some submissions address Williams with notes saying, “I heard about your side hustle. Please send money to my Western Union.”

The source of AI-assisted work is more challenging to parse. Undoubtedly, outsiders who care as much for the genre as they do the firewalls they’re trying to evade are responsible for some, but not all.

Combing subreddits and SFF discord servers yields a surplus of discussions on how to use AI to do some of the hard work of writing a story, but yelling at these writers isn’t the right approach either. It takes a long time to learn how to write stories and even longer to do it reliably. Writers don’t get to pause life, and some are understandably tempted by the lure of making this easier. AI aside, the internet is chockfull of cobbled-together courses, books, and free eGuides that promise to make the road to publication fast and easy. Some of them are even good, but those don’t promise to make it easy, just clearer.

Some see LLMs as a way of teaching themselves how to write better science fiction. Clarke asked: “Do you really want to learn from something that stole other writers’ work?”

The ethics of AI assistance needs to be more explicit in other areas. Screenwriters with the Writers Guild of America stipulated that they would allow for the use of AI only as it assisted them with their original work but drew a line against machine-generated storylines or dialogue qualifying as “literary material.”

AI is no small issue in the current writer’s strike. In 2017, the average full time writer made a yearly salary of just $20,000. A world where writers must share a byline with AI is terrifying as writers are isolated further from benefiting from their own trade. My Saponi mother would call this being put on a reservation.

The technological battle is ongoing, the legal one may take years to play out in courts and could reverse at any time, but the ethical issues are within our power to address.

Speaking outside of Readercon, some editors have suggested that the answer to this ethical attack on our community is more community.

Kressel says, “What I’d like to see is the SFF community coalesce around a set of core values, similar if not identical to Neil’s statement on AI. And I’d like to see SFWA and others release draft language, similar to how they offer boilerplate contracts, to (a) protect authors, (b) protect publishers, and recognize that both are necessary for a healthy community going forward. I understand the situation is rapidly evolving, but that doesn’t mean we can’t affirm our values now.” 

Just a day after Kressel made that (yet unpublished) statement, SFWA encouraged members to read and sign the Author’s Guild open letter. This development was a promising community response. The current SFWA vice president and author, John P. Murphy, served as the moderator for this panel. Salient fact: he holds a doctorate in Machine Learning. 

In all of this uncertainty, it’s clear that we must stick our necks out and protect the relationships that make our community possible, even if the immediate threat is the growing amount of spam that continues to overwhelm our publications. AI assistance is not a threat from outside our community but comes from within; it’s a longer-term issue. 

Can AI Tell Good Stories?

In 1972, George R.R. Martin published an essay about chess-playing computers in Analog. It was titled “The Computer Was A Fish,” and Sheila Williams referenced it during the panel. The moral of the essay was that chess-playing computers were terrible. In the last year, we’ve seen the chess world rocked by the illegal use of AI that gave players unfair advantages in tournaments. Leaders developed better ways to identify cheating and more severe repercussions for violations to protect the integrity of the game.

It is still unclear whether Language Learning Models and the other AI forms that will replace them will become incredible at telling stories that fascinate human readers. Most editors doubt AI can develop the capacity, yet SFF readers and writers never get tired of asking, “What if?”

One attendee at the DDOS panel posed a hypothetical question to the panelists: “What if a developer takes it as a challenge to create AI that writes a story that wins a Hugo?”

“That’s a wonderful story,” Neil Clarke mused.

Sheila Williams interjected, “—That a human being came up with.”


Thanks to the DDOS panelists, John P. Murphy, Matthew Kressel, Scott H. Andrews, Sheila Williams, and Neil Clarke. Thanks also to Bernard Steen for providing photos and to PJ T. de Barros for providing an audio recording of the panel as reference

2022 Shirley Jackson Award Nominees

The 2022 Shirley Jackson Award nominees have been released. The juried award is given for outstanding achievement in the literature of psychological suspense, horror, and the dark fantastic.

 The 2022 Shirley Jackson Awards will be presented in-person on Saturday, July 15 at Readercon 32 in Quincy, Massachusetts.

The nominees for the 2022 Shirley Jackson Awards are:

NOVEL

  • Beulah by Christi Nogle (Cemetery Gates Media)
  • The Dead Friends Society by Paul Gandersman and Peter Hall (Encyclopocalypse Publications)
  • The Devil Takes You Home by Gabino Iglesias (Mulholland Books)
  • Jackal by Erin E. Adams (Bantam)
  • Unwieldy Creatures by Addie Tsai (Jaded Ibis Press)
  • Where I End by Sophie White (Tramp Press)

 NOVELLA

  • The Bone Lantern by Angela Slatter (PS Publishing)
  • Bound Feet by Kelsea Yu (Cemetery Gates Media)
  • Catastrophe by Deirdre Danklin (Texas Review Press)
  • Lure by Tim McGregor (Tenebrous Press)
  • Pomegranates by Priya Sharma (PS Publishing)
  • The Wehrwolf by Alma Katsu (Amazon Original Stories)

 NOVELETTE

  • Azeman or, the Testament of Quincey Morris by Lisa Moore (Black Shuck Books)
  • “Challawa” by Usman T. Malik (Dark Stars:  New Tales of Darkest Horror)
  • “Sweetbaby” by Thomas Ha (Clarkesworld, October 2022)
  • “This Place is Best Shunned” by David Erik Nelson (Tor.com)
  • What the Dead Know by Nghi Vo (Amazon Original Stories)

 SHORT FICTION

  • “Brother Maternitas” by Viktor Athelstan (Your Body is Not Your Body)
  • “The Church of Divine Electricity” by Emily Mitchell (The Southern Review)
  • “Dick Pig” by Ian Muneshwar (Nightmare Magazine, Issue 112)
  • “Halogen Sky” by Wendy N. Wagner (VASTARIEN:  A Literary Journal, vol. 5, issue 1)
  • “Pre-Simulation Consultation XF007867” by Kim Fu (Lesser Known Monsters of the 21st Century)

 SINGLE-AUTHOR COLLECTION

  • And At My Back I Always Hear by Scott Nicolay (Word Horde)
  • Breakable Things by Cassandra Khaw (Undertow Publications)
  • Hell Hath No Sorrow Like a Woman Haunted by RJ Joseph (The Seventh Terrace)
  • Lesser Known Monsters of the 21st Century by Kim Fu (Tin House)
  • Splendid Anatomies by Allison Wyss (Veliz Books)
  • We Are Here to Hurt Each Other by Paula D. Ashe (Nictitating Books)

EDITED ANTHOLOGY

  • Chiral Mad 5, edited by Michael Bailey (Written Backwards)
  • The Hideous Book of Hidden Horrors, edited by Doug Murano (Bad Hand Books)
  • Other Terrors, edited by Vince A. Liaguno and Rena Mason (William Morrow)
  • Screams From the Dark:  29 Tales of Monsters and the Monstrous, edited by Ellen Datlow (Tor Nightfire)
  • Your Body is Not Your Body, edited by Alex Woodroe and Matt Blairstone (Tenebrous Press)

 [Via Ellen Datlow.]

Pixel Scroll 9/27/21 A Pixel Scroll Title That Turns Out To Have Been Used Before

(1) B5. Variety reports J. Michael Straczynski is working on bringing back his keynote show: “’Babylon 5′ Reboot in Development at The CW From Original Creator”.

… Original series creator J. Michael Straczynski is onboard to write the project. He will also executive producer under his Studio JMS banner. Warner Bros. Television, which produced the original series, will produce the reboot.

The new iteration of the sci-fi series is described as a “from-the-ground-up reboot.” In the series, John Sheridan, an Earthforce officer with a mysterious background, is assigned to Babylon 5, a five-mile-long space station in neutral space, a port of call for travelers, smugglers, corporate explorers and alien diplomats at a time of uneasy peace and the constant threat of war. His arrival triggers a destiny beyond anything he could have imagined, as an exploratory Earth company accidentally triggers a conflict with a civilization a million years ahead of us, putting Sheridan and the rest of the B5 crew in the line of fire as the last, best hope for the survival of the human race.

Which all makes sense of Straczynski’s cryptic tweet of two weeks ago.

(2) LDV NEWS. Today Straczynski also tweeted a brief update about the status of Last Dangerous Visions.

(3) TWO TO TANGO. James Davis Nicoll is there “When Authors Collide: Five SFF Works of Collaborative Fiction” at Tor.com.

The writing of prose is often depicted as a solitary activity, an occupation suited to hermits sealed into poorly lit garrets, sliding their manuscripts out under their front door, receiving flat food under the same door. Now this can be a perfectly functional approach to writing…but it is not the only one…..

(4) READERCON. The Readercon committee announced the next con will be in 2023. Rose Fox will be interim con chair leading their “year of renovation.” Readercon 32 Moved to July 13–16, 2023.

There will be no Readercon in 2022. But don’t panic! We’re not going anywhere! We just need some time to recharge and get our house in order.

The last two years have been a doozy for everyone. We all need some rest. And Readercon as an organization needs an opportunity to revamp back-end processes, update and streamline old systems, and recruit new volunteers to fill key positions. Just as you can’t fix your car’s brakes while you’re driving, we can’t make all those changes at the same time as putting on a convention. So after much behind-the-scenes discussion, we’re officially taking 2022 as a Renovation Year!…

(5) CORFLU. The convention for fanzine fans, Corflu 39 Pangloss, still aspires to run on its March 18-20, 2022 date – and toward that end has published Progress Report #1 with all the info about venue, membership, and who’s on the committee.

We live in parlous times. There is great confusion under heaven, and the conditions are excellent.  Which is to say, thanks to border closures, travel restrictions, economic wobbles, and ongoing pandemic uncertainty, much of what we can tell you about Corflu 39 is aspirational, provisional, or pending better data with the unfolding of future events.  But we step out in hope, and choose to be optimistic that all our Corflu wishes will come true.  Thus, Corflu Pangloss….

(6) CITY PICKS BUTLER BOOK. The city of South Pasadena (CA) has voted its One City One Story book for 2021 – Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler. The South Pasadena Public Library will hold an in-person discussion on October 21 and a Zoom discussion on November 10 – register at the links.

One City One Story is the South Pasadena Public Library’s Citywide Reading Program. Community voting took place for a title from September 1-10. The winning book, Parable of the Sower by Octavia E. Butler, was announced on September 27. We encourage South Pasadenans to read it to engage with this year’s theme, “Navigating Nature”. Dive even deeper with community discussions and themed programs.

(7) BANKS TV ADAPTATION PLANNED. Producer Matthew James Wilkinson (Yesterday) is teaming up with Poldark and Endeavour exec producer Tom Mullens on a TV adaptation of The Business by Iain Banks – Deadline has the story: “’Poldark’ & ‘Yesterday’ Producers Team For Iain Banks Adaptation”.

The Business follows Kate Telman, a working-class Glaswegian who has risen through the ranks to become a senior executive in a secretive super-corporation, known only as The Business. Telman discovers that The Business is planning to buy a small country in order to secure a seat on the UN and that, despite the benevolent image and democratic structure it presents to the world, the company will stop at nothing to increase its influence. So begins a dangerous personal reckoning as Telman travels the globe from Scotland to the Swiss Alps, the American Midwest, Pakistan and the Himalayas, determined to uncover the conspiracy at the heart of the shady company she works for.

…Mullens and Wilkinson said: “We are thrilled to have the opportunity to adapt Iain Banks’ wickedly satirical The Business for television. As relevant today as when it was first published, we look forward to honouring Iain’s work with a powerful, entertaining thriller.”

(8) THE EFFECTS THAT WON THE AWARDS. This ILM look at season 2 of The Mandalorian dropped last week: “The Emmy-Winning Special Visual Effects Of The Mandalorian: Season 2”.

Join Visual Effects Supervisor, Richard Bluff, as he shares a peek behind the curtain of the effects of The Mandalorian: Season 2, winner of 7 Emmy® Awards including Special Visual Effects, Sound Mixing, Cinematography, Prosthetic Makeup, Stunt Coordination, Stunt Performance, and Music Composition. For its sophomore outing, Lucasfilm’s hit Disney+ series built upon the groundbreaking technical and artistic achievements accomplished during season one, combining traditional methodologies, with ever-advancing new technologies. The team also increased the physical size of the ILM StageCraft LED Volume which would again be used for over half of all scenes. This season also marked the debut of ILM’s state-of-the-art real-time cinema render engine called, Helios. The high-resolution, high-fidelity engine was used for all final pixel rendering displayed on the LED screens and offers unmatched performance for the types of complex scenes prevalent in today’s episodic and feature film production. Practical creature effects have been a vital part of the aesthetic and charm of the Star Wars universe since 1977, and for season two, the effects team realized over 100 puppeteered creatures, droids, and animatronic masks, which included the beloved Tatooine Bantha, realized as a ten foot-high puppeteered rideable creature. Practical miniatures and motion control photography were used once again for scale model ships, as well as miniature set extensions built for use in ILM’s StageCraft LED volume. Stop motion animation was also utilized for the Scrap Walker at the Karthon Chop Fields. The greater krayt dragon on Tatooine was realized as a six-hundred-foot computer-generated creature that would swim shark-like through the sand environment by way of a liquefaction effect, wherein the sand would behave like water.

(9) MEDIA BIRTHDAY.

  • 1964 – Fifty-seven years ago this evening on CBS, My Living Doll, a SF comedy, first aired. Another production of the Desilu Studios, My Living Doll was rather unusual in that it was purchased by the network without any pilot at the request of CBS’s president, due to the success of Chertok’s previous series, My Favorite Martian. The series starred Bob Cummings as Dr. Bob McDonald, a psychiatrist who is given care of Rhoda Miller, an android who was played by Julie Newmar who would later be Catwoman on Batman. Unlike My Favorite Martian which ran three seasons and over a hundred episodes, it would last a single season of twenty six episodes. It is available on DVD but not on streaming services. 

(10) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

  • Born September 27, 1927 — Martin Caidin. His best-known novel is Cyborg which was the basis for The Six Million Dollar Man franchise. He wrote two novels in the Indiana Jones franchise and one for the Buck Rogers franchise as well. He wrote myriad other sf novels. The Six Million Dollar Man film was nominated for a Hugo at Discon II which Woody Allen’s Sleeper won, and Marooned was nominated at Heicon ’70 when TV Coverage of Apollo XI was chosen for the Best Dramatic Presentation Hugo. (Died 1997.)
  • Born September 27, 1932 — Roger Charles Carmel. The original Harcourt Fenton “Harry” Mudd as he appeared in two episodes of the original Star Trek, “Mudd’s Women” and “I, Mudd” and one episode of the animated series as well, “Mudd’s Passion.” I say original because Discovery has decided that they have a Harry Mudd too. He also had one-offs on I-SpyMunstersThe Man from U.N.C.L.E.Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea and Batman. It is rumored but cannot be confirmed that he was going to reprise his role as Harry Mudd in a first-season episode of Next Gen but died before filming could start. (Died 1986.)
  • Born September 27, 1934 — Wilford Brimley. His first genre role was as Dr. Blair in John Carpenter’s The Thing. He’s Benjamin ‘Ben’ Luckett in the Cocoon films, and Agency Director Harold Smith in Remo Williams: The Adventure Begins. He made a rather splendid President Grover Cleveland in The Wild Wild West Revisted. And finally I note that he was Noa in Ewoks: The Battle for Endor. (Died 2020.)
  • Born September 27, 1947 — Meat Loaf, 74. He has a rather tasty role as Eddie in The Rocky Horror Picture Show.  He also has film roles in Wishcraft (horror), Stage Fright (horror) and Urban Decay (yes more horror). He’s also in BloodRayne which is yes, horror. He’s had one-offs on Tales from the CryptThe Outer LimitsMonstersMasters of Horror and was Doug Rennie, a main cast member of Ghost Wars. I think one of his songs, particularly the video version, “I’d Do Anything for Love (But I Won’t Do That)” qualifies as genre. 
  • Born September 27, 1956 — Sheila Williams, 65. Editor, Asimov’s Science Fiction, the past fifteen years. She won the Hugo Award for Best Short Form Editor at Renovation and Chicon 7. (She’s nominated this year again.) With the late Gardner Dozois, she co-edited a bonnie bunch of anthologies such as Isaac Asimov’s RobotsIsaac Asimov’s Christmas and Isaac Asimov’s Cyberdreams. She was also responsible for the Isaac Asimov Award for Undergraduate Excellence in Science Fiction and Fantasy writing being renamed the Dell Magazines Award for Undergraduate Excellence in Science Fiction and Fantasy Writing.
  • Born September 27, 1966 — David Bishop, 55. In Nineties, he edited the UK Judge Dredd Megazine (1991–2002) and 2000 AD (1995–2000). He wrote a number of Dredd, Warhammer and Who novels including the Who novel Who Killed Kennedy which is a popular Third Doctor story.  He’s written Big Finish stories in the DreddSarah Jane and Who lines. Dredd audio drams. Huh.
  • Born September 27, 1970 — Tamara Taylor, 51. Best remembered I’d say as Camille Saroyan in Bones which is at least genre adjacent being connect to Sleepy Hollow. Genre wise, she was in season seven of Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. as the primary antagonist, Sibyl. She also appeared in Lost, as the former girlfriend of Michael and mother of Walt, Susan Lloyd. And she has a brief appearance in the Serenity film just listed as Teacher.

(11) TONY AWARDS. The American Theater Wing presented its Tony Awards over the weekend. A Christmas Carol won five of them.  “Tony Awards: The Full List Of Winners”.

(12) DUCK! There’s four days left to bid on the original “Duck with a Pearl Earring” by Omar Rayyan, offered by Last Week Tonight with John Oliver with all proceeds going to benefit U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Bidding was up to $16,351 last I looked.

This is an original oil on paper painting, commissioned by Last Week Tonight with John Oliver.

The painting was entered in the 2021 Federal Duck Stamp Art Contest, in which the winning entry is turned into a duck stamp and sold to raise funds for conserving the nation’s wetlands and other wildlife habitats. It is a take on a classic painting, Girl with a Pearl Earring. But there is one significant difference between the two works of art: ours is good, because it is a duck.

Shockingly this masterpiece did not win, but you can still help conserve habitats for birds and other wildlife in our National Wildlife Refuge System by bidding on the painting here.

(13) START AGAIN. “New Limits Give Chinese Video Gamers Whiplash” reports the New York Times.

China’s video game industry is booming. But it sure doesn’t feel that way to Stone Shi, a game designer in China.

Mr. Shi, 27, got his first job in 2018, when Beijing temporarily suspended approval of new games. The next year, the government placed new limits on minors’ playing time. A few weeks ago, the rules got stricter still. People under 18 can now play just three hours a week, during prescribed times on weekends.

“We never hear any good news about the gaming industry,” Mr. Shi said. “We have this joke, ‘Each time this happens, people say it’s doomsday for the video game industry.’ So we say, ‘Every day is doomsday.’”

That’s a bit of an exaggeration. Mr. Shi remains employed and hundreds of millions of Chinese continue to play games each day. Minors still find ways around government blocks. Chinese tech companies, like Tencent, are cornerstones of the global gaming industry. The country has also been quick to embrace competitive gaming, building e-sports stadiums and enabling college students to major in the topic.

(14) MUSH-A-BOOM. Jaya Saxena takes the opening of the Ratatouille ride at Walt Disney World on October 1 as the excuse for a culinary experiment: “Disney Made Me Do It: The Lightning Mushroom From ‘Ratatouille’” at Eater.

…Remy is, of course, an animated talking rat, and this is a movie that presumes, among other things, that a human body is an elaborate marionette operated by hair. I know the lightning cheese mushroom is not realistic. But it looked so enticing, like a crunchy balloon, or like if Eleven Madison Park made a Cheeto. I would very much like to taste an exploded mushroom. So to that end, I nearly set my house on fire.

…There aren’t many recipes for applying lightning to mushrooms, but some people have tried to approximate what this might taste like. My first attempt at distilling the flavor of a storm came from Disney itself, which published a recipe for “Lightning-y Mushrooms” adapted from Fiction-Food Café. Already I saw a problem, though: This recipe calls for fresh, spreadable chevre, which is whipped with herbs and honey and stuffed into mushroom caps. But in the film, Remy is enthralled to find not fresh chevre, but Tomme de Chevre, a semisoft cheese with a grey rind that’s been aged for at least seven weeks. I opted to follow in Remy’s footsteps, and ad-lib where I could.

…I decided I needed to employ some actual electricity. But short of sticking a mushroomed fork in a socket and hoping I didn’t die, I had no idea what to do. So I called Chris Young, co-author of Modernist Cuisine, hoping he had come across something like this in his experiments.

Young explained what I was trying to do is called ohmic cooking, which is actually quite common, especially in the dairy industry. Picture how a power cord plugged into a wall tends to heat up. That’s because it’s a conductor for the electricity, and because a wire is not a perfect conductor, the resistance begins to generate heat. The same thing can happen with food when you essentially make the food the wire…. 

(15) ACRONYMS. Brought to you by Harvard.edu, “Dumb Or Overly Forced Astronomical Acronyms Site (or DOOFAAS)”. This is the kind of thing we’re talking about:

SMIRFSSub Millimeter InfraRed Fiber-feed System (or something)
SMOGSpitzer Mapping of the Outer Galaxy
SMUDGESSystematic Multiwavelength Unbiased catalog of Dwarf Galaxies and Evolution of Structure 

(16) TRAILER TIME. Netflix dropped a trailer for its animated series Arcane.

From the creators of League of Legends comes a new animated series, Arcane. Set in the utopian region of Piltover and the oppressed underground of Zaun, the story follows the origins of two iconic League champions-and the power that will tear them apart.

And while I’m not that wowed by the trailer for Muppets Haunted Mansion people keep sending me the link, so what do I know?

[Thanks to Martin Morse Wooster, JJ, Cat Eldridge, Chris Barkley, Marc Criley, Michael J. Walsh, Daniel Dern, Jerry Kaufman, Bill Burns, Andrew Porter, John King Tarpinian, Michael Toman, and Mike Kennedy for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Andrew (not Werdna).]

Pixel Scroll 8/12/21 Make The Scene On The Mezzanine, But Don’t Scroll In The Pixels

(1) FREE COMIC BOOK DAY. August 14 is Free Comic Book Day. Here are Marvel’s contributions to the event.

Readers can stop by their local comic shop for Free Comic Book Day 2021: Avengers/Hulk and Free Comic Book Day 2021: Spider-Man/Venom, featuring new stories that kick off the upcoming eras of fan-favorite heroes and lay the groundwork for major new storylines.

The new creative team behind Amazing Spider-Man is about to take the Spider-Man mythos beyond your wildest expectations! Get a first look at Ben Reilly as the new Spider-Man in a story by writer Zeb Wells and artist Patrick Gleason. Then, see what’s in store for Venom when Ram V., Al Ewing, and Bryan Hitch take over in a glimpse that will show you just how twisted their upcoming run will be! 

(2) BLOGGER’S VERDICT ON VOX DAY. Blogger has elevated the threat level to Defcon 2. Yesterday this was the message users were getting when they tried to reach Vox Popoli: “This blog is under review due to possible Blogger Terms of Service violations and is open to authors only.” Today Blogger says flat out —

(3) LEM 100. In “A Century in Stanislaw Lem’s Cosmos”, the New York Times salutes those who are celebrating the author’s centenary.

In “The Eighth Voyage,” a short story by Stanislaw Lem, aliens from across the universe convene at the General Assembly of the United Planets. Lem’s hero, the space traveler Ijon Tichy, watches as an uninformed but overconfident creature steps forward and makes the case to admit Earth to the organization’s ranks. The planet — which he mispronounces as “Arrth” — is home to “elegant, amiable mammals” with “a deep faith in jergundery, though not devoid of ambifribbis,” the alien tells the delegates.

His sentimental appeal is well-received, until a second extraterrestrial stands up and begins to list humanity’s wrongdoings, which include meat-eating, war and genocide. Tichy listens as the aliens belittle us and label us misguided and corrupt, our planet a blip on their intergalactic radar.

This cosmic perspective — mischievous yet melancholy, and far beyond a human point of view — is a signature with Lem, an icon of science fiction best known to English-speaking readers as the author of the 1961 novel “Solaris.” Throughout a career spanning six decades that produced more translated works than any other Polish writer, he adopted the viewpoints of aliens, robots, a conscious supercomputer and a sentient planet, using these voices to reckon with philosophical quandaries….

(4) BRIEF REMINDER. Readercon 31, online only, takes place this weekend, August 13–15, 2021, with Guests of Honor: Jeffrey Ford & Ursula Vernon. Also “Memorial Guest of Honor” Vonda N. McIntyre. As they say:

Although Readercon is modeled on “science fiction conventions,” we have no art show, no costumes, no gaming, and almost no media. Instead, Readercon features a near-total focus on the written word.

Registration is $25, and “grants you access to the Discord server and recordings of all program items for six full months following the convention. After that time is up, most recordings will be made public, but some may be taken down.”

(5) ALTERNATE WHO. Radio Times says the Doctor Who “archeologists” have found more material: “Doctor Who’s Tom Baker to return for audio adaptation of lost scripts”.

Tom Baker is set to reprise his role as the Fourth Doctor in Big Finish’s upcoming adaptations of lost Doctor Who episodes.

The two episodes – Doctor Who and the Ark and Daleks! Genesis of Terror – were written by screenwriter John Lucarotti and Terry Nation, creator of the Daleks, respectively and are set for release in March 2023.

Big Finish recently rediscovered the episodes’ original scripts and initial story outlines and will be adapting them into audio adventures as part of their series, Doctor Who – The Lost Stories.

… producer Simon Guerrier said in a statement.

“The Ark in Space and Genesis of the Daleks are among the best-loved TV stories ever. We’ve uncovered first draft scripts by John Lucarotti and Terry Nation that are exciting, surprising and very different.”

(6) AUREALIS AWARDS JUDGES WANTED. The Aurealis Awards have put out a call for judges. The positions are open to Australian residents only. See complete guidelines at the link.

Judges are volunteers and are drawn from the Australian speculative fiction community, from diverse professions and backgrounds, including academics, booksellers, librarians, published authors, publishing industry professionals, reviewers and enthusiasts.

The only qualification necessary is a demonstrated knowledge of and interest in their chosen category (good time management skills and an ability to work in a team in an online environment are also essential).

(7) TRAILER TIME. This clip explains why vampires shouldn’t learn about chain letters – from What We Do in the Shadows.

(8) LORNA TOOLIS (1952-2021). Lorna Toolis, retired collection head of the Toronto Public Library’s Merril Collection of Science Fiction, Speculation and Fantasy, died of cancer on August 11. Toolis, notes Robert J. Sawyer in his tribute was also a 2017 inductee into the Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame.

Earlier in life she was a member of ESFCAS, the Edmonton Science Fiction and Comic Arts Society. Toolis is survived by her husband, the Aurora Award-winning writer Michael Skeet, with whom she co-edited Tesseracts 4: Canadian Science Fiction published in 1992.

Toolis was interviewed last year by the Toronto Public Library blog for “Merril Collection at 50: Stories from the Spaced Out Library” (the latter was the collection’s original name). Among her memories —

The Merril Collection has hosted so many prominent authors/editors/scholars in the world of Speculative Fiction. Have you ever been starstruck?  

Lorna: I counted myself amazingly fortunate. Over the years, I had lunch with Margaret Atwood and dinner with Gene WolfeNeil Gaiman was our guest three times, as was Cory DoctorowJohn Scalzi was a huge hit with the audience and returned to speak several times by request. When Lois Bujold was our guest, her kids were having trouble with their grammar, and I gave her my personal copy of The Transitive Vampire. Robert Jordan was a guest and he was an absolute sweetheart.

(9) NEAL CONAN OBIT. Retired radio host Neal Conan died August 10 at the age of 71. Jim Freund recalled Conan’s science fiction connections from early in his career at WBAI in New York.

…My favorite regular program Bai’ did was “Of Unicorns and Universes,” which he co-produced and was often hosted by Neal Conan. Neal, while primarily a producer of some of our best Public Affairs programming, (at the same time Paul Fischer was our News Director,) was quite the sf fan. He worked with Samuel Delany on the 2-hour adaptation of “The Star Pit,” and some years later, when I was co-host on Thursday and Fridays of Hour of the Wolf with Margot Adler, he was an occasional co-host on Mondays. (I usually engineered.) I was quite surprised at how much of a Heinlein fan he was….

Conan would be hired by NPR and spend 36 years at the network. Robert Siegel paid tribute to his work there in “Neal Conan, Former Host Of NPR’s ‘Talk Of The Nation,’ Has Died”.

…Later at NPR, he held an astonishing variety of jobs. He was at various times the line producer and the executive producer of ALL THINGS CONSIDERED. Back in 1987, he ran NPR News for a year. He was a reporter.

…  In 1991, while reporting from southern Iraq on the war to liberate Kuwait, Neal was taken captive by the Iraqi Republican Guard, along with New York Times reporter Chris Hedges. It took diplomatic efforts to get them released….

[SIEGEL]: Neal Conan’s most prominent role at NPR was hosting Talk Of The Nation. …He tried out for that job the week that began on Monday, September 10, 2001. Sept. 11 was Neal’s Day 2….

The New York Times has also published an obituary.

(10) MEMORY LANE.

  • 1991 – Thirty years ago at Chicon V at which Marta Randall was the Toastmaster, Edward Scissorhands wins the  Hugo for Best Dramatic Presentation. Other nominated works for the Con for this Award were Total RecallGhostBack to the Future III and The Witches

(11) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

  • Born August 12, 1894 Dick Calkins. He’s best remembered for being the first artist to draw the Buck Rogers comic strip. He also wrote scripts for the Buck Rogers radio program. Buck Rogers in the 25th Century, The Complete Newspaper Dailies in eight volumes on Hermes Press collects these strips.  They’re one hundred fifty dollars a volume. (Died 1962.)
  • Born August 12, 1929 John Bluthal. He was Von Neidel in The Mouse on the Moon which sounds silly and fun. He’s in Casino Royale as both a Casino Doorman and a MI5 Man. (Why pay the Union salaries?) He had roles in films best forgotten such as Digby, the Biggest Dog in the World. (Really. Don’t ask.) And he did play a blind beggar in The Return of the Pink Panther as well, and his last genre role was as Professor Pacoli in the beloved Fifth Element. Lest I forget he voiced Commander Wilbur Zero, Jock Campbell and other characters in Fireball XL5. (Died 2018.)
  • Born August 12, 1931 William Goldman. Writer of The Princess Bride which he adapted for the film. Wrote the original Stepford Wives script and King’s Hearts in Atlantis and Misery as well. He was hired  to adapt “Flowers for Algernon“ as a screenplay but the story goes that Cliff Robertson intensely disliked his screenplay and it was discarded for one by Stirling Silliphant that became Charly. (Died 2018.)
  • Born August 12, 1947 John Nathan-Turner. He produced Doctor Who from 1980 until it was cancelled in 1989. He finished as the longest-serving Doctor Who producer. He cast Peter Davison, Colin Baker and Sylvester McCoy as the Fifth, Sixth and Seventh Doctors. Other than Who, he had a single production credit, the K-9 and Company: A Girl’s Best Friend film. He wrote two books, Doctor Who – The TARDIS Inside Out and Doctor Who: The Companions. He would die of a massive infection just a year before the announcement the show was being revived. (Died 2002.)
  • Born August 12, 1954 Sam J. Jones, 67. Flash Gordon in the 1980 version of that story. Very, very campy. A few years later, he played the lead role in a TV adaptation of Will Eisner’s The Spirit which I’ve not seen and am now very curious about as the audience reviewers at Rotten Tomatoes don’t have good things to say about it. He also had the lead in The Highwayman (name of his character there) which is described as a mix of Mad Max and Knight Rider. It lasted nine episodes in the late Eighties. Anyone seen it?
  • Born August 12, 1960 Brenda Cooper, 61. Best known for her YA Silver Ship series of which The Silver Ship and the Sea won an Endeavour Award, and her Edge of Dark novel won another such Award. Due co-authored Building Harlequin’s Moon with Larry Niven, and a fair amount of short fiction with him. She has a lot of short fiction, much collected in Beyond the WaterFall Door: Stories of the High Hills and Cracking the Sky. She’s well-stocked at the usual suspects.
  • Born August 12, 1966 Brian Evenson, 55. I consider him a horror writer (go ahead, disagree) and his Song for the Unraveling of the World collection did win a Shirley Jackson Award though it also won a World Fantasy Award. He’s also won an International Horror Guild Award for his Wavering Knife collection. He even co-authored a novel with Rob Zombie, The Lords of Salem
  • Born August 12, 1992 Cara Jocelyn Delevingne, 29. Her first genre role was as a mermaid in Pan. She then shows up in James Gunn’s Suicide Squad as June Moone / Enchantress, in Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets as Laureline. She was in Carnival Row as Vignette Stonemoss. It was a fantasy noir series on Amazon Prime.

(12) COMICS SECTION.

(13) I TALK FOR THE TREES. NPR’s Elizabeth Blair says “Dr. Seuss Warned Us 50 Years Ago, But We Didn’t Listen To ‘The Lorax’”.

Call it fate or an unfortunate coincidence that Dr. Seuss’ The Lorax celebrates its 50th anniversary the same week the United Nations releases an urgent report on the dire consequences of human-induced climate change. The conflict between the industrious, polluting Once-ler and the feisty Lorax, who “speaks for the trees,” feels more prescient than ever.

“Once-ler!” he cried with a cruffulous croak.
“Once-ler! You’re making such smogulous smoke!
My poor Swomee-Swans…why, they can’t sing a note!
No one can sing who has smog in his throat.

(14) DON’T SCRY FOR ME ARGENTINA. Romina Garber, in conversation with Dhonielle Clayton, will discuss her new book Cazadora on Thursday, August 19 at 6:00 p.m. Pacific. Register here.

Werewolves. Witches. Romance. Resistance. Enter a world straight out of Argentine folklore…

Following the events of Lobizona, Manu and her friends cross the mystical border into Kerana–a cursed realm in Argentina–searching for allies and a hiding place. As they chase down leads about the Coven–a mythical resistance manada that might not even exist–the Cazadores chase down leads about Manu, setting up traps to capture and arrest her.

Just as it seems the Cazadores have Manu and her friends cornered, the Coven answers their call for help. As Manu catches her breath among these non-conforming Septimus, she discovers they need a revolution as much as she does.

(15) THE LOTTERY. Did you plan to live forever? Don’t. “NASA Says an Asteroid Will Have a Close Brush With Earth. But Not Until the 2100s”  says the New York Times.

An asteroid the size of the Empire State Building has a slight chance of hitting Earth.

Don’t worry. You’ll long be dead before that has any chance of happening. So will your children. Probably all of your grandchildren, too.

At a news conference on Wednesday, NASA scientists said there was a 1-in-1,750 chance that an asteroid named Bennu, which is a bit wider than the Empire State Building is tall, could collide with Earth between now and 2300.

That is actually slightly higher than an earlier estimate of 1 in 2,700 over a shorter period, between now and 2200….

(16) MARK YOUR CALENDAR.  On the other hand, if you are going to be around for at least another century, Gizmodo has a suggestion for your bucket list: “John Malkovich and Robert Rodriguez Have Made A Movie No One Will See For 100 Years”.

Think the secrecy around the biggest Hollywood blockbusters is crazy? They don’t come close to what John Malkovich and Robert Rodriguez are doing. The pair has collaborated for a film that no one will see for 100 years. Literally.

This isn’t some joke. They’ve made a film, called 100 Years, which is being placed in a special time-locked safe that won’t open again until November 18, 2115. Why? Well, because it’s promotion for Louis XIII Cognac, an ultra-luxury liquor that is aged 100 years. Bottles currently on shelves were made in 1915 so they decided a piece of art that speaks to their commitment to quality was something worth doing….

Gizmodo links to three teasers: 100 Years: The Movie You’ll Never See Nature Teaser”, “100 Years: The Movie You’ll Never See Retro Teaser”, and “100 Years: The Movie You’ll Never See Future Teaser”.

(17) FILL IN THE BLANC. Gabriel Iglesias was on Colbert last night to talk about Space Jam 2.

Comedian Gabriel Iglesias is the voice of Speedy Gonzales in “Space Jam 2” and he was very excited to get the role without even auditioning.

(18) MAGNIFICENT SEVEN. Nerdist says you will finally have a chance to see it: “Cult Sci-Fi Favorite BLAKE’S 7 Is Coming to BritBox”. Get your money ready.

For fans of classic British science fiction, there are a few names that always pop up. Doctor Who, naturally, stands head and shoulders above everything else. Other favorites like Sapphire & SteelThe Prisoner, and the shows of Gerry Anderson pop up as well. But for a certain age of fan, the cream of the crop is Blake’s 7. The show was the BBC’s direct attempt to capitalize on the success of Star WarsBlake’s 7 ran for four seasons from 1978 to 1981 and has been pretty hard to find in North America lately. That is, until now. The entire series will debut on BritBox beginning August 13….

(19) TOSSED IN SPACE. The latest issue of Nature warns: “World must work to avoid a catastrophic space collision”.

Governments and companies urgently need to share data on the mounting volume of satellites and debris orbiting Earth.

There’s an awful lot of stuff orbiting Earth, with more arriving all the time. More than 29,000 satellites, pieces of rockets and other bits of debris large enough to track from the ground are circling the planet. Smaller items number in the millions. The Californian company SpaceX alone has launched some 1,700 satellites over the past 2 years as part of its Starlink network, which provides broadband Internet, with thousands more planned. Other companies are also planning such megaconstellations, and more and
more nations are launching or plan to launch satellites. This growing congestion is drastically increasing the risk of collisions in space….

(20) SHORT SUIT. In the Washington Post, Christian Davenport says NASA’s Artemis mission to the Moon could be delayed because the program to design a new spacesuit has spent $1 billion but delays have meant they will only have two flight-ready spacesuits prepared by fiscal year 2025. “NASA IG says 2024 moon landing won’t happen, blames space suit delays”.

Ever since the White House directed NASA to return astronauts to the moon by 2024 as part of its Artemis program, there have been all sorts of daunting challenges: The rocket the space agency would use has suffered setbacks and delays; the spacecraft that would land astronauts on the surface is not yet completed and was held up by the losing bidders; and Congress hasn’t come through with the funding NASA says is necessary.But another reason the 2024 goal may not be met is that the spacesuits needed by the astronauts to walk on the lunar surface won’t be ready in time and the total development program, which ultimately will produce just two flight-ready suits, could cost more than $1 billion…

(21) VIDEO OF THE DAY. [By Martin Morse Wooster.] In “Honest Trailers:  Loki” on YouTube, the Screen Junkies say that Loki “has a Comic-Con’s worth of alternate Lokis” including Richard E Grant, who “can make you love anything he does, even if he’s dressed like Kermit The Frog and talks nonsense for 30 minutes straight.”  Bonus: they send up Tom Hiddleston’s Chinese vitamin commercial!

 [Thanks to Cat Eldridge, Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, Richard Horton, Lloyd Penney, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Martin Morse Wooster, JJ, Michael Toman, and John King Tarpinian for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to contributing editor of the day Jim Janney.]

Pixel Scroll 4/17/20 We Go Scrolling Through The Park, Goosing Pixels In The Dark

(1) ON BOARD. Tim Pratt’s space opera The Fractured Void will kick off a new series of books from Aconyte based on the Twilight Imperium strategic boardgame. Pratt does a Q&A here about his novel, coming in November.

Tim Pratt

How do you get into the headspace of a completely alien species… ones who might not even have heads?
 
All the playable aliens in Twilight Imperium have something in common with humanity: they want stuff. Desire is the common language that drives character motivations (and character is what drives plot).
 
Whether you’re a telepathic serpent or an ocean-dwelling scientist with tentacles, the universality of desire makes you comprehensible.
 
Admittedly, there are some factions that are harder to write point-of-view characters for, because their mental process is so alien – the Nekro Virus and the Arborec come to mind – but there are tricks for writing entities that are insane by human standards or possessed of a group consciousness (stream of consciousness, first-person plural viewpoints, and so on). Science fiction is all about imagining alien mindsets, or familiar mindsets confronted by alien circumstances and writing Twilight Imperium will give me the chance to do both.

(2) FULLY PACKED. This week in “The Full Lid 17th April 2020”, Alasdair Stuart leads off with “The Patron Saints of Freelancing,” about the lessons freelancers can take away from the hard-travelling heroes of The Mandalorian and The Witcher.

The Mandalorian and The Witcher have a lot in common. Monosyllabic leads, a bone-dry sense of humor, plots about reluctant dads, tons of cool armor, not quite enough screen time for supporting female characters…

But underneath all that there’s another narrative, one that resonates with me on a deep level. Both shows are about freelancers. And not (just) the biblical ass-kicking you get handed either: the social pressures of the job, the ways you survive it and the people you meet….

He also takes a look at how The Letter for the King almost lands some really brave choices, and the new oceanic horror movie, Sea Fever. Interludes this week are Sam Rockwell, Margaret Qualley and Christopher Walken cutting various degrees of rug in some epic dance routines and, as ever, Signal Boost is crammed full of treasures.

The Full Lid publishes weekly at 5 p.m. GMT on Fridays. Signup is free and the last six months are archived here.

(3) READERCON CANCELLED. The Readercon committee has announced that the event, which was to be held in Boston this July, has been cancelled. The series will resume next year.

Since our initial announcement on March 15, the United States has become an epicenter for COVID-19. The Governor of Massachusetts has prohibited gatherings of more than 10 people through at least May 4, as of this announcement. Experts predict that continued social distancing efforts may be required until such time as there is an effective vaccine, a milestone we are not expected to reach in time for this summer.

Because the safety of all our members—and their families—is our top concern, we have decided to postpone Readercon 31 for a year. It will now be held July 8 to 11, 2021 at the Marriott Boston Quincy, and Jeffrey Ford and Ursula Vernon have graciously agreed to remain our Guests of Honor, with Vonda N. McIntyre as our Memorial Guest of Honor….

(4) LONELINESS OF THE LONG DISTANCE ISOLATOR. [Item by Martin Morse Wooster.] In the Washington Post, Christian Davenport interviews astronauts and explorers who have spent a lot of time in isolation for tips about how to survive the age of social distancing.  (Two tips:  don’t count the number of days you are isolated and have as many celebrations as possible.) “Even astronauts get ornery: Coronavirus advice from those who have endured social distancing in the extreme”.

…“I have no idea how many days I’ve been in quarantine. None,” said Scott Kelly, the former NASA astronaut who spent 340 days in space, the record for the longest single spaceflight by a U.S. astronaut. “I don’t think about it. I just think, this is my reality. This is my mission. And it will someday be over.”Today, instead of being confined on the International Space Station with a handful of crewmates, he’s restricted to his 1,200-square-foot, two-bedrooms-with-den apartment in Houston with his wife. But his philosophy is the same, as is his strict adherence to routine, laid out daily on a shared Google calendar. He sets his alarm for 7 a.m., eats breakfast, “then work goes to noon, and then lunch, and then work, and then physical training, then plan for the next day, then dinner, then free time.”

(5) HUGO COVERAGE. “Vermont Author Katherine Arden Nominated for Hugo Award” – Andrew Liptak’s report was published in the Vermont pop culture publication Seven Days.

The conclusion of the trilogy qualified it for this year’s Best Series award, which is the Hugo’s newest addition, established in 2017.

In reaction to the nomination, Arden said, “The first time the Hugos came onto my radar was when I read Ender’s Game over and over as a kid. It had ‘WINNER OF THE HUGO AWARD’ emblazoned on the cover.”

That introduction is common to genre fans: The award can help readers cut through the overwhelming pile of stories and find the best ones. “The possibility that a book of my own will have a similar bit on its cover is thrilling and surreal,” Arden said.

(6) OBJECT LESSON. James Davis Nicoll’s latest Tor.com article, “Shiny Cosmic Objects and the Search for Intelligent Life in the Universe”, is of interest in its own right, and triggered a good conversation about sff history in the comments.

It’s just the sort of object SF authors might find notable enough to namecheck. More importantly, it’s something at which curious, technically advanced species would want a closer look. Call it a Leinster Object.

(7) ROWAND OBIT. LASFS member Ken Rowand (1948-2020) died April 12 of cancer. In years gone by he was a regular at the clubhouse’s Hell’s Bridge games and Magic Tournaments. He lived in Northern California for awhile in the early 1980s and did work for the Star Wars Fan Club, such as conducting the interview with Ralph McQuarrie published in Bantha Tracks #15 (1982). He is survived by his wife Marta Strohl.

(8) DAVIAU OBIT. Five-time Oscar-nominated cinematographer Allen Daviau, who collaborated with Steven Spielberg and other film directors, died of COVID-19. NPR paid tribute: “‘E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial’ Cinematographer And Spielberg Collaborator Dies.

…In a statement, Spielberg said his old his friend was, “a wonderful artist, but his warmth and humanity were as powerful as his lens.”

Daviau was born 77 years ago in New Orleans, and started out making music videos long before MTV existed. In 1968, he teamed up with Spielberg for the short film Amblin. They went on to make the memorable 1980’s films Empire of the Sun, The Color Purple, and E.T. the Extra -Terrestrial….

(9) TODAY IN HISTORY.

  • April 17, 1956 X Minus One’s “Jaywalker” first aired. Written by Ross Rocklynne who was a regular contributor to Astounding StoriesFantastic Adventures and Planet Stories, and who is a finalist this year for the Retro Hugo for his “Intruders from the Stars” novella. George Lefferts wrote script. The cast included Bob Hastings, R.E. Johnson, Terri Keane  and Connie Leinke. You can hear it here.

(10) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

  • Born April 17, 1923 Lloyd Biggle Jr. He was the founding Secretary-Treasurer of Science Fiction Writers of America and served as Chairman of its trustees for many years. Writing wise, his best known series was about the Jan Darzek and Effie Schlupe troubleshooting team, and the Cultural Survey.  I find it interesting that he wrote his own Sherlock Holmes stories from the perspective of Edward Porter Jones, an assistant who began his association with Holmes as a Baker Street Irregular. There’re are two novels in this series, The Quallsford Inheritance and The Glendower Conspiracy. (Died 2002.)
  • Born April 17, 1923 T. Bruce Yerke. Involved in LASFS early on, serving as its secretary for many years, and instrumental in recruiting Ray Bradbury to the club. Forrest J. Ackerman, Morojo and he co-edited the Imagination! zine which won the Best Fanzine 1939 Retro-Hugo Awards at Loncon 3. His unfinished biography though published biography, Memoirs of a Superfluous Fan, is a good look at the early days of LASFS. (Died 1998.)
  • Born April 17, 1942 David Bradley, 78. It’s his Doctor Who work that garners him a Birthday honor.  He first showed up during the time of the Eleventh Doctor playing a complete Rat Bastard of a character named Solomon in the “Dinosaurs on a Spaceship” episode. But it was his second role on the series as actor who was the First Doctor that makes him really worth noting. He portrayed William Hartnell in An Adventure in Space and Time and then played the role of the First Doctor again in “The Doctor Falls” and “Twice Upon a Time”, both Twelfth Doctor stories.  He is also known for playing Argus Filch in the Harry Potter film franchise, Walder Frey in Game of Thrones and Abraham Setrakian in The Strain.
  • Born April 17, 1948 Peter Fehervari, 72. Ok, I’ll admit I’m including him because he’s written a number of novels set in the Warhammer Universe and I’ve never read anything set there. Who here has read the fiction set there? Is it worth reading, and if so, is there a good starting point?
  • Born April 17, 1959 Sean Bean, 61. His current role that garners him recognition is his performance as Ned Stark in Game of Thrones, but he’s worked in our area interest a long time.  His first genre role was in GoldenEye as the the antagonist of Bond, Alec Trevelyan (Janus).  Next he shows up as Boromir in the first of The Lord of the Rings films. He played Dr. Merrick in the horror SF film The Island and was James in horror flick The Dark high purports to be based off Welsh myth. Following in the horror vein, he’s Chris Da Silva in Silent Hill (which gets a sequel later in Silent Hill: Revelation) and in yet more horror is John Ryder in the remake of the The Hitcher. (Was it so good that it yearned for a remake? I doubt it.)  Black Death — yes more horror — and the character of Ulric ensued next. Finally, something not of a horror nature in playing Zeus in Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief happened. I’m going to forgo listing the subsequent horror films he’s in and just finally note that he’s in The Martian playingMitch Henderson. 
  • Born April 17, 1972 Jennifer Garner, 48. Back before there was the Marvel Cinematic Universe, there were Marvel Comic movies. Such was the case with Elektra and its lead character of Elektra Natchios. Don’t remember anything about the film anymore. She also had the same role in Daredevil which was at best an OK film.
  • Born April 17, 1985 Rooney Mara, 35. She first shows up as Mary Lambert in Urban Legends: Bloody Mary, a slasher film, followed by being Nancy Holbrook in the remake of A Nightmare on Elm Street, and then Tiger Lily in Pan, a prequel to Peter Pan. Since then, she’s been M in A Ghost Story, and lastly is Molly Cahill in Nightmare Alley.

(11) COMICS SECTION.

(12) MAKING HEADLINES. As anticipated Cora Buhlert’s Hugo nomination made the news in her other local paper, too, the Kreiszeitung (County Paper): “Sie ist eine Auserwählte”. The tagline says (according to Google Translate) —

Seckenhausen – “You have been nominated.” These four words were in an email that Cora Buhlert had discovered in her mailbox about three weeks ago. At first she thought it was just a Worldcon newsletter, but then she read the next word

Cora says, “I’m quite stunned about the extensive coverage. I suspect part of the reason is that since sports events, city council sessions, festivals, etc… don’t take place at the moment, local journalists have more time and space to report about other things such as North Germany’s first Hugo finalist. 

“I also got invited to contribute a book recommendation to the World Book Day coverage of one of the two local papers, which again has never happened before, even though I used to hang out on the edges of the local arts scene.”

 (13) NOT SPARING THE ROD. In “Shorefall: Come for the heists and explosions, stay for the debates”, Fantasy Fiction’s Bill Capossere leads into a review of the new Robert Jackson Bennett novel with this exhortation:

Stop me if you’ve heard this before. Once upon a time there was a small group of uber-powerful folks who truly messed up the world. Luckily that was ages, sorry, I mean, Ages, ago. But now one of those ancient badass power users is potentially going to return and hoo boy is the world in trouble if he gathers all his power yet again. Thank the gods for the plucky group of scruffy underdogs who are definitely not a fellowship and who have decided to risk their lives to prevent the Dark Power’s rise. Anyone? Bueller?

OK, yes. We’ve all heard it before. So you might be forgiven if, upon learning that Robert Jackson Bennett’s newest title, Shorefall (sequel to the fantastic Foundryside), is about a spirited group of outnumbered and outgunned people trying to prevent the resurrection of an ancient power, you think to yourself, “Oh man, not another one of these!” You might be forgiven. But then again, you might not be. Because that would mean you haven’t been paying attention to Robert Jackson Bennett, because you would know he doesn’t do “another one of those.” And really, nobody should be forgiven for not paying attention to Robert Jackson Bennett, who has proven himself to be one of our best writers. Consider yourself duly chastised….

(14) SPACEX MANNED MISSION “Nasa to launch first manned mission from US in decade” – BBC has the story.

Nasa has announced that next month it will launch its first manned mission from US soil in almost 10 years.

The rocket and the spacecraft it is carrying are due to take off from Florida’s Kennedy Space Centre on 27 May, taking two astronauts to the International Space Station (ISS).

Both the rocket and spacecraft were developed by private company SpaceX.

Nasa has been using Russian rockets for manned flights since its space shuttle was retired in 2011.

(15) 1984 BALLET. Available on YouTube as a fundraiser, the UK’s Northern Ballet production of 1984.

Winston Smith lives in a world of absolute conformity, his every action is scrutinized by Big Brother. But when Winston meets Julia, he dares to rebel by falling in love. Based on George Orwell’s masterpiece and choreographed by [former Royal Ballet dancer] Jonathan Watkins, 1984 pushes the boundaries of contemporary ballet and won the dance award at the South Bank Sky Arts Awards in June 2016. If you can, please help us to protect our people and our work during these unprecedented times and make a donation when you watch:

It is now available to watch online until May 2 as part of their “Pay As You Feel Digital Season.”

(16) PHANTOM RETURNS. Also available for a very short time – today and tomorrow – “Andrew Lloyd Webber’s The Phantom of the Opera 25th anniversary special to be streamed for free on YouTube”.

Musical maker Andrew Lloyd Webber will stream his anniversary production of The Phantom of the Opera on his new YouTube channel from 7pm on Friday (17 April).

The 25th-anniversary concert production, filmed at the Royal Albert Hall in 2011 features Ramin Karimloo as the Phantom and Sierra Boggess as Christine. It will be available for 24 hours – so worth planning for a Friday night or Saturday matinee!

The show is the third in a new series of Lloyd Webber’s works that are being streamed for free online while a lockdown of UK households continues, which has seen theatres closed up and down the country. You can tune in here on Friday for more.

(17) IF I HAD A HAMMER. A Late Show with Stephen Colbert excerpt discovered thanks to Gizmodo (“We Could Watch Cate Blanchett Showing Off Her Thor and Hobbit Props Forever”).

The star of “Mrs. America” on FX and Hulu wields some serious hero weaponry in this pajama party interview with Stephen Colbert.

[Thanks to Chip Hitchcock, Cat Eldridge, John King Tarpinian, JJ, Michael Toman, Mike Kennedy, JJ, Martin Morse Wooster, Steve Green, Francis Hamit, and Andrew Porter for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Russell Letson.]

Pixel Scroll 7/17/19 By The Time I Get To Pixel, She’ll Be Scrolling

(1) CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS. Christopher J. Garcia and Chuck Serface are co-editing an issue of The Drink Tank dedicated to science-fiction comics of the 1950s and 1960s! Any critical articles, fanfic, personal remembrances, artwork, and any media we can publish in a fanzine are welcome.

Chuck Serface says, “Consideration of materials from any comic publisher of the time is fair game: Atlas/Marvel, DC, Gold Key, Charlton, Warren, EC, ones I’m forgetting at the moment — all of them.”

The deadline’s October 14, 2019. They’ll have it out by the end of the calendar year. Send submissions to [email protected].  

(2) COLSON WHITEHEAD Q&A. His new book is not sff, but some of his answers are about genre in “Powell’s Interview: Colson Whitehead, Author of ‘The Nickel Boys’”.

Rhianna: You’ve mentioned in other interviews being an avid reader of horror, and your novel Zone One is a zombie horror story. You’re very skilled at depicting violence. I was wondering if the horror genre has stylistically influenced the way that you depict historical atrocities, like those in The Underground Railroad and The Nickel Boys.

Whitehead: Again, I think the story determines how you tell it. The violence in Zone One is gorier. It’s more flamboyant than some of the stuff in The Underground Railroad and The Nickel Boys. In those two books, I think the horrific brutality that they experience speaks for itself. They don’t have to be dramatized.

This kind of language, I borrowed from reading the slave narratives. You don’t have to dramatize or sell to the listener or the reader how terrible everything is that is happening because it speaks for itself. If the violence is speaking for itself, I can concentrate more on the characters and what they’re feeling.

(3) TOLD WITH CONVICTION. LAist tells how “This LA Writer Turned Comic-Con Into A Crime Story”.

San Diego’s Comic-Con International starts Wednesday night, which makes this the perfect time to talk about Bad Weekend, a noir set against the backdrop of a fictionalized version of the now famous comics convention.

Writer Ed Brubaker described the graphic novel — with art by Brubaker’s longtime collaborator Sean Phillips and colors by Phillips’ son Jacob — as a weird love letter to comics, being a fan, and the strangeness of the comic book industry.

Bad Weekend is the product of filing away stories he’s heard around the comic book industry for the past 20 to 30 years, according to Brubaker — stories of who screwed over whom, of success not bringing happiness, and of comic companies getting rich off their work with movies and TV shows without the creators sharing in that wealth.

(4) OP-EDS. [Item by Olav Rokne.] If, like me, you’ve been enjoying the New York Times’ series of science fictional op-eds, they’ve just created a landing page with all the articles in the series now organized in one place:  “Op-Eds From the Future”

It’s worth checking back every second Monday to see the latest installment, as they’ve been excellent so far. 

(5) FILER NAMED FGOH. Chris Barkley shared on Facebook: “I am pleased to report that I was asked and accepted to be the Fan GoH at the 2021 Astronomicon in Rochester, NY along with my good friend (and Identical twin) Robert J. Sawyer.”

(6) TRANSLATED NOVEL HUGO REDUX. Chris Barkley has also addressed criticism of the Best Translated Novel Hugo category in a Facebook post which begins —

I have taken this past week to ponder a response to Neil Clarke and Taiyo Fujii’s objections to the viability of a Hugo Award category for Best Translated Novel. And frankly, their objections puzzle me.

I ask this of Mr. Fujii and to Mr. Clarke; if the three Hugos awarded to translated works are the awakening of fandom to translated literature, why haven’t more of those works been nominated in their wake? In the past three years of nominations; only 2017’s Death’s End, by Cixin Liu, translated by Ken Liu, has been included in the Best Novel category, all of the other nominees in the category have all been decidedly anglocentric.

The truth of the matter we think that the Worldcon and the Hugo Awards have been overwhelmingly perceived for quite a while as an English speakers only party since a majority of the conventions have been held in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom and Australia.

Mr. Clarke and Mr. Fujii may see the proposed award as either unnecessary, pandering or condescending to authors and fans but all Ms. Cordasco, my co-sponsors and I only want to do is shine a spotlight to fervently call attention to and honor authors and their translators. Speaking for myself, had there been three, four or five nominees on the final ballot since those historic awards, I would not have contemplated initiating and offering this proposal for an open debate…

(7) JUDGE UNCONVINCED. “Marvel Finally Beats a Lawsuit Over the ‘Iron Man 3’ Poster”The Hollywood Reporter has the story. There does seem to be a family resemblance, just the same:

Horizon still could have gotten the case to trial, but it then needed to show an inference of copying through the similarity of the works. Specifically, Horizon argued the two works were “strikingly similar,” with reliance on an expert report discussing anatomical structures, faces and heads, and camera views.

The judge responds that the expert report is “equivocating” on some of the noteworthy similarities by addressing features on careful viewing and not going quite so far to rule out any reasonable possibility of independent creation. Plus, the judge adds, “there remain enough differences between the two works,” nodding to Marvel’s pointing out differences in pose, differing placement of blue lights, and significantly different overall coloring.

(8) SEE READERCON 30. Ellen Datlow has posted 89 photos taken at ReaderCon 30 in a Flickr album.

Catherynne M. Valente, Heath Miller, and Sebastian

(9) ARE YOU WHAT YOU CONSUME? Surprising no one, here’s where The Hollywood Reporter lands on the meaning of “fan” and “fandom” — “Among Fandoms, Marvel May Reign Supreme, Poll Finds”.

A nationally representative sample of 2,200 adults carried out between July 8 and 10 revealed that, when it comes to genre properties, Marvel is far and away the most successful, with 63 percent of those surveyed considering themselves fans. The next most popular property was Marvel’s Disney sibling, Star Wars, with a 60 percent fandom, and DC followed with 59 percent.

(10) TODAY IN HISTORY.

  • July 17, 1955 — Disneyland Park opened in Anaheim, California.
  • July 17, 1987 Robocop premiered on this day.

(11) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

  • Born July 17, 1858 Florence Balcombe Stoker. She was the wife and literary executor of Bram Stoker. She’s best remembered for her extended legal dispute with the makers of Nosferatu, an unauthorized film blatantly based on her husband’s novel Dracula. (Died 1937.)
  • Born July 17, 1889 Erle Stanley Gardner. Though best known for the Perry Mason series of 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. (Died 1970.)
  • Born July 17, 1944 Thomas A. Easton, 75. 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, 1952 Robert R. McCammon, 67. Horror writer whose Michael Gallatin books, The Wolf’s Hour and The Hunter from the Woods, Alllied WWII werewolf agent and his adventures, I strongly recommend. His “Nightcrawlers” short story was adapted into an episode of the Twilight Zone.
  • Born July 17, 1954 J. Michael Straczynski, 65. 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 commit sides, 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 Superman, Wonder Woman, and Before Watchmen titles.
  • Born July 17, 1967 Kelly Robson, 52. I just got done reading her brilliant “Gods, Monsters and the Lucky Peach”.  Right now, it appears only this plus “A Human Stain” and “Waters of Versailles” are available on iBooks and Kindle for reading as she has no collection out yet. And no novel as far as I can tell. 
  • Born July 17, 1971 Cory Doctorow, 48. I’ll admit that I’ve mixed feelings about his work. I enjoyed Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom, his first novel, and thought The Rapture of the Nerds had potential but really failed to live to that potential to great. Everything else is ‘Meh’. His activism is oft times that of an overeager puppy trying to get attention for himself. 
  • Born July 17, 1976 Brian K. Vaughan, 43. Wow. Author of  Ex Machina,  Pride of BaghdadRunawaysSagaY: 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.

(12) IN THE BEGINNING. The San Diego Union-Tribune explores “50 Shades of Comic-Con: What we’ve gained and lost in five decades of pop culture celebrations”.

From its inception, Comic-Con had intergalactic ambitions.

The initial show, then called San Diego’ Golden State Comic Con, featured science fiction writers Ray Bradbury and A.E. Van Vogt; Jack Kirby, creator of Captain America, X-Men and other iconic superheroes; vintage films; an art auction; and dozens of dealers peddling mountains of new and used comics.

An unforgettable event — for the 300 attendees. Few others noticed and even they dismissed this as a juvenile jamboree. For instance:

On the show’s first day, Aug. 1, 1970, the author of “Fahrenheit 451″ and “The Martian Chronicles” granted an interview to The San Diego Union. Yet Bradbury’s spirited defense of comics was buried on page B-11, under articles about a flower show, the repainting of the White House East Room and a medical brief with the headline “Fat Men More Tipsy.”

… Neil Kendricks is a writer, filmmaker and teacher who recently led a San Diego State course on comics and sequential art. In the early 1980s, though, he was a high school student at his first Comic-Con. In the dealer’s room, he bumped into a white-haired gentleman flipping through the cardboard boxes full of used comics.

“Mr. Bradbury,” he stammered, “will you be here for awhile?”

When Ray Bradbury nodded yes, Kendricks dashed out of Golden Hall and ran the half-mile to Wahrenbrock’s Book House.

“I went upstairs to the science fiction section and bought as many of his books and I could find. Then I ran all the way back and he signed them. That,” Kendricks said, “could never happen now.”

(13) UP ON CHARGES. Trae Dorn reports at Nerd & Tie that a conrunner is being prosecuted in the Twin Cities: “How to React When a Member of Your Con Staff is Accused of Rape”. Documentation accompanies the post.

On Monday it came to light that long time staffer of Twin Cities based Anime Detour Stephen Gifford has been charged with third-degree sexual assault in Hennepin County, Minnesota. Gifford was head of Convention Communications for Anime Detour’s 2019 event earlier this year, and has previously served as the event’s convention chair.

… Now we’ve seen cons react to situations like this in many ways, but thankfully Anime Detour’s staff has taken the situation seriously.

(14) KNIT ONE, PEARL TWO. While they still can, WIRED lets readers decide for themselves what to think about this coming technology: “Here’s How Elon Musk Plans to Stitch a Computer into Your Brain”.  

…At a presentation at the California Academy of Sciences, hastily announced via Twitter and beginning a half hour late, Musk presented the first product from his company Neuralink. It’s a tiny computer chip attached to ultrafine, electrode-studded wires, stitched into living brains by a clever robot. And depending on which part of the two-hour presentation you caught, it’s either a state-of-the-art tool for understanding the brain, a clinical advance for people with neurological disorders, or the next step in human evolution.

The chip is custom-built to receive and process the electrical action potentials—“spikes”—that signal activity in the interconnected neurons that make up the brain. The wires embed into brain tissue and receive those spikes. And the robotic sewing machine places those wires with enviable precision, a “neural lace” straight out of science fiction that dodges the delicate blood vessels spreading across the brain’s surface like ivy.

…And, sure, there’s more. A public records request from WIRED in April 2019 found that Neuralink is licensed to have hundreds of rats and mice in its research facilities. In a seemingly unplanned moment at the Cal Academy, Musk also acknowledged that Neuralink’s research had progressed beyond rodents to non-human primates. It’s only because of a records request filed by Gizmodo that Neuralink’s affiliation with the primate research center at UC Davis is public knowledge. That affiliation has apparently progressed: “A monkey has been able to control a computer with its brain, just FYI,” Musk said during the Q and A after the presentation.

His team seemed as surprised and discombobulated by the announcement as the audience. “I didn’t know we were running that result today, but there it goes,” said Max Hodak, president of the company, on stage next to Musk. (Monkeys have controlled computers via BCIs before, though presumably this would be the first time one used Neuralink.)

(15) APOLLO 11 AT 50 CLIPPINGS.

One small holograph for man, one giant holograph for the Washington Monument.

The Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum will celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing with a life-size projection of the Saturn V rocket on the Washington Monument on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday.

The Saturn V rocket is now iconic for carrying the Apollo 11 crew to the moon in 1969. The projection-mapping artwork will occupy 363 of the monument’s 555 vertical feet.

As the 17th century’s most famous Italian astronomer surveyed the heavens, he likely never dreamed a rocket shooting fire would one day power people up among the stars he eyed through his telescope, or that his work would help guide a ship to the moon.

But Galileo Galilei’s observations would become a key link in the chain of scientific research and discovery fundamental to our understanding of the universe and our drive to explore it.

That scientific continuum is at the heart of a new Houghton Library exhibit connecting early celestial calculations to the Apollo 11 mission that put two American astronauts on the lunar surface 50 years ago this July. “Small Steps, Giant Leaps: Apollo 11 at Fifty” features gems from Harvard’s collection of rare books and manuscripts as well as NASA artifacts from an anonymous lender and Harvard alumnus, many of which were aboard the spaceship that left Earth’s orbit in 1969.

Not all of the equipment carried into space was cutting edge and expensive. Some of the more humble odds and ends even prevented disaster.

…25: Length of duct tape rolls carried to the Moon, in feet

If there’s one saviour time and again of American space missions over the past 50 years, it’s a roll of duct tape. During Apollo missions, it was used for everything from taping down switches and attaching equipment inside the spacecraft, to fixing a tear on a spacesuit and, during Apollo 17, a fender on the lunar rover.

One of the surviving crew members of the first manned mission to the Moon – Apollo 11 – has returned to the site where the mission set off 50 years ago.

Michael Collins, 88, visited Florida’s Kennedy Space Center on Tuesday. He marked theprecise time – 09:32 (13:32 GMT) – when their rocket took off.

Mr Collins had stayed in lunar orbit while his colleagues Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walked on the Moon.

…Mr Collins described how he felt during take-off.

“The shockwave from the rocket power hits you,” he told Nasa TV. “Your whole body is shaking. This gives you an entirely… different concept of what power really means.”

Esquire was not expecting much from Neil Armstrong.

“While the space program is poised on the brink of a truly epoch-making triumph of engineering, it is also headed for a rhetorical train wreck,” the story said.

“The principal danger is not that we will lose the life of an astronaut on the Moon, but that the astronauts will murder English up there . . . . That they are likely to litter the intergalactic void with gibberish and twaddle.”

The smugness is rather remarkable, because despite the talent of the people it enlisted, Esquire got not a single decent line from any of them.

It got, in fact, a lot of gibberish and twaddle.

…With that as your benchmark, here’s a sampling of what Esquire’s best and brightest came up with:

John Kenneth Galbraith, the Harvard economist: “We will hafta pave the damn thing.”

Ayn Rand, libertarian thinker and novelist: “What hath man wrought!”

…Leonard Nimoy, the actor, then in his third season as Spock on the new TV series Star Trek: “I’d say to Earth, from here you are a peaceful, beautiful ball and I only wish everyone could see it with that perspective and unity.”

(16) BACK SEAT FLYING. [Item by Mike Kennedy.] Washington Post: “Airline tweets about where passengers are least likely to die in a crash”. The pic below is cribbed from the WaPo article. Apparently, they got ahold of a screenshot of the since-deleted tweet. The thought process of whoever sent this out must have been, well, let’s just call it astounding.

(17) A KING WILL BE CROWNED. Looper fills us in about The Most Anticipated Sci Fi Movies Of 2020.

2020 might feel far away, but Hollywood’s major studios are already planning ahead with some legit super hits on the horizon. And if you’re a fan of sci-fi flicks, then 2020’s looking like an especially good year for you. These are just a few of the most anticipated sci-fi blockbusters on their way to a big screen near you. Film fans will finally get the answer to an age-old question in 2020, when Godzilla and King Kong face off on the big screen. Director Adam Wingard has already assured fans that his take on the two monsters will crown a definitive winner, unlike the 1962 film that first pit the two characters against each other. This will be the fourth entry in Legendary’s MonsterVerse, first established in 2014’s Godzilla and further explored in Kong: Skull Island.

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

ReaderCon 30 Photos

Neil Clarke

By Daniel Dern: [In addition to his photos taken onsite this weekend, Dern offered this “quotable tidbit” from ReaderCon 30 — ]

The “Remembering Gene Wolfe” session was amazing and wonderful. Howard Waldrop opened with what could easily have been a great first line: “I first met Gene Wolfe at Sleeping Beauty’s Castle in Disneyland…”  C.S.E. Cooney related how she met Wolfe (leading to a long friendship) — when she was still a new writer, her father suggested she might like to meet and talk with one of his parishioners who wrote science fiction…

Hopefully, ReaderCon (or somebody else volunteering to do it) will post the audio of this panel.

The rest of Dern’s photos follow the jump.

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2018 Shirley Jackson Awards

The 2018 Shirley Jackson Awards were presented on Sunday, July 14 at Readercon 30, Conference on Imaginative Literature, in Quincy, Massachusetts. (Kate Maruyama livetweeted the ceremony.)

The awards are given for outstanding achievement in the literature of psychological suspense, horror, and the dark fantastic.

They are voted upon by a jury of professional writers, editors, critics, and academics. The jurors for the 2018 awards were Chikodili Emelumadu, Michael Thomas Ford, Gabino Iglesias, Kate Maruyama and Lynda E. Rucker.

NOVEL

  • Little Eve, Catriona Ward (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, an imprint of The Orion Publishing Group)

NOVELLA

  • The Taiga Syndrome, Cristina Rivera Garza (Dorothy, a Publishing Project)

NOVELETTE

  • “Help the Witch,” Tom Cox (Help the Witch)

SHORT FICTION

  • “The Astronaut,” Christina Wood Martinez (Granta 142: Animalia)

SINGLE-AUTHOR COLLECTION

  • All the Fabulous Beasts, Priya Sharma (Undertow Publications)

EDITED ANTHOLOGY

  • Robots vs Fairies, edited by Navah Wolfe and Dominik Parisien (Saga Press)