(1) TAKING THE CURSE OFF ADVERBS. Philip Athans is here to liberate us: “Adverbs Are Fine!” declares Athans at the Fantasy Author’s Handbook.
…Everyone tells you adverbs are bad, bad, terrible words! In On Writing Stephen King wrote that famous line:
I believe the road to hell is paved with adverbs, and I will shout it from the rooftops.
I even found a web site that said you can only use one adverb per 300 words, which is just bizarre. That’s not even a little bit a thing. This came from one of those goofy “writing” apps that count the number of adverbs in your manuscript so you can feel bad about yourself in a new and pointless way based on a software engineer’s lack of understanding of creative writing. Or, anyway, maybe not totally embarrass yourself in work emails….
Adverbs are fine!
Why say that to ourselves? Because it’s true. Adverbs are a perfectly acceptable, even necessary part of speech and blindly deleting them from a manuscript because an app told you to is the sign of an amateur. Learning how to use them properly is the sign of a writer.
You might be surprised by Athans’ choice of novel from which to draw his example texts:
…I pulled out some examples from Perry Rhodan #19: Mutants vs. Mutantsby Clark Darlton, translated by Wendayne Ackerman and published by Ace Books in 1972…
However, they’re pertinent to his interesting discussion. And in the end he reminds writers:
…Adverbs are words and as authors we get to use all the words. We even get to make some up from time to time. And there’s nothing special about adverbs. Use them—just like you use adjectives, nouns, and verbs—with care and thought and in service to your characters and the story they’re sharing with your readers.
The same discussion is also available as a YouTube presentation.
The Sad Man in Space is back! He was last seen orbiting our cinemas five years ago, when the average big-screen astronaut was less inclined to explore strange new worlds or fight bug-eyed monsters than to sit in a tin can feeling sorry for himself. Ryan Gosling was grief-stricken in First Man, Brad Pitt had issues in Ad Astra, Robert Pattinson was in low spirits in High Life, and Matthew McConaughey sobbed his eyes out in Interstellar, to name just four of the men who were lost in space in more ways than one. Floated around in zero gravity, but weighed down by their woes, they were so common that critics coined the terms “Sad Man in Space”, “Sad Dad in Space”, and “Sadstronauts” to describe them, while various articles traced the sub-genre back to Tarkovsky’s Solaris via Duncan Jones’s Moon. Being thousands of miles from home, separated from every other living being by cold, dark emptiness … this, film-makers realised, was a handy metaphor for being a bloke.
Now another Sadstronaut is on the launchpad. Earlier this week, Netflix debuted the first trailer for Spaceman, a science-fiction drama that premieres at the Berlin film festival in February. Adapted from Jaroslav Kalfar’s novel, Spaceman Of Bohemia, it stars Adam Sandler as Jakub, the titular astronaut – and you know it’s one of Sandler’s serious outings, because he’s got a beard….
…Where has the Sad Man in Space been since Gosling, Pitt and co were doing their intergalactic brooding? The answer, I’d argue, is that he fell to Earth, and now he’s everywhere. Countless major films in the last 12 months have revolved around masculinity in crisis: men without purpose, men perplexed by relationships, and men being generally depressed about being men. This has been the year of the Sad Man in Cinema….
Lynda La Plante and James Lee Burke are the joint recipients of this year’s award, which is administered by the Crime Writers’ Association (CWA) and recognises sustained excellence in the genre.
“By an extraordinary quirk of fate, due to our new voting process, this year’s Diamond Dagger is, for the first time in seven decades, being awarded to two authors,” said Maxim Jakubowski, chair of the CWA Daggers’ committee. “If the Booker prize can do it, so can we!”
La Plante is best known for writing the Prime Suspect and Widows television and novel series. Her other series include Lorraine Page, Anna Travis and Trial And Retribution. In 2008, she received a CBE for services to literature, drama and charity. Her memoir is expected to be released later this year.
…James Lee Burke’s series about detective Dave Robicheaux spans more than 20 novels. Burke said he was “honoured and humbled” to receive his award. “It is also an honour to have my name among the best mystery and crime writers in the world,” he added….
(4) GLORIOUS EDITION OF LONG WAY. Becky Chambers announced The Folio Society’s limited edition of her book The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet will be available beginning January 25.
…Yes indeed, that’s The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet, complete with full-color artwork from award-winning illustrator Zoë van Dijk. Each copy is signed by both me and her, and there’s a new introduction written by yours truly. It’s got a folding box and cloth binding and lemon-gold foil and all other manner of fancy materials besides, but…the artwork. The artwork knocked me off my feet. I spent years living in that spaceship inside my head. What a wild thing, to see someone evoke it so perfectly….
…The first issue of Futuria Fantasia, published when Ray was eighteen years old, catches him just before he heads off to New York for the first-ever World Science Fiction Convention. In that first issue, he is very much focused on “Technocracy”, a movement which promised to turn science fiction into political reality. The issue includes an essay on Technocracy by Bruce Yerke, followed by an early piece of Ray Bradbury science fiction: “Don’t Get Technatal”, a satirical look at how boring it will be to live in a utopia!
“Don’t Get Technatal” was Ray’s third piece of published fiction, although he hid behind the pseudonym of Ron Reynolds. I read it in full in the podcast, along with Ray’s other contributions to FuFa No. 1. (I also read selections from the writings of the other contributors.)
If you want to read the whole magazine, it’s freely available, since the copyright on FuFa expired decades ago. The best place to find it – and the other three issues that Ray published – is via the links at science fiction history site FANAC.
So, come with me now to the world of 1939, where fans of “scientifiction” enthusiastically support the bright future offered by the Technocracy movement, perhaps oblivious to the impending likelihood of world war…
Or to quote Ray: “But, Mr. Smith, how do you explain that gyro-statistic-electromagnetiosonomonator on the radiostuntomotor?”
(6) IT’S A TWISTER AUNTIE EM! Stephen Colbert opens the CBS vault to discover a lost segment from The Twilight Zone, where legendary host Rod Serling shares twist endings that were filmed but never aired. The Late Show Presents: “The Twilight Zone: Just The Twists”.
(7) GARY GRAHAM (1950-2024). Actor Gary Graham died January 23 at the age of 73. The Deadline tribute details his genre roles.
…Graham began making appearances on episodic TV in the mid-1970s, including one-off roles in Eight Is Enough, Starsky and Hutch, Police Woman and The Incredible Hulk.
His signature role came in 1989, when he was cast in the starring role of Detective Matthew Sikes in the television series Alien Nation. The series lasted only one season, but Graham would reprise the role in TV movies Alien Nation: Dark Horizon (1994), Alien Nation: Body and Soul (1995), Alien Nation: Millennium (1996), Alien Nation: The Enemy Within (1996), and Alien Nation: The Udara Legacy (1997).
Graham became part of the Star Trek universe in 2001 when he was cast in Star Trek: Enterprise in the recurring role of Vulcan Ambassador Soval (Graham had appeared as a different character in a 1995 episode of Star Trek: Voyager). He appeared as a character named Ragnar in the 2007 video Star Trek: Of Gods and Men, and reprised that role in the series Star Trek: Renegades….
…[George] Romero cast Emge as helicopter pilot Stephen “Flyboy” Andrews, an accident-prone but well-meaning news pilot who escapes the undead apocalypse to find safety with a few other survivors in a suburban shopping mall.
Emge’s character manages to avoid a zombie fate for much of the movie, but eventually falls victim.
A photo of Emge’s dead-eyed, blood-spattered Zombie Stephen would become the most famous image from the film, used in promotional material and capturing the lasting attention of generations of horror fans, among them a young Simon Pegg, future star of the 2004 horror-comedy Shaun of the Dead.
“I would stare at the image of David Emge’s zombified flyboy character,” Pegg wrote in his 2011 memoir Nerd Do Well. “The film became something of an obsession for me.”
Emge appeared in only two films after Dawn of the Dead – 1990’s Basket Case 2 and 1992’s Hellmaster – but years later he’d become a favorite at horror conventions for his role as Stephen….
(9) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.
[Written by Cat Eldridge.]
Born January 23, 1950 — Richard Dean Anderson, 74. I’ve liked Richard Dean Anderson from the very first time I saw him playing Lt. Simon Adams in the one-season Emerald Point N.A.S., which befitted him more than his first acting job playing Dr. Jack Webber on the General Hospital daytime soap opera, as this was a military soap opera of the first degree.
Going from the short-lived and uniformed Emerald Point N.A.S. role, he got arguably the most interesting acting role of his career of his performing career, the lead in MacGyver. Was it genre? I think so. I enjoyed it immensely.
Richard Dean Anderson in 1985.
It had a very lean regular cast with Dana Elcar as Peter Thornton, MacGyver’s immediate supervisor at the Phoenix Foundation, and Bruce McGill as Jack Dalton, MacGyver’s best friend, the whole supporting cast. There were a few other performers that showed on up a recurring basis plus a legion of background characters.
Remember Heinlein’s “Specialization is for insects” quote from Time Enough for Love? Well MacGyver comes as close in his problem solving to that as any individual could. And with a sense of humor to boot. Something I sometimes suspect Heinlein characters of lacking.
It lasted seven seasons comprising 139 plus two films. The seventh was short as it was cancelled but as Anderson noted in a later interview, “The only reason it went off the air was that everybody was ready to move on. I was physically exhausted and had no life.”
As it’s streaming on Paramount+, I know what I’ll be watching soon!
So having survived, and by his own admission mostly enjoyed, a long running series, what came next for him? Well you take a half decade off before getting involved in a series that was even a lot longer lasting than MacGyver turned out to be!
Oops, my bad. I almost forgot about the series he did in between the two most important, that being Legend, all twelve episodes. Yes, you heard me. Twelve. He played Ernest Pratt, a hard-drinking writer who created Nicodemus Legend, the main character in pulp novels. The only other ongoing character was a Tesla ripoff by the name of Janos Bartok played by John de Lancie. Think SF western and you’ve got it. It was fun, it had absolutely no audience and it was cancelled apparently before it aired. Oh well.
So now for his longest running series. I loved Stargate, I really did. So when I heard a series was being made from the film I was definitely intrigued. And I was pleasantly surprised how well Stargate SG-1 worked. Stargate wasn’t really a developed reality, Stargate SG-1 was. So comparing the Jack O’ Neil character that he plays there to the character played Kurt Russell once and done makes no sense, really it doesn’t.
It was a great role that Anderson was allowed to develop I assume as an Executive Producer of the series. So how the long did it last? An amazing ten seasons, 214 plus two films. And he shows up elsewhere in the Stargate Universe unsurprisingly.
So two-long running roles, 357 between them. Quite impressive I would say.
Magical Mealtime: Entertain your guests with this gorgeous 16-piece Harry Potter Dinnerware Set. Featuring themed designs inspired by the Wizarding World, the fine detailing and gold edging make this a must-have dish set.
Elegant Styling: Each dinnerware place setting depicts a unique Hogwarts House: Gryffindor, Hufflepuff, Ravenclaw, and Slytherin. The Sorting Hat’s poem is also featured on the plates and bowls, tying all the pieces together in a cohesive style.
Scientists have begun to decommission one of the world’s foremost nuclear-fusion reactors, 40 years after it began operations. Researchers will study the 17-year process of dismantling the Joint European Torus (JET) near Oxford, UK, in unprecedented detail — and use the knowledge to make sure future fusion power plants are safe and financially viable….
…The thorniest part of decommissioning the JET site will be dealing with its radioactive components. The process of fusion does not leave waste that is radioactive for millennia, unlike nuclear fission, which powers today’s nuclear reactors. But JET is among the tiny number of experiments worldwide that have used significant amounts of tritium, a radioactive isotope of hydrogen. Tritium, which will be used as a fuel in future fusion plants including ITER, has a half-life of 12.3 years, and its radiation, alongside the high-energy particles released during fusion, can leave components radioactive for decades.
Decommissioning a fusion experiment doesn’t have to mean “bulldozing everything within sight into rubble and not letting anyone near the site for ages”, says Anne White, a plasma physicist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge. Instead, engineers’ priorities will be to reuse and recycle parts. This will include removing tritium where possible, says Buckingham. This reduces radioactivity and allows tritium to be reused as fuel. “The sustainable recycling of this scarce resource makes economic sense,” he says…
(13) YOU’RE FROM THE SIXTIES. Is that a robot duking it out with a Dalek in this 1967 video? Sure, but that’s not the big secret of Robot Boy. Beware spoilers. Yes, even a 90-second video can have spoilers.
Several shots show a home-made ‘Robot Boy’ and a Dalek in a suburban back garden. The maker, Victor Sherlock, sits with some young boys on the back doorstep; one of the boys is sitting inside a model spaceship. The robot is apparently worked by remote control; Victor sits with a remote control box that he seems to be speaking into. The robot walks towards a lawnmower, then Victor makes some adjustments to the robot’s head. He then lifts the head off to reveal that his son, Peter, is inside the robot suit.
[Thanks to Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, John King Tarpinian, Kathy Sullivan, Frank Catalano, JJ, Daniel Dern, Chris Barkley, Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, and Steven French for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Cat Eldridge.]
(1) DRAGON CON STILL ON SCHEDULE. Dragon Con told Facebook readers today they are proceeding with plans for their Labor Day event.
Many things in the world are uncertain right now. One thing isn’t: We are planning to throw one sorely-needed, amazing celebration come Labor Day. We’re moving forward to keep #DragonCon2020 on schedule.
Currently, there are no plans to reschedule or cancel the event, however we’re keeping in touch with the experts either way, and working with our venue partners to make sure everything and everyone stays safe, happy, and healthy.
Rest assured if at any time we feel that cannot be accomplished, we will do what is needed to protect our community.
I’m sure everyone’s familiar with America’s snack, as ubiquitous at ball games as beer and hotdogs. As caramel corn goes, it’s pretty mediocre stuff, though once you start eating, you find you can’t stop. And the real incentive is the prize waiting for you at the bottom of the box. Will it be a ring? A toy or a little game? Maybe a baseball card.
This month, like most months recently, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction is kind of like a box of Cracker Jacks. But the prize at the end of the May 1965 issue is worth the chore of getting there.
Creative platform Patreon has laid off 30 employees, which is 13% of its workforce, TechCrunch has learned.
“It is unclear how long this economic uncertainty will last and therefore, to prepare accordingly, we have made the difficult decision to part ways with 13% of Patreon’s workforce,” a Patreon spokesperson said in a statement to TechCrunch. “This decision was not made lightly and consisted of several other factors beyond the financial ones.”
(4) VISITOR FROM BEYOND. [Item by Daniel Dern.] Jeff Hecht (who’s sold sf stories everywhere from Analog, Asimov’s and Interzone to Nature and various anthologies — ) has an article in the April 21, 2020 Sky & Telescope on recent interstellar visitors: “The Origins of Interstellar Objects”.
…Comet Borisov was easy to recognize as a comet, but our first interstellar visitor, 1I/’Oumuamua, was like nothing astronomers had seen before. It was elongated, tumbling erratically, porous, moving oddly, releasing only wisps of gas — even evoking thoughts of derelict alien spaceship….
In terms of SF relevance (beyond “we also are interested in science fact stuff”), Jeff notes, regarding this article, “The only SF twist was saying they finally found a way to explain the origin of ‘Oumuamua other than as an alien spacecraft.”
(5) MOORCOCK REVEALED WHEN PAYWALL FALLS. Stacy Hollister’s “A Q&A With Michael Moorcock” is an interview with Michael Moorcock about his novel King Of The City that first appeared in the November 2002 Texas Monthly, which has lowered its paywall for the rest of the year.
texasmonthly.com: What’s your mission as a writer?
MM: I’m very moralistic. I think I bear a certain responsibility for the effect of the fiction I write. Anger at injustice, cruelty, or ignorance is what tends to fire me up. I try to show readers where we might all be wearing cultural blinders. I hate imperialism, so therefore much of my early work was an attempt to show admirers of the British Empire, say, what kind of injustice, prejudice and hypocrisy such an empire is based on. I am very uneasy with current Anglophone rhetoric about responsibilities to other parts of the world, for instance. King of the City deals with some of this, especially the destruction of African society by imperial rapacity.
(6) SMALL SHOW RECAP – BEWARE SPOILERS. [Item by Martin Morse Wooster.] Last night on DC’s Legends of Tomorrow, the time ship ended up in British Columbia in 2020 and ended up in a woods which ultimately led them to the set of Supernatural. They didn’t see any members of the cast, but they did see Sam and Dean’s car and opened the trunk, which was full of monster-fighting equipment. They then used the equipment to fight a bunch of zombie-like creatures, and learn the creatures have killed the crew shooting Supernatural.
“How will they finish season 15?” one of the legends asks.
Well, now we know why Supernatural still has seven episodes left to shoot…
(7) ENTERTAINMENT FOR SJW CREDENTIAL OWNERS. Martin Morse Wooster, our designated Financial Times reader, peeked behind the paywall and found that in the April 17 issue Sarah Hemming reviews fiction podcasts.
Nadia, star of Russian For Cats (created by Pam Cameron), has escaped from prison and is desperately seeking refuge. She discovers it with Brian, a loser who lives in a caravan in a state of great disorder and despondency. When Nadia arrives, he finds a confidante and she finds sanctuary.
The only thing is, Nadia is a cat: a talking cat fluent in Russian. Here’s a story ideally suited to lockdown :a gently absurd thriller, featuring a chatty feline, the chance to learn Russian (a short lesson follows each episode), and a sinister explanation for popularity of cat memes. Is your cat spying on you? Do you need to ask?
(9) CASEY OBIT. Past President of the Philadelphia SF Society Hugh Casey died April 21 after a long illness, including a stroke. He is survived by his partner Stephanie Lucas.
In happier times Hugh made File 770 with this humorous incident from 2002:
Philadelphia SF Club President Hugh Casey almost made his show business debut in September. “I was supposed to be checking out an alternate location for meetings, but was unable to make it due to being held up in traffic. In fact I ended up driving into the middle of filming for Kevin Smith’s upcoming movie Jersey Girl – apparently disrupting a shot and getting some crew members very angry at me. I did not see either the director or the stars.”
In 2017, when Casey battled cancer, his friends rallied to raise money for his medical expenses by creating “HughCon” –
…The Rotunda has donated their space, Star Trek-themed band The Roddenberries have donated their time and talent, a number of makers and vendors have donated items for our silent auction, and a lots of people have donated their time and effort
(10) TODAY IN HISTORY.
April 22, 1953 — Invaders from Mars premiered. It directed by William Cameron Menzies and produced by Edward L. Alperson Jr. from the script written by Richard Blake with the story by John Tucker Battle. It starred Jimmy Hunt, Helena Carter, Arthur Franz, Morris Ankrum, Leif Erickson, and Hillary Brooke. Invaders from Mars was nominated for a Retro-Hugo at Noreascon 4 but lost out to The War of The Worlds. Critics at the time liked it quite a bit, and At Rotten Tomatoes, it holds an approval rating of 82% among audience reviewers. You can watch it here.
April 22, 1959 — The Monster Of Piedras Blancas enjoyed its premiere. It was produced by Jack Kevan who started out as a makeup artist on The Wizard of Oz as written and directed by Irvin Berwick who was associate produced later on for The Loch Ness Horror. The screenplay was by H. Haile Chace It starred Jeanne Carmen, Les Tremayne, John Harmon, Don Sullivan, Forrest Lewis, and Pete Dunn. It received universally negative criticism with most calling it amateurish with the script, dialogue, and monster design being noted s being bad. It holds a not terribly bad 33% rating among audience reviewers at Rotten Tomatoes. You’re in for for a special treat as you can see it here.
(11) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.
[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]
Born April 22, 1902 — Philip Latham. Name used by Robert Shirley Richardson on his genre work. His novels were largely first published in Astounding starting in the Forties, With the exception of his children’s SF novels that were published in Space Science Fiction Magazine. He also wrote a few scripts for Captain Video, the predecessor of Captain Video and his Video Rangers. His Comeback novel starts this way: ‘ When Parkhurst heard the announcement that climaxed the science fiction convention, he found that he’d been right, years ago when he had faith in science-fictionists’ dreams. But, in another way, he’d been wrong . . .’ It’s available at the usual digital suspects for a buck. (Died 1981.)
Born April 22, 1934 — Sheldon Jaffery. An editor and bibliographer of pulps whose non-fiction Work and genre anthologies are both fascinating. Among the latter are such publications as Sensuous Science Fiction From the Weird and Spicy Pulps and The Weirds: A Facsimile Selection of Fiction From the Era of the Shudder Pulps, and from the former are Future and Fantastic Worlds: Bibliography of DAW Books, The Arkham House Companion: Fifty Years of Arkham House and Collector’s Index to Weird Tales. (Died 2003.)
Born April 22, 1937 — Jack Nicholson, 82. I think my favorite role for him in a genre film was as Daryl Van Horne in The Witches of Eastwick. Other genre roles include Jack Torrance in The Shining, Wilbur Force in The Little Shop of Horrors, Rexford Bedlo in The Raven, Andre Duvalier in The Terror, (previous three films are all Roger Corman productions), Will Randall in Wolf, President James Dale / Art Land in Mars Attacks! and Jack Napier aka The Joker in Tim Burton’s The Batman. I watched the last one, was not impressed.
Born April 22, 1944 — Damien Broderick, 76. Australian writer of over seventy genre novels. It is said that The Judas Mandala novel contains the first appearance of the term “virtual reality” in SF. He’s won five Ditmar Awards, a remarkable achievement. I know I’ve read several novels by him including Godplayers and K-Machines which are quite good.
Born April 22, 1967 — Sheryl Lee, 53. Best remembered as being cast by David Lynch as Laura Palmer and Maddy Ferguson in Twin Peaks and in Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me, and reprised in the later Twin Peaks. Her other interesting genre role was playing the title role in Guinevere based on Persia Woolley’s Guinevere trilogy. Finally, she was Katrina in John Carpenter’s Vampires for which she won the very cool sounding Fangoria Chainsaw Award for Best Supporting Actress.
Born April 22, 1977 – Kate Baker, 43. Editor along with with Neil Clarke and Sean Wallace of the last two print issues Clarkesworld. She’s won the Hugo Award for Best Semiprozine twice, and the World Fantasy Award (Special Award: Non Professional) in 2014, all alongside the editorial staff of Clarkesworld. She’s a writer of three short genre stories, the latest of which, “No Matter Where; Of Comfort No One Speak”, you can hear here. (Warning for subject matters abuse and suicide.)
Born April 22, 1978 — Manu Intiraymi, 42. He played the former Borg Icheb on the television series Star Trek: Voyager. A role that he played a remarkable eleven times. And this Birthday research led me to discovering yet another video Trek fanfic, this time in guise of Star Trek: Renegades in which he reprised his role. Any Trekkies here watch this?
Born April 22, 1984 — Michelle Ryan, 36. She had the odd honor of being a Companion to the Tenth Doctor as Lady Christina de Souza for just one story, “Planet of the Dead”. She had a somewhat longer genre run as the rebooted Bionic Woman that lasted eight episodes, and early in her career, she appeared as the sorceress Nimueh in BBC’s Merlin. FinallyI’ll note sheplayed Helena from A Midsummer Night’s Dream in BBC’s Learning project, Off By Heart Shakespeare.
(13) BREAKTHROUGH. In the Washington Post, Michael Cavna profiles Steenz (pseudonym of Christina Stewart) and Bianca Xunise as two African-American comic strip creators who have broken into the world of newspaper comic strips, as Steenz has taken over Heart of the City and Xunise has joined the artists producing Six Chix. “Newspaper comics hardly ever feature black women as artists. But two new voices have arrived.”
“The ‘powers that be’ — white male editors at white publications — have kept folks of color to a minimum on their pages so as not to cause a stir. That’s the case still,” says Barbara Brandon-Croft, whose trailblazing strip “Where I’m Coming From” was distributed by Universal Press Syndicate from 1991 to 2005 — making her the first black woman to achieve national mainstream syndication as a cartoonist.
“You had to go to the black newspapers — as early as the ’30s — to find black characters drawn by black hands,” she says. ”And a black woman lead — what? Jackie Ormes’s ‘Torchy Brown’ was truly groundbreaking.” (Ormes, the first African American woman to have a syndicated comic strip, was elected to the Will Eisner Comics Hall of Fame in 2018.)
The October premiere date for Season 2 of “The Mandalorian” may still feel like it’s far, far away, but pre-production has already begun on a third installment of the wildly popular Disney Plus series, Variety has learned exclusively.
Sources close to the production have confirmed that creator Jon Favreau has been “writing season 3 for a while,” and that the art department, led by Lucasfilm vice president and executive creative director Doug Chiang, has been creating concepts for Season 3 “for the past few weeks.”
…The Mouse House also has two others series from a Galaxy far, far away in the works, namely an Obi-Wan Kenobi series with Ewan McGregor reprising the iconic role, and a Cassian Andor series starring Diego Luna, which recently added Stellan Skarsgard and Kyle Soller, as Variety reported exclusively.
As the comic book industry seeks to rebuild in the wake of store closures and publication pauses caused by the coronavirus outbreak, the Book Industry Charitable Foundation (BINC) is announcing the formation of a new fund specifically aimed at assisting comics, the Comicbook United Fund.
Combining the $100,000 pledged last year to BINC from the Oni-Lion Forge Publishing Group to support comic book retailers with the $250,000 pledged earlier this month by DC, the Comicbook United Fund is intended to be the central location for any and all figures and organizations hoping to raise money for comic book retailers.
(16) EMERGENCY. The roleplaying game designer Guy McLimore (FASA’s Star Trek: The Roleplaying Game, Mekton Empire, The Fantasy Trip) says he had to break social distancing for an exceptionally good reason:
Broke distancing today; no choice. Young woman across the street fled her abusive husband & I found her hiding in my back yard. Brought her in, but couldn’t convince her to go to a women’s shelter. A friend came to get her. Barbara gave her supplies from our stash.(1 of ?)
…I’m sure, in her incredible, gifted, magnificent imagination, she never even considered for a second that, almost 100 years into her future, someone whose parents weren’t yet born would take her work, bring it to life in a unique way, and then distribute that new work to anyone who wants it, in the world, without even getting out of my desk chair.
What amazing thing is sitting just over our horizon? What amazing thing is waiting for our grandchildren that we can’t even imagine right now? Why aren’t we doing more to protect our planet and each other, so our grandchildren don’t have to live in some apocalyptic nightmare?
Stephen Hawking’s personal ventilator has been donated to the hospital where he was often treated to help patients diagnosed with coronavirus.
The physicist, who had motor neurone disease, died in 2018, aged 76.
His family donated the medical equipment he bought himself to the Royal Papworth Hospital in Cambridge.
Prof Hawking’s daughter Lucy said the hospital was “incredibly important” to her father and Dr Mike Davies said staff were “so grateful” to the family.
A team of researchers from India, upon discovering a new species of green pit vipers, have decided to name the snake after the one, the only Salazar Slytherin. Their findings were published this month in the journal Zoosystematics and Evolution.
For those not familiar with Harry Potter, a quick history lesson. In a nutshell, Salazar Slytherin was one of the founders of the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, along with his pals Godric Gryffindor, Rowena Ravenclaw and Helga Hufflepuff.
Along with being some of the most powerful witches and wizards of their time in the Harry Potter world, they’re also the namesakes of the four Hogwarts houses.
Slytherin, partly known for his ability to talk to snakes, is linked to the animals — the snake is, after all, the symbol of the Slytherin Hogwarts house. That’s why the researchers chose the name Trimeresurus salazar.
A Richardson man who has had a lifelong love of “Star Wars” and particularly stormtroopers, took to the streets to bring a smile and an important message to his neighbors.
Rob Johnson dressed up as a stormtrooper and patrolled the sidewalks near his home carrying signs reminding people “Good guys wear masks” and “move alone, move alone.”
The stormtrooper shows a sense of humor too, with one sign reading, “Have you seen my droid, TP4U?”
Stormtrooper Patrols Richardson Neighborhood With Coronavirus-Related Messages –> https://t.co/jjWDGmqkZ9
[Thanks to Cath Jackel, Mike Kennedy, Martin Morse Wooster, John King Tarpinian, JJ, Michael Toman, Cat Eldridge, Chip Hitchcock, rcade, Bill, Daniel Dern, N., and Andrew Porter for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Jack Lint.]
