Pixel Scroll 6/15/19 His Scroll Swooned Slowly As He Heard The Pixels Falling Faintly Through The Universe

(1) DUBLIN 2019 DEADLINE. Linda Deneroff, Dublin 2019 WSFS Business Meeting Secretary, broadcast the message that the deadline for submission of new business to this year’s business meeting is fast approaching: July 17. Pass the word to anyone else you believe is considering new business.

(2) TEARS FOR FEARS. The Guardian’s Leo Benedictus has indifferent success getting writers to talk to him about YA “cancel culture” — “Torn apart: the vicious war over young adult books “

Since March, I have been sending discreet messages to authors of young adult fiction. I approached 24 people, in several countries, all writing in English. In total, 15 authors replied, of whom 11 agreed to talk to me, either by email or on the phone. Two subsequently withdrew, in one case following professional advice. Two have received death threats and five would only talk if I concealed their identity. This is not what normally happens when you ask writers for an interview.

… Many of the battles around YA books display the worst features of what is sometimes called “cancel culture”. Tweets condemning anyone who even reads an accused book have been shared widely. I have heard about publishers cancelling or altering books, and asking authors to issue apologies, not because either of them believed they ought to apologise, but because they feared the consequences if they didn’t. Some authors feel that it is risky even to talk in public about this subject. “It’s potentially really serious,” says someone I’ll call Alex. “You could get absolutely mobbed.” So I can’t use your real name? “I would be too nervous to say that with my name to it.” None of the big three UK publishing groups, Penguin Random House, HarperCollins or Hachette, was available for comment.

Another author I will call Chris is white, queer and disabled. Chris has generally found the YA community friendly and supportive during a career spanning several books, but something changed when they announced plans for a novel about a character from another culture. Later, Chris would discover that an angry post about the book had appeared anonymously on Tumblr, directing others to their website. At the time, Chris only knew that their blog and email were being flooded with up to 100 abusive messages a day.

(3) DEFINING MOMENT. Ellen B. Wright reignites a traditional debate, in the process collecting a lot of entertaining answers. Thread stars here.

(4) SHORT FILM Exclusive premiere of “After Her” starring Stranger Things’s Natalia Dyer.

One night, a teenage girl disappears without a trace. Years later, her friend returns home and finds himself being beckoned back into those woods – the last place she was seen alive. An atmospheric sci-fi about the archetypal lost girl.

Director’s Statement: I was interested in making a short that confronts the perversion of the “missing girl story” in both film and in reality. I wanted to create something meditative and personal with a small group of collaborators; I shot most of the film myself, including the VFX, which were hand done in my parents’ basement. I’m from Rhode Island and grew up reading Lovecraft, and was incredibly inspired by his worlds, his characters, and their maddening search for the bigger picture, the great answers. As Callum searches for Haley, the alluring missing girl of his past, his expectations get challenged. His journey spans fertile woods, deep caves, and fallopian tunnels. He grows to realize that he is a passenger, not a pioneer, while she is the leader, not the victim.

(5) REDRUMOR. I don’t think I’m ready to face this at the breakfast table — Funko’s Pennywise cereal with pocket pop.

Thought you had seen it all from Funko? Well think again. Introducing FunkO’s, the new collectible cereal from the pop culture wizards at Funko. Each box comes with a Pocket Pop!

This IT Pennywise box of FunkO’s comes with a Pennywise Pocket Pop!, and the red, multigrain cereal is bound to wow you at breakfast time. That’s if you decide to eat it and not keep it intact with your Funko collection! Grab a box today and make your Saturday mornings fun again.

(6) OGAWA OBIT. Publisher Haikasoru announced the death of a well-known sff translator:

Takashi Ogawa, an English-Japanese translator, editor and educator in translation, who introduced Western SF to Japan since 1980’s. He translated many of Bruce Sterling’s titles including Schismatrix and Islands in the Net.

Ogawa’s translation of Bruce Sterling’s “Taklamakan” won the Foreign Short Story category of Japanese prozine Hayakawa’s S-F Magazine Reader’s Award in 1999.

(7) TODAY IN HISTORY.

  • June 15, 1955The Beast With A Million Eyes debuted at drive-ins.
  • June 15, 1973The Battle for the Planet of the Apes premiered.

(8) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

  • Born June 15, 1939 Brian Jacques. British author who surprisingly is not on the ISFDB list today. Writer of the exceedingly popular Redwall series of novels and also the Castaways of the Flying Dutchman series. And he wrote two collections of Alan Garner style fiction, Seven Strange and Ghostly Tales and The Ribbajack & Other Curious Yarns. Only the Redwall series is available in digital format on either platform. (Died 2011.)
  • Born June 15, 1941 Neal Adams, 78. Comic book artist who worked for both DC and Marvel. Among his achievements was the creation with writer Dennis O’Neil of Ra’s al Ghul. I’m a DC fan so I can’t speak for his work on Marvel but he did amazing work on Deadman, BatmanGreen Lantern and Green Arrow. All of this work is now available on the DC Universe app.  It should be noted he lead the lobbying efforts that resulted in Superman creators Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster receiving long overdue overdue credit and financial remuneration from DC.
  • Born June 15, 1942 Sondra Marshak, 77. Author of multiple Trek novels including The Price of the Phoenix and The Fate of the Phoenix, both co-written with Myrna Culbreath. She also wrote, again with Myrna Culbreath, Shatner: Where No Man …: The Authorized Biography of William Shatner which of course naturally lists Shatner as the third co-author.
  • Born June 15, 1947 David S Garnett, 72. Not to be confused with the David Garnett without an S. Author of the Bikini Planet novels which should be taken as seriously as the name suggests. Revived with the blessing of Michael Moorcock a new version of New Worlds as an anthology this time. Last work was writing Warhammer novels.
  • Born June 15, 1960 Sabrina Vourvoulias, 59. Thai-born author, an American citizen from birth brought up in Guatemala, but here since her teens. Her novel, Ink, deals with immigrants who are tattooed with biometric implants that are used to keep track of them no matter where they are. I’m assuming that the “Skin in the Game” story which appeared first on Tor.com is set in the future. Fair guess that “The Ways of Walls and Words” which also appeared on Tor.com is also set there. The Readercon 25 panel she was on, “East, West and Everything Between: A Roundtable on Latin@ Speculative Fiction” is available for free on iBooks is is all of her fiction. 
  • Born June 15, 1963 Mark Morris, 55. Horror writer who’s also written a number of Dr. Who works, both novels and audiobooks. I’d single out his Torchwood full-cast audiowork Bay of the Dead as being quite chilling. He also edited Cinema Macabre where folks such as Jo Fletcher and Simon Pegg discuss their favorite films which won the prestigious British Fantasy Award. 
  • Born June 15, 1973 Neil Patrick Harris, 46. His first genre role was not Carl Jenkins in Starships Troopers, but rather Billy Johnson in Purple People Eater, an SF comedy best forgotten, I suspect. Post-Starship Troopers, I’ve got him voicing Barry Allen / The Flash in Justice League: The New Frontier and Dick Grayson / Nightwing in Batman: Under the Red Hood. He also voiced Peter Parker and her superhero alias in Spider-Man: The New Animated Series. Finally, he’s currently Count Olaf in A Series of Unfortunate Events which he also produces. 

(9) COMMENTS ON TRANSLATING SFF. In 2014, the SCBWI Japan Translation Group ran this interesting Q&A with Yoshio Kobayashi (who has been to more than one North American Worldcon.)

How did you come to be involved in the project? What approach do you take with the translating and editing of each book?

I’ve translated novels and stories from English for more than thirty years. I’ve also written book reviews of Japanese novels in English, and I frequently discuss SF at World Science Fiction Conventions. I’ve also helped shepherd some stories to be translated into English. I write my blog in English, too. So they asked me to do the job. My experience of book editing was appreciated as well.

…What advice can you give to translators wishing to develop their literary translation skills?

Read. A lot. At the least, you have to read 500 novels to be confident of your reading ability. I used to read ten novels a month before I decided to be a translator. When I started my career, I had read more than 1,000 novels in English from every genre. I teach translation at a translators’ school and I always tell my students to read. When you have read 500 novels you start to understand an author’s style, what euphemism is and how the author uses metaphor. A lot of translators misunderstand that. You have to read contemporary US/UK novels too, in order to understand the modern usage of English and current trends. Then to translate modern Japanese novels, you need to be able to grasp contemporary vocabulary. I still read about ten titles a month, although now it’s a combined number. I have read ten American novels and five Japanese novels a month for twenty years. So read! And trust the authors. You don’t have to orchestrate the work. Authors write everything that is needed to be described. The rest should be given to the reader’s imagination. Reading is an ability that is developed through reading, so it’s better to help our readers expand that ability. You shouldn’t intervene by explaining too much.

(10) A HOLE NEW ARTFORM. Art Daily remarks on a science-meets-art subject in “Art of early man found in the greatest meteor crater on earth.”

Leading South African scientists from the University of the Free State are about to undertake research into the destruction caused by a huge ancient meteorite that could hold clues critical to the history, mechanisms and consequences of meteorite strikes on earth and elsewhere in the Solar System. The results of this work could mean a better understanding of the effects of such impacts and the greater safety of the earth. 

The vast crater is also fascinating for its human interest from early man who used it as a centre of cultural importance and left rock carvings as proof of their presence. The site was of great spiritual significance, comparable to the stone circles of Stonehenge in the UK. The Khoi-San patently understood that the rock remains found on the surface were unique and important. 

(11) UNGIFTED STUDENT. The Verge reviews a new book: “Magic for Liars blends magic school with a murder mystery.” The article’s tagline is, “Sarah Gailey’s full length debut is a unique spin on the genre.”

Magic school clashes with a murder mystery in Magic for Liars, the debut novel from Sarah Gailey, best known for their American Hippo short stories — but with one key twist. 

That’s because while the school and the murder may be magical, Ivy Gamble, the investigator hired to solve the case, is completely ordinary. Unable to sling a spell or cast a charm, she’s a far more relatable character than most other magical detectives that dot the literary landscape.

(12) MINORITY REPORT. USA Today likes a new movie, at least more than a number of reviewers (“’Men in Black: International’ burning questions: Where the heck is Will Smith?”).

Producers didn’t even seek out Smith and Jones for cameo appearances.

“They both loom so large, it didn’t feel right,” MacDonald said. “It seemed like it might be that taste that made you think, ‘Why aren’t they here?’ ” 

However, if you look carefully at Agent High T’s (Liam Neeson) office, there are pictures of both agents in the background.

(13) D&D&TV. Do they have enough hit points? Inverse (“At D&D Live, Wizards of the Coast Rolls the Dice on the Future”) says “Hundreds gathered at the Los Angeles event to celebrate a 45-year-old tabletop game. It’s ground zero for what’s in store for the next four and a half decades.”

Inside an air-conditioned TV studio in Hollywood, a colossal stone castle looms large surrounded by blooming hellfire. Sleek black leather chairs, the kind often found in a Wall Street meeting room, sit behind a long oak table beneath dynamic lights and high-definition cameras on 15-foot cranes. This is hell, and the cameras will go live tomorrow.

Over the next three days, a few hundred people — and a million more tuning in at home — will come in and out to watch celebrities and online personalities play Dungeons & Dragons. This is D&D Live, an annual celebration of the 45-year-old tabletop role-playing game where the newest of new media revere a game still best played with pencils, paper, dice, and friends.

(14) MORE FERTILE THAN WILEY. According to NPR, “Killing Coyotes Is Not As Effective As Once Thought, Researchers Say”.

In a rugged canyon in southern Wyoming, a helicopter drops nets over a pair of coyotes. They’re bound, blindfolded and flown to a landing station. There, University of Wyoming researchers place them on a mat. The animals stay calm and still while technicians figure out their weight, age, sex and other measurements. Graduate student Katey Huggler fits the coyotes with tracking collars.

“What really is most important to us is that GPS data,” says Huggler, who’s the lead on this project. What that data has been showing is, boy, do coyotes roam. Huggler is amazed at one young female that wandered long distances.

“It was like 110 miles as the crow flies, turned around, came back three days later,” she says. “[Coyotes] are moving fast, but they’re also moving really far.”

Huggler says all that roaming changes during the short window when mule deer fawns are born, showing that coyotes are indeed targeting them. Mule deer populations around the West are down — 31% since 1991 — and some people blame coyotes. It stands to reason that killing some coyotes could help improve mule deer numbers, but University of Wyoming wildlife professor Kevin Monteith points out if you wipe out a pack of coyotes, it leaves a hole in the habitat, and nature dislikes a vacuum.

The federal government kills thousands of coyotes every year to keep them from preying on livestock and big game. But some wildlife biologists say killing coyotes isn’t actually the best way to control them.

“The next day you just have an exchange of animals that come right back in and fill that place,” Monteith says.

In fact, some studies show that if you kill off a lot of coyotes, they breed even more.

(15) READING LIST. “As The 50th Anniversary Of Apollo 11 Nears, New Books Highlight The Mission’s Legacy”.

The countdown has begun. It’s T-minus a month or so until the 50th anniversary of Apollo 11 — and humanity’s first and famous steps on another world.

In appreciation of that achievement, and the five-decade milestone, a flotilla of books has also been launched exploring Apollo’s story and raising questions about its ultimate legacy. Surveying just a few of these works, it quickly becomes apparent how singular America’s achievement was with Apollo. Even more pressing, however, is how these books show that — half a century later — we’re still grappling to understand its long-term meaning for our nation and the world.

(16) YOUR LUNAR MT. TSUNDOKU. The Verge’s Andrew Liptak precedes his preview of new genre books — “11 new science fiction and fantasy books to check out in late June” – with recommendations for reading about the Moon program.

With the 50th anniversary of the lunar landings coming up next month, I’ve been thinking quite a bit about the vast canon of Apollo histories that are out there. There has been of ink spilled in the last five decades exploring every detail of the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo missions, and there are more on the way.

A handful of works stand out in the history of spaceflight literature. The first is a pair of books authored by Francis French and Colin Burgess: Into that Silent Sea, about NASA’s work leading up to Apollo, and In the Shadow of the Moon, about the Apollo program up to Apollo 11. They’re part of the University of Nebraska Press’s fantastic Outward Odyssey series, and provide an accessible, in-depth look at how the US reached the moon.

Another essential book is Spacesuit: Fashioning Apollo by Nicholas de Monxhau. If you’ve ever wondered what goes into designing a space suit (and if you haven’t watched my colleague Loren Grush’s Space Craft series), it’s an exhaustive history into how a company known for making bras and girdles developed the iconic suits worn on the moon. It explores how the space suits were made and provides a unique look into the history of spaceflight.

(17) COOL. “Bald Eagle Caught Elegantly … Swimming?” (video).

Bald eagles are typically known for their elegant flying, skilled hunting and having such majestic strength and beauty that they became the U.S. national bird. But they also possess a lesser-known talent: swimming.

Yes, bald eagles are really good at swimming, a fact some of us learned this week from a viral video published by New Hampshire TV station WMUR.

(18) WHO’S ON FIRST? Camestros Felapton has more to say about the nominees, and about the rationale for evaluating them in “Hugo 2019 – Looking at Fanwriters Part 2”.

One approach to ranking a set of fanwriters for the Hugo Awards might be to pick the example in the packet for each writer that you thought was the best example of their work and then rank each of those exemplars against each other. I think if I did that, I’d probably put Alasdair Stuart or Foz Meadows highest. But…it doesn’t feel right as a way of evaluating the finalists systematically*.

It fails in a couple of ways:

  • Reviews: longer critical essays or essays with personal insights will on a piece-by-piece comparison win out when judging writing. A good functional review will adopt a more ‘objective’ style of informative writing, which is technically hard to do but whose qualities are less obvious.
  • Broader aspects of fan writing: Elsa Sjunneson-Henry included a link to a Twitter thread in her packet contribution and it is a good example of how fanwriting also includes commentary in formats other than essays. Compiling news, parodies, event comments on other sites are part of the mix.

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