Tag Archives: Victoria Strauss

Pixel Scroll 10/15/23 I’m Still Big; It’s The Pixels That Got Small

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(1) CHARTING THE DECLINE OF SFF MAGAZINES. Steve Davidson of Amazing Stories has shared a graph on Facebook showing decade-by-decade the number of sff magazine titles and issues since 1923. The numbers really drop off as they approach 2023, as you might guess. Now you can see it, too.

Steve followed up with a deep dive into the costs of producing a print magazine today, something both fascinating and sobering.   

(2) PREVIOUSLY UNSUSPECTED PRATCHETT. A Stroke of the Pen: The Lost Stories is a new collection of Terry Pratchett shorts. Where did they come from? Big Issue has the inside story: “Terry Pratchett: Remarkable way lost stories were found by fans”.

…Following the posthumous release of his final few novels, there could never again be a new Terry Pratchett book.

Until now.

A Stroke of the Pen: The Lost Stories, published this week, compiles short tales written by Pratchett for newspapers in the ’70s and early ’80s and not republished since. It’s not the first such collection – before he died, Pratchett himself approved several volumes of his early tales, originally published in the Bucks Free Press newspaper where he wrote children’s stories under the inherited nom-de-plume ‘Uncle Jim’. The Lost Stories are different, though – until last year, nobody knew they existed.

 “It always puzzled me why his inspiration for writing short stories dried up in the mid ’70s”, says Colin Smythe, Pratchett’s friend and publisher, who would become his literary agent when the Discworld novels found success in the ’80s. “It turns out it had not.”…

(3) REVIEW OF ‘THE LOST STORIES’. SF author Adam Roberts analyzed the collection for the Guardian: “A Stroke of the Pen by Terry Pratchett review – newly discovered early stories”.

…The best stories have sparks of originality that, the reader wishes, could have been kindled into greater length. The Fossil Beach starts from the premise that putting a fossilised seashell to your ear enables you to hear a prehistoric ocean, spinning a neat and funny little time-travel comedy from that notion. The collection’s final story, The Quest for the Keys, is the best as well as the longest. It opens in “Morpork” – not exactly the Discworld’s Ankh-Morpork, but a more thinly rendered “evil, ancient, foggy city” – where a disreputable wizard, Grubble the Utterly Untrustworthy, sends the none-too-bright warrior Kron on the titular quest. It rattles along, and is liable to remind the Pratchett fan of The Colour of Magic. But it only confirms what the collection as a whole says: that this is a writer on his way somewhere more interesting….

(4) COSTLY VANITY. Victoria Strauss warns “Vanity Radio and TV: Think Twice Before Paying for Interviews” at Writer Beware.

… What’s vanity radio/TV? In the “writer beware” context, it’s radio or television air time that you, the program guest, have to pay for. Such schemes have been around forever in various forms, aimed at experts and creatives of all kinds, from services that explicitly sell pay-to-play interviews, to show hosts that charge interview fees to defray the fees that they themselves have to pay their platforms.

The main selling point is the promise that your interview will be heard by a large and eager audience, giving wide exposure to you and your book (see the pitches screenshotted below).

In reality, though, vanity radio primarily means local AM/FM stations (not national radio), often in obscure time slots; or internet radio broadcasts and podcasts delivered via platforms like Blog Talk Radio, Spreaker, and streaming services such as iHeart Radio. Internet radio listenership has steadily risen over the last decade and a half, but unless there are subscriber lists (as on YouTube, for instance), there’s usually no way to determine the audience for any given host or show–or to authenticate any listenership claims the show may make.

Ditto for vanity television: interviews may appear on local channels–again, often at times when viewership may be low–but are most often delivered via “sponsored content” internet stations such as The Spotlight Network, or proprietary online “channels” like Daily Spark TV, or “cable alternative” apps like TikiLIVE, which provide no reliable way of verifying audience.

Bottom line: lots of people may be tuning in…or no one at all. Which means that that the only benefit authors can be sure they’ll receive for their money is an audio or video clip they can post to their websites and social media accounts.

Whether that’s worth it when it costs $99 or $150 or $200 is debatable enough. But when the price tag is four figures?…

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

Crowdsourced spreadsheet of panel members

This Chinese-language online spreadsheet shows in red the members of panels/events, where those people or organizations have publicly posted about them.  The Weibo post announcing it indicates that it is open to submissions for the missing information – if anyone has info, if you post a comment here, it will be seen and added to that spreadsheet.  NB: the information may not be 100% correct due to late cancellations and the like.

CSFDB activities at the Worldcon

A weixin.qq.com post by the Chinese Science Fiction Database linked from the aforementioned Weibo post provides full details of their activities, including a panel whose members include Sanfeng (aka Feng Zhang) and Arthur Liu, both of whom have contributed posts or commented here at File 770.  The post states (via Google Translate):

Note: Translation and video recording will be provided for this event, and we will produce a Chinese and English subtitled version after the event.

I asked Arthur Liu, and he said those recordings and subtitles are something that the CSFDB team are providing off their own back.  It’s still unclear what exactly the con will be providing via official streams and the like.

34th Galaxy Awards shortlist

I’m not sure if this shortlist is new information, but it doesn’t look to have been previously covered on File 770.  Hugo Best Short Story finalists “On the Razor’s Edge” and “The White Cliff” both make an appearance, as do the western works Love, Death and Robots (an anthology of the adapted stories, I think), Ken Liu’s Good Hunting (I think this is a collection including the titular story), Stanislaw Lem’s The Star Diaries and a Roger Luckhurst non-fiction book.

The award ceremony is on Thursday 19th at the Sheraton across the lake from the Worldcon site.

Successful lottery applicants have been notified

My searches for relevant Xiaohongshu posts today were dominated by successful applicants to the lottery for the three ceremonies.  From this incredibly unscientific sample set, it seems like the Hugo ceremony was most popular, followed by the opening ceremony.  I only found one post showing attendance for the closing ceremony.

Another view of the Hugo rocket decoration

This Xiaohongshu post has a few images of the interior of the museum, including a wider angle view on the Hugo rocket that was in yesterday’s Scroll.  It doesn’t look that impressive at first glance, until you notice the tiny human figure under it…

Venue video

The Chengdu Worldcon committee has posted a video on Facebook with many interior views of the décor of the building where the con will be held.

(6) OVERSIGHT. Hugo Administrator Dave McCarty has arrived in Chengdu and on Facebook has shared photos of the view of the Chinese Science Fiction Museum from his hotel room window.

(7) WE HAVE LIFTOFF! And Chris Barkley took off for China this morning after sending us this photo message: “Well, it’s HAPPENING. Tell my fellow Filers that I will be safe and I’ll TRY to behave.” 

(8) ICONOCLASTS. Michael Cava tells Washington Post readers that “Art Spiegelman didn’t expect to become a book challenge warrior”. Much of the interview is in comics form – art and word balloons.

(9) SIMULTANEOUS TIMES.  Space Cowboy Books has launched Episode 68 of the Simultaneous Times podcast. Stories featured in this episode are:

  • “This is an Optimistic Science Fiction Story About the Future” by Marie Vibbert. Music by Fall Precauxions
  • “Space Radio” by Michael Butterworth. Music by Phog Masheeen
  • “Space Age Mermaid” by Tonya R. Moore. Music by Phog Masheeen.

And theme music by Dain Luscombe

(10) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

  • Born October 15, 1911 — James H. Schmitz. Writer of short fiction in a space opera setting, sold primarily to Galaxy Science Fiction and Astounding Science-Fiction. His “Lion Loose” was nominated for a Short Fiction Hugo at Chicon III, and The Witches of Karres was nominated for Best Novel at NyCon 3. Sources laud him for his intelligent female characters. His collections and novels are available at the usual suspects. (Died 1981.)
  • Born October 15, 1919 — E.C. Tubb. A writer of at least one hundred forty novels and two hundred twenty short stories and novellas, he’s best remembered I think for the Dumarest Saga. His other long-running series was the Cap Kennedy stories. And his short story “Little Girl Lost” which was originally published in New Worlds magazine became a story on Night Gallery. He novelized a number of the Space: 1999 episodes. Somewhat surprisingly he’s never been nominated for or won any awards. (Died 2010.)
  • Born October 15, 1923 — Italo Calvino. Writer and Journalist who was born in Cuba, but grew up in Italy. His works range widely across the literary spectrum, across realism, surrealism, and absurdism. As a genre writer he is best known for his “cosmicomics”, linked stories which explore fantastical speculations about subjects such as mathematics, evolution, and human perception. At the time of his death in 1985, he was the most-translated Italian author, and he was recognized with a World Fantasy Award for Life Achievement. (Died 1985.)
  • Born October 15, 1926 — Ed McBain. Huh, I never knew he ventured beyond his mystery novels where he was best known for his 87th Precinct novels but he published approximately twenty-four genre stories and six SF novels between 1951 and 1971 under the names S. A. Lombino, Evan Hunter, Richard Marsten, D. A. Addams, and Ted Taine. ISFDB has a list and I can’t say I know any of them. Any of y’all read them? Some are distinctly pulpier in nature such as Find The Feathered Serpent. (Died 2005.)
  • Born October 15, 1935 — Ray “Duggie” Fisher. Editor, Conrunner and Fan, who chaired the 1969 Worldcon in St. Louis, was on the committee for several other conventions, and was a founding member of the Poplar Bluff Science Fiction Club and the Ozark Science Fiction Association. His fanzine ODD was a finalist for a Best Fanzine Hugo. His contributions to fandom were, sadly, cut short by his death at age 52 due to complications of diabetes. (Died 1988) (JJ)
  • Born October 15, 1942 — Lon Atkins. Editor, Conrunner, and Fan who chaired a DeepSouthCon and was editor of numerous fanzines and apazines, including eight years as co-editor of Rally! He was Fan Guest of Honor at a Westercon, and a recipient of Southern Fandom’s Rebel lifetime achievement award. He was also a ferocious Hearts player. (Died 2016.) (JJ)
  • Born October 15, 1954 — Linnea Sinclair, 69. Merging romance, SF and paranormal into, well, damned if I know. She’s here solely because I’m really tickled by the use of her SJW credentials as Games of Command and the short story “Of Cats, Uh, Furzels and Kings” feature telepathic feline creatures called ‘Furzels’. Sinclair has stated that these are inspired by her two cats. 
  • Born October 15, 1968 — Jack du Brul, 55. A writer of somewhat SF novels that EoSF says of “the Philip Mercer sequence featuring a geologist who – not entirely unlike Steven Spielberg’s similarly scholarly Indiana Jones – has physical gifts extending beyond the probable.” He also co-wrote, and continued after Clive Cusler passed on, The Oregon Files.

(11) COMICS SECTION.

(12) LEARNEDLEAGUE: SFF ONE-DAY SPECIAL. [Item by David Goldfarb] The LearnedLeague is in its off-season, which as usual means single-topic one-day quizzes. There was one recently about the cartoon Avatar: The Last Airbender. You can read its questions here.

(13) TRIBUTE TO B MOVIE MAKER. “Roger Corman at Beyond Fest: ‘I love making motion pictures’” in the Los Angeles Times.

Beyond Fest and the American Cinematheque saluted producer Roger Corman on [September 30] with a four-film marathon followed by a conversation with some of the directors who began their careers working for the now-legendary genre icon….

…“The vast majority of people can’t tell good from bad,” said [Amy Holden] Jones. “You get notes on cuts that don’t particularly make sense, to get reshoots that aren’t fixing what’s actually the problem. But mainly the executives can’t tell good from bad. And Roger knew it immediately.”

“I’ll never be working for anybody again who knows as much about movies as Roger did when I was starting out,” said Dante, who went on to make the “Gremlins” movies. “Unfortunately, the problem is that the more movies you make, and the more executives you meet, the more you realize that there are almost none who know as much about movies as you do. And so they are no help.

“In fact, they’re a hindrance and you spend a lot of time trying to please people who don’t know what they want,” added [Joe] Dante. “And if they did, they wouldn’t know how to express it anyway. So I think all of us feel that the best years of our creative lives were spent working for somebody who knew more than we did. And that was Roger.”

[Allan] Arkush pointed to Corman when he said, “The profound thing is, this is the only person to run a studio who knows how to make a movie.”…

(14) PARTY LIKE IT’S 1998. “Lost In Space Forever” – a skit with Jonathan Harris and Bill Mumy.

The end of this 1998 documentary features a short skit with Will, Dr. Smith and the Robot on the Jupiter 2.

[Thanks to SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Mike Kennedy, Gareth Jelley, Jennifer Hawthorne, David Goldfarb, Steven French, Andrew Porter, Ersatz Culture, John King Tarpinian, Chris Barkley, and Cat Eldridge for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Andrew (not Werdna).]

Pixel Scroll 9/22/23 Brand New Pixels Right Off The Cosmic Assembly Line

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(1) FINALLY! MAX TO RUN FINAL HALF-SEASON OF DOOM PATROL. [Item by Daniel Dern.] According to Gizmodo, the long-overdue final half of the final season (Season 4) of Doom Patrol on MAX (aka HBO MAX, originally on DC’s streaming platform, yeesh) — the first half finished showing back in January — with, according to Gizmodo, “two episodes October 12, followed by a weekly drop through November 9.”

(While this is the first time actual drop dates have been announced, I’ll believe this is real only after I’ve seen ’em.)

Doom Patrol has been among my short-list favorites for comics-based live-action superhero/sf shows/movies:

  • Reason 3, history: I’ve been a DP fan since the group debuted back in June 1963, in DC’s My Greatest Adventure #80, for the modest price of twelve cents.

While I missed some issues/runs during the 1970s (when I thought I was done reading comics), I de-gafiated in time for fabulous mind-blowing runs starting with Grant Morrison, followed by Rachel Pollack, and others.

(Here’s the cover.)

The initial team consisted of Rita “Elastigirl” Farr, Larry “Negative Man” Trainor, and Cliff “Robotman” Steele, led by doctor/scientist-in-a-wheelchair Niles “The Chief” Calder.

(As opposed to Marvel’s X-Men, who started in their eponymous comic dated September 1963. (Reminder, comic issue dates often weren’t the same as “when released.”) (The DP Wikipedia page discusses some of the “plagiarism? coincidence” questions.)

  • Reason 2, respectful faithfulness to canon, versus teeth-gnashing gratuitous/disrespectful changes. The characters and plots come from all eras, heroes (and villains), and plots arcs, going back to Mento, Beast Boy, General Immortus, the Brain & Monsieur Mallah, and Garguax, through Flex Mentallo, Crazy Jane, Danny The Street, Coagula, and Casey “Space Case” Brinke.

That said, the creators haven’t hesitated to explore and extend characters’ backstories and development. Our heroes (and villains) bring a lot of baggage, and it gets unpacked.

  • Reason 1, this is a mind-blowingly great show. Plots, acting, visuals, ideas, and dialogue. A lot of heart. And a great cast, including Timothy Dalton, Alan Tudyk, Matt Bomer, Brendan Fraser, Diane Guerrero (to name the ones I’m familiar with).

Note, a fair amount of “adult language.” (Not at the level of The Boys, though.) Given the predicaments, all justified.

Plus the flying vampire butts, who we’ve previously seen singing/performing “Shipoopi” (from The Music Man).

I’m excited.

(2) CHENGDU WORLDCON UPDATES. [Item by Ersatz Culture.]

I think this needs someone more versed than me in Chinese culture/cuisine/promotional merchandise to fully explain…  As far as I can tell, for 158 yuan – around $21 USD – you get a gift box containing two jars of different types of bean paste, a mecha-panda figurine, a mobile phone ring holder (?) and 2 ribbons.

The branding is mainly associated with “the 6th Chengdu International SF Convention”, which seems like it was due to be held in November 2021, but got cancelled due to the pandemic, and hasn’t been rescheduled.  However, the packaging does also say “A Tribute to the 2023 Chengdu World Science Fiction Convention” and “Originating from the 2023 Chengdu World SF Convention site”, but I don’t think that it’s official Worldcon merchandise.

Estimated shipping date is 10th October; there’s a link to a purchase page at the Weibo link.

  • Two posts about the SF-themed tunnels that lead to the SF museum/con venue

One of these was mentioned in the 2023-09-15 Scroll, but it turns out there are three newly constructed SF-themed tunnels leading to the con venue, although currently only one is open to traffic, with the other two due to open in October.  

Red Star News has a couple of posts about them; yesterday they had an article going into detail about them [Chinese only], and today they posted a video: “Red Star Video: In Chengdu Drive into the ‘tunnel’ and look up at the ‘starry sky’”.

(3) TRIO OF WARNINGS. At Writer Beware, Victoria Strauss posts three “Cautions: Babelcube, Barnes & Noble Book Order Scams, Audiobook Order Scam (Featuring a Fake Non-Profit)”. Here’s an excerpt of the third warning:

Audiobook Order Scam (Featuring a Fake Non-Profit)

This one comes courtesy of 20/Twenty Literary Group, a fake literary agency with a roster of imaginary agents that does all the things that real agencies don’t, and none of the things they do.

Its latest gambit: an audiobook order scam.

The author is contacted by one of 20/Twenty’s imaginary agents with an offer to re-publish the author’s book–for a fee, naturally. Shortly afterward…surprise! The author gets a call from a Jennifer Lim, who claims to represent a society for the blind. Jennifer wants to order 5,000 audiobooks to be distributed to the society’s members! Naturally, 20/Twenty can oblige. The cost is steep–but oh, those royalties!…

(4) IS THEIR LOVE REAL? “Is The Creator the best science fiction movie of 2023 – or is AI controlling the hype?” – the Guardian’s Ben Child raises suspicions.

…Ahead of any official reviews of the AI-centric piece, studio 20th Century has allowed select critics to tweet their opinions, and the consensus seems to be that this could be the discerning sci-fi fan’s movie of the year. To reach that level for me, Edwards would have to deliver a film on a par with Neill Blomkamp’s District 9 (2009), Alex Garland’s Ex-Machina (2014) or Grant Sputore’s I Am Mother (2019). These films were full of vim and verve and imagined future worlds so rich and detailed that you can imagine never-ending sequels spinning off into infinity – perhaps the mark of all great celluloid sci-fi….

…Are studios using artificial intelligence to handpick journalists who are statistically more likely to provide positive hype? If it’s not happening already, it almost certainly will be soon. In the meantime, let’s hope Edwards’ film really is the zeitgeist-defining AI flick we’ve all been waiting for. If mankind is going down, the least we can expect is to do so while drinking in the finest tech-inspired entertainment human civilisation has ever delivered….

(5) GENRE CONTENT INDEED. Fascinating article: “I’m a fake brand, in a fake world: The secrets behind designing a great fictional brand for TV and film” at It’s Nice That.

Duff Beer, Dunder Mifflin Paper, Wonka Candies, Barbie merchandise… We’ve seen countless made-up brands transcend seamlessly from the screen into the real world. So what’s the key to their success? We chat to the graphics team behind the Barbie film, Wes Anderson’s go-to graphic designer, motion designer and 3D artist Lorenzo Bernini, and Adult Swim’s president Michael Ouweleen….

…When it comes to the make-up of fictional brands, Erica notes how, if done correctly, they can make the stylised world feel like a real place, and can become a playground for the characters to fully express themselves within the storyline. In Asteroid City, for instance, all of the roadside cafes have menus written on the facade, because cars don’t have time to stop for a menu. “The cafe is the canvas of the menu board,” she says. Additionally, one of the characters named Shelly constantly carries a book entitled Invisible Spectrum Elemental Surface Atomic Spectroscopy. There’s also a Girl Scout character who’s always walking around with her Jam Krispies. “Often the brands have a purpose for existing in the script. It’s about understanding what the purpose of that action prop is, and what they’re trying to say about a particular character.”…

(6) EATING THE FANTASTIC. Scott Edelman invites listeners to join Hildy Silverman for a Georgian feast in Episode 207 of the Eating the Fantastic podcast.

My guest this time around is Hildy Silverman, perhaps best known for having been the Editor-in-Chief of Space and Time Magazine from 2005 through 2018. But she’s also a writer of science fiction, fantasy, horror, and the interstitial spaces between. Her short stories have appeared in such anthologies as The Dystopian States of America, Bad Ass Moms, Release the Virgins, Baker Street Irregulars, and most recently, Three Time Travelers Walk Into.

Hildy Silverman

In 2013, her short story “The Six Million Dollar Mermaid,” which appeared in the anthology Mermaids 13: Tales from the Sea, was a finalist for the WSFA Small Press Award. In 2020, she joined the Crazy 8 Press authors collective, which publishes novels and anthologies by its membership. She is a past president of the Garden State Speculative Fiction Writers and has frequently pontificated with me on the science fiction convention circuit.

We discussed the kindergarten incident which taught her all she ever wanted to do was write, how to keep writing when the whole world is telling you to stop, what she learned early on from such literary lions as Sue Miller and Jayne Anne Phillips, the lunch that changed her life, why she loves writing for themed anthologies (and how to do it right), what made her decide to take over as editor and publisher of Space and Time magazine, how to beat the odds of the slush pile, the ways being an editor helped her become a better writer, how she’s managed to collaborate without killing her writing partner, and so much more.

Scott Edelman is raising money to upgrade his podcasting equipment. Between auctions and listener donations, he’s at about the 60% mark. Plenty of fun stuff still up on eBay here.

(7) TENTACLED TEASER. Variety fills readers in about the forthcoming series: “Squid Game The Challenge Trailer; Netflix Sets November Premiere”. November 22, to be precise.

…“Squid Game: The Challenge” will see 456 contestants from around the world battle it out through various challenges based on the Korean game show in the scripted series, as well as introducing some new games.

Only one winner will take home the $4.56 million cash prize….

(8) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

  • Born September 22, 1917 — Samuel A. Peeples. Memory Alpha says that he’s the person that gave Roddenberry the catch phrase he used to sell Trek to the network: “[As] fellow writer Harlan Ellison has credited him with the creation of one of the most famous catch phrases in Star Trek-lore, ‘[Gene Roddenberry] got “Wagon Train to the stars” from Sam Peeples. That’s what Gene said to me. They were at dinner and Sam Peeples, of course, was a fount of ideas, and Gene said something or other about wanting to do a space show and Sam said, “Yeah? Why don’t you do Wagon Train to the stars?”’” (Died 1997.)
  • Born September 22, 1939 — Edward A. Byers. Due to his early death, he has but two published novels, both space operas, The Log Forgetting and The Babylon Gate. EOFSF says “Byers was not an innovative writer, but his genuine competence raised expectations over his short active career.” There’s no sign his double handful of stories was collected, though his two novels are in-print. (Died 1989.)
  • Born September 22, 1954 — Shari Belafonte, 69. Daughter of Harry Belafonte, I first spotted her on Beyond Reality, a Canadian series that showed up when I was living in upstate Vermont. You most likely saw her as Elizabeth Trent in Babylon 5: Thirdspace as that’s her most well-known genre performance. 
  • Born September 22, 1957 — Jerry Oltion, 66. His Nebula Award-winning Abandon in Place novella is the beginning of the Cheap Hyperdrive sequence, a really fun Space Opera undertaking. Abandon in Place was nominated for a Hugo at LoneStarCon 2 (2013). The Astronaut from Wyoming was nominated for a Hugo at Chicon 2000
  • Born September 22, 1971 — Elizabeth Bear, 52. I’m only going to note the series that I really like but of course you will add the ones that you like. First is her White Space series, Ancestral Space and Machine, which I’ve read or listened to each least three times.  Next up is the sprawling Promethean Age series which is utterly fascinating, and finally The Jenny Casey trilogy which came out at the usual suspects several years ago.
  • Born September 22, 1982 — Billie Piper, 41. Best remembered as the companion of the Ninth and Tenth Doctors, she also played the dual roles Brona Croft and Lily Frankenstein in Penny Dreadful. She played Veronica Beatrice “Sally” Lockhart in the BBC adaptation of Philip Pullman’s The Ruby in the Smoke and The Shadow in The North. 
  • Born September 22, 1985 — Tatiana Maslany, 38. Best known for her superb versatility in playing more than a dozen different clones in the TV series Orphan Black which won win a Hugo for Dramatic Presentation (Short Form), for its “By Means Which Have Never Yet Been Tried“ episode, She received a Best Actress Emmy and more than two dozen other nominations and awards. She’s playing She-Hulk in a Marvel series. 

(9) COMICS SECTION.

  • Bizarro illustrates a tangled legal phrase.
  • Dork Tower shows us the kind of letter a warrior writes, just before a big battle. Big franchise alert.
  • The Argyle Sweater finds a crew member with a complaint about a Star Trek photo booth.

(10) EPIC COSPLAY PHOTOS. Bored Panda arrays “105 Of The Best Cosplay Costumes We’ve Ever Seen”. See photos at the link.

Includes an example of extreme dedication – the black plastic suit of “#7 My Catwoman Cosplay From 1992 ‘Batman Returns’”.

SaintElena added: “I experience almost everything the same as Michelle [Pfeiffer], unfortunately. If I spend more than 2 hours in this suit actively moving, then I can get heat stroke. If I’m not moving very actively, then I can break the stay in the suit up to 4 hours.”

(11) POLICE ROBOTS IN NYC ARE NOW A REALITY. [Item by Francis Hamit.] This isn’t what Asimov envisioned when he wrote the Three Laws but it’s close.  I invested in Knightscope in 2017 for several reasons.  Reading science fiction led me to make Robotics one of my beats as a trade magazine journalist.  I was once the West Coast Editor for ROBOTX News.  Economic circumstances made me transition from Real Estate broker to Security Captain, a temp gig that became a 20 years career while also continuing to be a professional writer.  So I understood instantly what Knightscope’s robots could add to the equation.  They extend the range and presence of human guards.  Security has never been a well-respected business, sort of the Rodney Dangerfield of corporate life but that’s changing because of all of the flashmob thieving and mass shootings.  It has evolved to a very serious part of corporate life with a strong moral center, led by a new generation of military and police veterans.

Knightscope is now a public company and trades under KSCP on the NASDAQ.  The share price has been under attack by trolls and short sellers for most of that time.  That gave me the opportunity of increasing my shares by a factor of ten at a very low price this year. So I’m not claiming to be objective.  It’s a very high risk investment but this NYPD trial is a tipping point.

(12) FEAR REVERED. The Chicago Sun-Times’ Richard Roeper looks back to the beginning: “‘The Exorcist’ at 50: Some things to look for in the classic that elevated horror”.

…When I’m asked about the scariest movie I’ve ever seen, there’s no asterisk, no hesitation, no wavering: It’s “The Exorcist.” I’ve never been as mesmerized, as terrified, as ain’t-no-way-you’re-sleeping-tonight shocked, as I was when I first saw William Friedkin’s demonic, head-turning, supernatural horror film at the Dolton Theater in the spring of 1974. (Warner Bros. actually released the film on Dec. 26, 1973 — the day after Christmas, how about that — but I had to wait for a second-run showing with the more user-friendly $1 admission price.)…

“The Exorcist” became the first pure horror film to be nominated for the best picture Oscar and continues to be a major influence on the genre to this day.In memory of Friedkin’s death last August and in anticipation of the 50th anniversary of the film, we’re getting a theatrical re-release and a 4K Ultra HD Blu-Ray and Digital edition of “The Exorcist” that includes the Original Theatrical Version and the Extended Director’s Cut, which incorporates 11 extra minutes of footage and ends with a certain exchange that offers a slightly more hopeful note.

(13) TRAIN UP ON THIS TOOL FOR WRITERS. “Decoding the Submission Grinder” is a $20 course offering at Reach Your Apex. Scheduled for Saturday, September 23 at 2:00 p.m. Eastern.

This class will show you how to use The Submission Grinder—the donation-supported web app for writers—to enhance your submission process. Find new publishers for your work that meet your criteria, track your submissions, track your income and expenses, set reminders for yourself, and more.  This course will help beginners and intermediate users get the most out of the tool to enhance their submission process. This course will be taught by David Steffen; co-founder, owner, data administrator, and developer of The Submission Grinder.

(14) WHO HYPE. “Doctor Who shares new pics of David Tennant’s Doctor reunited with Donna” – Radio Times makes sure we don’t miss them.

…The BBC has released some exciting new stills from the upcoming Doctor Who 60th-anniversary specials – showing David Tennant’s Doctor reunited with Catherine Tate’s Donna Noble….

[Thanks to Chris Barkley, Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Steven French, Daniel Dern, Ersatz Culture, Lise Andreasen, Francis Hamit, Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, and John King Tarpinian for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Cat Eldridge.]

Pixel Scroll 9/16/23 Hush Little Pixel, Mama’s Going To Buy You A Scroll

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(1) DOCTOROW ON FABLES TABLE-FLIP. Cory Doctorow’s Pluralistic post “Bill Willingham puts his graphic novel series ‘Fables’ into the public domain (15 Sept 2023)” assesses many IP rights issues triggered by Willingham’s announcement.

…It’s been 21 years since Bill Willingham launched Fables, his 110-issue, wide-ranging, delightful and brilliantly crafted author-owned comic series that imagines that the folkloric figures of the world’s fairytales are real people, who live in a secret society whose internal struggles and intersections with the mundane world are the source of endless drama.

Fables is a DC Comics title; DC is division of the massive entertainment conglomerate Warners, which is, in turn, part of the Warner/Discovery empire, a rapacious corporate behemoth whose screenwriters have been on strike for 137 days (and counting). DC is part of a comics duopoly; its rival, Marvel, is a division of the Disney/Fox juggernaut, whose writers are also on strike.

The DC that Willingham bargained with at the turn of the century isn’t the DC that he bargains with now. Back then, DC was still subject to a modicum of discipline from competition; its corporate owner’s shareholders had not yet acquired today’s appetite for meteoric returns on investment of the sort that can only be achieved through wage-theft and price-gouging….

…Rather than fight Warner, Willingham has embarked on what JWZ calls an act of “absolute table-flip badassery” – he has announced that Fables will hereafter be in the public domain, available for anyone to adapt commercially, in works that compete with whatever DC might be offering.

Now, this is huge, and it’s also shrewd. It’s the kind of thing that will bring lots of attention on Warner’s fraudulent dealings with its creative workforce, at a moment where the company is losing a public relations battle to the workers picketing in front of its gates. It constitutes a poison pill that is eminently satisfying to contemplate. It’s delicious.

But it’s also muddy. Willingham has since clarified that his public domain dedication means that the public can’t reproduce the existing comics. That’s not surprising; while Willingham doesn’t say so, it’s vanishingly unlikely that he owns the copyrights to the artwork created by other artists (Willingham is also a talented illustrator, but collaborated with a who’s-who of comics greats for Fables). He may or may not have control over trademarks, from the Fables wordmark to any trademark interests in the character designs. He certainly doesn’t have control over the trademarked logos for Warner and DC that adorn the books….

It is also interesting to read that Bill Willingham, praised today by Cory Doctorow for striking a blow against corporate IP abuse, attended BasedCon last weekend.   

(2) FANTASY REQUIRES A GOOD MAP. [Item by Bruce D. Arthurs.] Interesting piece at Mapping As Process about a 1917 map of Fairyland by artist Bernard Sleigh, with references to many stories in folklore and fable. There’s a link to a high-resolution image that can be zoomed in on: “An Anciente Mappe of Fairyland”.

…In December 1917, the British artist and wood engraver Bernard Sleigh (1872–1954) published a six-foot long, panoramic map of Fairyland in three sheets. Its style was that of the Arts and Crafts movement, an aesthetic championed by William Morris (1834–1896) in the second half of the nineteenth century, in reaction to the apparent destruction of individual skills and traditional designs by mass industrialization. Arts and Crafts generated intricately detailed designs and a retrogressive appeal to folk aesthetics. Sleigh, trained by one of Morris’s followers, cultivated a stylized mediaevalism in both the design and the subject matter of his drawings, prints, murals, and stained glass (Cooper 1997)….

(3) VOCAL COMPLAINT. Behind a paywall at Fortune: “Actor Stephen Fry says his voice was stolen from the Harry Potter audiobooks and replicated by AI—and warns this is just the beginning”. Wealth of Geeks has this report about what is in the article: “Actor Stephen Fry Claims AI Replicated His Voice from ‘Harry Potter’ Audiobooks”.

…Actor Stephen Fry claims that producers used AI to replicate his voice from the Harry Potter audiobooks without his permission. AI has become a central point of contention of both the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes.

As reported by Fortune, Fry told an audience at a London festival, “I’m a proud member of [SAG-AFTRA], as you know we’ve been on strike for three months now. And one of the burning issues is AI.”

At the festival, Fry played a clip of AI mimicking his voice as the narrator of a historical documentary. “I said not one word of that—it was a machine. Yes, it shocked me,” he said. “They used my reading of the seven volumes of the Harry Potter books, and from that dataset an AI of my voice was created and it made that new narration. What you heard was not the result of a mash-up, this is from a flexible artificial voice, where the words are modulated to fit the meaning of each sentence.”…

(4) DON’T BE A SUCKER. Victoria Strauss gives Writer Beware readers the “Anatomy of a Fake Film Company Scam: The Greendot Films / Better Bound House”.

…Here’s how it works. A film company–with a website and everything–calls or emails out of the blue with a tempting offer: your book has the potential to be made into a movie/TV series! And they want to represent you to studios/pitch you to producers/take you to a major conference where scores of film people will be present! Just one requirement: you need a screenplay/a pitch deck/a storyboard/some other product. Don’t have those things? No problem–they know a reputable and expert company that can create them for you…for a fee.

It’s a classic bait-and-switch setup. The “film company” is a front for the service provider, which in turn is owned by a parent company overseas. And that initial service that was pitched to you as absolutely essential? It’s just the start. By paying, you’ve marked yourself as fair game for escalating sales pressure and fraudulent offers involving large upfront payments. And the sales reps who staff the scams–who earn a commission on every dollar you spend–will take every opening you give them, and won’t stop unless you stop them.

This post takes a look at a real-life example, thanks to an author who has given me permission to share their experience.

Dramatis Personae

The fake film company: The Greendot Films. Its website includes a slideshow of movies Greendot is hoping you’ll assume they were responsible for creating, along with a fake history claiming that they’re a successor to two defunct production companies. The Greendot name itself has been “borrowed” from yet another defunct film company, Green Dot Films….

(5) BARRIERS TO FANDOM. Pocket reposts a 2021 Teen Vogue article which asks, “Who Actually Gets to ‘Escape’ Into Fandom?” and discusses antiracism resources.

… Escapism isn’t actually possible for everyone because of the nature of both fandom and the world around us. The best-worst example of the limits of fandom escapism? Racism.

Racism is global, and it infiltrates everything that we do; it’s close to inescapable offline, and it’s just as common online. Fandom is no exception.

In 2019, Dr. Rukmini Pande did an interview with Henry Jenkins about her book Squee From The Margins: Fandom and Race. “I found that while it is certainly possible for fans of color to ‘pass’ within online fan spaces, their modes of escapism are mostly contingent – I can enjoy a source or fan text until it gets racist,” Pande said in the interview. “Other fans articulated the importance of finding networks of fellow non-white fans so that they could curate their experiences to be safer. In all cases, fandom certainly isn’t a space where these fans can escape from race/racism even if it is not something that is engaged with publicly or vocally.”

It makes sense that people would resort to fandom escapism following natural disasters, or to have something to do other than overthink their local government’s COVID-19 response. But what about the times we’ve seen people talk about fandom being their “safe space” from them dealing with or seeing viral video recordings of Black people being killed, as we saw in the summer of 2020? What about people in the U.S. delving into fandom so they don’t have to think about American politics?

No matter the fandom, fans of color can’t reliably escape into fandom, because people don’t stop being racist just because they like the same things that people of color do. There’s always a racist person in fandom. There are always racist fanworks. There are always racist creators. There’s always racism in the source material that people will defend in your mentions for days….

(6) NM-AZ STATE BOOK AWARD SHORTLIST. The finalists for the 2023 New Mexico-Arizona Book Awards include these science fiction books:

  • 3VE by Jason DeGrey
  • Mountain Knight by Avery Christy
  • Planet Quest by Kate Harrington
  • The Yewberry Way by Jack Gist

(7) NO, THERE IS ANOTHER. “C.I.A. Discloses Identity of Second Spy Involved in ‘Argo’ Operation” reports the New York Times.

In the midst of the 1979 Iran hostage crisis, the C.I.A. began what came to be noted as one of the spy agency’s most successful publicly known operations: the rescue of six American diplomats who had escaped the overrun U.S. Embassy — using a fake movie as the cover story.

“Argo,” the real-life 2012 movie about the C.I.A.’s fake movie, portrayed a single C.I.A. officer, Tony Mendez, played by Ben Affleck, sneaking into Tehran to rescue the American diplomats in a daring operation.

But in reality, the agency sent two officers into Tehran. For the first time on Thursday, the C.I.A. is releasing the identity of that second officer, Ed Johnson, in the season finale of its new podcast, “The Langley Files.”

Mr. Johnson, a linguist, accompanied Mr. Mendez, a master of disguise and forgery, on the flight to Tehran to cajole the diplomats into adopting the cover story, that they were Canadians who were part of a crew scouting locations for a science fiction movie called “Argo.” The two then helped the diplomats with forged documents and escorted them through Iranian airport security to fly them home.

Although Mr. Johnson’s name was classified, the C.I.A. had acknowledged a second officer had been involved. Mr. Mendez, who died in 2019, wrote about being accompanied by a second officer in his first book, but used a pseudonym, Julio. A painting that depicts a scene from the operation and hangs in the C.I.A.’s Langley, Va., headquarters, shows a second officer sitting across from Mr. Mendez in Tehran as they forge stamps in Canadian passports. But the second officer’s identity is obscured, his back turned to the viewer.

The agency began publicly talking about its role in rescuing the diplomats 26 years ago. On the agency’s 50th anniversary, in 1997, the C.I.A. declassified the operation, and allowed Mr. Mendez to tell his story, hoping to balance accounts of some of the agency’s ill-fated operations around the world with one that was a clear success.

But until recently, Mr. Johnson preferred that his identity remain secret….

 (8) CINEMATIC HISTORY MADE HERE. “George Lucas’ former Marin Industrial Light and Magic studio closing, some employees vow to save it” reports ABC7 San Francisco.

In the North Bay, it’s the end of an era of movie-making magic.

The original soundstage and production facility in San Rafael for Industrial Light and Magic, founded by George Lucas, is going away. Lucas moved his campus to the Presidio in San Francisco almost 20 years ago.

The facility’s new owners are retiring, but one employee would like to save the studio’s history and legacy.

It may be a surprise to know hundreds of other films were created inside the nondescript building on Kerner Blvd. in San Rafael.

Now home to 32TEN Studios, this is the former campus of Lucas’ Industrial Light and Magic.

“Right after the success of ‘Star Wars,’ George Lucas wanted to remove himself from the Hollywood system, so he moved the ILM shop from Van Nuys up here,” said House.

House is a longtime model shop supervisor, and says many props and models from movies are still there. That includes the Millennium Falcon, an anchor from “Pirates of the Caribbean,” even a model of Chewbacca’s head.

Lucas relocated his campus to the Presidio in 2005 and he took the original door with him, which is now on display….

(9) BACK IN PORT. Having finished a series detailing her experiences aboard Disney’s Star Wars-themed Starcruiser, Cass Morris analyzes why it works in “The Stars Have Come Alive” at Scribendi.

As promised, this post is my attempt to analyze, for myself and for other interested parties, how the Starcruiser creates such an exceptional experience, and why it works so very well as it does.

I feel quite confident in the base assertion that it does, and has, because I’ve seen it in action on people who aren’t as deeply invested in the IP as I am. I’ve watched videos of influencers who are only surface-level conversant with Star Wars be moved to tears by Yoda’s holocron. I’ve seen parents who thought they were only their for their kids get wrapped up in the experience. I’ve seen people who arrived in civilian clothes buy garments on the ship or in Batuu so they could feel more a part of things.

And I’ve seen people who were already Star Wars fans go absolutely feral. In a good way! But the response that this experience has from people who fully give themselves over to it is astonishing.

So. It works. The Starcruiser is a phenomenal example of what immersive experiences can be. Now: Let’s unpack how and why…

(10) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

  • Born September 15, 1898 — Hans Augusto Rey. German-born American illustrator and author best remembered for the beloved Curious George children’s book series that he and his wife Margret Rey created from 1939 to 1966. (An Eighties series of five-minute short cartoons starring him was produced by Alan Shalleck, along with Rey. Ken Sobol, scriptwriter of Fantastic Voyage, was the scriptwriter here.) His interest in astronomy led to him drawing star maps which are still use in such publications as Donald H. Menzel’s A Field Guide to the Stars and Planets. A simpler version for children called Find the Constellations, is still in print as well. (Died 1977.)
  • Born September 15, 1932 — Karen Anderson. She co-wrote two series with her husband, Poul Anderson, King of Ys and The Last Viking, and created the ever so delightful The Unicorn Trade collection with him. Fancyclopedia has her extensive fannish history thisaway, and Mike has her obituary here. (Died 2018.)
  • Born September 15, 1952 — Lisa Tuttle, 71. Tuttle won the Astounding Award for Best New Writer, received a Nebula Award for Best Short Story for “The Bone Flute”, which she refused, and a BSFA Award for Short Fiction for “In Translation”. My favorite works by her include Catwitch, The Silver Bough and her Ghosts and Other Lovers collection. Her latest novel is The Curious Affair of the Witch at Wayside Cross.
  • Born September 15, 1954 — Howard Weinstein, 69. At age 19, he was the youngest person to ever write a Trek script, selling “The Pirates of Orion” for use in the animated series. Though it would be his only script, he would go on to write quite a few Trek novels — thirteen are listed currently at the usual suspects — and comics. He gets a thanks credit in Star Trek: The Voyage Home. He wrote a script, “The Sky Above, the Mudd Below”, for the fanfic video affair Star Trek: New Voyages, but it never got made. And it won’t given that there’s a comic book series already made with its plot.  Paramount wasn’t at all pleased. To quote Zevon, “Send lawyers, gun and money / the shit has hit the fan.” 
  • Born September 15, 1955 — Amanda Hemingway, 68. British author of fantasy novels who’s best known for the Fern Capel series written under the Jan Siegel name — it’s most excellent. I’d also recommend The Sangreal Trilogy penned under her own name. Alas her superb website has gone offline. She is available from the usual suspects — curiously her Hemingway novels are much more costly than her Seigel novels are. Oh and she invented this wonderful as noted on her Twitter site: “Schroedinger’s Cake: you don’t know it it’s been eaten until you open the tin.”
  • Born September 15, 1960 — Kurt Busiek, 63. Writer whose work includes The Marvels limited series, Thuderbolts, Superman, his own outstanding Astro City series, and a very long run on The Avengers. He also worked at Dark Horse where he did Conan #1–28 and Young Indiana Jones Chronicles #1–8. 
  • Born September 15, 1960 — Mike Mignola, 63. The Hellboy stories, of course, are definitely worth reading, particularly the early ones. His Batman: Gotham by Gaslight is an amazing What If story which isn’t at all the same as the animated film of that name which is superb on its own footing, and the B.P.R.D. stories  are quite excellent too.  I’m very fond of the first Hellboy film, not so much of the second, and detest the reboot now that I’ve seen it, while the animated films are excellent.

(11) COMICS SECTION.

  • Reality Check shows the results of a mixed message in Gotham.
  • Bliss explains the source of this superhero’s bliss.

(12) FEAST YOUR EYES. The Bristol Board has a wild gallery of “Basil Wolverton artwork for ‘Weird-Ass Tales of The Future’”, splash panels from Basil Wolverton’s science-fiction tales.  

(13) LOOKS WEIRD. Gizmodo delivers a “Weird Tales 100 Years of Weird Illustrated Anthology First Look”. There’s a slideshow of art at the link.

Weird Tales—which delivers exactly the kind of freaky, spooky stories you’d expect—marks its 100th anniversary this year, and is celebrating with the release of illustrated anthology Weird Tales: 100 Years of Weird. It’ll include entries from authors like Ray Bradbury and H.P. Lovecraft, as well as contemporary writers….

(14) ALL ABOARD. GameRant calls these the “Best Sci-Fi Board Games Of All Time”.

…This shared love of science fiction has led to a plethora of sci-fi-themed board games that use the themes and aesthetic of sci-fi to create immersive, unique experiences on the tabletop. The following examples provide a broad and varied selection of games, both old and new, that use science fiction as their theme to great effect.

Ranked in first place:

1. Twilight Imperium

This sci-fi space opera from Fantasy Flight Games was originally produced back in 1997. Now in its fourth edition, Twilight Imperium is grand strategy on an epic scale, tasking players with controlling the burgeoning empires of various alien races.

Each race in Twilight Imperium encourages a different playstyle, making for a broad and replayable experience. The game is mainly focused on building and positioning fleets, as well as engaging in diplomacy with fellow players. Twilight Imperium is a huge game, and not necessarily accessible, not only because it takes roughly six hours to play depending on the player count, but because it requires a heavy amount of strategizing. However, Twilight Imperium is a dramatic and immersive experience that fans of sci-fi space operas are sure to love.

(15) BUDGET BREAKER? Science explains why “Mars Sample Return risks consuming NASA science”. “Forthcoming cost estimate for budget-busting mission could lead to strict caps from Congress.”

…The cost of the mission may become altogether too mighty, however. The most recent official figure now puts it at some $6 billion, up from some $4 billion, and a leaked report suggests that, in one scenario, it could exceed $8 billion. Cost overruns for MSR and a few other large missions have already forced NASA to squeeze or delay other science missions, and calls to rethink—or even kill—Mars Sample Return  have grown. When an independent review of the project delivers a fresh cost estimate later this month, advocates are praying it stays well below $10 billion, which has emerged as a sort of red line for the mission. “It’s fair to say that the future of Mars Sample Return lives and dies with the recommendations of that panel,” says Casey Dreier, chief of space policy at the Planetary Society….

(16) WE’LL GO AT NIGHT. PBS Space-Time wonders “What NEW SCIENCE Would We Discover with a Moon Telescope?”

In order to see the faint light from objects in deepest space, astronomers go to the darkest places on the planet. In order to listen to their quite radio signals, they head as far from any radio-noisy humans as possible. But there’s nowhere on the earth, or even orbiting the Earth, that’s far enough to hear to the faint radio hum from the time before stars. In fact, we may need to build a giant radio telescope in the quietest place in the solar system—the far side of the Moon.

(17) VIDEO OF THE DAY. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] Moid, over at YouTube’s Media Death Cult, has a new 10-minute video filmed appropriately, in sand dunes, on “How DUNE Became The Biggest Science Fiction Book In The Universe”.

[Thanks to Chris Barkley, Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Kathy Sullivan, Bruce D. Arthurs, Francis Hamit, Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, and John King Tarpinian for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Cat Eldridge.]

Pixel Scroll 8/11/23 The Secret Diary Of Pixel Scroll, Aged Four And Five Fifths

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(1) PUBLISHER STRUGGLES TO GET AMAZON TO LIST “JEWISH FUTURES” ANTHOLOGY. [Item by Michael A. Burstein.] Fantastic Books and I are having trouble getting Amazon to list the Jewish Futures: Science Fiction from the World’s Oldest Diaspora edited by Michael A. Burstein ebook on Amazon.

Fantastic Books publisher Ian Randal Strock told Facebook readers:

Amazon.com has decided to “block [the ebook version of Jewish Futures] from being sold on Amazon.” Apparently, the fact that Fantastic Books published the print version means that Fantastic Books submitting the ebook version to publish through them violates… something. I have no idea. So, if you use a Kindle ebook reader, and you’d like to read an electronic version of Jewish Futures, we recommend you buy it directly from Fantastic Books. Doing so will get you both the epub and the mobi versions of the book.

Amazon provides a number of ways to load your eBooks on to your Kindle. For instance, you can email it to your Kindle address. Click the link in the first comment for their email instructions, however the “Other Ways to Send” column on the right side of the Amazon page also shows you the other options available to you.

Also, they seem to have finally realized that the trade paperback version of the book is available.

Lezli Robyn amplified:

Amazon has decided to block the ebook edition of Jewish Futures from being published after multiple emails where the publisher, Ian Randal Strock, tried to find out why and how he can get the ebook listed on their website (the paper and hardback editions are up there!), and they said they will “uphold” their decision to block it from publication.

Ian will try to find out tomorrow why they made this decision and attempt get it reversed, but if there is ever a time to buy a book directly off of the publisher’s website to support them and their authors, this is it. So much blood, sweat, and tears go into publishing a new title and everyone in the book world knows how important sales numbers are in the first week!

I’ve even emailed Amazon’s CEO but haven’t heard anything. We’ve had to remind people they can buy the ebook from the publisher directly or from Barnes & Noble.  

We’ve also heard that Amazon has delayed getting the print books shipped out, even though the week before it was #1 in a few pre-order categories.

Here is the anthology’s Table of Contents:

  • Introduction by Jack Dann
  • Shema by Samantha Katz
  • Mission Divergence by E.M. Ben Shaul
  • Rachel Nussbaum Saves the World by Esther Friesner
  • One Must Imagine by Harry Turtledove
  • Into Thin Heirs by Susan Shwartz
  • Proof of Alina by Riv Begun
  • Baby Golem by Barbara Krasnoff
  • Frummer House by Leah Cypess
  • Moon Melody by SM Rosenberg
  • Initial Engagement by Steven H Silver
  • Matzah Ball Soup for the Vershluggin Soul by Randee Dawn
  • The Ascent by S.I. Rosenbaum and Abraham Josephine Reisman
  • The Aliens of Chelm by Valerie Estelle Frankel
  • The Kuiper Gemara by Shane Tourtellotte
  • Legend Born by Robert Greenberger
  • The Last Chosen by Jordan King-Lacroix

If anyone is in Boston on August 23, we are having a book event at Brookline Booksmith with the editor, publisher, cover artist Eli Portman and three writers, E.M. Ben Shaul, S.I. Rosenbaum, Abraham Josephine Riesman.

(2) SHERIDAN AND DELENN. “Warner Bros. Releases New ‘Babylon 5: The Road Home’ Clip” – Animation World Network has the story.

…In anticipation of the all-new original animated movie, a never-before-seen clip from the film, “Standing In The Shadows” has just been released! In the clip, John Sheridan (voiced by Bruce Boxleitner) expresses his second thoughts about leaving Babylon 5 to his wife, Delenn (voiced by Rebecca Reidy)….

(3) PROPOSAL SUBMITTED TO COURT IN SUIT AGAINST INTERNET ARCHIVE. “Copyright: Publishers, Internet Archive File Court Proposal” at Publishing Perspectives. “A proposed judgment bars Internet Archive from of offering ‘unauthorized copies’ of book publishers’ copyrighted content inside and outside the United States.” There’s also an unspecified payment involved.

This afternoon (August 11), the Association of American Publishers is confirming to Publishing Perspectives that the publisher-plaintiffs in the June 2020 lawsuit of the Internet Archive have submitted to the US District Court in the Southern District of New York a joint, negotiated proposal for Judge Koeltl’s consideration.

As our readers will remember, the plaintiffs—Hachette Book Group; HarperCollins Publishers; John Wiley & Sons; and Penguin Random House—received on March 24 an adamant ruling against the Internet Archive for its “Open Library” lending activities. In that ruling, the court deemed Internet Archive as liable for copyright infringement.

Today’s proposed consent judgment provides for a “stipulated permanent injunction,” according to the AAP’s media messaging, “preventing Internet Archive from offering unauthorized copies of the plaintiffs’ books to the global public under the manufactured theory of ‘controlled digital lending,’ and indicates that the parties have reached a confidential agreement on a monetary payment, all subject to Internet Archive’s right to appeal the case.”…

(4) ZOOM CHANGES ITS MIND. According to Gizmodo, “Zoom Backtracks on Training Its AI on Your Calls”.

After massive backlash over its wishy-washy communication regarding training artificial intelligence with customer data, Zoom wants to set the record straight. Today, Zoom issued an update to its previous announcement on its plans for AI to formally claim that the company will not use audio, video, chat, or similar data to train its AI models.

Zoom issued the update today to its original blog post, published earlier this week by Chief Product Officer Smita Hashim. Zoom’s terms of service stated that the company could use Customer Content—which is what Zoom calls audio, video, chat, attachments, screen-sharing, etc.—to train its own in-house or third-party AI models. On Monday, however, the blog post from Hashim promised that Zoom wouldn’t use Customer Content to train AI (except in some cases). Today, the company has updated Section 10 of its terms of service to no longer retain the legal right to use Customer Content to train any AI models. Zoom did not immediately return Gizmodo’s request for comment on what data sources these AI features will, in fact, be trained with…..

Here’s the opening paragraph of the Zoom Blog’s post “How Zoom’s terms of service and practices apply to AI features”.

It’s important to us at Zoom to empower our customers with innovative and secure communication solutions. We’ve updated our terms of service (in section 10) to further confirm that Zoom does not use any of your audio, video, chat, screen-sharing, attachments, or other communications like customer content (such as poll results, whiteboard, and reactions) to train Zoom’s or third-party artificial intelligence models. In addition, we have updated our in-product notices to reflect this.*

Zoom is still offering users access to a pair of AI features:

…two powerful generative AI features — Zoom IQ Meeting Summary and Zoom IQ Team Chat Compose — on a free trial basis to enhance your Zoom experience. These features offer automated meeting summaries and AI-powered chat composition. Zoom account owners and administrators control whether to enable these AI features for their accounts.

… We inform you and your meeting participants when Zoom’s generative AI services are in use….

(5) I AM I SAID. Writer Beware’s Victoria Strauss looks into a service capitalizing on a topical concern in “Dear Author, Are You Human? Certifying Authenticity”.

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that where there is an issue of concern for writers, someone will find a way to monetize it….

In this fraught environment, it was probably inevitable that someone would come up with the idea of a service to certify or authenticate human authorship, and invite creators buy into it. This post takes a look at two such services.

The Authenticity Initiative

The originator of The Authenticity Initiative is Eliza Rae, who also offers social media, brand management, and PR services for authors. The Authenticity Initiative provides a seal to authors who pledge not to use AI-generated content in their work, along with a number of additional perks, including a newsletter and promotional opportunities. The cost: $50 per year.

Of course, as illustrated by the Bob the Wizard kerfluffle (in which a cover artist who swore their art was not AI-assisted turned out to be fibbing) as well as a general knowledge of human nature, the question is the degree to which a voluntary promise is actually equivalent to certification. I reached out to Eliza for comment, and you can see her response to that question in the Q&A below.

WRITER BEWARE: The Authenticity Initiative seems to rely on authors to self-certify that their work contains no AI-generated content. Do you have any concern that some authors may not be honest?

ELIZA RAE: Yes, that’s exactly correct. While technology and laws that govern AI are limited, we decided that a trust based platform for authors and readers to come together was the best way to service this aspect of the community until more legislation and/or publishing platforms have caught up to technology issues and the pitfalls of what is and is not considered legal to scrape or use to train generative AI software….

(6) MEDICAL UPDATE. StarShipSofa’s Tony C. Smith made an announcement to the District of Wonders email list.

…Some of you might know, some maybe not but I thought it only best to let you all know.

I have cancer (that feels so horrid to write). Bladder cancer.

As you can imagine this came as one f–king huge shock. Then it was discovered there might have been something on my lung… thank god… that was not the case… so just bladder cancer.

I go into hospital on the 15th August to have my bladder removed and from then on I’m on a bag. Total lifestyle chance but hopefully one I can put behind me and move on when it’s done.

One neat SF thing, the operation will be done by robot – the future is here!

(7) EATING THE FANTASTIC. Scott Edelman invites listeners to feast on Fettuccine Alfredo with Howard Bender on Episode 204 of the Eating the Fantastic podcast.

Howard Bender

Eating the Fantastic moves on to Pittsburgh for the first of three episodes harvested due to this year’s StokerCon taking place in that city. My conversation this time around didn’t take place because of that main event, though, but only because I remembered my guest happens to live in Pittsburgh, and I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to reminisce with him about the old days.

I met Howard Bender 49 years ago, the year we both began working in the Marvel Comics Bullpen. He worked as a letterer and artist in the Marvel Comics production department from 1974–1980, and then moved on to DC Comics in the same role, where he worked from 1981–1985. He’s drawn Superman stories in Action Comics, Dial H for Hero stories published in The New Adventures of Superboy, Ghostbusters for First Comics, and a variety of series for Archie Comics. He also collaborated with Jack C. Harris on a Sherlock Holmes comic strip in the ‘90s. These days, he can be found at markets and fairs all across Pittsburgh working as a caricature artist.

We discussed how desperate Marvel Comics must have been to have hired young kids like us, his role in founding the Pittsburgh Comics Club (and the way he paid homage to that club down the road in Dial H for Hero), the day he showed Stan Lee his art portfolio over dessert, how he started his career at Marvel using Jack Kirby’s taboret, the fact neither of us would have become who we turned out to be without Superman creators Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, how terrified we both were of production manager John Verpoorten, our first meetings with the late, great Johnny Romita, the important life lesson he learned from inker Mike Esposito, what he was glad he remembered you shouldn’t talk about with Steve Ditko, how Marie Severin inspired him in his current career as a caricaturist,  and so much more.

(8) NYT SFF CRITIC. Amal El-Mohtar reviews “Witches, Robots and Martial Artists, Ready for Battle” — new books by Juno Dawson, Emma Mieko Candon and Alexander Darwin — in the New York Times.

(9) BSFS BEAUTIFUL. Congratulations to the Baltimore Science Fiction Society on their revived clubhouse space. (By gosh, there’s a Dalek on the balcony!) See the photos at Facebook.

(10) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

  • Born August 11, 1902 — Jack Binder. Thrilling Wonder Stories in their October 1938 issue published his article, “If Science Reached the Earth’s Core”, where the first known use of the phrase “zero gravity” is known to happen. In the early Forties, he was an artist for Fawcett, Lev Gleason, and Timely Comics. During these years, he created the Golden Age character Daredevil which is not the Marvel Daredevil though he did work with Stan Lee where they co-created The Destroyer at Timely Comics. (Died 1986.)
  • Born August 11, 1923 — Ben P. Indick. A member of First Fandom and prolific fanzine publisher. He wrote a handful of short genre fiction and two serious non-fiction works, The Drama of Ray Bradbury and George Alec Effinger: From Entropy to Budayeen. (Died 2009.)
  • Born August 11, 1928 — Alan E. Nourse, 1928 – 1992. His connections to other SF writers are fascinating. Heinlein dedicated Farnham’s Freehold to Nourse, and in part dedicated Friday to Nourse’s wife Ann.  His novel The Bladerunner lent its name to the movie but nothing else from it was used in that story. However Blade Runner (a movie) written by, and I kid you not, William S. Burroughs, is based on his novel. Here the term “blade runner” refers to a smuggler of medical supplies, e.g. scalpels. (Died 1992.)
  • Born August 11, 1932 — Chester  Anderson. His The Butterfly Kid is the first part of what is called the Greenwich Village Trilogy, with Michael Kurland writing the middle book, The Unicorn Girl, and the third volume, The Probability Pad, written by T.A. Waters. I can practically taste the acid from here… The Butterfly Kid, like all of these novels. is available from all the usual suspects. (Died 1991.)
  • Born August 11, 1949 — Nate Bucklin, 74. Musician who has co-written songs with Stephen Brust and others. He wrote two Liavek anthology stories, “Dry Well” and “Strings Attached” He’s a founding member of the Scribblies, the Minneapolis writer’s group, and is also one of the founding members of the Minnesota Science Fiction Society, better known as Minn-stf. He spent four years as a member of the National Fantasy Fan Federation or N3F, and his correspondents included Greg Shaw, Walter Breen, and Piers Anthony. He’s been a filk guest of honor at five cons.
  • Born August 11, 1959 — Alan Rodgers. Author of Bone Music, a truly great take off the Robert Johnson myth. His “The Boy Who Came Back From the Dead” novelette won the Bram Stoker Award for Best Long Fiction, and he was editor of Night Cry in the mid-Eighties. (Died 2014.)
  • Born August 11, 1961 — Susan M. Garrett. She was a well-known and much liked writer, editor and publisher in many fandoms, but especially the Forever Knight community. (She also was active in Doctor Who and The Secret Adventures of Jules Verne fandoms. And no, I had no idea that the latter had a fandom.) She is perhaps best known for being invited to write a Forever Knight tie-in novel, Intimations of Mortality. (Died 2010.)
  • Born August 11, 1962 — Brian Azzarello, 61. Comic book writer. First known crime series 100 Bullets, published by Vertigo. Writer of DC’s relaunched Wonder Woman series several years back. One of the writers in the Before Watchmen limited series. Co-writer with Frank Miller of the sequel to The Dark Knight Returns, The Dark Knight III: The Master Race.

(11) COMICS SECTION.

(12) GENERALIZATION ALERT. BookRiot’s Alice Nuttall asks, “Science Fiction Is Inherently Rebellious — So Why Don’t Some of Its Fans Think So?”

My husband and I are currently watching Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, me for the first time, him for about the billionth. After watching one episode where religious fundamentalists insist that the space station’s school teach their holy stories instead of scientific fact, and bomb the school when the teacher doesn’t agree, my husband leaned over to me and commented “But you know, Star Trek was never political.”

“[Sci fi story] was never political” is a running joke of ours, usually said with an eye roll and a bitter laugh at the complaint du jour about sci-fi stories that dare to centre anyone who isn’t a white, cishet man. Sci-fi has been decried as “political” for telling stories about people of colour or women (and predictably, some of the worst backlashes have come when a central character happens to be a woman of colour). Stories have been panned or banned for including LGBTQ+ people and relationships.

Writers who share the marginalisations of their characters are at the greatest risk of being harassed and attacked for daring to publish in a space that reactionary gatekeepers see as “theirs”. The ‘Sad Puppies’ campaign was a coordinated attempt by right-wing, “anti-diversity” pundits to influence the results of the Hugo Awards and push works by authors of colour, women, and LGBTQ+ people to the sidelines. Fortunately, it was unsuccessful — and not only because it was a clumsy, transparent attempt at attacking diversity. The fact is that sci-fi has never been a white, cishet, male, or conservative domain. It has always been a space for subversion, radical thinking, and rebelliousness — and marginalised people have been there from the beginning….

(13) PUMP BROTHERS, PUMP WITH CARE. This idea sucks, but does that mean it’s actually no good? “U.S. to Fund a $1.2 Billion Effort to Vacuum Greenhouse Gases From the Sky” reports the New York Times.

The Biden administration will spend $1.2 billion to help build the nation’s first two commercial-scale plants to vacuum carbon dioxide pollution from the atmosphere, a nascent technology that some scientists say could be a breakthrough in the fight against global warming, but that others fear is an extravagant boondoggle.

Jennifer Granholm, the energy secretary, announced Friday that her agency would fund two pilot projects that would deploy the disputed technology, known as direct air capture.

Occidental Petroleum will build one of the plants in Kleberg County, Texas, and Battelle, a nonprofit research organization, will build the other in Calcasieu Parish on the Louisiana coast. The federal government and the companies will equally split the cost of building the facilities.

“These projects are going to help us prove out the potential of these next-generation technologies so that we can add them to our climate crisis fighting arsenal, and one of those technologies includes direct air capture, which is essentially giant vacuums that can suck decades of old carbon pollution straight out of the sky,” Ms. Granholm said on a telephone call with reporters on Thursday.

The 2021 bipartisan infrastructure law included $3.5 billion to fund the construction of four commercial-scale direct air capture plants. Friday’s announcement covered the first two.

Oil and gas companies lobbied for the direct air capture money to be included in the law, arguing that the world could continue to burn fossil fuels if it had a way to clean up their planet-warming pollution….

(14) CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE CLUCKY KIND. What does that mean? You’ll understand after you see the video of this unidentified flying coop on Tumblr.

(15) MAN OF A THOUSAND FLAVORS. Here’s another exotic collectible, the Chaney Entertainment Hot Sauce 5-Pack from Jade City Foods.

Here’s a close-up of one of the labels.

(16) DUNE WHAT COMES NATURALLY. “’Futurama’ meets ‘Dune’ in action-packed, exclusive clip” at Mashable.

The beloved sci-fi comedy Futurama is no stranger to Frank Herbert’s Dune, featuring nods to stillsuits and space worms. But with its newly launched 11th season, Futurama takes its Dune tributes to a whole new level.

In an exclusive clip from the upcoming episode “Parasites Regained” (a spiritual sequel to Season 3’s “Parasites Lost,” perhaps?), we see Fry, Leela, Zoidberg, and Bender struggling to brave a mysterious desert landscape. There, they encounter a fearsome sandworm that looks like an oranger, fuzzier version of the show-stealing sandworms of Denis Villeneuve’s Dune. We also get Futurama‘s version of the powerful spice melange, a psychedelic drug that turns Leela’s eyes orange instead of Dune‘s classic blue-within-blue….

[Thanks to Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, John King Tarpinian, Kathy Sullivan, Nickpheas, Michael A. Burstein, 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 Soon Lee.]

Pixel Scroll 8/4/23 Brush Up Your Star Trek

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(1) THIRD SELF-PUBLISHED SCIENCE FICTION COMPETITION OPENS TODAY. Hugh Howey’s third annual Self-Published Science Fiction Competition (SPSFC) is now taking submissions. Are you an indie science fiction writer looking for a wider audience? Check the guidelines here. Submit here.

(2) CHIANG AND BENDER IN CONVERSATION. UW Professor of Linguistics Emily M. Bender talks with award-winning science fiction author Ted Chiang about the nature of creativity and the role of the author amid rising concerns about AI-generated storytelling. Moderated by Jeopardy! champion and Phinney Books owner Tom Nissley. November 10, 2023 at 7:30 p.m.

This event is a fundraiser for Clarion West. VIP tickets and meet-and-greet reception go on sale on Monday, August 7.

(3) CLARION WEST FALL CLASS SCHEDULE. Registration is open now.

Fall classes are here! We’ve got an exciting line-up of instructors, classes, and workshops. Registration is open now. Come learn with us!

(4) BOGUS BARKER. Writer Beware’s Victoria Strauss reports on somone impersonating her in “Dogging the Watchdog: In Which a Scammer Tries to Troll Me”.

…If you read here regularly, you’ll know that I’ve written a lot of posts about the impersonation scams that are becoming increasingly common. Well, an enterprising scammer recently decided to turn the tables…by impersonating me…

The [email protected] email address, of course, is bogus, and the scammer has added “literary agent” to my resume (which I am not, even though people sometimes mistakenly believe I am). And for added authenticity, a photo of me! Swiped from my personal Facebook page. (I’m sure the scammer would have preferred something unflattering, but I rarely post photos of myself–this post should make it clear why–so they didn’t have a lot to choose from.)

Obviously I would not want anyone to be defrauded in my name, so I enlisted a couple of the writers to write back to see what would happen. After a week with no replies, it seemed pretty clear that–as I’d half-suspected, especially given the stupidity of the fake email address –the email was a trolling attempt and not a bona fide scheme to scam.

Trolling doesn’t deliver the emotional satisfaction the troll craves unless the trollee knows they’re being trolled, though. And the scammer did want me to know…. 

(5) OLD BRIDGE (NJ) PUBLIC LIBRARY SCIENCE FICTION DISCUSSION GROUP DISBANDING. Evelyn Leeper told MT Void readers today:

After twenty years of meeting, the Old Bridge Public Library science fiction discussion group is disbanding.  Given that the last few meetings have been only three or four people, that sounds a bit more dramatic than it really is.  Our final book was THIS IS HOW YOU LOSE THE TIME WAR by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone (Saga Press, ISBN 978-1-534-43100-3) and all three of us disliked it, so we have referred to this as THIS IS HOW YOU KILL THE DISCUSSION GROUP.  The book swept all the major awards for novellas, so we are clearly in some sort of minority here.

But it was not really the book that killed the group, but the gradual drifting away of members.  We tried both Zooming and in-person meetings. but though we had weathered the pandemic, the return to other opportunities for socializing et al made it harder to get people to attend….

(6) BACK TO THE FUTURE MUSICAL. The Hollywood Reporter favorably reviews “’Back to the Future: The Musical’ Review: Stage Adaptation on Broadway”.

…The creators of Back to the Future: The Musical weren’t taking any chances.

The production, newly arrived on Broadway after a London engagement that snagged a 2022 Olivier Award for Best New Musical, begins with the stirring main theme of the 1985 film’s score, garnering loud cheers from the audience. The book, with some minor exceptions, recreates the screenplay beat for beat and in some cases line for line. And the performances hew closely to those of the movie’s lead actors, with Hugh Coles, playing Marty McFly’s father George, imitating Crispin Glover so closely that it’s hard to tell whether it’s tribute or appropriation.

None of this is surprising, considering that original co-screenwriter Bob Gale has written the musical’s book and original composer Alan Silvestri, in collaboration with Glen Ballard (Ghost, Jagged Little Pill), its score. What is surprising is how effective and damn fun it all is.

(7) REFERENCE DIRECTOR. Daniel Dern’s Scroll title, inspired by the musical Star Trek episode, he would like to remind everyone, is a reference to “Brush Up Your Shakespeare” from Kiss Me, Kate — which, by coincidence, came from a Cole Porter musical as did the song that kicked off the musical episode.

(8) CHILDREN’S BOOK PUBLISHER REMEMBERED. The Washington Post’s recalls the impact on children’s literature of Ursula Nordstrom (1910-1988) in “The fighter behind many of the most beloved children’s books of all time”.

…Hired as a clerk in 1931 at what was then Harper & Brothers (later Harper & Row, now HarperCollins), Nordstrom became an assistant in the department of books for boys and girls five years later. In 1954, she became the first woman elected to the Harper board of directors, and its first female vice president in 1960. She was referred to (and referred to herself) as the Maxwell Perkins of children’s literature. Perkins was an editor who built his career and reputation on seeking out and supporting new writers such as Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald and Thomas Wolfe. Over more than three decades, beginning in earnest in 1940, Nordstrom shepherded, chivied and gently bullied some of the greatest works of children’s literature into life. Those books included “Goodnight Moon,” “Where the Wild Things Are,” “Harriet the Spy,” “Little Bear,” “Harold and the Purple Crayon,” “Charlotte’s Web,” “Stuart Little,” “Bedtime for Frances,” “Where the Sidewalk Ends” and “Freaky Friday.”

Nordstrom’s spectacular eye for talent and many “firsts” as a mid-century career woman were not the most remarkable things about her. She believed in truth for children, even when it made adults uncomfortable. She prioritized children’s needs over reactionary parental qualms and rallied a fierce defense of realistic themes in books for young people. Her stance should be recognized, now more than ever, as a model for fighting back against censoriousness, grandstanding and patronizing of children masquerading as protecting them…

(9) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

  • Born August 4, 1923 — Paul Schneider. He wrote scripts for the original Star Trek, Star Trek: The Animated Series, The Starlost, The Six Million Dollar Man, and Buck Rogers in the 25th Century. He’s best remembered for two episodes of the Trek series: “Balance of Terror” and “The Squire of Gothos.” “Balance of Terror,” of course, introduced the Romulans. (Died 2008.)
  • Born August 4, 1937 — David Bedford. Composer who worked with Ursula K. Le Guin to produce and score her Rigel 9 album which the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction says is ‘a work that is musically pleasant although narratively underpowered.’ I’ve not heard it, so cannot say how accurate this opinion is. The not usual suspects such as iTunes have as their Meredith Moment for just seven dollars. (Died 2011.)
  • Born August 4, 1944 — Richard Belzer. A long non-genre career as John Munch, for 23 years starting on Homicide: Life on the Street and then Law & Order: Special Victims Unit and related series which made him only the third actor ever to play the same character in six different prime time TV series. In the Third Rock from The Sun series as himself, also the Species II film and an adaption of Heinlein’s The Puppet Masters, along with series work too in The X-Files, The Invaders, Human Target, and a recurring role in the original Flash series to name a few of his genre roles. (Died 2023.)
  • Born August 4, 1950 — Steve Senn, 73. Here because of his Spacebread duology, Spacebread and Born of Flame. Spacebread being a large white cat known throughout the galaxy as an adventuress and a rogue. He’s also written the comic novels, Ralph Fozbek and the Amazing Black Hole Patrol and Loonie Louie Meets the Space Fungus. 
  • Born August 4, 1968 — Daniel Dae Kim, 55. First genre role was in the NightMan series, other roles included the Brave New World TV film, the second Fantasy Island of three series, recurring roles on Lost, Gavin Park on Angel and Lieutenant John Matheson on Crusade, the Babylon 5 spinoff Crusade series, Star Trek: Voyager, Charmed and voice work on Justice League Unlimited.
  • Born August 4, 1969 — Fenella Woolgar, 54. Agatha Christie in “The Unicorn and The Wasp” episode of Doctor Who, my favorite episode, where she more than capably played off against David Tennant’s Tenth Doctor. Her only other genre was as Helena in A Midsummer Night’s Dream at the Royal Exchange Theatre, Manchester.
  • Born August 4, 1981 — Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, 42. Yes, she’s done a genre performance or so. To be precise, she showed up on Fringe in the first two episodes of the second season (“A New Day in the Old Town” and “Night of Desirable Objects”) as Junior FBI Agent Amy Jessup. She was also in the “First Knight” episode of Knight Rider as Annie Ortiz, and Natasha in “A Mind is a Terrible Thing to Lose” on Century City, a series most of you have likely never heard of. 

(10) DOCUMENTING POP CULTURE. Steven Heller interviews ephemera collector and student of popular culture Richard Marschall: T “What To Do With All This Ephemera” in PRINT Magazine.

What do the comics, satiric magazines and newspapers in your holdings teach you? And what do they say, through your books and exhibits, to your audience?

…But I never wanted to deconstruct to the point of denying construction in the first place. In
the 1970s I reveled to a popular culture symposium that invited me because of my “informed” attitudes on the comics as an art form. Yet every speech, roundtable and Q&A dealt with comics as mere conduits—“What did Dick Tracy say about crime?” Not, “What expressive dynamics did Chester Gould employ to communicate in revolutionary ways?” Arrested development. This academic myopia was maddening. The graphics community at one time was similarly dismissive, as you know as well as anyone, may I confidently say?

So even unconsciously I amassed a collection of comics, sections, clips, original art, magazine runs, bound volumes of newspapers, books, toys, postcards, posters and such … with the goal, instinctive as it actually was, to be in a position to document all this, and with a mature cultural perspective. And, no less earnestly, to help others who sought to do so….

(11) YOU ARE THERE. A day like any other day, but — Ersatz Culture says this news story involves his local library!

(12) WIMPS. [Item by Steven French.] Dark stars observed! No it’s nothing to do with the John Carpenter and Dan O’Bannon movie. Astronomers have closely examined recent images produced by the James Webb Space Telescope and concluded that they reveal ancient stars powered by dark matter. “Stars powered by dark matter may have been seen by the JWST” at Physics World.

… In 2007, Freese and colleagues proposed the possibility of “dark stars”, which may have been common in the early universe. While composed mostly of hydrogen and helium, these exotic stars would be fuelled by “dark matter heating” rather than nuclear fusion. This could involve a type of dark matter called weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs). WIMPs have evaded discovery for decades in Earth-based detection experiments, but according to Freese’s team, the sheer density of dark matter in the early universe could cause them to interact far more frequently with regular matter during the formation of some of the earliest stars.

In the early universe, “WIMPs could have annihilated into photons, electron-positron pairs, and other particles, which collided with the hydrogen in collapsing clouds,” Freese explains. “These particles then get stuck inside the cloud, and deposit all the energy from the mass of the dark matter particles into the cloud. The cloud then stops collapsing, and instead turns into a ‘dark star’.”…

(13) VIDEO OF THE DAY. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] The concept of the space elevator was popularized by Arthur Clarke’s Fountains of Paradise.

The idea is that a cable from the equator (Ceylon/Sri Lanka was geographically moved in Clarke’s novel) to a large satellite/small asteroid, in geosynchronous orbit, can be used to haul payload very cheaply into Earth orbit.

This concept has been further explored before by Isaac Arthur on his Science Futurism channel. Isaac has just taken this concept further by considering the advantages of a space elevator on the Moon…

A Space Elevator on the Moon, made of mundane materials, could be built with modern technology, and allow ultra-cheap freight off the Moon

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

Pixel Scroll 7/25/23 There’s No Business Like Scroll Business

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(1) CHENGDU’S OFFER TO HUGO FINALISTS. Joe Yao, a WSFS Division department head for Chengdu, provides more information about the assistance being offered to 2023 Hugo finalists to attend the Worldcon:

As it is the first time a Worldcon held in China, along with the first time for the Hugo Awards presented in China, we really like to have more finalists coming in person, and they can also participate in program and other activities if they want. But as we all know, it is a long and expensive trip for most of the finalists and they might not afford such a trip by themselves, thus we tried our best to help them, even though we have limited budget as well.

Hope there will be more finalists coming in October.

It appears the offer of help is being offered to 2023 Hugo finalists generally (or to one representative of finalists involving teams of multiple editors/creators). A few more people who have confirmed to File 770 that they received the offer include Gideon Marcus, Alison Scott, and Olav Rokne and Amanda Wakaruk (the latter got theirs today; they didn’t have it yet when they responded yesterday.)

(2) WRITER BEWARE. “Contract, Payment Delays at the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction” at Writer Beware.

F&SF takes First North American Serial Rights and pays on acceptance (which in practice means on receipt of a contract). Acceptance emails indicate that writers will receive a contract and a check within two to four weeks. However, Writer Beware has recently received multiple reports from writers whose work has been officially accepted but, months later, are still waiting for contracts and checks.

…Writers also report a variety of other delays: waiting for notification of official acceptance well beyond the stated acquisition timeline of 6 weeks to 6 months; receiving copy edits and proofs for accepted stories without having received a contract or payment; receiving contract and payment only weeks before the publication date, after months of waiting; completing requested revisions and then hearing nothing more. Many of the writers who contacted me say that they’ve sent repeated emails asking about the delays, and haven’t received a response….

Writer Beware’s Victoria Strauss contacted F&SF publisher Gordon Van Gelder and heard what he is doing to resolve the issues. See his responses at the link.

(3) SDCC AMID THE STRIKES. Rob Kutner says the lack of big movie presentations had its advantages in “Comic-Con In the Time of Strikes” at Book and Film Globe.

…As I’ve written here, Comic-Con offers many uses for the working (on non-struck things) professional. I came this year in part to network for gigs, and in part to sign my new kids’ graphic novel at my publisher’s table. Neither of those directly tied to the big panel/preview scene, so for me it was mostly business as usual. Nor, at first glance, could I necessarily spot a difference, other than some occasionally empty patches in the crowds, which would normally be wall-to-wall nerd.

However, after two days, some patterns began to emerge, and friends and colleagues that I spoke to confirmed this. As Craig Miller, Lucasfilm’s Director of Fan Relations for the first two Star Wars movies, described it, the effect on strike-year Comic-Con was “both profound and minimal. Hall H, the big, 6,000-person room”—where they often announce the latest Marvel or Star War for the first time — “is empty. There are no lines of people waiting hours to get into that room. But they’re still here at the convention.”

As a result, Miller spent the Con at a table, selling his memoir Star Wars Memories, and sold every last copy. Granted, any SDCC might have brought him scads of customers who liked both Star Wars and books, but it’s also a highly competitive environment, with literally hundreds of vendors and publishers vying for those same dollars.

This time, however, the diversion of crowds, who might otherwise be in Lineworld, onto the main convention floor created a flood of foot traffic for vendors that lifted even the smallest boats. Rantz Hoseley, VP of Editorial for Z2 Comics, confirms, “sales and signings at our booth were the biggest we’ve had at any convention, with a number of deluxe editions selling out by Thursday evening [the first of Comic-Con’s four days].”…

(4) BACK TO 1955. In “Buckle Your (DeLorean) Seatbelt: ‘Back to the Future’ Lands on Broadway”, the New York Times talks to franchise co-creator Bob Gale.

…And now on Broadway: “Back to the Future: The Musical,” which opens Aug. 3 at the Winter Garden Theater, follows a story that will be familiar to fans of the film. Using a time machine devised by Doc Brown, Marty McFly travels to 1955, meets his parents Lorraine and George as teenagers and must help them fall in love after he disrupts the events that led to their romantic coupling.

On its yearslong path to Broadway, “Back to the Future” has faced some challenges that are common to musical adaptations and others unique to this property.

While the show’s creators sought actors to play the roles indelibly associated with the stars of the film and decided which of the movie’s famous scenes merited musical numbers, they were also trying to figure out how the stage could accommodate the fundamental elements of “Back to the Future” — like, say, a plutonium-powered sports car that can traverse the space-time continuum.

Now this “Back to the Future” arrives on Broadway with some steep expectations: After a tryout in Manchester, England, its production at the Adelphi Theater in London’s West End won the 2022 Olivier Award for best new musical. The show also carries a heavy price tag — it is being capitalized for $23.5 million, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Throughout its development process, the people behind it — including several veterans of the “Back to the Future” series — tried to remain true to the spirit of the films and keep intact a story that has held up for nearly 40 years.

Bob Gale, who wrote the original movie with Robert Zemeckis, said of the stage adaptation: “We didn’t want to reinvent the wheel. We just want to make the wheel smooth.”

But, he added, “It cannot be a slavish adaptation of the movie. Because if that’s what people want to see, they should stay home and watch the movie. Let’s use the theater for what theater can do.”…

(5) LEARNEDLEAGUE. [Item by David Goldfarb.] LearnedLeague is currently in its “off-season” when it features player-created content, including 12-question specialized quizzes that last for one day. Monday there was one about the Stargate movie and TV franchise. As I write this it’s still live, but by the time tonight’s Pixel Scroll goes out, it will be graded and so available for the public to view. Here’s a link: Stargate 1DS

(6) CORDWAINER SMITH REDISCOVERIES. James Davis Nicoll encourages readers to “Take a Minute to Celebrate the Forgotten Greats of Science Fiction” at Tor.com.

Time is nobody’s friend. Authors in particular can fall afoul of time—all it takes is a few years out of the limelight. Publishers will let their books fall out of print; readers will forget about them. Replace “years” with “decades” and authors can become very obscure indeed.

The Cordwainer Smith Rediscovery Award was founded in 2001 to draw attention to unjustly forgotten SF authors…. Since it’s been five years (and there have been four new recipients) since we last discussed the award in 2018, I’ve updated the discussion to include the newest honorees—including the most recent winner, announced this past weekend at Readercon.

I wish the award were more widely known, that it had, perhaps, its own anthology. If it did, it might look a bit like this. Who are the winners? Why should you care about them? I am so happy I pretended you asked….

(7) FANAC.ORG NEWS. The fanhistory website Fanac.org has been adding scanned fanzines at an colossal rate. Among their accomplishments, they’ve finished scanning a run of Imagination, by LASFS members during the Fighting Forties…

We’ve added more than 1,000 publications since the last newsflash in March, and about 2,000 since the last full newsletter in December 2022. We’ve added some great zines by Arnie Katz, and many APAzines from Jeanne Gomoll. Here are some highlights.

 We completed our run of LASFS’s first important fanzine, Imagination including the Rejected issue. Imagination is filled with contributions from notables in the field, fan and pro, among them Yerke and Bok, Kuttner and Bloch, Bradbury and Lowndes, Hornig and Wollheim, and of course 4sj….

(8) WILL WIKI MATE WITH CHATGPT? Jon Gartner calls it h “Wikipedia’s Moment of Truth”. “Can the online encyclopedia help teach A.I. chatbots to get their facts right — without destroying itself in the process?”

…In late June, I began to experiment with a plug-in the Wikimedia Foundation had built for ChatGPT. At the time, this software tool was being tested by several dozen Wikipedia editors and foundation staff members, but it became available in mid-July on the OpenAI website for subscribers who want augmented answers to their ChatGPT queries. The effect is similar to the “retrieval” process that Jesse Dodge surmises might be required to produce accurate answers. GPT-4’s knowledge base is currently limited to data it ingested by the end of its training period, in September 2021. A Wikipedia plug-in helps the bot access information about events up to the present day. At least in theory, the tool — lines of code that direct a search for Wikipedia articles that answer a chatbot query — gives users an improved, combinatory experience: the fluency and linguistic capabilities of an A.I. chatbot, merged with the factuality and currency of Wikipedia.

One afternoon, Chris Albon, who’s in charge of machine learning at the Wikimedia Foundation, took me through a quick training session. Albon asked ChatGPT about the Titan submersible, operated by the company OceanGate, whose whereabouts during an attempt to visit the Titanic’s wreckage were still unknown. “Normally you get some response that’s like, ‘My information cutoff is from 2021,’” Albon told me. But in this case ChatGPT, recognizing that it couldn’t answer Albon’s question — What happened with OceanGate’s submersible? — directed the plug-in to search Wikipedia (and only Wikipedia) for text relating to the question. After the plug-in found the relevant Wikipedia articles, it sent them to the bot, which in turn read and summarized them, then spit out its answer. As the responses came back, hindered by only a slight delay, it was clear that using the plug-in always forced ChatGPT to append a note, with links to Wikipedia entries, saying that its information was derived from Wikipedia, which was “made by volunteers.” And this: “As a large language model, I may not have summarized Wikipedia accurately.”

But the summary about the submersible struck me as readable, well supported and current — a big improvement from a ChatGPT response that either mangled the facts or lacked real-time access to the internet. Albon told me, “It’s a way for us to sort of experiment with the idea of ‘What does it look like for Wikipedia to exist outside of the realm of the website,’ so you could actually engage in Wikipedia without actually being on Wikipedia.com.” Going forward, he said, his sense was that the plug-in would continue to be available, as it is now, to users who want to activate it but that “eventually, there’s a certain set of plug-ins that are just always on.”…

(9) MITCH THORNHILL (IRA) OBITUARY. Mitch Thornhill (Ira) died July 25 after many months of serious medical problems. He lived in Mississippi. However, he first became known as a fan in the Seventies while living in New Orleans and Minneapolis. He sometimes went by the name Ira M. Thornhill.

(10) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

  • Born July 25, 1907 — Cyril Luckham. He played the White Guardian first in the Fourth Doctor story, “The Ribos Opperation”, part one, and then twice more in the two-part Fifth Doctor story, “Enlightenment”.  He was also Dr. Moe in the Fifties pulp film Stranger from Venus, and also showed up in The Omega Factor, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased) and Tales of The Unexpected. (Died 1989.)
  • Born July 25, 1910 — Kendell Foster Crossen. He was the creator and writer of the Green Lama stories about a Buddhist crime fighter whose powers were activated upon the recitation of the Tibetan chant om mani padme hum. He also wrote Manning Draco series, an intergalactic insurance investigator, four of which are can be found in Once Upon a Star: A Novel of the Future. Kindle has a really deep catalog of his genre work. (Died 1981.)
  • Born July 25, 1922 — Evelyn E. Smith. She has the delightful bio being of a writer of sf and mysteries, as well as a compiler of crossword puzzles. During the 1950s, she published both short stories and novelettes in Galaxy Science Fiction, Fantastic Universe and The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. Her SF novels include The Perfect Planet and The Copy Shop. A look at iBooks and Kindle shows a twelve story Wildside Press collection but none of her novels. (Died 2000.)
  • Born July 25, 1937 — Todd Armstrong. He’s best known for playing Jason in Jason and the Argonauts. A film of course made excellent by special effects from Ray Harryhausen. His only other genre appearance was on The Greatest American Hero as Ted McSherry In “A Chicken in Every Plot”. (Died 1992.)
  • Born July 25, 1948 — Brian Stableford, 75. I am reasonably sure that I’ve read and enjoyed all of the Hooded Swan series a long time ago which I see has been since been collected as Swan Songs: The Complete Hooded Swan Collection. And I’ve certainly read a fair amount of his short fiction down the years. 
  • Born July 25, 1971 — Chloë Annett, 52. She played Holly Turner in the Crime Traveller series and Kristine Kochanski in the Red Dwarf series. She was in the “Klingons vs. Vulcans” episode of the Space Cadets, a sort of game show. 
  • Born July 25, 1973 — Mur Lafferty, 50. Podcaster and writer. Co-editor of the Escape Pod podcast with Valerie Valdes. She is also the host and creator of the podcast I Should Be Writing which won a Parsec Award for Best Writing Podcast. She is also the Editor-in-Chief of the Escape Artists short fiction magazine Mothership Zeta. And then there’s the Ditch Diggers podcast she started with Matt Wallace which is supposed to show the brutal, honest side of writing. For that, it won the Hugo Award for Best Fancast at Worldcon 76, having been a finalist the year before.  Fiction wise, I loved both The Shambling Guide to New York City and A Ghost Train to New Orleans with I think the second being a better novel. She has two nominations at Chicon 8, first for Best Semi Prozine as part of the Escape Pod team, second for Best Editor, Short Form with S.B. Divya. 

(11) COMICS SECTION.

(12) NO THERE THERE. GameRant warns that this “steelbook” collectible doesn’t include a copy of the series: “WandaVision Steelbook Release Is Missing An Actual Blu-Ray Copy”.

WandaVision is the first Disney Plus series to have a physical release, but the upcoming steelbook doesn’t actually include any discs or a download code.

The steelbook set includes a case, full slip, folder, envelope, character cards, and stickers, but the lack of actual physical media may turn fans off.

The decision to release a steelbook without including the series itself seems odd and could be seen as a disappointment, especially considering Disney’s recent removal of other series from its streaming platform…

(13) NASFIC COVERAGE. “Winnipeg hosts first Canadian version of international science fiction convention” at CTV News Winnipeg

…Unlike other “comic-cons,” Pemmi-Con makes a point of bringing in scientists as well as science fiction content creators. Canadian paleontologist Phillip John Currie is speaking about Jurassic Park-inspired fiction and dinosaur art and will be participating on a panel about recent scientific discoveries.

Other guests include biologist and author Julie E. Czerneda, Captain Canuck comic creator George Freeman, and Indigenous author Waubgeshig Rice.

“One of the things we’re trying to do this year is…emphasize Indigenous contributions to Canadian science fiction and fantasy,” Smith said.

The convention takes a different name every year relating to its location. Pemmi-Con is an homage to pemmican, a popular Metis dish in Manitoba. Smith said NASFiC attracts a worldwide audience….

(14) TECHNOLOGY NEVER DIES. Especially when somebody is devoted to keeping it around like the people who host the Mimeograph Revival website.

Mimeograph Revival is dedicated to preserving the printing technologies of an earlier era – with a particular emphasis on the stencil duplicator, the hectograph, and (maybe, as this is still a work in progress) the spirit duplicator. These are the techniques, machines, and processes that have fallen by the wayside, been relegated to “obsolete” status, and nearly forgotten.

Once ubiquitous, these machines ushered in an era in which it became possible for individuals and organizations, including clubs, fraternal organizations, churches, and schools, to quickly, easily, and cheaply reproduce printed matter. 

There’s not too much fannish content, however, the “Personal Narratives” section has a wonderful anecdote by Jeff Schalles.

Jeff Schalles, fanzine creator, printer, and founder of the facebook Mimeograph Users Group left the following story here at M. R. one day. A little historical documentation personal-narrative-style:

A while ago I was contacted by a researcher working for National Geographic Magazine. She was looking for material for an article on mimeo and ditto printing of the Greenwich Village Beat poets and writers scene and poetry chapbook creaters of the 1950’s.

I responded by suggesting she contact the late Lee Hoffman concerning the gatherings in her Greenwich Village apartment, where musicians like Dave Van Ronk and the poets, writers, musicians, and other local Beats, would jam all night. Lee had a reel-to-reel tape recorder and taped many of the parties.

Lee also had a mimeograph and produced Science Fiction fanzines, including the long-running “Science Fiction Five Yearly” published every five years until Lee died sometime in the early 21st Century. The print runs were short and there are few copies of SF Five Yearly around. Geri Sullivan and I edited and mimeo’d two of the later issues for Lee. Harlan Ellison had a long-running serial in every issue and never missed a deadline until Lee’s death finally ended the run of Science Fiction Five Yearly.

The Geographic researcher was only interested in “The Mimeograph Revolution” and its beginnings. Her response to my suggestion that she contact Lee, who was by then living in Florida, was that there was… absolutely, positively, no connection between the Beats and Science Fiction Fandom. She was very rude to me, and obviously had no interest and little knowledge of SF Fandom. I just sighed and stopped corresponding with her. I blame Rupert Murdoch’s purchase of National Geographic for hiring an idiot like her.

I’m of the opinion that SF fan mimeographers like Ted White, who had a small basement mimeograph print shop in the Village, had something to do with teaching the Beats how to use the technology. The Geographic researcher insisted that was impossible, and that SF Fandom was just a bunch of teenage amateurs amounting to nothing.

I’ve asked around to see if any of Lee’s party tapes survived, but no one ever got back to me, so I suspect they were tossed in a dumpster.

(15) NETFLIX PASSWORD CRACKDOWN: HOW HAS PERFORMANCE CHANGED? With the recent news about Netflix changes and its growth, JustWatch has put together a graphic about the global market shares of streaming services and how Netflix performed over the last 2 years.

In brief, global streaming giant Netflix found a way to restore its former glory after losing -3% market share in 2022. Launching a “Basic with Ads” brought back some interest, however the key move was introducing password sharing crackdown, as they gained nearly 6 million subscribers in the last three months.

(16) VIDEO OF THE DAY. Ahsoka, a Star Wars Original series, begins streaming August 23 on Disney+.

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

Pixel Scroll 7/13/23 In His House At R’lyeh, Dead Pixel Waits Scrolling

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(1) THE HORN BLOWS AT MIDNIGHT. “SAG-AFTRA Strike Called as Studio Talks Collapse” – The Hollywood Reporter says the actors strike begins at midnight tonight.

… SAG-AFTRA’s National Board officially called a strike Thursday against major film and television companies as contract talks with studios and streamers broke down without a deal on July 12. The work stoppage will impact 160,000 union members and begin at midnight tonight….

…The last of the major entertainment unions to enter labor negotiations with entertainment companies in the spring and summer of this year, SAG-AFTRA walked into their talks with the AMPTP on June 7 with a strike authorization vote in hand. Responding to an especially tight time frame in which to negotiate their sprawling TV/theatrical contracts (their current pact initially expired June 30, then was extended to July 12), nearly 98 percent of voting members of the union authorized their leaders to call a strike if deemed necessary….

(2) STRIKE NUKES OPPENHEIMER PREMIERE. “Oppenheimer Cast Walks Out of UK Premiere as SAG-AFTRA Strike Begins” CBR.com.

The cast of Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer has walked out of the film’s UK premiere in solidarity with the actor’s union, SAG-AFTRA, following its call to strike.

“We talked about it,” [Matt] Damon told Variety on the red carpet. “Look, if it’s called now, everyone’s going to walk obviously in solidarity … Once the strike is officially called, [we’re walking]. That’s why we moved this [red carpet] up because we know the second it’s called, we’re going home.” Damon also revealed the results of SAG-AFTRA’s vote to strike, with 98% of its membership in favor of the move….

(3) HOW ACTORS STRIKE AFFECTS SDCC. “’Good Omens,’ ‘That ’70s Show,’ & More Cancel SDCC Panels Amid SAG Strike” reports Collider.

San Diego Comic-Con is going to look pretty different this year, as SAG-AFTRA has officially begun its strike. As the actors join the writers on the picket lines for better pay, conditions, and benefits, much of the industry has come to a halt without many of its key people. With the SAG-AFTRA strike now happening, it means actors cannot promote their current or future projects – including anything that was originally planned for Comic-Con. Thus, panels are already being cancelled for the event happening next week….

(4) YOU’LL BE CRYING A RIVER IF YOU FALL FOR THESE. Victoria Strauss warns about “How Scammers Are Using Amazon and Amazon Trademarks to Rip Writers Off” at Writer Beware.

In the past year or so, I’ve noticed an upsurge in scams that employ the Amazon name, or the names of Amazon trademarks, to try and trick hopeful writers into believing they are working with a company affiliated with Amazon, or even with Amazon itself.

As is common with scams these days, many of these questions come from writers who’ve been solicited via email or phone (you can see one such story here)–but also from writers looking to self-publish, who googled “self publishing” or “Amazon self-publishing” or “KDP publishing” or a similar search term.

Right at the top of such searches are sponsored links purchased by Amazon fakers….

… All four sponsored links are scams (see the list at the bottom of this post). The real Amazon KDP is down there at #5.

Some Amazon fakers use Amazon-ish logos, the better to further the illusion….

(5) THE OUTER LIMITS OF TAYLOR SWIFT. [Item by Rogers Cadenhead.] If you’ve been waiting for the day that your love of science fiction and Taylor Swift intersected, it has arrived.

Some pressings of the vinyl release of Swift’s album Speak Now contain not the stylings of the centillion-selling chanteuse, but instead the industrial electronic band Cabaret Voltaire sampling the 1960s TV series Outer Limits on their 1992 song “Soul Vine (70 Billion People).” “’This is so creepy!’: the Taylor Swift vinyl haunted by Britain’s weirdest musicians” in the Guardian.

Rachel Hunter, a TikTok user who played the not-so-swift album, told the Guardian, “I thought maybe the vinyl had some sort of special message. Because Taylor does that sort of thing. This voice was saying strange things about flesh and anxiety. I was like: This is weird. I thought maybe the other side would be less strange but I flipped it over and, no, it only got weirder.”

All was not lost. Instead of seeing red, the Swiftie shook it off. “I was like: this is so creepy,” she said. “But when the beat kicks in I was like: this is a vibe.”

Cabaret Voltaire’s song samples the Outer Limits line “the 70 billion people of Earth — where are they hiding?”, which was written by Harlan Ellison in the acclaimed 1964 episode “Demon With a Glass Hand.” (See “Samples of The Outer Limits (1963) – The 70 Billion People of Earth, Where Are They Hiding?” at WhoSampled.)

Hunter’s copy is the only one known to contain this mistake, but there may be others. Fun fact: “Studies show that around half of the vinyl released bought isn’t actually played, so there’s a chance there are more in circulation unbeknown to owners.”

(6) AMAZING PLANS CENTENARY BLOWOUT. Amazing Stories will be 100 three years from now. They are working on the party now: “100 Years of Science Fiction Celebration”.

The Publishers of Amazing Stories magazine and the Producers of RavenCon announce a partnership to produce the most exciting event to hit the Science Fiction World since the Moon Landing!

On March 10th of 1926, the world’s first magazine devoted exclusively to the publication of Science Fiction – Amazing Stories – was released to newstands, and the world just hasn’t been the same!

…You can’t live in this world without being touched by Science Fiction’s influence. And now you have the unprecedented opportunity to join your fellow Fans in celebrating the first 100 Years of the Science Fiction Age!

RavenCon, a Virginia-based, traditional Science Fiction Convention has partnered with Experimenter to host the in-person celebration at RavenCon 19, April 2026. RavenCon is a well-respected and long-running, traditional, Fan-run con, making it a perfect choice for a celebration of the magazine that started it all, the Fandom that supported it all, and the genre that we all love!

…Lists of potential guests, special events, displays and programming subjects are currently being created, as is merchandise and crowdfunding platforms to help us make this the biggest, most exciting and out of this world celebration of Science Fiction that the world has ever seen!

If you are interested in any aspect of this event – be it attending, volunteering, offering a presentation, appearing as a guest (virtual or in person), hosting a local Slan Shack party, joining the quest to recover the Enchanted Duplicator, donating Lime Jello, or even seeking to be appointed the event’s Official David Kyle so you can tell everyone where to sit, sign up for our mailing list at www.RavenCon.com or www.AmazingStories.com.

(7) THEY MUST BE HERE SOMEPLACE. To continue a topic opened in comments the other day — Fansided published a list of the “Most sold Amazon books last week”. See how many men you can find among the 20 best sellers.

Most sold Amazon books last week

  1. Fourth Wing by Rebecca Yarros (–)
  2. The Covenant of Water by Abraham Verghese (+1)
  3. Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus (-1)
  4. The Five-Star Weekend by Elin Hilderbrand (–)
  5. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone by J.K. Rowling (reentry)
  6. The Housemaid by Freida McFadden (-1)
  7. It Ends with Us by Colleen Hoover (+6)
  8. Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver (-1)
  9. Happy Place by Emily Henry (-3)
  10. Never Lie by Freida McFadden (-2)
  11. Too Late by Colleen Hoover (new addition)
  12. Haunting Adeline by H.D. Carlton (-2)
  13. Wool by Hugh Howey (new addition)
  14. A Court of Thorns and Roses by Sarah J. Maas (+1)
  15. Verity by Colleen Hoover (-3)
  16. It Starts with Us by Colleen Hoover (+1)
  17. The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid (–)
  18. The Housemaid’s Secret by Freida McFadden (-2)
  19. Iron Flame by Rebecca Yarros (-10)
  20. Hello Beautiful by Ann Napolitano (-6)

(8) THE KEY TO ASCII. [Item by Bruce D. Arthurs.] “About ASCII Art and JGS Font” at Velvetyne Type Foundry explains JGS, a free typefont designed to better facilitate the creation of “ASCII art”, like the “typewriter art” that occasionally appeared in fanzines of our own era. It includes a rundown on the history of art and decoration created with printers type and elements, typewriters, computer keyboards, etc.

A self-portrait by Joan G. Stark featuring her standard signature.

…It isn’t that simple to explain what ASCII Art means. More than defining a well-established practice, ASCII Art blurs the habitual distinction between image and text, in the art world, and between “graphic interface” and “text mode,” in the informatics domain.

Strictly speaking, the expression designates pictures composed by using the 128 characters contained in the American Standard Code for Information Interchange (shortened as ASCII). Even if the terms “Text Art” or “Textmode Art” are also used, “ASCII Art” or just “ASCII” has become a way of naming all pictures produced with the help of typographic elements. In 1999, in The History of ASCII (text) Art, Joan G. Stark describes ASCII in the following way:

They are “non-graphical graphics”. Its palette is limited to the symbols and characters that you have available to you on your computer keyboard….

And here’s a link to the download page for the JGS font for anyone who wants to try it out.

(9) MEMORY LANE.

2011 – [Written by Cat Eldridge from a choice by Mike Glyer.]

My favorite work by Jo Walton is the Small Change series, not so much for its alternate history angle but for the Manor House mystery aspect. Manor House mysteries are comfort food to me.  I’m also inordinately fond of another British set fiction, Tooth and Claw. Dragons! 

I’d also note that An Informal History of the Hugos: A Personal Look Back at the Hugo Awards, 1953–2000 makes for rather interesting reading. 

Our Beginning is Among Others which was published was published by Tor twelve years ago. It won a Hugo at Chicon 7 along with the BFA Robert Holdstock Award for Best Fantasy Novel and a Nebula. It was also nominated for a World Fantasy Award, a Mythopoeic Award and another BFA, this time for August Derleth Award for Best Horror Novel. 

Our Beginning starts now…

Thursday 1st May 1975 

The Phurnacite factory in Abercwmboi killed all the trees for two miles around. We’d measured it on the mileometer. It looked like something from the depths of hell, black and looming with chimneys of flame, reflected in a dark pool that killed any bird or animal that drank from it. The smell was beyond description. We always wound up the car windows as tight as tight when we had to pass it, and tried to hold our breath, but Grampar said nobody could hold their breath that long, and he was right. There was sulphur in that smell, which was a hell chemical as everyone knew, and other, worse things, hot unnameable metals and rotten eggs. 

My sister and I called it Mordor, and we’d never been there on our own before. We were ten years old. Even so, big as we were, as soon as we got off the bus and started looking at it we started holding hands.

It was dusk, and as we approached the factory loomed blacker and more terrible than ever. Six of the chimneys were alight; four belched out noxious smokes.

“Surely it is a device of the Enemy,” I murmured. 

Mor didn’t want to play. “Do you really think this will work?” “The fairies were sure of it,” I said, as reassuringly as possible. “I know, but sometimes I don’t know how much they understand about the real world.”

“Their world is real,” I protested. “Just in a different way. At a different angle.”

(10) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

  • Born July 13, 1937 — Jack Purvis. He appeared in three of director Terry Gilliam’s early fantasy films, with roles in Time Bandits, a film Kage Baker adored, The Adventures of Baron Munchausen and Brazil. He’s in three of the Star Wars films, the only actor he says to play three different roles, and he’s also in Wombling Free (based on The Wombles, a UK Children’s series), The Dark Crystal and Willow. (Died 1997.)
  • Born July 13, 1940 — Mike Ploog, 83. He’s a storyboard and comic book artist, as well as a visual designer for films. his work on Marvel Comics’ Seventies Man-Thing and The Monster of Frankenstein series are his best-known undertakings, and as is the initial artist on the features Ghost Rider, Kull the Destroyer and Werewolf by Night.  He moved onward to storyboarding or other design work on films including John Carpenter’s The Thing, Little Shop of Horrors, The Dark Crystal, Labyrinth and The Storyteller series. He also the cover art for OzCon International 2015, and Christopher Priest’s Fugue for a Darkening Island.
  • Born July 13, 1940 — Sir Patrick Stewart, 83. Setting aside Trek which he says he’s done with now that Picard is wrapped up, other memorable genre roles include Leodegrance in Excalibur, Gurney Halleck in Dune, Prof. Macklin in The Doctor and the Devils, Charles Xavier in the X-Men franchise and he’s played Macbeth myriad times in the theatre world. 
  • Born July 13, 1955 — David J. Schow, 68. Mostly splatterpunk horror writer of novels, short stories, and screenplays. (He’s oft times credited with coining the splatterpunk term.) His screenplays include The Crow and Leatherface: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre III. He’s also done scripts for Masters of Horror, Perversions of Science and The Outer Limits. As an editor, he’s did the very impressive three-volume collection of Robert Bloch short fiction, The Lost Bloch.
  • Born July 13, 1966 — David X. Cohen, 57. Head writer and executive producer of the original Futurama. Cohen is a producer of Disenchantment, Matt Groening’s fantasy series on Netflix. He also wrote a number of the “Treehouse of Horror” episodes on the Simpson’s which have a strong genre slant such as “Treehouse of Horror VII” (“Citizen Kang”). 
  • Born July 13, 1985 — Monica Byrne, 38. Her debut novel The Girl in the Road which is I’ve added to my reading list as it sounds fantastic which won the 2015 James Tiptree, Jr. Award and was also nominated for the Locus and Kitschies awards. She also had an essay in Wired back four years ago, “Hey, Book World: Sexism is Way Bigger Than the Hugos”, commenting on the Sad Puppies. It’s interesting reading still. And this essay, “Literature Still Urgently Needs More Non-White, Non-Male Heroes”, certainly shows where she is ideologically.

(11) COMICS SECTION.

  • Blondie shows Alexander Hamilton Bumstead telling his dad that billionaires have better ways to spend their money than space flight. Dagwood knows his son doesn’t have social causes in mind.

(12) A MEETING OF THE MINDS. Steve Vertlieb is in town and we got together for lunch today. Thanks to his brother, Erwin, for snapping the photo. It was a pleasure to see you, Steve!

Mike Glyer and Steve Vertlieb

(13) JEOPARDY! [Item by David Goldfarb.] In Tuesday’s episode during the single Jeopardy round, in Friends, $800 (fourth tier): Ken Jennings read the following clue, while two pictures were displayed side-by-side, of two men wearing jacket and tie.

Conversations about language and myths initially bonded these two titans of fantasy, influencing each other and their works

This was a triple stumper, nobody recognizing or guessing either C.S Lewis (on the left) or J.R.R. Tolkien (on the right). For myself, I recognized Tolkien but not Lewis.

In Double Jeopardy, a category “2 Books In One” — the clues were mashups of two titles by the same author, the contestants were to unmash them and give the two titles in full. At the $1200 level (third tier):

Dandelion 451

Another triple stumper.

(14) KEEP BURROUGHING INTO THAT HOLE. “Disney Rebooting Their Biggest Sci-Fi Flop Into A Series” reports GiantFreakinRobot.

Disney is about to find out whether or not a concept that didn’t work as a movie will do better as a streaming show. Our trusted and proven sources tell us the House of Mouse is working on a John Carter reboot series for Disney+.

This seems like a strange move for Disney, particularly in light of recent months. Disney, like all of the other major studios who now own and operate major streaming platforms, has been canceling and cutting content as it struggles to figure out how to make its streaming service profitable.

(15) WHERE TO FIND THE EMMY NOMINEES. JustWatch has put up a list of the “50 Most Popular Emmy Nominees & how to stream them online”. The list shows real-time data on the titles’ popularity, as well as where to watch a particular TV show in the US.

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

Pixel Scroll 7/4/23 Chocolate With Pixels Swirling At Their Center Do Taste Better Than Chocolate Covered Manholes

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(1) SFF GROWING IN INDIA. Jaya Padmanabhan explores “Myth, AI, & Reality Power A Thrilling New Genre Of Indian Sci-Fi!” at IndiaCurrents.

…Presently, more and more writers are experimenting with the genre. While only a handful of SF novels have thus far been traditionally published in India every year, a slate of new science and speculative fiction domains is giving space to new voices and ideas, like the magazine Mithila Review and the feminist collection Magical Women (2019).

Vandana Singh, Anil Menon, Samit Basu, Mimi Mondal, and Gautam Bhatia, among others, headline discussions on Indian SF today. Their storylines expose the chaos, upheavals, and power structures of an ethnically, religious, and linguistically diverse India.

Unique to Indian SF is the manner in which mythology and folklore undergird much of the storytelling. From the Vedas and Puranas to the epics Ramayana and Mahabharata, historical plots continue to have relevance in Indian SF. As a result, science fiction from India is emerging as a singular genre rich with its own vernacular lexicon….

(2) PROBLEMS THAT ARE WORSE THAN AI. “’We Have Built a Giant Treadmill That We Can’t Get Off’: Sci-Fi Prophet Ted Chiang on How to Best Think About About AI” at Vanity Fair.

…The “AI as McKinsey” piece also articulates an underlying capitalist critique in your work. You clearly hold a lot of skepticism about the idea that Silicon Valley can provide magic fixes for social ills; you wrote this BuzzFeed News essay in 2017 that was so saucy. When reading “Seventy-Two Letters,” your short story from 2000, I gravitate toward this conversation between a craftsman and an inventor trying to create labor-saving robots, where the craftsman tells the inventor:

“Your desire for reform does you credit. Let me suggest, however, that there are simpler cures for the social ills you cite: a reduction in working hours, or the improvement of conditions. You do not need to disrupt our entire system of manufacturing.”

At a moment when we’re being promised “labor-saving” AI, this feels…relevant.

There’s this saying, “There are two kinds of fools. The first says, ‘This is old and therefore good.’ And the second one says, ‘This is new and therefore better.’” I think about that a lot. How can you evaluate the merits of anything fairly without thinking it’s good simply because it’s new? I think that is super difficult.

There probably was a time in history where most people were thinking, “This is old and therefore good,” and they carried the day. Now I think that we live in a time where everyone says, “This is new and therefore better.” I don’t believe that the people who say that are right all the time, but it is very difficult to criticize them and suggest that maybe something that is new is not better….

(3) STEPPING OFF THE MORAL HIGH GROUND. Beatriz Williams celebrates “The Return of the Cold War Novel and Its Glorious Uncertainties” at CrimeReads.

I was a kid playing Atari with my best friend when she informed me, as she sent her frog darting through traffic, that Nostradamus had predicted the world would end in nookuler destruction in August of that year. The exact date she named happened to be my birthday. Since Nostradamus lived hundreds of years ago and didn’t even know what nookuler was, she continued confidently, he must have had special powers and his predictions were therefore true. It was the early eighties and we had no internet, so I accepted her logic and spent the remaining weeks of summer assuming I would die before the leaves fell. 

If you were born in the 1970s, like me, or the sixties or the fifties, the Cold War was the backdrop of life, like wallpaper. It had no beginning and no end. It just was. You trundled to school each day under partly cloudy skies and a chance of nuclear annihilation, and when you went to the bookstore or the movie theater you found spy novels, spy movies that pitted Us against Them—the Soviet Union. In these stories, men chased each other around the world while some bomb ticked somewhere, some web of loyalties required untangling. Their manly brows furrowed under the weight of so much responsibility. Their wives worried cluelessly at home. The hot girl in the black sequined dress with the cleavage turned out to be a honey trap….

(4) REMEMBER DOS? “’Indiana Jones’: One of the Best Sequels Wasn’t a Movie” according to Collider.

During an ample period of growth for the LucasArts division of Lucasfilm Limited, the company began experimenting with the new games centered around their tentpole properties; as the Star Wars franchise began developing the initial Rebel Assault and Super Star Wars games, Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis was pitched as a canonical sequel to Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. The game takes place in 1939 during which Indy discovers that his former archeological collaborator Sophia Hapgood has given up her profession to become a psychic. Fearing that she’ll be targeted by the Nazis, Indy teams up with his old flame on an adventure to discover the ancient city of Atlantis and unlock its secrets before the Nazis take it for themselves to use as weaponry in World War II.

Compared to Lucasfilm’s Star Wars franchise, the Indiana Jones saga doesn’t quite have the same extensive expanded universe. While there are a few novel series, comic storylines, and adventure games focused on different aspects of Indy’s life, they’re merely a fraction of the massive expanded timeline developed in the Star Wars “Legends” and modern canon sagas. However, Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis didn’t just expand upon the character and tease a new chapter of his story; it developed Indy’s motivations under dire circumstances and featured a compelling storyline that actually surpassed some of the cinematic installments. Even if it never hit theaters, it’s easy to rank Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis among the best projects in the Indiana Jones universe….

(5) GOODER ENGLISH. [Item by Danny Sichel.] The mention of Downbelow Station in Monday’s file reminded me of the “lost in translation” thread from rec.arts.sf.written back in, oh god, 1999.

In particular, it reminded me that Susan Stepney did an archive thereof, which Filers may find amusing. “Lost in the Translation”.

Certain competition threads start spontaneously on the science fiction newsgroup rec.arts.sf.written. One of my favourites was about title/author pairs that can be read as a single phrase (with possibly the best being The Sheep Look Up John Brunner). In May 1999 someone quoting an alleged funny mistranslation, by a translator who missed the point, of a well-known SF book title A Very Important Mission, and a thread took off from there. Below are some of the submissions I’ve collected from that thread, and from ones sent to me later. (The contributors of the titles – either the devisers themselves, or telling of titles they remember from earlier competitions – are noted afterwards.) I’ve also provided answers – but no peeking before trying to work them out – that’s most of the fun!…

Here are couple:

Nancy Kress

  • Hispanic Mendicants — (Angus MacSpon)

Ursula K. LeGuin

  • On the Other Hand, It’s Dark — (Joe Slater)

(6) ANTI-FAN MAIL. “Gene Roddenberry’s Threatening Star Trek Letter To Leonard Nimoy And William Shatner” at Slashfilm.

…Gene Roddenberry, writing in 1967, was clearly reacting to various stories from the “Star Trek” set claiming William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy were on their worst behavior. It seems they were swapping lines, taking dialogue from co-stars, and going all-out to get as much screen time as possible. “Star Trek,” unlike some other shows at the time, had an open-door policy at [NBC], allowing actors to air grievances, explore ideas, and examine characters earnestly with those at the top. By Roddenberry’s description, this privilege was being abused. Shatner and Nimoy would cause delays in shooting and their characters would start to change on camera. Roddenberry, wanting to put the kibosh on his prima donnas, wrote the following letter, which was addressed to both actors equally:

“Toss these pages in the air if you like, stomp off and be angry, it doesn’t mean that much since you’ve driven me to the edge of not giving a damn. […] No, William, I’m not really writing this to Leonard and just including you as a matter of psychology. I’m talking to you directly and with an angry honesty you haven’t heard before. And Leonard, you’d be very wrong if you think I’m really teeing off at Shatner and only pretending to include you. The same letter to both; you’ve pretty well divided up the market on selfishness and egocentricity.” 

Roddenberry knew that actors all have egos and that petty grievances would indeed arise from time to time. Gene evidently instructed the production offices to overlook any foul moods from the cast, as tensions can run high and forgiveness will keep hackles lowered and production smooth. But after too many complaints, Roddenberry admitted, “‘Star Trek’ is going down the drain.”…

(7) IMPOSTOR PRODROME. Writer Beware’s Victoria Strauss warned Facebook readers about fraudsters trying to use her name.

So…after years of reporting on impersonation scams (rampant right now), the scammers have done me the ultimate honor: impersonating ME.

(8) TODAY’S TRIVIA. [Item by Mike Kennedy.] The following CNN video (well, link to a video) by SE Cupp includes a quote from Isaac Asimov at the end. “SE Cupp: Was ‘Idiocracy’ real? The Musk-Zuckerberg cage match could not be dumber”

In case you were wondering whether the quote was correctly attributed, see the information at this link.

(9) MEMORY LANE.

1983 – [Written by Cat Eldridge from a choice by Mike Glyer.]

Our Beginning tonight is a true one as Bruce Bethke tells us the origin  story of a now familiar word and the story that he’d use it in.

The essay and story itself were published in Amazing Science Fiction, November 1983. If after reading the Beginning here, you can do so at Infinity Plus where it is up with the permission of the author.

In the early spring of 1980 I wrote a little story about a bunch of teenage hackers. From the very first draft this story had a name, and lo, the name was —

Cyberpunk

And you can bet any body part you’d care to name that, had I had even the slightest least inkling of a clue that I would still be answering questions about this word nearly 18 years later, I would have bloody well trademarked the damned thing!

Nonetheless, I didn’t, and as you’re probably aware, the c-word has gone on to have a fascinating career all its own. At this late date I am not trying to claim unwarranted credit or tarnish anyone else’s glory. (Frankly, I’d much rather people were paying attention to what I’writing now –e.g., my Philip K. Dick Award-winning novel, Headcash, Orbit Books, 5.99 in paperback.) But for those folks who are obsessed with history, here, in tightly encapsulated form, is the story behind the story.

The invention of the c-word was a conscious and deliberate act of creation on my part. I wrote the story in the early spring of 1980, and from the very first draft, it was titled “Cyberpunk.” In calling it that, I was actively trying to invent a new term that grokked the juxtaposition of punk attitudes and high technology. My reasons for doing so were purely selfish and market-driven: I wanted to give my story a snappy, one-word title that editors would remember.

Offhand, I’d say I succeeded.

Art accompanying the short story Cyberpunk in Amazing Stories by Bob Walters

(10) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

  • Born July 4, 1883 — Rube Goldberg. Not genre, but certainly genre adjacent. Born Reuben Garrett Lucius Goldberg, he was a sculptor, author, cartoonist, engineer, and inventor who’s certainly best known for his very popular cartoons showing overly complex machines doing simple tasks in a terribly convoluted manner, hence the phrase “Rube Goldberg machines”. The X-Files episode titled “The Goldberg Variation” involved an apartment rigged as a Goldberg machine. (Died 1970.)
  • Born July 4, 1900 — Guy Endore. Writer of The Werewolf of Paris which is said by Stableford in the St. James Guide to Horror, Ghost & Gothic Writers as “entitled to be considered the werewolf novel”. He also wrote “The Day of the Dragon” which Stableford likes as well. He was a scriptwriter hence for writing Mark of the Vampire starring Bela Lugosi. He also the treatment for The Raven but never got credited. (Died 1970.)
  • Born July 4, 1910 — Gloria Stuart. She was cast as Flora Cranley opposite Claude Rains in The Invisible Man in 1933, and 68 years later she played Madeline Fawkes in The Invisible Man series. She was in The Old Dark House as Margaret Waverton which is considered horror largely because Boris Karloff was in it. And she was in the time travelling The Two Worlds of Jennie Logan as well. (Died 2010.)
  • Born July 4, 1949 — Peter Crowther, 74. He is the founder (with Simon Conway) of PS Publishing where he’s editor now. He edited a series of genre anthologies that DAW published. And he’s written a number of horror novels of which I’d say After Happily Ever and By Wizard Oak are good introductions to him. He’s also done a lot of short fiction but I see he’s not really available in digital form all that much for short fiction or novels. 
  • Born July 4, 1974 — Kevin Hanchard, 49. Canadian actor best known for his major role in Orphan Black as Detective Art Bell, whose partner’s suicide kicks off the whole show. He also had a significant role in the first season of The Expanse as Inspector Sematimba, Det. Miller’s old friend from Eros. Other genre roles include appearances in the movies Suicide Squad and the made-for-TV Savage Planet, and shows The Strain, Hemlock Grove, Wynonna Earp, and Impulse, among others. (Xtifr) 
  • Born July 4, 1977 — David Petersen, 46. Writer and illustrator of the brilliant Mouse Guard series. If you haven’t read it, do so — it’s that good and it’s still ongoing. It almost got developed as a film but got axed due to corporate politics. IDW published The Wind in The Willows with over sixty of his illustrations awhile back.  I’d have love to seen that! 

(11) CANCELLATION MARK. There’s a hole in the schedule where Crater used to be says Digital Spy: “Handmaid’s Tale star’s new movie removed from Disney+ seven weeks after release”.

Disney+ has removed Crater from its platform just seven weeks after it premiered.

The sci-fi adventure follows Caleb Channing (Isaiah Russell-Bailey), a young boy who was raised on a lunar mining colony and is about to be moved to a distant planet following the death of his father.

The film also features Mckenna Grace, best known for portraying child bride Esther Keyes in The Handsmaid’s Tale….

But despite its $50 million (£39 million) budget, the film – directed by Kyle Patrick Alvarez – can no longer be watched on Disney+….

Crater, which debuted on May 12, scored a respectable 64% on aggregate site Rotten Tomatoes….

(12) LITTLE ICE AGE. The National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., in “Painting Climate Change in the 17th Century”, discusses art that documents a historic climate fluctuation.  

The world has warmed by more than one degree Celsius since the late 19th century, and it is on course to warm by another two degrees by the end of this century. The combination of the speed, likely magnitude, and human cause of this global warming make it unprecedented in the history of our species.

Yet this is not the first time Earth’s climate has changed. In the 13th century, the climate of the Northern Hemisphere started to cool due to natural causes. Although cooling varied over time and from place to place, in general it persisted for several centuries. This period is commonly referred to as the Little Ice Age. Global temperatures declined by just a few tenths of a degree Celsius—significantly less dramatic a change than our current warming trend. Nevertheless, regional effects were often severe, including catastrophic droughts, torrential rains, and entire years in which winter never fully gave way to spring and summer.

…Some of the disasters of the Little Ice Age may sound familiar. Indeed, many scholars study how people of the past coped with extreme weather to better understand how our societies might respond to global warming. The 17th-century Low Countries (modern Belgium, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands) provide striking models of just how adaptive and resilient people can be in the face of a changing climate. But they also provide warnings about how climate resilience can create or worsen inequality.

Fortunately, the 17th century has furnished us with a unique resource: millions of paintings, prints, and drawings, created by thousands of artists across the Low Countries, that depict elements of everyday life. By 1650 the inhabitants of Holland—the wealthiest province of the Dutch Republic, the precursor state to today’s Netherlands—collectively owned around 2.5 million paintings. Many of these paintings seem to reflect the presence of the Little Ice Age and record its consequences for ordinary people. Some remarkable examples are included in the National Gallery’s collection. 

These include stunning winter landscapes, which seem to recreate, with plausible detail, real-life gatherings in frigid weather. For example, Adam van Breen painted Skating on the Frozen Amstel River amid a sequence of chilly winters in the Low Countries, and in 1646—when Jan van Goyen painted Ice Scene near a Wooden Observation Tower—winter was even colder.

Although there were forces other than climate change that influenced how artists chose and depicted their subjects, icy landscapes do shed light on how the Dutch adapted to a cooler climate. The coastal Low Countries were crisscrossed by waterways that allowed for the efficient transportation of goods, people, and information. 

Paintings like those of Van Breen and Van Goyen accurately portray how ordinary people across the Low Countries used sleds and ice skates—a Dutch invention—to keep these transportation networks open in cold weather. To maintain crucial shipments of goods that were easier to send by water, intrepid traders even designed specialized icebreaker ships.

(13) ENGRAVED IN MEMORY. Catherynne Valente told Facebook readers why this quote is familiar.

OH MY GOD LOOK WHAT I JUST FOUND IN THE #BAYCON DEALERS’ ROOM!

I’m so completely delighted! I, big dumb #Trekkie, wrote that thing back when Twitter was fun! Ahh!

(14) THE END OF THE WORLD, AGAIN! [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] There nothing like the end of the world.  It is spectacular.  It is catastrophic. It has bags of sense-of-wonder.  It is anything but mundane. What’s not to like..?  Having said that, I prefer my ends of the world to be firmly in science fiction or alternatively in the future: certainly beyond my time; I’m dead sure I would not be personally partial to it and if I were I’d shortly be dead…  On that cheery thought, it is time to check out Science & Futurism with Isaac Arthur as he explores ‘Earth After Humanity’.

Isaac Arthur notes that there are many ways humanity’s world could end, but picks six basic scenarios:

  • An extinction-level natural catastrophe
  • Mass destruction by nuking ourselves or dystopian industrial scenarios
  • A super plague  
  • Artificial Intelligence kills us off
  • Aliens
  • Humanity abandons Earth.

Isaac opines that a global-level natural catastrophe – say an asteroid hundreds of miles across – would be unlikely to thread the needle between wiping out humanity, but leave lesser creatures such as plants and insects alive from which the biosphere might recover. Along the way, he touches on problems such as genetic bottle-necking in recovering sparsely distributed, very small populations.

With a super plague, he notes that it would not be instantaneous, and almost certainly there would be time to land planes and turn-off nuclear power plants (though here I note that Ukraine has demonstrated that that is not as easy as Isaac suggests). So the planet would continue without humanity and wildlife would reclaim our farms and cities.

Isaac is more optimistic when it comes to considering whether an AI would want to take out humanity. He hovers between AI possibly being ‘human-like’ as we would create it, and AI being completely alien to us.

With regards to aliens coming along and killing us off, Isaac thinks they would be likely to value life even if they were ruthless about wiping out potential competitors, so again, life other than humanity would survive. Having said that, he reminds us that the first rule of warfare (the physicist Isaac served in the US forces) is that there is no such thing as overkill.

One issue would be our pets. Could larger dogs survive and evolve even better predatory skills? He does wonder who would end up at the top of the food chain?

Finally, Isaac cannot easily see us simply abandoning Earth (unless there was an existential threat). Some humans would not leave…

…By the way, this was the 401th episode of  Science & Futurism with the 400th milestone happening the other week.

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

Pixel Scroll 6/24/23 My Pixel Threw Out All My Old Scrolls And All That’s Left Is This Godstalk

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(1) TROLLING FOR DOLLARS. Victoria Strauss advises how to handle a certain kind of litigation threat in “When the Copyright Trolls Came for Me” at Writer Beware.

If you’re a writer who’s serious about a career, you probably have some form of online presence: a website, a blog, an Instagram account. You may make use of images and/or videos created by others–to add visual interest to your blog posts or newsletters, decorate your website, and/or engage your readers and followers. For example, the header image at the top of this post.

If you use images online, you need to be aware of copyright trolls….

The full article is at Writer Unboxed: “When The Copyright Trolls Came for Me”. And part of the advice is to actually have rights to the images you used online.

The Importance of Protecting Yourself

The resources I consulted in my research for this post agree that copyright trolling is on the rise—and as my experience shows, you don’t have to infringe to be a target. In that environment, it makes sense to do what you can to defend yourself.

What does that include?

  1. First and most obvious, if you use images, make sure you have the proper licenses and/or permissions, or that the images are free to download under a Creative Commons license, such as photos from sites like Pixabay and Unsplash (though do read the license terms: there may be restrictions on use, such as a requirement for attribution—and yes, trolls come after people for messing that up too). Giving credit to the image creator and/or linking back to the source is polite, but it won’t protect you from copyright claims….

(2) NEW BLOCH TRIBUTE. The Robert Bloch Official Website launched just one week ago, and today Jim Nemeth announced a major update: the Stories page is greatly expanded, providing the most comprehensive list of Bloch’s published stories to date.

 (3) A REAL HE-MAN. Cora Buhlert shows off two Masters of the Universe figures.

(4) TINGLE BOOK AD. “Chuck To The Future” is an appeal to preorder Chuck Tingle’s Camp Damascus.

“No, no buckaroo, the Hugo Awards are fine. We’ve gotta help Chuck Tingle!”

(5) TINGLE BOOK TOUR. And Chuck Tingle has been dropping announcements about book tour appearances with colleagues – you’ll be able to tell them apart, he’ll be the one with a bag over his head.

With Nicola Griffith in Seattle.

With Catriona Ward in Minneapolis.

With N.K. Jemisin in New York.

(6) REGRETS, I’VE HAD A FEW. “Our Way” is a parody of the Frank Sinatra hit “My Way” about the DC Extended Universe.

The Flash marks the end of the DCEU run as we’ve known it. Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman sing goodbye to the DCEU and reminisce on the good, the bad, and the weird that the DC Comics movie universe entailed

(7) MEMORY LANE.

2015 – [Written by Cat Eldridge from a choice by Mike Glyer.]

Becky Chambers as you all well know is the author of the Hugo Award-winning Wayfarers series which is where our Beginning comes from this Scroll, as Mike choose wisely in selecting The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet, the first novel in that series. It is one of my favorite novels, period.  

The novel itself surprisingly didn’t garner any Awards though it was nominated for an  Arthur C. Clarke Award, a British Fantasy Award for Best Newcomer, a Grand prix de l’Imaginaire and a Kitschie for Best Debut Novel. No Hugo nomination though. 

And now for a rather superb Beginning…

As she woke up in the pod, she remembered three things. First, she was traveling through open space. Second, she was about to start a new job, one she could not screw up. Third, she had bribed a government official into giving her a new identity file. None of this information was new, but it wasn’t pleasant to wake up to. 

She wasn’t supposed to be awake yet, not for another day at least, but that was what you got for booking cheap transport. Cheap transport meant a cheap pod flying on cheap fuel, and cheap drugs to knock you out. She had flickered into consciousness several times since launch—surfacing in confusion, falling back just as she’d gotten a grasp on things. The pod was dark, and there were no navigational screens. There was no way to tell how much time had passed between each waking, or how far she’d traveled, or if she’d even been traveling at all. The thought made her anxious, and sick.

Her vision cleared enough for her to focus on the window. The shutters were down, blocking out any possible light sources. She knew there were none. She was out in the open now. No bustling planets, no travel lanes, no sparkling orbiters. Just emptiness, horrible emptiness, filled with nothing but herself and the occasional rock. 

The engine whined as it prepared for another sublayer jump. The drugs reached out, tugging her down into uneasy sleep. As she faded, she thought again of the job, the lies, the smug look on the official’s face as she’d poured credits into his account. She wondered if it had been enough. It had to be. It had to. She’d paid too much already for mistakes she’d had no part in.

Her eyes closed. The drugs took her. The pod, presumably, continued on.

(8) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

  • Born June 24, 1947 — Peter Weller, 76. Yes, it’s his Birthday today. Robocop obviously with my favorite scene being him pulling out and smashing Cain’s brain, but let’s see what else he’s done. Well, there’s The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension, a film I adore. And then there’s Leviathan which you I’m guessing a lot of you never heard of. Is Naked Lunch genre? Well Screamers based on Philip K. Dick’s short story “Second Variety” certainly is. Even if the reviews sucked.  And Star Trek Into Darkness certainly qualifies. Hey, he showed up in Star Trek: Enterprise! 
  • Born June 24, 1950 — Mercedes Lackey, 73. There’s a line on the Wiki page that says she writes nearly six books a year. Impressive. She’s certainly got a lot of really good series out there including the vast number that are set in the Valdemar universe. I like her Bedlam’s Bard series better. She wrote the first few in this series with Ellen Gunn and the latter in the series with Rosemary Edgehill. The SERRAted Edge series, Elves with race cars, is kinda fun too. Larry Dixon, her husband, and Mark Shepherd were co-writers of these. 
  • Born June 24, 1950 — Nancy Allen, 73. Officer Anne Lewis in the Robocop franchise. (I like all three films.) her first genre role was not in Carrie as Chris Hargensen, but in a best forgotten a film year earlier (Forced Entry) as a unnamed hitchhiker. She shows up in fan favorite The Philadelphia Experiment as Allison Hayes and I see her in Poltergeist III as Patricia Wilson-Gardner (seriously — a third film in this franchise?). She’s in the direct to video Children of the Corn 666: Isaac’s Return as Rachel Colby. (Oh that sounds awful.) And she was in an Outer Limits episode, “Valerie 23”, as Rachel Rose. 
  • Born June 24, 1961 — Iain Glen, 62. Scots actor who played as Ser Jorah Mormont in Game of Thrones, he’s also  well known for his roles as Dr. Alexander Isaacs/Tyrant in the Resident Evil franchise; and he played the role of Father Octavian, leader of a sect of clerics who were on a mission against the Weeping Angels in “The Time of Angels” and “Flesh and Stone”, both Eleventh Doctor stories.
  • Born June 24, 1982 — Lotte Verbeek, 41. You most likely know her as Ana Jarvis, the wife of Edwin Jarvis, who befriends Carter on Agent Carter. She got interesting genre history including Geillis Duncan on the Outlander series, Helena in The Last Witch Hunter, Aisha in the dystopian political thriller Division 19 film and a deliberately undefined role in the cross-world Counterpart series. 
  • Born June 24, 1988 — Kasey Lansdale, 35. Daughter of Joe Lansdale. Publicist at Tachyon Books and a really nice person. Really she is. And yes, she’s one of us having written The Cases of Dana Roberts series, and edited two anthologies, Fresh Blood & Old Bones and Impossible Monsters. In her father’s Hap and Leonard collection Of Mice and Minestrone, she has “Good Eats: The Recipes of Hap and Leonard”. 
  • Born June 24, 1994 — Nicole Muñoz, 29. You’ll perhaps best remember her for role as Christie Tarr (née McCawley) in the Defiance series. Her first role was playing a Little Girl in Fantastic Four. Likewise she was A Kid with Braces in The Last Mimzy, and yes, Another Girl, in Hardwired. The latter was written by Michael Hurst, and has apparently nothing to with the Walter Jon Williams novel of the same name.

(9) COMICS SECTION.

Yo_runner reveals the superpower of reading.

(10) NO ONE WILL WANT TO LEAVE. Architectural Digest takes readers to “The 9 Most Beautiful Bookstores in the World”. One is in Chengdu, China.

Dujiangyan Zhongshuge Bookstore (Chengdu, China)

When Dujiangyan Zhongshuge Bookstore opened in 2020, it was hard to escape news coverage of the surreal masterpiece. The company is known for its maximalist bookstores, and this location—with its tower book spirals and sculptural shelves—was no exception. In her book, Stamp recommends a visit to a similarly extravagent sister store, the Taizhou City branch.

(11) CHANNELING THE FUTURE. MeTV analyzes “Five predictions from ‘TV of Tomorrow’ that came true, and five that didn’t”.

3. Interior Design

While maybe not to the extent in this exaggerated cartoon, many rooms today are constructed with special attention given to the furniture’s placement in relation to the TV. While most of us aren’t installing a bathtub in the living room, televisions are nonetheless often the anchor, or focal point, in a room’s design. 

(12) PRIME DIRECTIVE. [Item by Mike Kennedy.] You’ve probably heard that Amazon Prime Day is coming on July 11-12th. A few Prime Day sale prices are reserved as “invitation only“. (You can request, but are not guaranteed, an invitation.)

This year, a trio of those deals have genre connections — stands for the 4th & 5th generation Echo Dot styled as Darth Vader, a Storm Trooper, or the Mandalorian. They’ll be 25% off the usual price. Check them out here.

(13) THE DINOS MAY BE DEAD BUT THEIR BONES STILL MOVE. Science News investigates “How ‘parachute science’ in paleontology plays out in 3 countries”.

In the Cretaceous Period, roughly 100 million years ago, the dinosaur Ubirajara jubatus probably turned heads with its feathers, shoulder rods and flashy displays. In 2020, the petite theropod made headlines as the first feathered dinosaur discovered in the Southern Hemisphere (SN: 12/14/20).

Today, the dinosaur is notorious for different reasons: Shortly after the news of its discovery, its backstory quickly drew some red flags.

The fossil had been unearthed in Brazil’s Araripe Basin, yet no Brazilian researchers were involved in its study. The researchers initially said they found the fossil in a Brazilian museum and brought it to a German museum in 1995 for further study, yet that museum later revealed it bought the fossil in 2009 from a private company. That company imported the fossil to Germany in 2006, yet it’s not clear if that import was legal.

U. jubatus isn’t unique in this sense. A supposed four-legged, 120-million-year-old snake (Tetrapodophis amplectus), for example, also made an unsanctioned trip from Brazil to Germany (SN: 7/23/15). And then there’s a roughly 90-million-year-old shark (Aquilolamna milarcae) from Mexico with a fantastic wingspan, which may have been purchased by a private collector through a legal loophole  (SN: 3/18/21).

These and many other cases of fossil fishiness are part of a long trend of what some call “parachute science” (or in this case “parachute paleontology”) and “scientific colonialism.”

These umbrella terms describe practices where scientists from high-income countries travel to middle- and low-income countries to study or collect fossils and fail to collaborate with or involve local experts. Or they skirt local laws around fossil collection and export. Sometimes the fossils are removed from their home countries under dubious or outright illegal circumstances. In other cases, the scientists purchase fossils from dealers, smugglers or private collectors in their own countries. The trend is linked to the legacy of colonialism, as many of the lower-income countries also happen to be former European colonies, while the higher-income ones are former colonizers….

(14) VIDEO OF THE DAY. “We Don’t Talk About Pluto” is a parody of “We Don’t Talk About Bruno” from Disney’s Encanto. Written in tribute to the Pluto formerly known as “planet”.

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

Pixel Scroll 6/5/23 A Baby Pixel Is So Cute In Its Scroller Pushed Along By Its Nanny Filer

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(1) 2025 WORLDCON SITE SELECTION UPDATE. The Seattle 2025 Worldcon Bid News for June reports theirs was the only bid filed, and the only one that will be on the official ballot. (If another one appears it could still be a write-in.)

Seattle filed its site selection paperwork in April which was acknowledged and approved! According to the World Science Fiction Society (WSFS) Constitution, bid documents for opposing bids must be filed no later than 180 days before the opening of the administering convention. No other bids were filed, so Seattle will be the only bid on the printed ballot. We could not be more excited! Supporting memberships are still on sale through our website, and we hope to have strong voter turnout in October.

… Watch for announcements on how to vote in site selection remotely. Barring an unlikely loss to a write-in campaign, we also plan to sell upgrades to supporting members who do not participate in site selection which allow them to purchase attending memberships to the Seattle Worldcon for a similar cost. Stay tuned for more!

(2) DROPPED LEAVES ARE HEARD FROM. At Writer Beware, Victoria Strauss shares a group statement provided to her by 17 current and former clients of New Leaf Literary. “Call For Change: Current and Former New Leaf Literary & Media Authors Speak Out”.

…Agents parting ways with agencies is not uncommon; however, it is inexcusable for an agency of New Leaf’s caliber to lack clear internal and external protocols for such situations….

(3) SFF EVENT IN BERLIN. Cora Buhlert’s conreport is up: “Cora’s Adventures at Metropol Con in Berlin, Part 2: The Con”. Here’s an excerpt covering a panel about sf in divided postwar Germany.

…The panel was very interesting and went into what distinguished East German science fiction from West German and Western science fiction in general. One of the points made was that since East Germany has an official vision of what the future would look like, namely a Socialist utopia, the questions East German science fiction asked was not so much, “What will the future look like?”, because they already knew, but “How do we get there?” and “How do we do this?” The above-mentioned novel Andymon by Karlheinz and Angela Steinmüller is actually a good example for this, because it’s about some young people landing on a planet they’re supposed to colonise, only that the planet is not as advertised, so they have to figure out how to make it habitable anyway.

Emma Braslavsky pointed out that by the 1980s, when East Germany was visibly declining and falling apart (which tracks with what Aunt Metel told me, namely that East Germany continued improve and progress, albeit slowly, into the 1970s, then it stagnated and gradually fell apart), the Socialist Utopia was more of a promise, much like Christmas. Just sleep one more night and Christmas – Socialism is here and everything will be wonderful. Emma Braslavsky also noted that when she watched things like Star Trek on West German TV (a large part of East Germany could and did watch West German TV), someone muttered some complete nonsense like “Reverse the polarity” and it actually worked.

Even though the panelists grew up in two very different countries and systems, there were some things that united all of them. For example, it was never easy to be a budding SF fan in a small rural village or town, whether in East or West Germany, because library selections were limited and books or comics not always easily available in local shops….

(4) CATHERINE LUNDOFF Q&A. Oliver Brackenbury’s So I’m Writing a Novel… podcast devotes episode 66 to the “Queen of Swords Press”.

When most of us think about publishing we tend to think of one of the Big Five (Four? How many are we down to now?), but there is a whole world of smaller, independent publishers to explore!

Wanting to learn more about that world, Oliver spoke with Catherine Lundoff about her own experiences launching and running Queen of Swords Press.

(5) AUTHORS GUILD RECOMMENDS NEW AI CONTRACT CLAUSES. The Authors Guild is introducing four new model clauses concerning AI to its Model Trade Book Contract and Model Literary Translation Contract. “AG Introduces New Publishing Agreement Clauses Concerning AI”.

…In addition to the recent clause preventing the use of books in training generative AI without an author’s express permission, the new clauses require an author’s written consent for their publisher to use AI-generated book translations, audiobook narration, or cover art. These clauses can benefit publishers and the publishing industry at large by maintaining the high quality craftsmanship that consumers are used to.

The Authors Guild also urges publishers to identify any books that contain a significant amount of AI-generated text. This summer, the Guild will be publishing AI guidelines for authors and publishers containing each of these conditions.

The purpose of these demands is to prevent the use of AI to replace human creators. The Authors Guild strongly believes that human writing, narration, and translation are vastly superior to their AI mimics. Moreover, as an ethical matter, the Authors Guild opposes relying on these tools to replace human creators, in part because current AI content generators have largely been trained on pre-existing works without consent. The Guild stands in solidarity with human creators in other industries, who like authors, face professional threats from AI-generated content flooding the markets for their work….

We encourage publishers to adopt these clauses and authors and agents to request that they be added to their contracts.

Clause Relating to Authors’ Use of AI
Author shall not be required to use generative AI or to work from AI-generated text. Authors shall disclose to Publisher if any AI-generated text is included in the submitted manuscript, and may not include more than [5%] AI-generated text. 

Audio Book Clause (For Use With Audiobook Grants)
With respect to any audiobook created or distributed under this Agreement, Publisher shall not permit or cause the Work to be narrated by artificial intelligence technologies or other non-human narrator, without Author’s prior and express written consent.

Translation Clause (For Use With Grants of Translation Rights)
With respect to any translations created or distributed under this Agreement, Publisher shall not translate or permit or cause the Work to be translated into another language with artificial intelligence technologies or other non-human translator, without Author’s prior and express written consent. For purposes of clarification, a human translator may use artificial intelligence technologies as a tool to assist in the translation, provided that the translation substantially comprises human creation and the human translator has control over, and reviews and approves, each word in the translation.

Cover Design Clause (For Book Contracts)
Publisher agrees not to use AI-generated images, artwork, design, and other visual elements for the book cover or interior artwork without Author’s prior express approval. For purposes of clarification, a human designer may use artificial intelligence technologies as a tool to assist in the creation of artwork for the Work, provided that the human artist has control over the final artwork and the artwork substantially comprises human creation.

(6) GAMES KIDS PLAYED. Cora Buhlert’s new “Non-Fiction Spotlight today” is for a book called D20 or Die!: Memories of Old School Role-Playing Games from Today’s Grown-Up Kids, edited by Jim Beard.

Why should SFF fans in general and Hugo voters in particular read this book?

Because no matter what the theme is, they will see themselves in the personal essays. That’s the beauty of these books, I think, that we all have these shared experiences and we like to see echoes of our own lives in what we read. Beyond that, if you love RPGs and began playing as a kid, you’re going to love this book.

(7) CLARKE CONTENDERS. The list of 97 books submitted for this year’s Arthur C. Clarke Award has been posted: “5 judges, 988,172,368 possible shortlist combinations”.

As is now traditional, we’re publishing below the full list of eligible titles received by the Clarke Award from which our official shortlist selection is decided.

This is released as an open-source resource to showcase the breadth and diversity of UK science fiction literature as part of its ongoing commitment to self-accountability and supporting equity, diversity and inclusion (EDI) across the publishing industry and science fiction community.

This year’s judging panel received 97 eligible titles submitted by 40 UK publishing imprints and independent authors.

The judging panel for the Arthur C. Clarke Award 2023 are:

(8) SPOCK FAMILY TREE. All I can say is that I’m glad this isn’t a trivia quiz. “Star Trek: Every Spock Family Member, Explained” at ScreenRant.

The Vulcan known as Spock was one of the most important characters in Star Trek, and many of his family members also played key roles in the franchise. Ever since his debut in Star Trek: The Original Series, Spock has been an integral part of Star Trek lore, and so has his kin. As the series progressed, more and more of Spock’s family tree began to be fleshed out, and it was clear that Spock was one of the most connected individuals in the Alpha Quadrant. From villains to ambassadors, Spock’s family was just as important as he was in shaping the franchise….

Here’s one member you might have overlooked.

Perrin

When Sarek returned in The Next Generation, he was accompanied by a new wife who filled much the same role that Amanda did. Because of the large gap in the Star Trek timeline between TOS and TNG, it could be assumed that Amanda died of old age, and Perrin, a human woman, eventually married Sarek. Because of Sarek’s advanced age, she was a companion and caretaker to him, and she was very protective of his important image as he began to succumb to Bendii syndrome in TNG season 3, episode 23, “Sarek”. Unlike Amanda though, Perrin did not get personally involved in Sarek and Spock’s affairs.

(9) WHO NEEDS MARKETING? There’s a whole book blaming insufficient marketing for the failure of John Carter to become a blockbuster, which might make you wonder if this plan will work. “Studio Ghibli to Release Miyazaki’s Final Film With No Trailer, No Marketing” – The Hollywood Reporter explains why.

… The forthcoming film, which opens in Japan on July 14, is easily the most anticipated movie coming to Japanese theaters in years — and exceedingly little is known about it. (U.S. and international release dates for the film have not yet been set.)

Ghibli previously described the film as “a grand fantasy” loosely inspired by Japanese author Genzaburo Yoshino’s 1937 novel How Do You Live?, a coming-of-age story about the emotional and philosophical development of a young boy after the death of his father….

In the interview, [lead producer Toshio] Suzuki also contrasted Ghibli’s approach for How Do You Live? with the usual marketing methods of Hollywood.

“There’s an American movie — ah, I almost said the title out loud! — coming out this summer around the same time [as How Do You Live?],” he said. “They’ve made three trailers for it, and released them one at a time. If you watch all three, you know everything that’s going to happen in that movie. So how do moviegoers feel about that? There must be people, who, after watching all the trailers, don’t want to actually go see the movie. So, I wanted to do the opposite of that.”…

(10) MEMORY LANE.

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

Elizabeth Bear’s “Tideline” reminds me how great the short stories are by a writer whose novels I usually am reading, such as the ever so excellent White Space series.

This story was first published in Asimov’s Science Fiction in their June 2007 issue. It’s been reprinted a number of times and Primes Books published it in the Shoggoths in Bloom collection they released which is available from the usual suspects at a very nice price. 

It’s also in The Best of Elizabeth Bear from Subterranean Press which I need not say will set you back many a penny.

The audio series StarShipSofa in their number thirty-nine production has it as the lead piece here.

And now the Beginning to this story…

Chalcedony wasn’t built for crying. She didn’t have it in her, not unless her tears were cold tapered glass droplets annealed by the inferno heat that had crippled her. 

Such tears as that might slide down her skin over melted sensors to plink unfeeling on the sand. And if they had, she would have scooped them up, with all the other battered pretties, and added them to the wealth of trash jewels that swung from the nets reinforcing her battered carapace. 

They would have called her salvage, if there were anyone left to salvage her. But she was the last of the war machines, a three-legged oblate teardrop as big as a main battle tank, two big grabs and one fine manipulator folded like a spider’s palps beneath the turreted head that finished her pointed end, her polyceramic armor spiderwebbed like shatterproof glass. Unhelmed by her remote masters, she limped along the beach, dragging one fused limb. She was nearly derelict. 

The beach was where she met Belvedere.

Butterfly coquinas unearthed by retreating breakers squirmed into wet grit under Chalcedony’s trailing limb. One of the rear pair, it was less of a nuisance on packed sand. It worked all right as a pivot, and as long as she stayed off rocks, there were no obstacles to drag it over. 

As she struggled along the tideline, she became aware of someone watching. She didn’t raise her head. Her chassis was equipped with targeting sensors which locked automatically on the ragged figure crouched by a weathered rock. Her optical input was needed to scan the tangle of seaweed and driftwood, Styrofoam and sea glass that marked high tide. 

He watched her all down the beach, but he was unarmed, and her algorithms didn’t deem him a threat. Just as well. She liked the weird flat-topped sandstone boulder he crouched beside. 

The next day, he watched again. It was a good day; she found a moonstone, some rock crystal, a bit of red-orange pottery, and some sea glass worn opalescent by the tide.

(11) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

  • Born June 5, 1908 — John Russell Fearn. British author and one of the first British writers to appear in American pulp magazines. A prolific author, he also published novels as Vargo Statten and with various pseudonyms such as Thornton Ayre, Polton Cross, Geoffrey Armstrong and others. As himself, I see his first story as being The Intelligence Gigantic published in Amazing Stories in 1933. His Golden Amazon series of novels ran to over to two dozen titles, and the Clayton Drew Mars Adventure series that only ran to four novels. (Died 1960.)
  • Born June 5, 1928 — Robert Lansing. He was secret agent Gary Seven in the “Assignment: Earth” on Star Trek. The episode was a backdoor pilot for a series that would have starred Lansing and Teri Garr, but the series never happened.  He of course appeared on other genre series such as The Twilight Zone, Journey to the Unknown, Thriller and Alfred Hitchcock Presents. (Died 1994.)
  • Born June 5, 1931 — Barbara Paul. Writer of mysteries, some twenty or so, and a handful of genre novels. Her novels feature in-jokes such as her Full Frontal Murder mystery novel which uses names from Blake’s 7. Genre wise, she’s written five SF novels including a Original Series Trek novel, The Three-Minute Universe, which is available at the usual suspects. (Died 2022.)
  • Born June 5, 1946 — John Bach, 77. Einstein on Farscape, the Gondorian Ranger Madril in the second and third movies of The Lord of the Rings film trilogy. Also a British body guard on The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian. And he was the body double for shooting of Saruman in place of Christopher Lee, who was unable to fly to New Zealand for principal photography on The Hobbit film series.
  • Born June 5, 1953 — Kathleen Kennedy, 70. Film producer responsible for E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, her first film, and later produced the Jurassic Park franchise.  She’s been involved in over sixty films, I’d say of which at least half are genre, starting with Raiders of the Lost Ark as an associate to Steven Spielberg. Amblin Films with her husband and Spielberg has produced many of the genre’s best loved films.
  • Born June 5, 1960 — Margo Lanagan, 63. Tender Morsels won a World Fantasy Award for best novel, and Sea-Hearts won the same for Best Novella. She’s an alumna of the Clarion West Writers Workshop In 1999 and returned as a teacher in 2011 and 2013.
  • Born June 5, 1976 — Lauren Beukes, 47. South African writer and scriptwriter. Moxyland, her first novel, is a cyberpunk novel set in a future Cape Town.  Zoo City, a hardboiled thriller with fantasy elements is set in a re-imagined Johannesburg. It won both the Arthur C. Clarke Award and a Kitschies Red Tentacle Award for best novel. (I love the name of the latter award!) And The Shining Girls would win her an August Derleth Award for Best Horror Novel. Afterland was on the long list for a NOMMO. Much of her short fiction is collected in Slipping: Stories, Essays, & Other Writing. 

(12) COMICS SECTION.

  • Sheldon witnesses an Uber reservation being placed for “Mister Gandalf”.

(13) IT’S CRACKERS. Although visiting Space Cowboy Books might be a better reason for driving to Joshua Tree, while you are in town you could pick up a snack: “Cheez-It Gas Station Pops Up in California Desert” at Food & Wine.

…From Monday, June 5 through Sunday, June 11, anyone who needs a road trip snack-break can visit the Cheez-It Stop to pick up several bags of orange crackers. The Cheez-It Stop has been equipped with the world’s first (and so far, its only) Cheez-It Pump which will spray bags of Cheez-Its through your open car window. And best of all, it’s completely free to take advantage of the pump and feed your Cheez-It cravings. 

Regardless, you just have seven days to visit the Cheez-It Stop before it disappears into the desert’s memory. It can be found at 61943 Twentynine Palms Highway, Joshua Tree, California and will be open between 10 a.m. and 6 p.m. PT every day between now and Sunday.

(14) HITS THE SPOT. Food & Wine also tells how “Wes Anderson and Dogfish Head Collaborate on ‘Asteroid City’ Beer”

…The Delaware-based beermaker has brewed up its own homage to the film called Asteroid City Lager, and it collaborated with the director himself to design the label. According to Dogfish Head, Asteroid City Lager was brewed with a combination of regeneratively grown pilsner malt, Tuxpeno corn malt, and Michigan-grown Zuper Saazer hops. The beer was then finished with a Pennsylvania lager yeast, which the brewery says is “a nod to the 1950s era during which Asteroid City takes place.” 

… The beer’s eye-catching label pays tribute to the film’s desert landscapes and to the Asteroid City billboard that shows the fictional town’s biggest tourist attraction, a giant crater left by a meteor….

(15) CHOCOLATE ORTHODOXY. I can confirm this will be a controversial opinion in our neck of the woods.

(16) WOOLLY BULLY. [Item by Michael Toman.} Should we fear the “footfall” of a “Mega Bo Peep?” “Asteroid the size of 28 sheep to ram past the Earth” reports The Jerusalem Post.

Baaaad news? How big is the asteroid coming toward Earth in 2023?

Asteroid 2023 HO18 is estimated by NASA to have a diameter of as much as 50 meters. In imperial measurements for American readers, that would be 164 feet or just under 55 yards.

But to use a more creative metric, consider the humble domesticated sheep (Ovis aries). These animals are widespread throughout the world and while there are a wide number of breeds, they are all still part of the same species.

(17) HELLO, COUSIN. Smithsonian Magazine wonders whether “A 146,000-Year-Old Fossil Dubbed ‘Dragon Man’ Might Be One of Our Closest Relatives”.

Three years ago, a Chinese farmer made an unusual donation to a university museum—a giant, nearly intact human skull with strange proportions and an unusual backstory. The man’s family had been hiding the fossil since it was unearthed at a construction site in Harbin nearly 90 years ago.

After geochemical detective work to locate where the fossil was likely found, and painstaking comparison of its distinctive features with those of other early humans, some of the scientists investigating the find believe the cranium from Harbin could represent an entirely new human species—Homo longi or “Dragon Man.” If so, they further suggest it might even be the human lineage most closely related to ourselves.

“The discovery of the Harbin cranium and our analyses suggest that there is a third lineage of archaic human [that] once lived in Asia, and this lineage has [a] closer relationship with H. sapiens than the Neanderthals,” says Xijun Ni, a paleoanthropologist at the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Hebei GEO University. If so, that would make the strange skull a close relative indeed since most humans today still have significant amounts of Neanderthal DNA from repeated interbreeding between our species….

(18) ANOTHER EARLY HOMININ BREAKTHROUGH. “Homo naledi had a brain one-third the size of humans but displayed intelligence far beyond, according to new discovery” – ABC News has the story.

Bigger brains may not equate to higher intelligence after all, according to a remarkable discovery about an early hominin.

Homo naledi, a hominin discovered in the Rising Star cave system in Africa’s Cradle of Humankind in 2013, had human-like hands and feet but a brain a third of the size of humans — a characteristic researchers previously attributed to a marker of far less intelligence than its Homo sapien relatives.

But the assertion that bigger brains make for a smarter species may have been disestablished now that scientists have made a harrowing journey into the Rising Star cave and discovered that the species — which lived about 335,000 to 236,000 years ago — buried its dead and marked the graves. It is the first non-human species in history known to do so, paleoanthropologist and National Geographic Explorer in Residence Lee Berger told ABC News.

…The researchers began to hypothesize that Homo naledi buried its dead during continued excavations in 2018 and in July 2022, those hunches were not only proven but amplified once Berger and his team found skeletal remains of Homo naledi and then carvings on the wall above them to mark those laid to rest there.

The symbols included triangles, squares and a sort-of “hashtag” sign, as in two cross-hatching equal signs, Berger said. However, it is unclear what these carvings meant, and researchers will be delving into whether there is a “random chance” that Homo naledi used the same symbols as humans or if they were obtained from some sort of shared ancestry.

(19) REH SCHOLARSHIP. A video of the “Glenn Lord Symposium”, i.e. the academic track of the 2023 Robert E. Howard Days, is available for viewing on YouTube. 

1)Dr. Dierk Gunther, Professor of English Literature at Gakushuin Women’s College, Tokyo His presentation: “Through the Eyes of an Ophirean Woman: Thoughts Concerning the Racism of Robert E. Howard’s The Vale of Lost Women.” 2) Brian Murphy, Howard Scholar His presentation: “Far Countries of the Mind: The Frontier Fantasy of Robert E. Howard.” 3) Dr. Willard Oliver, Professor of Criminal Justice at Sam Houston State University, Huntsville His presentation: “Robert E. Howard and Oil Booms: Crime, Disorder and Reality.”

(20) VIDEO OF THE DAY. “You Won’t Believe Who Did the LEGO Sequence in ‘Across the Spider-Verse’” says Collider. But you will.

…After Collider’s special screening, a member of the audience asked Dos Santos how hard it was to put the LEGO dimension together. Surprisingly, Dos Santos revealed the whole scene was created by the 14-year-old Youtuber LegoMe_TheOG, known for recreating movies and TV shows trailer and full scenes with LEGO pieces. A few months before Across the Universe hit theaters, LegoMe_TheOG made a viral recreation of the movie’s first teaser. After that, producers Phil Lord and Christopher Miller brought him to the project….

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