23 Pixel’s Just Another Word For Nothing Left To Scroll

Posted on December 28, 2023 by Mike Glyer

(1) LET LOOSE THE LAWYERS. The New York Times would like to be the first to tell you: “The Times Sues OpenAI and Microsoft Over A.I. Use of Copyrighted Work”.

The New York Times sued OpenAI and Microsoft for copyright infringement on Wednesday, opening a new front in the increasingly intense legal battle over the unauthorized use of published work to train artificial intelligence technologies.

The Times is the first major American media organization to sue the companies, the creators of ChatGPT and other popular A.I. platforms, over copyright issues associated with its written works. The lawsuit, filed in Federal District Court in Manhattan, contends that millions of articles published by The Times were used to train automated chatbots that now compete with the news outlet as a source of reliable information.

The suit does not include an exact monetary demand. But it says the defendants should be held responsible for “billions of dollars in statutory and actual damages” related to the “unlawful copying and use of The Times’s uniquely valuable works.” It also calls for the companies to destroy any chatbot models and training data that use copyrighted material from The Times….

(2) I FOUGHT THE LAW AND THE LAW WON. Meanwhile, the Guardian ponders the corporate trauma Disney will (or won’t) suffer as the “Copyright for original Mickey Mouse persona to run out 1 January 2024”.

…The loss of exclusive rights to the historically important first draft of a character who went on to capture the hearts of millions worldwide will cut deep, as proven by the decades of legal maneuvers the company made to try to preserve them.

The episode is also reflective of the turbulent waters in which Disney currently finds itself, including a bruising culture war fight with Florida’s Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, over LGBTQ+ rights, and strong financial headwinds from its loss-making streaming service Disney+, as well as a worrying series of movie flops.

“I always say any of us going past 100 years will usually have issues, but this whole original Mickey Mouse thing is something to think about as we look at Disney going into its second century with a good deal of troubles,” said Robert Thompson, a trustee professor of television, radio and film, and founding director of the Bleier center for television and popular culture at Syracuse University.

“Disney has a lot of things to worry about right now, and the expiration of Steamboat Willie’s Mickey Mouse probably shouldn’t be on the top of their list. The original Mickey isn’t the one we all think of and have on our T-shirts or pillowcases up in the attic someplace.

“Yet, symbolically of course, copyright is important to Disney and it has been very careful about their copyrights to the extent that laws have changed to protect them. This is the only place I know that some obscure high school in the middle of nowhere can put on The Lion King and the Disney copyright people show up.”…

(3) CREATING GAME CHARACTERS AS TRANS OUTLET. “Video Games Let Them Choose a Role. Their Transgender Identities Flourished.” The New York Times says, “Transgender people have turned to games, some with robust character creators, as places where they can safely express themselves.”

Nearly a decade before Anna Anthropy came out as a transgender woman, she was wearing a dress in the world of Animal Crossing on the Nintendo GameCube, leaving virtual bread crumbs for her family about information she was not prepared to share as a teenager.

“We were all playing in the same town, and I had chosen a female character,” said Anthropy, 40, now a professor of game design at DePaul University, in Chicago. “It wasn’t something we talked about, but it was my way of seeing a version of my family where I was the right gender.”

More than a dozen transgender and nonbinary people said in interviews that video games were one of the safest spaces to explore their queer identities, given the array of tools to modify a character’s appearance and a virtual world that readily accepts those changes.

Character creation tools in role-playing games like Starfield and Baldur’s Gate 3 are making fewer gendered assumptions than in the past, giving players more freedom to select pronouns, shape their bodies and select a vocal range. Those new options are leading some players to spend hours creating their virtual avatars….

(4) THE KING TOPS THE DOCTOR? UNBEEVABLE. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] When it comes to Christmas, if Nineteenth Century Britain gave us the Christmas Card then arguably the Twentieth Century gave us the tradition of watching TV at Christmas (as well as throughout much of the rest of the year). So, of 68 million in the United Kingdom, what were the Brits watching this Christmas day?

Well, according to B. A. R. B., (Broadcasters Audience Research Board) the UK broadcasting ratings bureau, the most watched programme over the 2023 Christmas was the King’s Speech. This is an annual address from the Monarch and this year it was King Charles III’s second such address. Some 7.5 million tuned in live (not counting catch-up viewers). The King was broadcast on both BBC1 (the UK’s principal state sponsored terrestrial channel) and simultaneously with ITV 1 (Independent Television) Britain’s leading commercial terrestrial channel.

Second was BBC1’s Strictly Come Dancing, a dancing competition, which garnered a little over 5 million viewers.

Third, was a programme that was broadcast immediately after Strictly on BBC1, so no need to get up from the sofa as the turkey with all the trimmings digested. It was Doctor Who and Ncuti Gatwa’s first solo outing as the new Doctor. Some 4.75 million tuned in to see him tackle the Goblin King. (Again, this figure does not include catch-up viewers.)

Of course Doctor Who was also broadcast in other countries including N. America’s Mega-Cities, so the global viewing figure would be much higher.

(5) THE APPAREL OF AFROFUTURISM. Visit the “Ruth E. Carter: Afrofuturism in Costume Design” exhibit at The Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History in Detroit anytime through March 31.

This new exhibition features over 60 of the Two-Time Academy Award winning costumer designer’s original designs from iconic films such as Black Panther, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, Malcolm X, Do The Right Thing, and more.

(6) MAN OF STEEL, FEET OF CLAY. [Item by Olav Rokne.] Polygon makes some good points about the phenomenon of “superhero fatigue,” which they argue has more to do with ill-considered studio decisions than with the core idea of superpowered guys in capes having adventures on screen. “People aren’t tired of superheroes, they’re tired of bad superhero movies”.

Companies considered the simple existence of an extended universe and the affection for recognizable characters as a core selling point, when it is, and should always be, the sauce and not the meat.

(7) FIFTEENTH DOCTOR, FOURTEENTH SERIES. “Doctor Who Series 14 Trailer Confirms a Returning RTD Character and Release Date Window “ at Den of Geek.

The Fifteenth Doctor era of Doctor Who is well underway with Ncuti Gatwa‘s first full episode helming the TARDIS. This year’s Christmas Special, “The Church on Ruby Road,” saw the Doctor not only face off with mischievous Goblins with a taste for baby scones (that is, scones made out of babies) but also meet his new companion, Ruby Sunday (Millie Gibson), who brings plenty of her own mysteries to the show. Who are her birth parents, what does her neighbor Mrs. Flood have to do with the upcoming season’s overarching plot, and what’s going on with the Hooded Woman who dropped her off at the church 24 years ago?

All questions we’ll have to wait to have answered in series 14, which is officially being marketed as Doctor Who season 1, marking the start of a new production era for the show, with returning showrunner Russell T Davies back at the helm. Fortunately, we won’t have to wait too long for season 1/series 14 to hit our screens. The very first trailer for the Fifteenth Doctor’s debut series confirms that the show will return in May 2024 with eight new episodes. Give the short trailer a watch below…

(8) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

Born December 28, 1932 — Nichelle Nichols. (Died 2022.) So let’s us honor Nichelle Nichols on her Birthday. I’ll get her SF work eventually but she’s got a fascinating story long before that. She started off as a dancer and a singer in the bands of Duke Ellington and Lionel Hampton, very impressive indeed. This photo is her as a singer with Duke Ellington.

In 1959, she appeared as the principal dancer in Carmen Jones and performed in a New York production of Porgy and Bess.

Did I mention Hugh Hefner briefly employed her to sing at his Chicago club? Well he did. No idea if she also danced there.

Now we come to the Sixties.

It said that she came to attention of Roddenberry when she was cast as Norma Bartlett in the “To Set It Right Episode” of his The Lieutenant military series.

(The series was thick of actors who would later appear on Trek. The lead here, second lieutenant William Tiberius Rice, played by Gary Lockwood, who will appear in “Where No Man Has Gone Before”. Majel Barrett, Leonard Nimoy, and Walter Koenig also appeared as guest stars, along with Ricardo Montalbán and Paul Comi, of the “Balance of Terror” episode.)

She did an interesting bit of genre work appearing in the Tarzan’s Deadly Silence is a 1970 adventure film composed of an edited two-parter of Ron Ely’s Tarzan series released as a feature. The actual original air dates were October 28, 1966 and November 4, 1966. She played Ruana. I was even able to find a high-resolution image of her on location on Hawaii.

Now Star Trek. What a wonderful character Lieutenant Nyota Uhura was! And yes, I realize that she wasn’t called by that full name until William Rotsler created the name it for Star Trek II Biographies, his 1982 licensed tie-in book.

There’s little I could say here about her Trek years that haven’t been said before. She had one of the best roles on the series bar none and the writers wrote her wonderfully. The films give her an ever more active role and I applaud the writers for doing this..

The films give her a more active role and I applaud the writers for doing this.

She did appear possibly in several fan video fictions, the first being Star Trek: Of Gods and Men in which she was Captain, and a narrator role in Star Trek First Frontier (but not onscreen). Here she is as captain in Star Trek: Of Gods and Men, and yes, that is Walter Koenig as well.

But you want to see her given a more expanded role as a character in the real Trek universe, that’s after the original series was long off the air. It comes into play in the matter of a hidden Star Trek: Picard season two Easter egg which reveals that she has become a starship captain after The Undiscovered Country.

(9) COMICS SECTION.

Peanuts from March 1, 1955 is the first day of 4 Martian jokes. (March 3 is my favorite.)
Pickles asks a sci-fi question.

(10) OLIVE & POPEYE. [Item by Daniel Dern.] ComicsKingdom takes you “Inside the Kingdom with Olive & Popeye: A Heartfelt Chat with the Creators of the New Comic Sensation”

Olive & Popeye are back with a new twice-weekly webcomic here at Comics Kingdom, where fans are family. The strip stars two of the most iconic and classic characters that have been around for nearly 100 years, with a rich history in comics.

Olive and Popeye, published twice weekly, is done alternately by webcomic creator Randy Milholland and comic writer and artist Emi Burdge (following Shadia Amin’s departure).

The new weekly comic was originally penned by Shadia Amin (Aggretsuko, Spider-Ham) and Randy Milholland (Popeye, Something Positive) and centers on both beloved pop-culture characters and their individual adventures, including Olive’s yoga classes, or Popeye’s messy family dynamic, which usually leads to brawls.

Comics Kingdom offers a 7-day free trial period — or (as of December 27, 2023, “four months free.” (To all Comics Kingdom’s strips etc., not just O & P.)

Or, if your library offers Hoopla access, Hoopla includes a Comics Kingdom Binge Pass (good for seven days).

(11) DRESSED FOR BATTLE SUCCESS. [Item by Steven French.] From Prince Caspian to Assassin’s Creed: on the use of brigandines in fantasy. “Brigandines” at The Secret Library, the Leeds Libraries Heritage Blog. There is a photo gallery at the link.

… A brigandine is a form of armour that became popular in Europe in the 15^th century. Constructed of overlapping plates that were riveted to fabric, it offered more flexible protection than plate armour, and could be produced at a lower cost….

(12) WEARING PROTECTION. Incidentally, here’s a whole article (from 2017) about “The armor sets of ‘Game of Thrones,’ ranked”, which are many and varied, at CNET.

Ranking the armor sets on “Game of Thrones”? Not exactly a walk in the water gardens of Dorne. But we gave it a shot anyway. Here are 21 different armor styles, ranked from worst to best.

Starting with No. 21: The Sons of the Harpy get points for being dramatic but their attire is going to do little to shield from them injuries on any actual battlefield….

(13) GONE IN A SPLASH. “Historic SpaceX Falcon 9 booster topples over and is lost at sea” reports Spaceflight Now. Without knowing what they expected, nineteen successful missions sounds like impressive longevity to me.

A piece of America’s space history is now on the ocean’s floor. During its return voyage to Port Canaveral in Central Florida, a SpaceX Falcon 9 first stage booster toppled over and broke in half.

This particular booster, tail number B1058, was coming back from its record-breaking 19th mission when it had its fatal fall. The rocket lifted off from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station on Dec. 23 carrying 23 Starlink satellites. The booster made a successful landing eight and a half minutes after launch on the drone ship ‘Just Read the Instructions’ which was stationed east of the Bahamas. SpaceX said in a statement on social media that it succumbed to “high winds and waves.”…

… The company stated that “Newer Falcon boosters have upgraded landing legs with the capability to self-level and mitigate this type of issue.

In a separate post, Kiko Deontchev, the Vice President of Launch for SpaceX, elaborated by added that while they “mostly outfitted” the rest of the operational Falcon booster fleet, B1058 was left as it was, “given its age.” The rocket “met its fate when it hit intense wind and waves resulting in failure of a partially secured [octo-grabber] less than 100 miles from home.”…

(14) CYBORG? [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] A hybrid bio-computer – combining laboratory-grown human brain tissue with conventional electronic circuits – has been built… and it has learned speech recognition.

Artificial Intelligence, cyborgs, replicants, positronic brains, are all allied SF tropes. Meanwhile, in real life we have in the past built computers part of whose electronic circuitry is based upon neural network structures and we have had computer-to-brain interfaces. This new development is different: it is an artificial intelligence computer made out of both electronic and purely biological components.

The biological component is a brain organoid. An organoid is a clump of cells created by stem cells next to brain cells. The stem cells grow and multiply taking on the properties of the neighbouring cells and turning into brain cells that are in effect similar to brain tissue. (This is different to growing a brain from an embryo.) A high-density multi-electrode array connects the electronic part of the bio-computer with the brain cell organoid. The researchers have only begun to explore the possibilities of this new technology, which they call ‘Brainoware’, but already they have trained it to recognise and distinguish speech from different speakers as well as solve non-linear equations.

(See the primary research Cai, H. et al (2023) Brain organoid reservoir computing for artificial intelligence. Nature Electronics, vol. 6, p1,032–1,039 and the review piece Tozer, L. (2023) ‘Biocomputer’ combines brain tissue with silicon hardware. Nature, vol. 624, p481.)

[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, Chris Barkley, Cat Eldridge, Olav Rokne, Kathy Sullivan, Lise Andreasen, Daniel Dern, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Steven French, Mike Kennedy, and Andrew Porter for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Andrew (not Werdna).]

Pixel Scroll 12/27/23 So Have You Looked Up And Seen How Pixels Twinkle Against The Midnight Sky?

Posted on December 27, 2023 by Mike Glyer

(1) UNFORSEEN INTERSECTION. Maya St. Clair draws a fascinating comparison between a current bestseller and Heinlein’s controversial classic in “Fourth Wing Review: Starship Troopers (for Girls!)”

…Criticisms of Starship Troopers’ themes, while hyperbolic, were not entirely off-base. In Heinlein’s world, the ideal military life is violent, abusive, and deindividualizing; death is and should be omnipresent at every stage of training. For example, there’s the basic training exercise in which

“… they dumped me down raw naked in a primitive area of the Canadian Rockies and I had to make my way forty miles through mountains. I made it [by killing rabbits and smearing fat and dirt on his body] … The others made it, too… all except two boys who died trying. Then we all went back into the mountains and spent thirteen days finding them…. We buried them with full honors to the strains of ‘This Land Is Ours’… They weren’t the first to die in training; they weren’t the last.”

Through the eyes of Johnnie, we experience an intensity of life that makes civilian existence seem anemic, even pathetic….

…With all that being said, it feels wrong to mention Fourth Wing in the same breath as Starship Troopers. Putting aside the fact that Fourth Wing is a poorly-written work whose prose has been critiqued to death by many people before me, the two books seem to represent opposing moments in publishing history. Heinlein, for all his faults, was writing “up” for an audience of teens, treating them as adults and including them in the sphere of “adult” science fiction, with complex worldbuilding and (relatively) sophisticated themes. Sixty years later, Fourth Wing and its team (author Rebecca Yarros and Entangled Publishing) represent a publishing world moving in the opposite direction: creating books for adults in an actively juvenile style, and cultivating an audience of adult readers who no longer demand that published books have good writing at all so long as they check necessary boxes of sensation and eroticism.

But thematically and content-wise, the two books are as close as one could possibly get. Fourth Wing, like Starship Troopers, sells a military coming-of-age story in which mass death is a part of the allure (“brutally addictive,” says the cover blurb). Someone on Reddit puts the death count of Fourth Wing at 222 cadets, plus an untold number of civilians — though it’s widely considered a “fluff” read. Its primary audience (and the primary audience of most mainstream fantasy now) is female, young, progressive, and would probably be aghast at being compared to grimdark bros, Heinlein apologists, or men in general. And yet here we all are, hooked on the same stuff….

(2) ICONIC LE GUIN COVER ART OFFERED. The estates of Carol Carr and her husband Robert Lichtman are in the news: “Original cover art for Le Guin sci-fi novel goes on sale” at Bay Area Reporter.

…First published in paperback by Ace Books, the novel sported cover art by award-winning artists and biracial couple Leo and Diane Dillon. Their painting featured profiles of the book’s protagonists in the left bottom corner looking off into the distance. Surrounding the pair is a blue and white celestial-like scene with what appears to be a brown planet and a spaceship hovering above.

(Leo Dillon, of Trinidadian descent, died in 2012. He was the first African American to win the prestigious Randolph Caldecott Medal for illustrators of children’s books, while the Dillons were the only consecutive winners of the award, having received the honor in 1976 and 1977.)

The Dillons’ original 17 and 1/4 by 13 inches acrylic painting is now being offered for sale for the first time at the Antiquarian Booksellers’ Association of America global book fair taking place in San Francisco in early February. The asking price is $20,000.

“It is literally unique. This is it, the original and not a print,” said Mark Funke, a rare bookseller who lives in Mill Valley where his business is also located.

Scouting out shops in the East Bay several years ago looking for new material to sell, Funke had received a tip about the sale of various items from a home in the Oakland hills. It led him to receive an invite from the executor of the estate to come to the house.

To his amazement, Funke had stumbled onto the archives of three individuals involved in the world of science fiction writing. One was the late Terry Carr, an editor at Ace Books who published the works of Le Guin and other sci-fi authors and died in 1987. While most of Carr’s personal papers had gone to UC Riverside, Funke found several boxes still in the house and acquired them….

… Funke is now handling its sale on behalf of the Carr and Lichtman Estate. He will have it available on a first-come, first-served basis at his booth at the book fair.

“I am pricing it high for the artists but, I think, reasonable for it being Le Guin’s most famous novel. She won awards for it, and it ratcheted her up to the greats of science fiction,” said Funke. “It’s got very topical content; this idea of the planet Gethen and ambisexual individuals. I just think it is fascinating and a very active topic in today’s discussion.”

In a statement to the B.A.R. about the sale, the executor for the family estate said, “The Carr-Lichtman family has treasured this artwork for over 50 years and now it is time to find a new owner who will cherish this remarkable work of science fiction publishing history for the next 50 years.”…

(3) KORSHAK COLLECTION NEWS. The Korshak Collection announced on Facebook —

We have partnered with the University of Delaware for an academic illustrated catalog of the Korshak Collection. We don’t want to give away all of our surprises, but the catalog will include a foreword by New York Times bestselling author Neil Gaiman and entry by Pulitzer prize winner author Michael Dirda, as well as an interview with the Hugo Award winning artist Michael Whelan. We are so grateful for this partnership and all of the outstanding contributions that have made this project possible.

(4) MCU UK. James Bacon recommends David Thorpe’s account of his time as a creator for Marvel UK: “In Review: The Secret Origin of Earth 616 By David Thorpe” at Downthetubes.net.

… This is a fascinating book, and, for Captain Britain fans, a definite buy. For comic fans interested in Marvel UK, of great interest. Yet it is also an excellent autobiography, a very readable and personal exploration of a comic fans desires, aspirations and progression to be a writer and an insight into how Marvel UK was, and offers real honesty when it comes to a comics career that took an interesting turn that saw David Thorpe’s work in the industry elsewhere. The story is brimful, and includes how another comic related moment saw him turn to a very successful career beyond comics, one that arguably has made a real difference to the world….

… David Thorpe came up with the concept of Earth 616, and he describes it as a Stan Lee styled “Hoo Boy” moment when he heard Mysterio say “This is Earth dimension 616. I’m from Earth 833.” to Spider-Man in Spider-Man: Far From Home and that is something that any comic reader can appreciate, many of whom have imagined themselves as writers….

(5) IN FELLOWSHIP THERE IS STRENGTH. “Board Game Cafe Workers Went on a Quest for a Union and Won” reports the New York Times.

A golden glow illuminated the employees huddled inside a Hex & Co. cafe on the Upper East Side, a haven created for board game enthusiasts to gather for fantastical quests.

Meticulous campaigns were second nature to these workers — how many times had they infiltrated an obsidian castle or vanquished a warlock? They had been immersed in this particular adventure for months, navigating a labyrinth governed by strict rules and made harrowing by unfamiliar tasks and tests. Now they gathered to plot their final triumph: unionization.

On that Tuesday in September, Hex & Co. workers confronted their bosses with a demand for recognition. Less than two months later, they voted to join Workers United, the same group that has been organizing workers at Starbucks stores across the United States. The workers at the three Hex & Co. locations across New York City were just the first employees of a board game cafe in the city to unionize. Workers at the Uncommons and the Brooklyn Strategist followed this month.

All the stores fall under the ownership of either Jon Freeman, Greg May or both, and they pleaded with their employees not to unionize, saying that a union would wipe out the “flexible and open-door atmosphere we have tried to foster.”

Teaching board games is a far cry from swinging a miner’s pick or working numbing hours on an assembly line. In fact, many of the cafe workers said they hung out at their workplaces in their off hours. But in the end, complaints over dollar-an-hour raises and bands of unruly children reigned: Among the 94 employees who voted, only 17 dissented….

…Only 10 percent of American wage and salary workers were union members in 2022, a historical low, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The food-service sector’s membership rate was less than 4 percent. But this fiscal year saw the most representation filings since 2015, according to the National Labor Relations Board.

Young workers “are willing to take risks, because they feel like their future is at stake,” said Kate Bronfenbrenner, the director of labor education research at Cornell University.

After slogging through a recession and a pandemic, many found themselves earning minimum wage while corporate profits soared, she said….

(6) AI AS SEEN BY THREE SFF AUTHORS. The River Cities’ Reader tells fans how to access the “Virtual Event: ‘Speculating Our AI Future,’” with Cory Doctorow, Ken Liu, and Martha Wells on January 11.

Designed for those fascinated by, or terrified about, the rise of artificial intelligence is invited to a January 11 virtual event hosted by the Rock Island and Silvis Public Libraries, when Illinois Libraries Present’s Speculating Our AI Future finds bestselling science-fiction writers Cory Doctorow, Ken Liu, and Martha Wells in discussion on the promise, perils, and possible impacts that AI will have on our future, as well as AI as portrayed in contemporary and future science-fiction writing.

The Speculating Our AI Future panel discussion with Corry Doctorow, Ken Liu, and Martha Wells will begin on January 11 at 7 p.m., participation in the virtual event is free, and more information is available by calling (309)732-7323 and visiting RockIslandLibrary.org, and calling (309)755-3393 and visiting SilvisLibrary.org.

(7) GRAPHIC EXAMPLES. Sam Thielman hits the high notes in a review of “The Year in Graphic Novels” for the New York Times.

Good graphic novels tend to appear in bookstores seemingly out of nowhere after years of rumors, scattershot serialization, “process” zines and snippets posted to social media. As literature, long-form comics are uniquely resistant to editing. As visual art, the cartoonist is in the weird position of having no access to the final product until it’s presented to the public. So it’s frankly miraculous when we get as many good comics as we do. This year there were remarkable new books from established masters and freshman graphic novels from brilliant young artists. Better still, a gratifyingly thick stratum of our 2023 stack was devoted to making us laugh. It’s a rich conversation, and one that promises to continue into next year and long beyond.

From the moment you open it, Daniel Clowes’s MONICA (Fantagraphics, 108 pp., $30) announces its ambition. Against the weird hellscape of its front endpapers, the title spread depicts the world at its lifeless, churning, brightly colored beginning. Then all of time (so far) goes by in a whoosh on the next two pages — the dinosaurs, Jesus, Hitler, Little Richard, Sputnik — alongside the copyright boilerplate and the names of the editors and publicist. In Clowes’s smooth lines and precise hues, the rest of the book borrows styles from war, horror and romance comics to tell the story of an ordinary woman trying to give her life some meaning. Is such a thing even possible? Could the attempt destroy everything?…

(8) EVA HAUSER (1954-2023). Past fan fund winner (GUFF) Eva Hauser died December 23 at the age of 69. Here is an excerpt from Jan Vaněk Jr.’s tribute on Facebook:

I am sad to announce that the 1992 GUFF delegate died on Friday 22nd. Eva Hauser[ová] travelled from Prague, still-Czechoslovakia to Syncon ’92 in Sydney, and then to Melbourne and back.

If you were there (despite the small attendance, the trip report reads like the Who Is Who of a golden age of the Australian fandom, and a testimony to their hospitality. Even though so much, and many, have already been lost in time, like tears in rain…), you may remember; and then you will understand why Eva is so much-lamented and widely eulogised from many different communities she was a part of….

(9) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

Born December 27, 1951 — Charles Band, 72. We have come tonight to honor a true film genius in Charles Band. He entered film production in the Seventies with Charles Band Productions. Dissatisfied with distributors’ handling of his movies, he formed his own company in the early Eighties. At its height, he would release an average of two films a month, one theatrically and one on home video.

So what are you going to recognize out of his hundreds of films?

Most of his films paid the cast next to nothing, were notoriously lax on safety measures according to State officials who fined him considerable amounts over the years and he paid screenwriters, well, guess.

Trancers, also released as Future Cop, the first of a series, which I’ve seen and liked, had Tim Thomerson and Helen Hunt in the lead cast. Supposedly the detective here is homage to Bogart’s various detective roles.

As producer, he did Metalstorm: The Destruction of Jared-Syn. Richard Moll who is in the cast and he shaved his head for his role here. The Night Court producers liked the look for Moll, so he continued shaving his head for the show.

Now he also produced a lot of more frankly sleazy SF such as Slave Girls from Beyond Infinity, Galactic Gigolo, and Space Sluts in the Slammer, and the post-apocalypse zombie films, Barbie & Kendra Save the Tiger King and Barbie & Kendra Storm Area 51.

His autobiography has a title that’s every bit has as over the top as most of some of film titles are, Confessions of a Puppetmaster: A Hollywood Memoir of Ghouls, Guts, and Gonzo Filmmaking.

One final note. His entire financial house of cards collapsed in the late Eighties and was seized by various banks who in turned sold the assets off to MGM, so you’re likely to see one of his films streaming just about anywhere these days.

(10) STORIES YES AND NO. Rich Horton reaches back to 1970 to tell Black Gate readers about “No More Stories — The Capstone to Joanna Russ’s Alyx Sequence: ‘The Second Inquisition’”.

“No more stories.” So ends Joanna Russ’s great novelette “The Second Inquisition.” But in many ways the story is about stories — about how we use them to define ourselves, protect ourselves, understand ourselves. It’s also, in a curious way, about Joanna Russ’s stories, particularly those about Alyx, a woman rescued from drowning in classical times by the future Trans-Temporal Authority….

(11) CORE TELEVISION. [Item by Olav Rokne.] Now, I don’t agree with everything in this article (for one thing, Foundation is execrable.) But it is an interesting look at what Apple+ is doing in SFF and why so much of it works. “The Best Sci-Fi Shows of 2023 All of Have One Shocking Thing in Common” at Inverse.

…For All Mankind isn’t the only sci-fi show pushing the limits of the genre on Tim Cook’s dime. The Apple CEO has been quietly funding some of the best science fiction TV in recent memory, ranging from the centuries-spanning Isaac Asimov adaptation Foundation to the mind-bending near-future of Severance to the globe-trotting Godzilla spinoff series Monarch: Legacy of Monsters — to name just a few.

And while it’s hard to say what exactly defines an Apple sci-fi show, Inverse spoke to several showrunners and producers who all agree the tech giant brings a unique, futurist perspective to the genre that — when combined with endless cash — helps explain why, all of a sudden, it seems like the best science fiction television is all coming from the same company that sold you your iPhone….

… One thing you can say about pretty much any show or movie on Apple TV+ is that it probably looks gorgeous. While many Netflix productions have a certain flatness to them that can make it feel like the streamer has been cutting corners, Apple is pouring a lot of money into the look (and star power) of its original series — it helps to have a trillion-dollar cash pile, even if Amazon and Disney are still outspending the MacBook maker….

(12) MARATHON FAN. SYFY Wire understandably wants us all to know “How to Watch SYFY’s Twilight Zone New Year’s Marathon 2023-2024”.

Just as you can count on our planet making a full rotation around the sun every 365 days or so, you can also rest assured that SYFY will use the key of imagination to unlock its annual New Year’s marathon of The Twilight Zone. The honored tradition of airing Rod Serling’s groundbreaking anthology series won’t be going anywhere anytime soon. In fact, the 2023-24 edition is super-sized, with the marathon spanning a total of three whole days — starting Saturday (December 30) and ending Tuesday (January 2).

Who needs to smooch someone at midnight when you’ve got Jason Foster (Robert Keith) teaching his wicked family members a lesson they’ll never forget in “The Masks”? Fittingly enough, the classic episode — which revolves around a collection of vain and greedy individuals ordered to wear hideous masks until the stroke of midnight — will air about 40 minutes before the ball drops. If someone offers you a grotesque party favor along with that glass of Champagne, you might want to turn it down….

(13) CHINA’S MIXED SIGNALS ON VIDEO GAME PLAYING. “Will China Ease Its New Video Game Controls? Investors Think So.” The New York Times says, “After a market rout, gaming companies like Tencent and Netease rally on signals that regulators might apply proposed curbs on users less harshly than feared.”

…The events of the past several days underline the push-and-pull forces in Chinese policymaking. The country’s top leaders have acknowledged they need to stabilize the economy, which has been slow to recover from being virtually locked down during the Covid pandemic. But the government’s tight control of how companies do business continues to inject uncertainty into the markets.

China’s National Press and Publication Administration, which issues licenses to game publishers and oversees the industry, unveiled a proposal on Friday aimed at effectively reducing how much people spend playing games. The plan took the industry by surprise, and investors dumped tens of billions of dollars in company stock.

The regulator issued a statement on Saturday stressing that the draft rules aim to “promote the prosperity and healthy development of the industry,” and said it is “listening to more opinions comprehensively and improving regulations and provisions.”

Then on Monday, the agency announced that it had licensed about 100 new games, after licensing 40 others on Friday. And a semiofficial association affiliated with the agency said that the additional game approvals were “positive signals” that the agency supports the industry.

The new regulations would cap how much money users could spend within games on things like upgrading the features of characters or procuring virtual weapons or other things used by the characters. It would also ban rewards that companies use to entice players to return. The proposal did not specify a spending cap…..

… The industry is still reeling from earlier restrictions first imposed in 2019 aimed at what the government deemed was an online gaming addiction among minors, as well as a broader crackdown against tech companies. Regulators also stymied publishers by not issuing any new game licenses for an eight-month stretch that ended in April 2022….

(14) CHART YOUR COURSE. Archie’s Press offers interesting “Outer Space” prints.

Outer Space is so huge, there’s really no way to wrap your head around the entire thing. This makes it all make sense.

(15) VIDEO OF THE DAY. [Item by Dann.] A tale of old Japan. A tale as old as time. A beleaguered hero looking to avenge past wrongs. Western forces looking to control a local government. A beauty of a beast.

When the culture and government deny any usual path to survival, much less happiness, our hero seeks unusual opportunities instead. Learning the secrets of steel. Surreptitiously learning the secrets of the sword. All of them.

Eventually, our hero sets out on a path of vengeance leaving rivers of blood along the way. Companions are found, whether or not our hero desires their companionship.

Each character is well-developed with unique strengths, flaws, and motivations. Even the villains have a compelling story to tell.

Blue Eye Samurai is not to be missed. And The Critical Drinker knows why. Go watch the “The Drinker Recommends… Blue Eye Samurai”.

[Thanks to Andrew Porter, John King Tarpinian, Chris Barkley, Dann, Olav Rokne, Michael J. Walsh, James Bacon, Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Steven French, and Mike Kennedy for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Cat Eldridge.]

Pixel Scroll 12/11/23 Pixelmancer

Posted on December 11, 2023 by Mike Glyer

(1) BOTTOM FALLS OUT OF THE CORRAIN MARKET. Cait Corrain, a debut author who was on Goodreads dropping one-star reviews on several others’ debut novels (see Pixel Scroll 12/7/23 item #1 and Pixel Scroll 12/8/23 item #4) has lost her agent, her publisher has pulled the book, and Ilumicrate has dropped her book from the upcoming crate.

The story even made NBC News today: “Author Cait Corrain loses book deal after accusations of review bombing on Goodreads”.

A first-time author has been dropped by her U.S. publisher and her agent after readers and fellow authors accused her of posting fake negative reviews to a popular book recommendation website.

Many within the book community last week appeared to publicly turn against Cait Corrain, the author of the coming sci-fi fantasy novel “Crown of Starlight,” after allegations surfaced that she made fake accounts on the Amazon-owned book review platform Goodreads to post negative user reviews online about fellow authors — a practice known as review-bombing….

(2) WORLDCONS AND HUMAN RIGHTS. Amazing Stories’ Steve Davidson has interviewed the writer of “Worldconned: How China Co-Opted Sci-Fi’s Crown Jewel Amidst the Uyghur Genocide”, recently linked in the Scroll: “Human Rights & Worldcon: An Interview with Danielle Ranucci of the Human Rights Foundation”.

ASM: In moving forward, do you think that WSFS and its members should be taking a host country’s politics and human rights into consideration when accepting bids for host countries?

D.R.: It’s essential for WSFS and its members to take a host country’s politics and human rights into consideration when accepting bids. There are many reasons for this. First, self-protection. How safe would it be for an attending member to publicly criticize China for its genocide at the 2023 Worldcon? For reference, when China hosted the 2022 Olympics, it warned Olympic athletes not to criticize the regime or they would face consequences. Given how China had handled protestors during the 2008 Beijing Olympics, the consequences for speaking out against the regime are all too evident: intimidation, arrests, and killings.

It would be downright perilous for anyone to criticize China while at Worldcon. Now, I doubt that state repression is a common conversation topic at Worldcon, but the extreme danger that members would face for even broaching this topic means that they are never truly secure. For every second they spend in a dictatorship like China, their safety is always jeopardized. Clearly, it is unconscionable to ignore a country’s human rights record and so jeopardize the safety of attending members in this way.

Considering human rights also helps protect Worldcon from being twisted into a tool of totalitarian repression. Hosting events like Worldcon helps dictatorships distract from, and legitimize, ongoing repression. I wrote about the effect such reputation-laundering has on outside countries, but it also has an important effect on those living within the dictatorship: It isolates them. Americans praise China’s futuristic-looking sci-fi museum while Chinese citizens can’t even find employment. Yet their lived experiences become invalidated. Their reality is made unimportant. And for people being persecuted by the regime, to diminish their suffering in this way is to forsake them. In a sense, it’s to render their pasts, presents, and futures meaningless….

(3) A CONFEDERATE HELICOPTER? An Alabama inventor tried to design a helicopter for military use during the Civil War. What could be steampunk-ier than that? “Helicopters During the Civil War? Almost” at Historynet.

…What if Confederates had invented a helicopter capable of dropping bombs?

It came closer to happening than many people realize. An innovative inventor in Alabama saw the potential for such an aircraft and actually drew up plans for how it might fly. Those drawings are preserved today in the archives of the National Air and Space Museum at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C.

By January 20, 1862, Union ships had managed to prevent most vessels from entering or leaving the major Confederate port of Mobile Bay. While certainly not a complete cordon, the blockade cut off delivery of supplies and, more important, the export of cotton to other nations—a much-needed source of income for the Southern war effort.

William C. Powers believed he had the answer to breaking the blockade: a motorized airship capable of bombing the Northern fleet. Known today as the Confederate helicopter, his idea offered a revolutionary look at solving a bothersome military problem….

…And to many historians as well. Powers’ plans and a small-scale model he built were donated by his family to the Smithsonian Institution in 1941. Since then, researchers and aeronautical engineers have pored over his design to determine the scope and feasibility of his idea….

(4) GETTING IT RIGHT AND GETTING IT WRONG. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] This weekend’s Infinite Monkey Cage on BBC Radio 4 looked at the depiction of space in SF film compared to reality.

Infinite Monkey Cage is a light-hearted look at science co-hosted by a comedian and a physicist (other sciences are available). This week they were accompanied by an Oscar winning SFX person and three astronauts.

There was much covered during the course of the show including how one aspect of space craft SFX they deliberately got wrong for Interstellar because it looked right. And in Gravity Sandra Bullock would not have worn those undies as nappies are the order of the day…You can listen to the 25-minute programme here.

Brian Cox and Robin Ince put Hollywood under the microscope to unpick the science fact versus science fiction of some of the biggest movies set in space. They are joined by a truly out of this world panel of space experts including astronauts Tim Peake, Nicole Stott and Susan Kilrain alongside Oscar winning Special FX director Paul Franklin, whose movies include Interstellar and First Man. Tim, Nicole and Susan fact check how space travel and astronauts are portrayed in movies such as Gravity and The Martian, whilst Brian and Robin argue about Robin’s lack of enthusiasm for Star Wars. They look back at some of the greatest Space movies including Alien and 2001 A Space Odyssey and ask whether some fictional aspects of these blockbusters may not be so far from our future reality?

(5) BLACKLOCK Q&A. The Arthur C. Clarke Award blog has a piece about “The Nonfiction of J.G. Ballard: An interview with editor Mark Blacklock” at Medium. Blacklock’s new book is The Selected Nonfiction of J. G. Ballard.

MARK: … Once it was all gathered, my first instinct was to include everything, but wiser counsel prevailed: it would have been unmanageable. I made sure to include anything significant that had been ignored for A User’s Guide or turned up since — the Introduction to the French Edition of Crash, for example, which I think he felt was not for a general audience; all the commentaries on his own work that had appeared in forewords and introductory glosses; and a sample of the reviews he wrote for Chemistry & Industry at the start of his career. I cut the number of book reviews that make up the majority of A User’s Guide too, in favour of showing a greater range of his work — the lists and glossaries, the “capsule commentaries.” The major decisions then were over which of the book reviews to include, because he was so prolific as a reviewer. I have about 30 of some 180. I printed them all off, read them several times and gave them all star ratings and then selected from the top-starred for a representative range across dates and publications. This felt like quite a heavy responsibility, but all the reviews are included in the bibliography so geeks like us can go and find those that aren’t in the book….

(6) CHENGDU WORLDCON COVERAGE CONTINUES. [Item by Ersatz Culture.] There have been several con reports and related news items since the last update in a Scroll; the following are a fairly arbitrary selection of recent and older items, with more to follow at some point.

Sylvia Hildr con report

This is a unique – I think – report, in that it’s written in English by a Chinese person. Given that this report isn’t subject to the vagaries of machine translation, I’ll just include a short extract here

Did I have a good time? Well, I met with fans and writers who share the same deep passion for science fiction and it was fascinating experiences. I learned of lots of sci-fi magazines and databases where organizers put their best efforts to make it easier for Chinese fans to open their eyes. I will always cherish these memories. But, the difficulties that these people had to overcome truly blew my mind. Not a single conversation could end without any reasonable complaints. I could not take the stance for them but as I checked WeChat groups and Moments, or talked with friends, the situation was the same.

Hugo finalist Yang Feng receives WSJ magazine award

On Saturday, Best Editor (Short Form) and Best Related Work Hugo finalist Yang Feng received an award from the Chinese edition of the Wall Street Journal magazine; relevant Weibo posts are here, here and here. I’m not sure exactly what relevance is of the guy with the shamisen-esque stringed instrument, but traditional music seems to have been a running theme of the awards ceremony.

I don’t think this is directly Worldcon/Hugo related, as the award seems to have been for business innovation, so it was possibly more due to her being CEO of the 8 Light Minutes publishing company?

Chengdu kids write about their Worldcon experiences

In early November, Character Weekly – which seems to be a magazine aimed at a young audience – published several short write-ups and photos (alternative link) from Chengdu children documenting their thoughts about attending the Worldcon. A couple of examples (via Google Translate, with manual edits):

I felt very honored to visit the World Science Fiction Convention that was held in Chengdu. In the science fiction museum, I communicated with an intelligent robot dog, walked through a fantasy universe, and saw various science fiction works that I had never heard of before. I was particularly fortunate to have a brief exchange, and to take a photo with, Mr. Ben Yalow, Chairman of the Worldcon. Through this event, I truly felt the infinite imagination of human beings and the charm of science fiction.

_________________

A few days ago, my mother and I participated in the 81st World Science Fiction Conference held in my hometown of Chengdu. In the Chengdu Science Fiction Museum, which is like a vast nebula, we experienced The Wandering Earth, Benben [the giant robot/vehicle structure], Kemeng [aka Kormo, the mascot), and the Hugo Awards with science fiction fans from all over the world, wonderful lectures by science fiction celebrities, etc., I also collected a book full of autographs, and took photos next to the beautiful Hugo Hall. This is the closest experience I have to science fiction, and I hope that one day I can do follow the same path, winning the Hugo Award for writing good science fiction works. I will meet the future with my scientific dreams.

Lukyanenko ends China tour

This Weibo post from his Chinese publisher covers the final event in Shanghai on Sunday 10th.

(7) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

Born December 11, 1959 — M. Rickert, 64. Tonight’s Birthday is that of M. Rickert who I must say never disappoints me. I loved her writing ever since I read her very first short story nearly a quarter of a century ago, “The Girl Who Ate Butterflies”. It’s certainly a wonderful story.

I’d say that two-thirds of her nearly fifty pieces of short fiction were published in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. Very impressive indeed. Some picked up well deserved awards— “Journey into the Kingdom” won a World Fantasy Award, and “The Corpse Painter’s Masterpiece” a Shirley Jackson Award. Many more were nominated for Awards.

There are three collections of her short fictions, both well worth your time on these cold nights. The first, Map of Dreams, covers a wide spread of her stories, and won a World Fantasy Award and the Crawford Award. The “Map of Dreams” novella herein was also nominated for a World Fantasy Award.

The second, Holiday, showing how prolific she is as a short fiction writer as it is filled with just stories from 2006 and 2007. You can find “Journey into the Kingdom” here.

The third, You Have Never Been Here: New and Selected Stories, to a certain extent is less necessary than the first two as a large part of it is already in the first two. If you’re a fan of hers, by all means pick it up.

Now her novels, her interesting novels. Both are very impressive with my favorite being The Memory Garden which sort of tangentially reminds me of McKillip’s The Solstice Wood in tone if not story. I’ll say The Shipbuilder of Bellfairie is one quirky novel. Really quirky novel. Not quite what to make of it.

Since this is the Christmas season, I should note her “Lucky Girl: How I Became a Horror Writer” is a Krampus story. It’s available as an actual paperback book or an epub.

(8) SPIRIT OF THE SEASON. Bobby Derie looks at what remains of Lovecraft’s Christmas verses to his correspondents: “Her Letters To Lovecraft: Christmas Greetings” at Deep Cuts in a Lovecraftian Vein.

H. P. Lovecraft spent most of his adult life in genteel poverty, slowly diminishing the modest inheritance that had come down to him from his parents and grandparents. He had no cash to spare on expensive gifts for his many friends and loved ones. So Lovecraft was generous with what he had—time, energy, and creativity. While not religious or given to mawkish displays, when it came to Christmas, Lovecraft poured his time and energies into writing small verses to his many correspondents, a body of poems collectively known as his “Christmas Greetings.”…

… In looking at Lovecraft’s Christmas Greetings to his women correspondents, we catch a glimpse at Lovecraft’s thoughtfulness. Their response, unfortunately, is often lost to us; though some few of them certainly responded in kind. We know Elizabeth Toldridge, for example, wrote her own Christmas poems to Lovecraft, because at least one survives….

(9) RAYMOND CHANDLER POEM REVEALED. Apparently located in the Bodleian, it may be a poetic response to the loss of his wife: “’A moment after death when the face is beautiful’: rare Raymond Chandler poem discovered by US editor”, a news item in the Guardian.

… Published on Monday in the 25th-anniversary issue of the Strand magazine, the poem, titled Requiem, dates back to 1955 and was discovered by the magazine’s managing editor, Andrew Gulli….

Grappling with loss, grief and what it describes as the “long innocence of love”, Requiem opens with: “There is a moment after death when the face is beautiful / When the soft, tired eyes are closed and the pain is over.”

For two stanzas, Requiem describes the moments after death when the “long innocence of love comes gently in / For a moment more, in quiet to hover”, as well as the fading of “bright clothes” and a “lost dream”. It adds that “silver bottles”, “three long hairs in a brush” and “fresh plump pillows / On which no head will lie/ Are all that is left of the long, wild dream”….

(10) MAKING A LIST AND CHECKING IT TWICE. “Big Bang observatory tops wish list for big US physics projects” reports Nature.

The United States should fund proposed projects to dramatically scale up its efforts in five areas of high-energy physics, an influential panel of scientists has concluded.

Topping the ranking is the Cosmic Microwave Background–Stage 4 project, or CMB-S4, which is envisioned as an array of 12 radio telescopes split between Chile’s Atacama Desert and the South Pole. It is designed to look for indirect evidence of physical processes in the instants after the Big Bang — processes that have been mostly speculative so far.

The other four priorities are experiments to study the elementary particles called neutrinos, both coming from space and made in the laboratory; the largest-ever dark-matter detector; and strong US participation in a future overseas particle collider to study the Higgs boson.

An ad hoc group called the Particle Physics Project Prioritization Panel (P5) presented the recommendations on 7 December. The committee, which is convened roughly once a decade, was charged to make recommendations for the two main US agencies that fund research in high-energy physics, the Department of Energy (DoE) and the National Science Foundation (NSF)….

(11) VIDEO OF THE DAY. Mark me as one of Today’s 10,000. I just learned there’s a Roblox game based on the Hamilton musical. “Hamilton X Roblox”.

Enhanced battle, squad upgrades, and a new rebirth mode to keep the adventure going. Check out the newest Hamilton Roblox update now!

[Thanks to Cat Eldridge, SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Mike Kennedy, Bruce D. Arthurs, Anne Marble, Steven French, Ersatz Culture, Andrew Porter, John King Tarpinian, and Chris Barkley for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Cubist.]

Pixel Scroll 11/30/23 Too Much Pixel And No Scroll

Posted on November 30, 2023 by Mike Glyer

(1) THE TIMES THEY ARE A’CHANGIN’. Gabino Iglesias is the new horror columnist for the New York Times. He told told readers on X.com, “It’s a dream come true. Can’t wait to bring you all the horror goodness starting in January. Long live horror.”

(2) LUKYANENKO EVENT AT WORLDCON VENUE. [Item by Ersatz Culture.] Sergey Lukyanenko will appear December 1 in an event at the Worldcon venue.

In the Friday 24th Scroll, it was mentioned that Sergey Lukyanenko would be making four appearances in Chengdu between December 1st and 4th. Today (November 30th) I saw a Weibo announcement indicating there will be an additional event on December 1st; notably, this one takes place at the SF Museum that was the venue for the Worldcon. I think this may be the first time that the museum has been used or open to the public since the con?

There was also a new Weixin/WeChat blog post from his publisher yesterday (Wednesday 29th); curiously this does not mention the event at the SF Museum.

(3) GOLDMAN FUND UPDATE. Dream Foundry reports that they were able to fully fund everyone who applied within the preferred window for the Con or Bust initiative to assist Palestinian creators and fans of speculative fiction in attending the 2024 World Science Fiction Convention.

They still have funds remaining for 2024 and will continue taking applications on a rolling basis. They say –

Don’t self reject! Anyone who is a citizen of Palestine or a member of the Palestinian diaspora qualifies and is encouraged to apply.

Applications for the 2025 Worldcon will open in summer of 2024.

(4) FURIOSA TRAILER. The first official trailer has dropped for Furiosa : A Mad Max Saga.

Anya Taylor-Joy and Chris Hemsworth star in Academy Award-winning mastermind George Miller’s “Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga,” the much-anticipated return to the iconic dystopian world he created more than 30 years ago with the seminal “Mad Max” films. Miller now turns the page again with an all-new original, standalone action adventure that will reveal the origins of the powerhouse character from the multiple Oscar-winning global smash “Mad Max: Fury Road.” The new feature from Warner Bros. Pictures and Village Roadshow Pictures is produced by Miller and his longtime partner, Oscar-nominated producer Doug Mitchell (“Mad Max: Fury Road,” “Babe”), under their Australian-based Kennedy Miller Mitchell banner. As the world fell, young Furiosa is snatched from the Green Place of Many Mothers and falls into the hands of a great Biker Horde led by the Warlord Dementus. Sweeping through the Wasteland, they come across the Citadel presided over by The Immortan Joe. While the two Tyrants war for dominance, Furiosa must survive many trials as she puts together the means to find her way home.

(5) A GOOD TONGUELASHING. “Adam Sandler’s ‘Leo’: A Crotchety Old Lizard Helping Kids Be Kids” at Animation World Network.

Hitting Netflix [on November 21] is Leo, a clever and charming coming-of-age animated musical comedy starring noted actor and comedian Adam Sandler as a curmudgeonly 74-year-old iguana, stuck living for decades in an elementary school class terrarium, who plots his escape – complete with an odd bucket list – after learning he only has one year to live. At the same time, he can’t help but offer friendly advice to a bunch of kids who each must take him home for a weekend, only to discover – and swear to keep secret – that he can talk…

… The idea for the film gestated with Sandler for eight years. “Basically, I had the idea of looking at an elementary school graduation, almost like in Grease, the kids’ last year of elementary school, and how you’re moving on to the big leagues after that,” he shares. “And me and my friend, Paul Sado, were working on that idea. And then I told Robert Smigel about it, and he said, ‘What about if you do it that year, but through the eyes of a class pet that’s been involved in that grade forever?’ And we got excited, and that’s when everything got flowing.”…

(6) PAGE-TURNER. Jay of Tar Vol On posted an extra-large magazine review this month, with thoughts on 35 different works of short SFF and a little bit of related non-fiction. “Tar Vol Reads a Magazine: November 2023”.

… the piece that inspired me to pick up this issue [of Asimov’s] in the first place: “Berb by Berb” by Ray Nayler. This story is connected to some of his other work that I haven’t yet read, but it makes an acceptable standalone, delivering a heartfelt tale of one person trying to do the best they can in a world that has gone to pieces around them. It’s a theme Nayler returns to often, and it makes for a good read every time. ..

(7) HOME IS THE SPACEMAN. Neil Clarke tells about his adventures at the Chengdu Worldcon in his Clarkesworld editorial, “This Would Have Been Longer”. He was impressed by how many children were at the con, and participated in the Hugo ceremony.

…Oh! That’s me up there with “little astronaut” after unexpectedly winning the Hugo Award for Best Editor Short Form. Those are two of the hosts of the event on the left and the gentleman on the right is convention Co-Chair Chen Shi, who presented the category. I actually had a speech written this time, but in the moment, I opted to abandon it and try to speak from what I was feeling instead. Probably not the brightest thing to do, but I wanted to say something to the kids watching now or later. I let them know that I was once like them and never believed that I would someday be up on this stage accepting an award I considered the domain of my childhood heroes. I told them that I hoped to be in the audience and watch them win one someday. I encouraged them to try, told them it wasn’t easy and that people might tell them it wasn’t possible . . . but it is.

After the ceremony, I was whisked off to do interviews. They had maybe two dozen reporters from a variety of outlets present and asking questions. It kept me from enjoying part of the after party with friends, but how often does a Hugo winner get that kind of attention? I understood and appreciated the novelty of it, and besides, they weren’t asking me about AI, so that’s progress, right?…

(8) YOU’VE HEARD HER WORK. [Item by Steven French.] “Jane Horrocks: ‘I’d love to be a baddie in a Tarantino movie’”, so she told the Guardian. Horrocks voices Babs, one of the chickens in Chicken Run and also starred with Anjelica Huston in Jim Henson’s film of Roald Dahl’s The Witches.

When did you discover you had an amazing voice? chargehand
From starting impersonations, really. My first impersonation was Julie Andrews when I got The Sound of Music album when I was nine. I fell in love with sounding like Julie. My mum and dad were massively into Shirley Bassey and I found I could impersonate her and Barbra Streisand. That’s when I started to realise that utilising my voice was going to be a good thing for me. It’s brought me a lot of pleasure, and I’ve made people laugh, which is great.

(9) NEW TO U.N.I.T. A disabled character is featured in the latest episode of Doctor Who. The actress discusses her role with Radio Times. Beware spoilers, maybe; I’m not sure.

“She is just so fun and feisty and ballsy – she’s just so much fun to play,” Doctor Who star Ruth Madeley says of her character Shirley Anne Bingham. “I’d love to be more like Shirley in my real life, I have got nowhere near that much cool in me!”

Madeley made her spectacular on-screen Doctor Who debut in The Star Beast as UNIT’s 56th scientific advisor. In the space of the 57-minute special, she got David Tennant’s Doctor out of some very sticky situations – and took absolutely none of his nonsense.

“Overall she is not overly impressed by anyone or anything, which I love about her because I am the complete opposite. That’s really fun to play,” Madeley tells RadioTimes.com….

(10) WHO PREVIEW. “Doctor Who debuts new scene from next episode Wild Blue Yonder” at Radio Times.

The veil of secrecy surrounding the next episode of Doctor Who, Wild Blue Yonder, is slowing beginning to lift, with the BBC dropping a first-look clip….

… In the new clip, Donna is left panicked when the TARDIS disappears, with the Doctor promising to return her home to her daughter Rose. But it appears someone – or something – is watching them……

(11) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY.

[Written by Cat Eldridge.]

Born November 30, 1906 — John Dickson Carr. (Died 1977.) As you know, we don’t do just sff genre Birthdays here and so it is that we have here one of my favorite mystery writers, John Dickson Carr. Indeed I’m listening to The Hollow Man, one of his Gideon Fell mysteries.

He who wrote some of the best British mysteries ever done was himself not British being American. Oh the horror. He did live there for much of the Thirties and Forties, marrying a British woman.

Dr. Fell, an Englishman, lived in the London suburbs. Carr wrote twenty-seven novels with him as the detective. I’m listening to The Hollow Man because it’s considered one of the best locked room mysteries ever done. Indeed, Dr. Fell’s discourse on locked room mysteries in chapter reprinted as a stand-alone essay in its own right.

All of the Fell novels are wonderful mysteries. The detective himself? Think a beer drinking Nero Wolfe who’s a lot more outgoing. Almost all of the novels concern his unraveling of locked room mysteries or what he calls impossible crimes. Of these novels, I’ve read quite a number and they’re all excellent.

Now let’s talk about Sir Henry Merrivale who created by Carter Dickson, a pen name of John Dickson Carr. (Not sure why he bothered with such a thinly-veiled pen name though.) Merrivale was like Fell an amateur detective who started who being serious but, and I’m not fond of the later novels for this, become terribly comic in the later novels. Let me note that Carr was really prolific as there were twenty-two novels with him starting in the Thirties over a thirty-year period. One of the finest is The White Priory Murders which was a Wodehousian country weekend with yet another locked room mystery in it.

He also, as did other writers of British mysteries, created a French detective, one by the name of Henri Bencolin, a magistrate in the Paris judicial system. (Though I’ve not mentioned it, all of his mysteries are set in the Twenties onward.) Carr interestingly has an American writer Jeff Marle narrating the stories here and he describes Bencolin as looking and feeling Satanic. His methods are certainly not those of the other two detectives as he’s quite rough when need be to get a case solved.

There are but four short stories and five novels of which I think The Last Gallows is the best.

With Adrian Conan Doyle, the youngest son of Arthur Conan Doyle, Carr wrote some Sherlock Holmes stories that were published in The Exploits of Sherlock Holmes collection. Not in-print but used copies available reasonably from the usual suspects.

He was also chosen by the estate of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle in 1949 to write the biography of the writer. That work, The Life of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, is in-print in a trade paper edition.

(12) COMICS SECTION.

The Far Side shows space invaders with really bad luck.

(13) ARTILLERY AND JOSEPHINE. Haley Zapal is the first reviewer I’ve seen who is genuinely enthusiastic about Ridley Scott’s Napoleon. Find out why in “Review: Napoleon” at Nerds of a Feather.

…The scenes where men and horses fall into the water are brilliant and artistic. There are things in Napoleon that I definitely have never seen before, and that’s wild considering director Scott is nearing 90. There is also absolutely brutal gore that makes Saving Private Ryan seem like Hogan’s Heroes….

(14) IT’S WASHED. Applause to Arturo Serrano for being one of the rare folk reviewing The Marvels who talks about the movie instead of its box office. But he’s no fan of the movie either: he rates “On the woes of ‘The Marvels’” only 5on a scale of 10 at Nerds of a Feather.

Someone at Marvel Studios should have pointed out that being simultaneously a sequel to WandaVision, Captain Marvel, Ms. Marvel and Secret Invasion and providing two sequel teases was too much weight to load onto the shoulders of one movie. But we’ve played this tune before: Marvel movies are doomed to be mere links in a neverending chain, each forgettable villain is just there to get the pieces in position for the next entry, what you see isn’t most of what the director intended, and so on. To keep going to theaters for a Marvel movie is by now a thoughtless habit, like grabbing one more potato chip when you know you’re full….

(15) IT’S COLD OUTSIDE. The New York Times covers “A Video Game That Doubles as a World War I History Lesson”. “Last Train Home tells an overlooked story of the Czechoslovak Legion’s evacuation across Russia in the embers of the Great War.”

… Foregrounding historical accuracy was a priority for Ashborne’s first original game, Last Train Home, which retells the Legion’s rolling evacuation eastward across Russia in the embers of the war. Its journey for homebound ships at the port of Vladivostok was tangled in Russia’s internal conflict between Bolshevik and anti-Bolshevik armies….

…Jos Hoebe, the founder of BlackMill Games and a longtime producer of World War I shooters, said video game developers had a responsibility to get details correct, especially when a particular battle or event has few depictions in popular culture. For his games, Hoebe digests historical documents in an attempt to understand the average soldier and shed light on overlooked aspects of combat.

“It feels like we’re responsible for creating the image that people have of this theater of war,” Hoebe said.

Last Train Home is a real-time strategy game in which the player orders specialized squads around rural battlefields. Scouts clear the fog of war, riflemen charge at enemies — usually the Bolshevik Red Army — and medics heal wounds. Another significant portion of the game is managing the armored train and exhausted infantry while fighting disease, starvation and the cruel Siberian cold…..

(16) THE DOOR INTO WINTER. Here’s an interesting artifact at Fullerton Arms Ballintoy: Giant’s Causeway North Coast Guesthouse and Restaurant in Ireland.

In 2016, Storm Gertrude ripped up some centuries-old beeches from the avenue known as Dark Hedges, (familiar to Game of Thrones fans as the Kingsroad). Ten doors, fashioned from the fallen trees, were carved with scenes from the cult TV show and placed in 10 pubs with Thrones connections in Northern Ireland. A fierce dragon embellishes the deep-brown polished door in Ballintoy’s Fullerton Arms. From the pub, it’s 20 minutes’ walk down a dramatic winding road to the cliff-ringed harbour, used to film scenes involving Theon Greyjoy in the Iron Islands. The steep climb back up will help build an appetite for the pub’s rope-grown mussels or seafood chowder, and Northern Irish specialities such as champ (mash with spring onions).
Doubles from £60 B&B

(17) NONE DARE CALL IT “LIP-SYNCHING”. A ventriloquist and his dummy sing “’Time Warp’ from The Rocky Horror Picture Show”.

“Time Warp” from The Rocky Horror Picture Show, a song by Nell Campbell, Patricia Quinn, and Richard O’Brien as sung by Terry Fator and Walter In this video Terry is singing live without moving his lips, 100% guaranteed!

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

The Game Awards 2023 Finalists

Posted on November 15, 2023 by Mike Glyer

The Game Awards 2023 nominations were released on November 13. Survival-horror themed Alan Wake 2 from Remedy Entertainment and role-playing game Baldur’s Gate 3 from Larian Studios lead the field with nominations in eight categories apiece, including Game of the Year.

Fan voting continues through December 6 on The Game Awards website and the official Discord server for The Game Awards. In China fans can vote on the winners via Bilibili, WeChat, and other platforms. Winners are determined by a blended vote between the voting jury (90%) and public fan voting (10%).

The awards show will stream live from L.A. on December 7 across more than 30 platforms including YouTube, Twitch, Facebook, TikTok Live and X (aka Twitter).

The full list of nominees follows the jump.

Continue reading →

Pixel Scroll 10/10/23 Nobody Knows The Pixels I’ve Screened

Posted on October 10, 2023 by Mike Glyer

(1) CHENGDU WORLDCON PROMO VIDEO UNVEILED. “Chasing Dreams for the Future_Worldcon” on YouTube.

A two-and-a-half minute video was released today on various platforms, including the official con site. It features animated characters, against imagery based on a variety of SF works, and also references prior Worldcons.

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

No reference to Lukyanenko in latest PR material

This Weibo post from the con’s official account has a couple of interesting details. Google Translate rendition of the post text (minor manual edits to fix mangled names):

The World Science Fiction Conference is held for the first time in China. This science fiction event brings together the best science fiction writers and industry insiders from the East and the West in Chengdu, where the past and the future are intertwined.

Liu Cixin, Robert Sawyer, Richard Taylor, Lezli Robyn, Michael Swanwick, David Hull, Satoshi Hase, Neil Clarke, Wu Jing, Guo Fan, Wang Jinkang, Han Song, He Xi… these shining names in the science fiction world, these stars who evoke the exciting dreams of countless science fiction fans, will all be unveiled at the 2023 Chengdu World Science Fiction Conference.

I think this might be the first official mention of Michael Swanwick’s attendance? Also, Japanese novelist Satoshi Hase is a name that I don’t think I’ve previously seen mentioned as a guest.

The linked weixin.qq.com page has an article by a reporter from the Chengdu Business Times org, which is involved in the running of the con. The piece is titled (via Google Translate) “Liu Cixin and Robert Sawyer: Representative figures of hard science fiction from the East and the West will appear together in Chengdu!” Liu and Sawyer are interviewed, and it seems this will be the first in a series of interviews with con guests:

Starting today, we are launching a series of reports called “When Science Fiction Stars Shine” to introduce the science fiction writers, academicians, experts, and industry figures who will appear at this conference, and look forward to and welcome the event with everyone.

There’s also a slightly puzzling statement which says “Robert Sawyer and Liu Cixin will appear together at The 81st World Science Fiction Convention Industrial Development Promotion Conference (WSDF)”, with “WSDF” being an acronym appearing in the Chinese text. Whilst I’ve seen a bit of con-related material that has references to “industry” and “promotion”, this is the first I’ve heard of something called the “WSDF”. This “WSDF” term also appears in Weibo posts today from the HELLOChengdu and GoChengdu accounts, which reference the same news item.

Sawyer/Liu/Lukyanenko anthology published

It is reported that the “Stellar Concerto” Chinese-language anthology featuring stories from the three (ahem) Worldcon GoHs, which was previously covered in the September 28th Scroll, has now been published. The ToC shows that of the 18 stories, 7 are by Sawyer, 6 from Lukyanenko and 5 from Liu.

Special edition coffee packaging

I guess I jinxed things in yesterday’s updates when I said I hadn’t seen any evidence of sponsor branding, because guess what showed up today? Coffee cups and bags adorned with a stylized representation of the con venue. In fairness, they seem to be licensing from the science museum rather than the Worldcon — the text in the photos only mentions the former.

A couple more Xiaohongshu posts

A short video of street artists decorate an electricity substation.

This post has a handful of images, most of which are fairly familiar views of the interior and exterior of the venue, but there are a couple of things I haven’t seen before: a topiary of something that I can’t quite fathom, and what I assume is interior signage for the fan area.

(3) ON THE DRAWING BOARD. Jeremy Zentner offers advice about “Designing Your Fictional Spaceship” at the SFWA Blog.

Spaceships have been iconic in science fiction ever since Jules Verne wrote From the Earth to the Moon. There are many features for writers to consider when designing their craft, including microgravity, faster-than-light (FTL) capabilities, journey time, habitation and resources, whether there’s a menacing AI on board, and so much more. In this article, we’ll examine how many published authors designed their sci-fi spaceships, so strap in and get ready for launch!

Interstellar travel: To FTL or not to FTL. In general, books that describe interstellar travel write about ships with FTL capability. In The Indranan War series, K.B. Wagers uses the Alcubierre drive, a concept developed by theoretical physicist Miguel Alcubierre to enable interstellar travel. Other books use wormhole technology. In John Scalzi’s The Interdependency series, ships penetrate a network of wormholes called the Flow to travel to other star systems. Since the Flow is a natural phenomenon, it’s also subject to cosmic events that can change the nature of its location, culminating in a great plot point. In Becky Chambers’ The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet, the Galactic Commons uses artificial gates that tunnel through the fabric of subspace, built by scrappy crews like that of the Wayfarer….

(4) CROWDFUNDING FOR APEX ANTHOLOGY. The Kickstarter campaign for The Map of Lost Places, edited by Sheree Renée Thomas and Lesley Conner, is now live. Click here – “The Map of Lost Places: A Horror Anthology by Apex Publications” to join in bringing this anthology to life. Check out the submission guidelines as well if you’re interested in sending a story to the open call in December.

Here are the perks:

Beyond the anthology itself, we’ve got all sorts of fantastic rewards, add-ons, and stretch goals included in this Kickstarter. Ai Jiang has contributed a beautiful handmade planner as an add-on, and there are five slots available for 15-minute Zoom calls with Brian Keene. A little ways down the line, we’ll have a few surprises from co-editor Lesley Conner, and maybe one or two other things up our sleeves….

Lesley and Apex Magazine managing editor Rebecca Treasure are also offering critiques on up to 7,500 words. Additionally, we have ten explorer care packages available, which will include items to keep you safe on your travels: a train ticket, holy water, a book of protective phrases…visit the Kickstarter page to find out more! Stretch goals include excitements like more open call slots, a new dark microfiction anthology from Marissa van Uden, art for the interior of the Map of Lost Places anthology, and an introduction written by Linda D. Addison.

(5) WARNING ABOUT KOSA. Charlie Jane Anders is quoted in the Sacramento Bee’s paywalled article “CA senators quiet on bill allowing removal of LGBTQ content”.

“Simply put, KOSA as currently written would allow (Texas Attorney General) Ken Paxton and other red-state attorney generals to bring frivolous lawsuits against any content they believe is harmful to kids — which includes LGBTQIA+ content in their view. The states are already passing state laws to censor the internet, but a federal law would give them much more leeway,” said writer and commentator Charlie Jane Anders in an email interview with The Bee.

(6) NOT QUITE THE ELEVENTH HOUR. The latest (in 1968) episode of Star Trek did not wow Gideon Marcus: “[October 10, 1968] Going Native (Star Trek: ‘The Paradise Syndrome’” at Galactic Journey.

With two episodes under its belt, the third season of Star Trek has both disappointed and elated. The general reaction to “Spock’s Brain” amongst the fan population (beyond the Journey) was universally negative. Buck Coulson of Yandro has even called for this season’s producer Fred Freiberger to be ridden out on a rail. On the other hand, “The Enterprise Incident” wowed everyone. And so, we waited eagerly for Trek at 9:59 PM on a Friday night, a night when we could have been out drinking and carousing (who are we kidding—we’re probably the only group for whom the Friday night “death slot” is actually perfect timing).

What we got was…well, closer to “Spock’s Brain” in terms of quality….

(7) WHEN FRANCHISES LOSE THEIR WAY. Not behind a paywall! “Jedi Knights and Vulcans Both Suck Now. What Happened?” asks Charlie Jane Anders at Happy Dancing.

Something strange happened to both Star Wars and Star Trek around twenty-five years ago: both franchises suddenly became disillusioned with their spiritual, selfless bands of heroes.

The Jedi knights and the Vulcans had been an essential part of these iconic universes from the very beginning, and twentieth century viewers would have come away with a mostly positive impression of them. That changed drastically in the late 1990s, when both Trek and Wars started portraying their respective bands of detached, disciplined seekers of truth as uptight jerks. It was a jarring transformation, and I’m still wondering what exactly happened….

(8) THERE IS ANOTHER. And what about Battlestar Galactica? To find out what Charlie Jane Anders thinks you’ll need to listen to episode 138 of Our Opinions Are Correct – “Battlestar Galactica, 20 Years Later”.

One of the greatest science fiction shows on TV debuted twenty years ago: the rebooted version of Battlestar Galactica. This show broke new ground in depicting realistic politics — and a nuanced view of a society of artificial people. How does it hold up? To find out, Charlie Jane went back and watched the entire series — here’s what she found.

(9) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

Born October 10, 1924 — Ed Wood, Jr. Best remembered for Plan 9 from Outer Space which inexplicably has a sixty-eight percent rating among audience reviewers at Rotten Tomatoes. Really how could they? He did a lot of terribly bad genre films including Night of the Monster and Bride of The Ghouls. (Died 1978.)
Born October 10, 1927 — Dana Elcar. Most of you will remember him as Peter Thornton on MacGyver which I submit is possibly genre, but he has a long genre history including Russ in Condorman which was inspired by Robert Sheckley’s The Game of X. He also played Sheriff George Paterson in Dark Shadows, and showed up in 2010 as Dimitri Moisevitch. (Died 2005.)
Born October 10, 1931 — Victor Pemberton. Writer of the script for the the “Fury from the Deep”, a Second Doctor story in which he created the Doctor’s sonic screwdriver. He had appeared as an actor in the series, in a non-speaking role as a scientist in “The Moonbase” story. In 1976, he wrote the BBC audio drama Doctor Who and the Pescatons which I remember hearing. Quite good it was. (Died 2017.)
Born October 10, 1931 — Jack Jardine. A long-time L.A. fan who was present at many West Coast cons and who shared the dais on panels with some of the major names in SF. He attended his last convention, in a wheelchair, assisted by his daughter Sabra, after a debilitating stroke at the age of 70. His health continued to get worse until he died from heart failure. File 770 has more here. (Died 2009.)
Born October 10, 1941 — Peter Coyote, 82. He actually did two genre films in 1982 with the first being Timerider: The Adventure of Lyle Swann in which he appeared as Porter Reese and the second being E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial which he’s Keys, the Agent hunting E.T. down. Sphere in which he’s Captain Harold C. Barnes is his next SF outing followed by The 4400 and FlashForward series being his next major genre involvement.
Born October 10, 1947 — Laura Brodian Freas Beraha, 76. While married to Kelly Freas, she wrote Frank Kelly Freas: As He Sees It with him along with quite a few essays such as “On the Painting of Beautiful Women or Ayesha, She Who Must Be Obeyed” and “Some of My Best Critics are Friends – or Vice Versa”. She’s credited for the cover art for New Eves: Science Fiction About the Extraordinary Women of Today and Tomorrow.
Born October 10, 1966 — Bai Ling, 57. She’s Miss West in that wretched Wild West West and the Mysterious Women in the exemplary Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, she has a major role as Guanyin in The Monkey King which aired on Syfy. Nope, not seen that one. Her last genre role was Zillia in Conjuring: The Book of the Dead, a horror film riffing off Alastair Crowley.

(10) COMICS SECTION.

Pearls Before Swine – “I’ll just say — it hits pretty close to home even with my minimal experience at autographings!” says Rich Horton.
Wizard of Id has a Dune reference.

(11) DUBLIN COMIC ARTS FESTIVAL. James Bacon’s report about the other con he went to last weekend: “In Review: Diving deep into DCAF 2023, the Dublin Comics Art Festival” at Downthetubes.net.

The Dublin Comics Art Festival, held this year over the weekend of Saturday and Sunday 7th and 8th of October, has been connecting comics and comic fans for years and I got the opportunity to go to their new venue, Richmond Barracks, which is now repurposed as a community cultural centre and library.

I depart Octocon, the National SF convention taking place at the Gibson Hotel and jump onto a Luas (tram), which terminates outside the hotel door and get off at Golden Bridge and its a very short walk to this excellent venue.

This gathering is in a lovely open and airy hall, filled with excitement and art, it’s a welcoming space and it’s busy.

… In many respects I found DCAF as rewarding as Thought Bubble when it comes to small press, entry level publications, zines and art. It’s a good show, with a wide and desirable selection of vendors. I also liked how relaxed everyone was. It was friendly but there is no hard sell. An occasional “feel free to browse” or “happy to answer questions” and I have to bite my tongue and not ask “why haven’t Marvel hired you for covers” because actually, the creative art of writing and drawing ones own unique story, for me as a reader, is hugely rewarding. I’ll take this, thanks….

(12) HE MADE A LITTLE MISTAKE. The New York Times reports “Unity Chief Resigns After Pricing Backlash” “John Riccitiello angered video game developers who use Unity’s software when he announced a new fee structure that could have significantly increased their costs.”

John Riccitiello, the chief executive of Unity Technologies, abruptly stepped down on Monday, less than a month after a change to the company’s pricing structure infuriated thousands of software developers who rely on the video game company’s tools.

Unity, which makes the underlying software that powers video games, has long imposed an annual licensing fee on developers. But in September, the company said it would begin charging developers additional money each time someone downloaded one of their video games. That meant developers would pay more as their games increased in popularity. Mr. Riccitiello was one of the main proponents of the change….

…His swift exit underscored the precarious position Mr. Riccitiello found himself in after an attempt to fix a corporate balance sheet awash in red ink. But the abrupt shift in the company’s financial model angered many programmers who rely on Unity for their own businesses….

(13) IN THE ZONE. In “20 Best Quotes From The Twilight Zone (& What They Mean)”, ScreenRant sifts through the series’ twists and morals. Among them:

Season 4, Episode 1, In His Image

“In His Image” follows an android man named Alan, created by Walter Ryder to be a perfect version of himself. However, as the ending reveals, Alan has unexplained flaws that cause him to want to kill others. Walter takes over his life at the end of the episode, realizing he is actually a perfect version of Alan. The episode’s quote, “There may be easier ways to self-improvement, but sometimes it happens that the shortest distance between two points is a crooked line.”

The common phrase says the shortest distance between two points is a straight line, but The Twilight Zone turns this on its head. The quote is saying the bizarre scenario in which Walter created a robot version of himself was the quickest way for him to realize that he is actually the best version of himself. There may have been an easier way, but this is the fastest way he came up with. This could be applied to various areas in life, as sometimes unusual circumstances can be the most effective way to realize or accomplish something.

(14) THE EVOLUTION OF WOMEN. “Eve by Cat Bohannon review – long overdue evolutionary account of women and their bodies” in the Guardian.

…This long overdue evolutionary account is the pre-history to Caroline Criado Perez’s Invisible Women (2019), showing how wrong it is to think of women as just men with breasts and wombs bolted on. Over hundreds of thousands of years, women have developed more sensitive noses (particularly around ovulation and pregnancy), finer hearing at high frequencies, extended colour vision, and longer life expectancy than men by an impressive half decade. Forget plasma exchange and supplementation – entrepreneurs trying to extend human life should be studying women, who comprise around 80% of today’s centenarians.

American academic and author Cat Bohannon asks how this came to be, tracing defining female features back to our “presumed true ancestors”, our Eves as she calls them. The story starts more than 200m years ago in the Jurassic period with a rodent, Morganucodon, nicknamed Morgie, which still laid eggs but also had glands on its tummy that began secreting milk. It was perhaps the first breastfeeder….

… There is no fossil record of brains or wombs. Where any organ once was becomes a cavity of uncertainty. Bohannon finds the gaps “incredibly fun”, excavating possibilities from silence. She revises the opening of Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, for example, replacing the testosterone-filled scene of early man as the “primordial inventor” of weapons, with women who were sharpening the tools while also making the babies…

(15) IS STEPHEN KING ‘KING’? [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] Moid over at Media Death Cult channel on YouTube is teasing us as to whether Stephen King the horror writer is a king of SF????

The Science Fiction Of Stephen King Filmed in a haunted forest in the pouring rain.

[Thanks to Andrew Porter, Ersatz Culture, John King Tarpinian, Steven French, Rich Horton, James Bacon, Chris Barkley, 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 Jayn.]

Pixel Scroll 10/8/23 Strange Scrolls Lying In Ponds Passing Out Pixels

Posted on October 8, 2023 by Mike Glyer

(1) MARTHA WELLS Q&A. Kelly Jennings interviews Martha Wells for IZ Digital: “Out of Trauma”.

Kelly Jennings: I also saw somewhere that you used to work as a programmer – is that right? Can you talk about how that’s helped you create the bots in your books, including Murderbot?

Martha Wells: Yes, in the late 80s and 90s I was a COBOL programmer and also built and worked with SQL databases and early CGI programs for web sites. I also did a lot of user support and wrote instructions and documentation, and worked with several different systems. I’ve had people assume I’m an expert on artificial intelligence, which I absolutely am not. What really informed Murderbot’s experience was creating a database according to what the users said they needed, and then finding that what they actually needed it to do was something else, and instead of asking for it to be adjusted they cram extra information into the fields and are then surprised when it doesn’t work the way it’s supposed to anymore. And being yelled at by people who don’t know how to turn their workstation on. I have lots of stories about this kind of thing….

(2) “TRUTH ISN’T ALWAYS ENLIGHTENMENT”. “Joanna Russ Showed Us the Future: Female, Queer but Far From Perfect” explains Annalee Newitz in a review of a new Russ collection.

Joanna Russ (1937-2011) was one of the great writers of the 20th century, but she is also one of those authors you either know intimately or have never heard of. She wrote prickly, violent stories about lesbian heroes who slay patriarchs, and adventure tales about bold women who swashbuckle across the multiverse. These tropes win fans and Oscars today, but Russ was publishing in the 1960s and ’70s, when women simply weren’t supposed to write like that. At least, not if they wanted to be taken seriously. She was an outsider in the literary world for writing about the future, but her space marauders were too queer for the science fiction crowd. And so she never really found a comfortable place in literary history.

Now a new collection of her most significant works, JOANNA RUSS: Novels & Stories (Library of America, 711 pp., $37.50), offers a valuable introduction to a pioneer who defied categories. It contains Russ’s best-known novel, “The Female Man” (1975), a potent mixture of science fiction and dark satire; her early stories about a savvy, tough time traveler named Alyx; and her painfully realistic coming-out novel “On Strike Against God” (1980).

Together, these works and a few others showcase Russ’s furious, chaotic style. She focuses on messy characters whose racing minds she populates with fragments of music and theatrical dialogue, interleaving their sharp social observations with futuristic speculation based in real science. It’s like listening to your smartest, funniest friend tell you why the whole world is garbage….

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

Test images lead to erroneous speculation about possible guests

A photo posted to Weibo of an apparent promotional image of George R. R. Martin, which was taken to imply that he might be at a GoT/ASoIaF panel. One comment exchange (via Google Translate, with minor edits):

User A: Martin is coming?

User B: Or maybe it’s just a schematic diagram of the scene. Or [he’s] connect[ing] remotely. It is impossible [for him] to come. If [he] really comes, I will never criticize the organizing committee again [laughing and crying emojis]

This speculation was dashed when it transpired that the image was some sort of test or mockup that had somehow escaped into the wider world. A similar one with James Cameron and an Avatar panel was also posted, along with a few others.

Chengdu light rail train with Worldcon livery

The official Twitter and Facebook accounts posted some photos of a light rail train in Worldcon livery. There was also a short video posted to Xiaohongshu.

Photos of Hugo Hall and other interior areas

Those official accounts also posted some photos of the Hugo Hall, which looks a lot more finished than in the video posted here a few days ago. Based on that video, I think the third and fourth images are of the media room, rather than the Hugo Hall.

The Weibo account of the SF World Translation magazine posted several more images of the interior of the museum.

Three Xiaohongshu posts about the surrounding area

(i) This Xiaohongshu post is a relatively slow and long video compiling aerial shots of JIngrong town, the vicinity of the con. The locale seems to have a lot more high-rise blocks than I thought, compared to what’s been seen in other videos. Perhaps that is down to angle and shot selection?

The accompanying text is quite informative. Via Google Translate (with manual edits to fix tenses and grammar, and with bits that came out incoherent removed), it says:

Jingrong Town is a town under the jurisdiction of Pidu District, Chengdu City. The Pidu District of Chengdu has transformed Deyuan New Town, which was on the verge of becoming a “hollow town” in terms of industrial development, into Jingrong Town, a well-known “maker’s paradise”. At the same time, it has set off an upsurge of innovation and entrepreneurship in the entire district.

(ii) This post from October 5th is perhaps more interesting for the text notes and comments than the images; via Google Translate (minor manual edits):

The whole place is still under construction, and there are security guards all around to prevent you from entering. If you want to check in at the best place, you should wait until it opens.

Moreover, the surrounding supporting facilities are not yet complete… I want to say that there are no restaurants around. The nearest community is probably nearly 2 kilometers away. There are only three or four food stalls outside. And the nearest subway station is Wangcong Temple, which takes three stops. This venue can only be reached by tram.

(iii) Most of the shots in this Xiaohongshu slideshow are by now fairly familiar, but there’s “(In Chengdu) Meet The Future” sculpture/statue/something that I haven’t seen before. (If you have that app, several of the images will display as short videos, but this doesn’t seem to work in a browser.)

Staff badges and training material

This post contains three images:

A photo of the (volunteer?) staff ID badges. I’ve seen a couple of other posts with these posted in the past day or so, so maybe they’ve just been issued?
The second photo looks like it might be the cover page of a training manual for the Hugo Awards Ceremony?
The third is possibly a banner flying in the area outside the SF museum?

PandaBot: “It’s coming”

I’m not sure what this is – quite possibly it’s just some unofficial fan art project – but these images of a robotic panda that (per the final image) is “helping the World Science Fiction Convention” were also posted to Xiaohongshu.

(4) EMMY-NOMINATED COSTUME DESIGNER. “Shawna Trpcic Dies: ‘The Mandalorian’, ‘Ahsoka’ & ‘Firefly’ Costume Designer Was 56” reports Deadline.

…She worked on such Joss Whedon series as Angel, Firefly, Dollhouse and Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog. as well as his movie The Cabin In the Woods.

A Firefly fan who worked at Skywalker Ranch asked her if she would like a tour, and there Trpcic met George Lucas. Fifteen years later, she received a call to work on The Mandalorian, fulfilling a lifelong dream to design for Star Wars.

Trpcic set up shop at Lucasfilm in 2019, joining the second season of The Mandalorian. She has since continued her work on that series and also served as costume designer of The Book of Boba Fett, and Ahsoka. Trpcic was nominated for an Emmy for her work on The Mandalorian Season 2 and The Book of Boba Fett, and won a Costume Designer’s Guild Award for her work on the latter. She is currently nominated for an Emmy for her work on The Mandalorian Season 3….

(5) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

Born October 8, 1920 — Frank Herbert. I’ll confess that I enjoyed Dune and Dune Messiah that’s as far as I got in the series. The BBC full cast audio version of Dune is quite amazing — by far, my favorite depiction of his novel in other media. The other Herbert novel I really liked was Under Pressure. Yes I’ve read much more by him but all that I remember vividly. No, I’ve not seen the film. Did y’all enjoy it? (Died 1986.)
Born October 8, 1943 — R.L. Stine, 80. He’s been called the “Stephen King of children’s literature” and is the author of hundreds of horror novels including works in the Goosebumps, Fear Street, Mostly Ghostly, and The Nightmare Room series. Library of Congress lists four hundred and twenty-three separate entries for him.
Born October 8, 1949 — Richard Hescox, 74. An illustrator who between the Seventies and early Nineties painted over one hundred and thirty covers for genre books, and is now working exclusively in the games industry and private commissions. Here’s his cover of Spider Robinson’s Lady Slings The Booze, another one of Spider’s clever puns.

Born October 8, 1949 — Sigourney Weaver, 74. I’m picking her greatest genre role as being the dual roles of Gwen DeMarco and Lieutenant Tawny Madison in Galaxy Quest. Chicon 2000 did give the film Best Dramatic Presentation Award after all and it is a loving homage to all that is good in the genre. And yes, I know Conspiracy ‘87 gave Aliens a Best Dramatic Presentation Award as well but I’m really not a fan of that franchise.
Born October 8, 1951 — Terry Hayes, 72. Screenwriter of Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior which he co-wrote with George Miller and Brian Hannant, Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome with Miller, and From Hell (from the Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell novel) which he co-wrote with Rafael Yglesias. He’s also the writer of an unused screenplay, Return of the Apes.
Born October 8, 1974 — Lynne M. Thomas, 49. Librarian, podcaster and award-winning editor. She has won ten Hugo Awards for, among other things, as one of many involved in the SF Squeecast fancast, and editing Uncanny magazine with and husband Michael Damian Thomas. She and her husband are fanatical Whovians, so it’s no surprise that with Tara O’Shea, she edited the superb Chicks Dig Time Lords: A Celebration of Doctor Who by the Women Who Love It.
Born October 8, 1993 — Molly C. Quinn, 30. Fey / Intern Molly / Melony on the Welcome to Night Vale podcast and Pemily Stallwark on the sort of related Thrilling Adventure Hour podcast. She’s Jenny in the Arthurian Avalon High series, and showed up in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 as Howard’s date.

(6) COMICS SECTION.

“Heart of the City” brings us “Cat Court”.
Tom Gauld shows it’s hard to keep a secret.

My latest cartoon for @newscientist. pic.twitter.com/X9CQg4OnkW
— Tom Gauld (@tomgauld) October 8, 2023

(7) POLISH GAME DEVS UNIONIZE. “CD Projekt Red devs unionise after its third round of layoffs in three months” reports Eurogamer.net.

Staff at CD Projekt Red are uniting with others in the Polish video game industry to unionise.

The union was formed after CDPR announced a third wave of job cuts in as many months, driving developers to unionise as a means of “improving their workplace/industry standards in a way that has legal power and amplifies their voices”.

“We started talking about unionizing after the 2023 wave of layoffs when nine per cent of Reds (that is roughly 100 people) were let go,” the union explains on the Gamedevunion.pl website (as translated by Google Translate)….

(8) HOLLYWOOD KITSCH. The “Again L.A. – Huge Toy and Hollywood Ephemera Sale starts on 10/6/2023” webpage at EstateSales.net is especially interesting for the vast photo gallery of treasures from past childhoods and other collectibles. I promise – a fair number are tasteless.

(9) PAPERBACK WRITER. The New York Times visits a local exhibit about “How the Humble Paperback Helped Win World War II”.

When American soldiers fought on the battlefields of World War II, they were carrying more than weapons. They also carried ideas — quite literally.

The Armed Services Editions, a series of specially designed pocket-size paperbacks, were introduced in the spring of 1943. Over the next four years, roughly 120 million were printed, finding their way everywhere from the beaches of Normandy to German P.O.W. camps to remote Pacific islands….

… The program, one of the more heroic chapters in American publishing history, is the subject of “The Best-Read Army in the World,” an exhibition at the Grolier Club in Manhattan. The show, on view through Dec. 30, is curated by Molly Guptill Manning, a law professor who accumulated more than 900 of the volumes while researching her 2014 book “When Books Went to War.”…

… The editions also boosted the fortunes of some authors. When F. Scott Fitzgerald died in 1940, “The Great Gatsby,” published in 1925, had barely sold 20,000 copies. Then it was selected as an Armed Services Edition, and more than 120,000 copies were distributed, spurring its transformation into a classic….

(10) VIDEO OF THE DAY. ‘Tis the season – Halloween, that is. “Toxicity (System of a Down) 2023 Halloween Light and Fire Show”.

[Thanks to SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, Daniel Dern, 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 Thomas the Red.]

Pixel Scroll 9/21/23 Dammit, Jetpack! I’m A Pixel Not A Scroll Deliverer

Posted on September 21, 2023 by Mike Glyer

(1) BIGGER ON THE INSIDE. If you can’t get somebody to give you this as a gift over the coming holidays you’ll have to buy it yourself. Because how could you not own it? “Doctor Who: Limited Edition Complete New Who Blu-ray Set Is Up for Preorder” at IGN. There’s a hell of a lot of content in these boxes.

…The Complete New Who limited edition collection is now available to preorder at Amazon and will feature every single episode from the modern era of Doctor Who in wonderful physical Blu-ray format. At $174.99, this looks incredibly affordable vs. buying each series on its own.

It’s still a premium price, for sure, but you’re getting a lot of TV-show for that price, with the collection comprising every series from the revival in 2005, to the Flux episodes (Series 13) in 2021, and every Holiday episode or one-off special along the way as well….

(2) BOOKS AS RARE AS UNICORNS. Or maybe you’d rather spend your money on one of the three limited editions of The Last Unicorn by Peter S. Beagle from Suntup Editions, announced today.

…Magical, beautiful beyond belief and completely alone, the unicorn has lived since before memory in a forest where death could touch nothing. Maidens who caught a glimpse of her glory were blessed by enchantment they would never forget. But outside her wondrous realm, dark whispers and rumors carried a message she could not ignore: “Unicorns are gone from the world.” Aided by a bumbling magician and an indomitable spinster, the unicorn embarks on a dangerous quest to learn the truth about what happened to her kind….

The signed limited edition of The Last Unicorn by Peter S. Beagle is presented in three states: Classic, Numbered and Lettered. The edition measures 6” x 9” and features nine full color tipped in oil painting illustrations by Tom Kidd as well as a new exclusive introduction by the author. One of the nine illustrations is a presented as a fold-out appearing in all three states….

The Classic edition is limited to 750 copies, and is the only edition to include a dust jacket illustrated by Tom Kidd….

The Numbered edition of 250 copies is a Bradel binding with a cover design inspired by the famous Unicorn Tapestries of the late Middle Ages….

The Lettered edition is limited to 26 copies and is bound in full white goatskin with a unicorn and bull design by Laura Serra on the cover. …

(3) 57 SECONDS. The idea might remind you of the Omega-13. Gizmodo has an exclusive “57 Seconds Clip: Josh Hutcherson Discovers Time Travel”. See the clip at the link.

…Presumably Franklin gets to the time jumps quick enough, considering the rest of the movie will see him team up with Burrell to use the ring on a mission of vengeance against a sinister pharmaceutical company that was responsible for the death of his sister. But for now, it’s nice to see someone react just like we would if we discovered time travel: with a lot of anxiety, confusion, and some mild cursing…

ScreenRant posted its own, different exclusive clip a couple days ago.

(4) THE LAW AND MISTER WILLINGHAM. [Item by Jennifer Hawthorne.] “The Litigation Disaster Tourism Hour: Bill Willingham, DC, and the Fight Over Fables – no, really, WTF is going on?” on Twitch is a video of a law stream done by Mike Dunford. He’s an actual professional copyright lawyer (did his JD thesis on it) and he was asked to address Bill Willingham’s statement that he was placing Fables into the public domain as a means of striking back at DC comics who Willingham asserts has disrespected him. Mike D goes over Willingham’s statement and explains why it’s utter nonsense. Warning: Lots of colorful profanity, much of it directed at Willingham. TL:DR: Willingham is talking BS and Mike D’s only concern is that some third party might believe WIllingham’s statement, try to make a Fables creative product, and end up getting sued into oblivion by DC.

(5) YOU MUST LISTEN. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] The British SF writer Nigel Kneale is possibly best known for creating the character Quatermass whose most famous adventure was the BBC TV series Quatermass and the Pit that gripped Britain back in 1958/9, so much so that it spawned a film version, the most successful of the four cinematic adaptations of the four BBC series (there were five Quatermass TV series in all).

Because much of Kneale’s work was decades before the internet (a good portion even before the widespread adoption of the transistor and microchip) some of his works have been lost. However, a trawl through his personal archive has uncovered the script for one of his lost radio play’s You Must Listen. This has now been re-made and premiered on BBC Radio 4 yesterday, September 20.

A solicitor’s office has a new phone line connected, but the staff keep hearing a woman’s voice on the phone. Engineer Frank Wilson is called to fix the problem, and gradually the disturbing story of the woman starts to emerge.

Originally broadcast in September 1952, You Must Listen was written by Nigel Kneale, one of the most admired English science-fiction writers of the last century. His Quatermass trilogy of science fiction serials continues to influence generations of admirers and filmmakers, among them Russell T Davies and John Carpenter.

But before The Quatermass Experiment established his television career, Kneale’s radio drama You Must Listen paved the way for what was to come. It explores many of the same themes that he later addressed in Quatermass, The Stone Tape and The Road, of the paranormal coming into collision with modern science.

No recording of the original version of You Must Listen is known to exist, but fortunately Kneale kept a copy of the script in his archives, and this new version has been recorded to mark the centenary of BBC Radio Drama.

You can listen to it on BBC Sounds here for the next month.

(6) AUCTION WILL ASSIST UKRANIAN BOOKSELLERS. The Guardian has details: “Rare book donations sought for auction to help Ukraine booksellers”.

Donations of rare books, artworks, manuscripts, photographs and ephemera are being sought for an auction aimed at raising funds for Ukrainian booksellers and publishers affected by the Russia-Ukraine war.

Authors are also being invited to donate signed first-edition copies of their books. The proceeds of the auction will go to Helping Ukrainian Books and Booksellers (Hubb), a group formed shortly after the war began, when thousands of publishing professionals suddenly found themselves out of work.

…Donations across “literature, poetry, history and science” are welcomed, said Avi Kovacevich, founder of Catalog Sale, a New York-based auction house that is facilitating the sale….

Hubb’s proceeds will be distributed in Ukraine by the Ukrainian Publishers and Booksellers Association. So far, Hubb has raised more than $30,000 (£24,257), which has been allocated to booksellers, publishers and libraries in Ukraine.

A large portion came from donations made by customers at Brookline Booksmith in Boston, the bookshop visited by the late Ukrainian novelist Victoria Amelina when she lived in the city for a year. Amelina died in July from injuries sustained in a Russian missile attack on a restaurant in eastern Ukraine.

The auction will take place online in mid-November….

The call for submissions is open until 10 October. Those interested in contributing to the sale are asked to send images of up to 10 items to [email protected].

(7) SF TERMS IN NEW YORK MAGAZINE NEWSLETTER. [Item by Michael A. Burstein.] Unfortunately, this isn’t available on the web, but New York Magazine is sending out a newsletter to subscribers who sign up called Queries, from copy editor Carl Rosen. (Information about the newsletter here.)

The issue that came out yesterday, Queries Week 2, includes this question from a reader and an answer from Rosen that I thought would be of interest (and does anyone know if Rosen was/is a part of fandom?):

A pet peeve: The new widespread usage of the phrase “I’m excited for …” applied to events instead of people. I believe that we all used to say “I’m excited for you, the bride-to-be, getting married next month!” Or, “I’m so excited about your wedding!” Now everyone says instead “I’m so excited for your wedding!” As though an event needs empathy. When did this start and why is it allowed to continue? —Callie

It started in the locker room at my middle school and followed the misuse of best for favorite that stoked my dudgeon in playground discussions of filk songs and FIAWOL (sci-fi fan terms). At least excited people talk in ways that favor empathy, as you point out, so let’s extend our sympathies to them. But only in their quotations.

(8) PRONOUNS IN SPACE. Samantha Riedel says “A Gamer Tried to Remove Pronouns from ‘Starfield’ and It Turned Their Character Nonbinary” at Them.us.

No matter how many light years you travel, you just can’t outrun pronouns.

Starfield, Bethesda Game Studios’ new science fiction role-playing game, launched almost two weeks ago with its fair share of bugs and glitches — but for the internet’s angriest hobbyists, one thing above all else had ruined the game: a drop-down menu in character creation that allows players to choose their own woke pronouns, by which we mean you can choose whether to be referred to as “he,” “she,” or “they.” (Next you’ll be telling us they let you have blue hair — aw, shit!)

Anti-trans gamer bros went on a comments-section rampage, led by one YouTuber who briefly went viral for a shrieking rant about Bethesda “tak[ing] everything we love” and shoving it full of “fucking pronouns.” One person was so Large Mad about the pronoun selection option that they even modified the game’s PC version to remove the option from character creation entirely. There’s just one problem: the mod accidentally made the player’s character gender-neutral….

(9) DEBORAH K. JONES (1948-2023). “Deborah K. Jones 1948–2023: In Memoriam” at the International Costumers Guild website is a personal tribute by Eleanor Farrell.

I am very saddened to report that Deborah K. Jones, respected and admired by all in the costuming community for her exquisitely crafted and thoughtfully choreographed masquerade presentations, passed away peacefully on July 8, 2023, following a three year bout with glioblastoma. Debby had struggled with a number of medical issues over several decades, but always with a positive attitude and quiet fortitude, and never lost her sense of curiosity and creative drive. She is survived by her husband Terry and their two children, Rhiannon and Bryan….

Continues at the link.

(10) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

Born September 21, 1895 — Norman Louis Knight. His most-remembered work is A Torrent of Faces, a novel co-written with James Blish and reprinted in the Ace Science Fiction Specials line. His only other writing is a handful of short fiction. Not surprisingly his short fiction isn’t available at the usual suspects but neither A Torrent of Faces. (Died 1972.)
Born September 21, 1912 — Chuck Jones. Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies creator (think Bugs Bunny). His work won three Oscars, and the Academy also gave him an honorary one in 1996. I’ve essayed him more that once here, so you know that I like him. What’s your favorite one of his? Though perhaps culturally suspect these days, I’m very fond of “Hillbilly Hare”. (Died 2002.)
Born September 21, 1935 — Henry Gibson. I’m going confess upfront that I remember best him as a cast member of Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In. In regards to his genre work, he showed up on the My Favorite Martian series as Homer P. Gibson, he was in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang as an uncredited dancer, in Bewitched twice, once as Napoleon Bonaparte, once as Tim O’ Shanter, he was the voice of Wilbur in Charlotte’s Web, in The Incredible Shrinking Woman as Dr. Eugene Nortz, and even in an episode of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, the “Profit and Lace” episode to be exact in which he was Nilva, a ferengi. (Died 2009.)
Born September 21, 1947 — Stephen King, 76. I once saw him leaning up against a wall in Bangor outside his favorite breakfast spot nose deep in a paperback novel. That’s how his native city treated him. Favorite by him? I’m not fond of his novels but I love his novellas and shorter fiction, so Different Seasons, Four past Midnight and Skeleton Crew are my picks.
Born September 21, 1950 — Bill Murray, 73. Scrooged is my favorite film by him by a long shot followed by the first Ghostbusters film as I remain firmly not ambivalent about the other Ghostbusters films. I’m also fond of his voicing of Clive the Badger in Fantastic Mr. Fox.
Born September 21, 1964 — Andy Duncan, 59. If I were to start anywhere with him, it’d be with his very excellent short stories which fortunately were published in two World Fantasy Award-winning collections Beluthahatchie and Other Stories, and The Pottawatomie Giant and Other Stories, and another WFA nominee, An Agent of Utopia: New & Selected Stories. I’ve read his novels, so what you recommend? He has garnered some very impressive Awards — not only World Fantasy Awards for the two collections, but also for the “Wakulla Springs” novelette (co-authored with Ellen Klages), and a Nebula for the novelette “Close Encounters” (2013). He has three Hugo nominations, for his “Beluthahatchie” short story (1998), the novella “The Chief Designer” (2002), and “Wakulla Springs”
Born September 21, 1974 — Dexter Palmer, 49. He wrote interesting novels, the first being The Dream of Perpetual Motion which is based off The Tempest, with steampunk, cyborgs and airships as well; the second being Version Control, a media-saturated twenty minutes into the future America complicated by time travel that keep changing everything. He wrote these and that was it.
Born September 21, 1983 — Cassandra Rose Clarke, 40. I strongly recommend The Witch Who Came in from the Cold, a serial fiction story she coauthored with Max Gladstone, Lindsay Smith, Ian Tregillis, and Michael Swanwick. It’s quite brilliant. And The Mad Scientist’s Daughter, nominated for a Philip K. Dick Award, is equally brilliant.

(11) COMICS SECTION.

Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal asks, what can time machines be used for?

(12) FINAL DOOM. TVLine brings news of “’Doom Patrol’ Final Season 4B Release Date, Trailer — Series Finale”.

…Max on Thursday announced that Doom Patrol‘s in-progress final season will resume on Thursday, Oct. 12. Two episodes will drop on premiere day, followed by one new episode every week through Nov. 9.

In Season 4B, “the Doom Patrol meet old friends and foes as they race to defeat Immortus and get back their longevities,” according to the official logline. “Battling between saving the world and each other, the Doom Patrol are forced to face their deepest fears and decide if they are ready to let go of the past in order to take their future into their own hands — and away from the zombie butts.”…

(13) WHAT’S COMING TO THE COMIC-CON MUSEUM. “Comic-Con Museum Announces Fall 2023 Exhibits Featuring Popnology, Artist Colleen Doran, More”. The new exhibits debut October 4.

…This interactive exhibit looks back at how the pop culture of yesterday has influenced the technology of the future, exploring the fantasy and reality of driverless cars, robots, drones, 3D printers, and more.

Museum attendees will get to explore:

How We Play – The future of toys and games. Is virtual the new reality? Experience Oculus Rift and virtual projection games.

How We Connect – The revolution in communication technology, with concept drawings from the visual futurists who created the looks for Blade Runner.

How We Live and Work – Inventions and ideas that shape daily life, including interacting with robots.

How We Move – The future of transportation on Earth and beyond. Check out everything from a full-sized replica of the Back to the Future DMC DeLorean to the world’s first 3D-printed car.

…The first of which is “Colleen Doran Illustrates Neil Gaiman”, which features original artwork by the award-winning artist Colleen Doran. The new exhibit will focus on her work illustrating the stories of Neil Gaiman, including Chivalry, Snow, Glass, Apples, The Sandman, Troll Bridge, American Gods, Norse Mythology, and the upcoming Good Omens.

The centerpiece of the exhibit will be 20 hand-painted pages for Doran and Gaiman’s Chivalry (Dark Horse Books), the Eisner-award winning graphic novel adaptation of Gaiman’s short story which features the story of Mrs. Whitaker, a British widow who finds the Holy Grail in a thrift shop and the knight who offers her priceless relics in exchange so he can win the Grail and end his quest…

(14) SUPER STYLING. DC Comics’ merch pages include “Batman & Superman Fashion Accessories” such as these “Batman Dark Knight Cufflinks”.

And this reference to some super villains: “Arkham Asylum Lapel Pin”.

(15) OCTOTHORPE. A belated Octothorpe episode 92 winging its way to you! Listen here: “Shouting From Inside the Room”.

John Coxon went to Reno, Alison Scott went to San Francisco, and Liz Batty went to Chicago. We spend some time discussing ConFrancisco, which celebrated its 30th anniversary recently, before also discussing Glasgow and Chengdu. We read out some excellent letters of comment and discuss some science fiction, too! The cover art is by our own Alison Scott.

(16) SAMPLE CASE. Nature tells how “Bringing space rocks back to Earth could answer some of life’s biggest questions”.

At 8.55 a.m. local time on 24 September, a small and precious cargo is due to touch down in Utah’s West Desert, ending a journey of more than two years and two billion kilometres. Released 100,000 kilometres from Earth by NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft, the sample capsule contains roughly 250 grams of material transported from the near-Earth asteroid 101955 Bennu — the largest ever asteroid sample to be brought back to Earth.

…The imminent return of the Bennu samples by OSIRIS-REx reminds me of what an exhilarating time this is and the profound possibilities of these precious materials.

(17) SINGLE EBELSKIVER TO ORBIT. [Item by Steven French.] Space-faring Swedes! (Should the cosmos be worried about a resurgence of Viking tendencies …?!!) “Hidden in the Arctic, Sweden is quietly winning Europe’s next big space race” reports the Guardian.

Once Europe’s first successful launch is completed, the base aims to build capacity for “rapid launching” by 2030, where satellites would be ready to be thrust into orbit within a fortnight of notification. “To us, it’s not a race to be first, it’s a race to be successful,” said Gustafsson, a former marathon canoeist with world championship medals to his name. But, he adds, “competition is good because it drives speed and cost effectiveness”. Make no mistake, the Swedes have their eyes on the stellar prize.

(18) SLOW BURN. See the “Close-up Ignition of a Rocket Engine in Slow Mo” courtesy of The Slow Mo Guys.

Gav plops down the high speed camera next to a rocket engine with 45,000lbs of thrust and the results are epic. Big thanks to Firefly for allowing us to film at their facility and BBC Click for letting us use their behind the scenes footage from the day.

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

Pixel Scroll 9/18/23 Take A Pixel, Leave A Pixel

Posted on September 18, 2023 by Mike Glyer

(1) WORLDCON VENUE DISPLAY. [Item by Ersatz Culture.] Blogger skyxiang1991, who posts photos of the Chengdu SF museum/convention centre, uploaded a video earlier today showing a test of the light/laser (?) display at what is perhaps the entrance. See the video here.

The 2 characters on the left of the entrance are 科幻 (kehuan/science fiction), I can’t make out the stuff on the right.

(2) WORLDCON INVITATION. [Item by Ersatz Culture.] Whilst looking for any relevant posts or updates on the Xiaohongshu social media platform, I came across this post from September 5, which — based on the footer — indicates that the Chengdu organizers were still sending out invitations as of September 4. [Click for larger images.]

Google Translate indicates that the English and Chinese language pages have broadly the same information. There’s nothing about the nature of the invitation though e.g. will they be appearing on panels, that says the Worldcon is offering any assistance towards their attendance, etc.

One of the comments is from a volunteer, who says that they have started training for the event.

I have no idea who Chen Ming Da / 晨鸣达 is, although their Xiahongshu bio and posts indicate they are a street artist in Guangdong province.

(3) BACK YOUR FAVORITE MAGAZINES. Jason Sanford says “Don’t Let Our Current Golden Age of Genre Magazines Fade Away” in a post at Apex Magazine.

…Last month, Fantasy Magazine announced they’re closing their doors, in part because of Amazon’s change to Kindle Newsstand. And there are fears more magazines could follow.

As magazines deal with the fallout from Amazon nuking the digital subscription landscape, people will no doubt be told that magazines are no longer relevant in today’s genre. That it is the magazine’s fault for trusting Amazon. Or that only writers read these magazines (an outright myth, with Neil Clarke’s recent analysis of Clarkeworld’s readership data showing that only 13% of his known subscribers are writers who also submitted to the magazine).

The truth is that in today’s fragmented online world, genre magazines are even more vital to the SF/F/H genre. Magazines are where new and marginalized voices can be heard. Magazines are where genre communities and connections can be formed. Magazines are where our genre futures are being created today….

(4) FIND OUT “HOW TO”. Mary Soon Lee’s How to Navigate Our Universe, released this past week, is a collection of 128 poems, ranging from whimsical to serious — poems about planets, stars, black holes, and astronomers, complete with essential advice such as “How to End the Universe”.

Here’s an example —

How to Be a Star

Gravitationally collapse a nebula.
Fuse hydrogen into helium.
If desired, explode.

And there is other How-to astronomy poetry to answer vexing questions such as “How to Surprise Saturn”, “How to Blush Like Betelgeuse”, and “How to Survive a Black Hole”.

Mary Soon Lee is a Grand Master of the Science Fiction & Fantasy Poetry Association, and has won the Rhysling Award, the Elgin Award, and the AnLab Readers’ Award.

The book is self-published, and available through Amazon.com.

This is her second collection of science poetry, following on from Elemental Haiku: Poems to honor the periodic table three lines at a time.

(5) I COULD SING THIS ALL DAY. “Captain America’s MCU Musical is Now Streaming” – Gizmodo alerts the media.

You usually go to the Marvel Cinematic Universe for a lot of things, but memorable original music isn’t really one of them. But Rogers: The Musical—a corny Hamilton-alike that told a very condensed story of Chris Evans’ Captain America—is one of the more successful attempts at musically spicing things up for the films, if only because people seemed to like its brief appearance in the first episode of Hawkeye. It even took off well enough that Disney brought it to its theme parks for the summer—which is why Disney’s now putting the album out on streaming.

Marvel released Rogers’ 12-track album at the start of the weekend, which comes from the most recent performance held at Disney’s California Adventure Park at the Hyperion Theater. Beyond the novelty of being an MCU musical, the album boasts five brand new original songs that were made specifically for the production.

(6) ONLY 97 SHOPPING DAYS BEFORE CHRISTMAS. This is what someone at TrekCore.com is getting this year: “Hallmark Honors Data and His Cat with 2023 ‘Ode to Spot’ STAR TREK Ornament”.

…Featured in the episode “Schisms” — did that episode mess anyone else up? Just me? — the poem “Ode to Spot” has a special place in this 90s kid’s Star Trek lovin’ heart. I was delighted to see that Hallmark decided to immortalize this iconic TNG moment in this year’s ornament line up.

The push button audio includes the first and final stanzas of the poem…

(7) A DEAL, DEPENDING ON HOW YOU FEEL ABOUT IT. [Item by Daniel Dern.] I see that Amazon is currently offering three free months of Kindle Unlimited. (Just noticed after pre-ordering a book, by an author I’m overdue to write a scroll about.)

I’m well aware that while this is good for us voracious read’n’release readers, it’s arguably trebleplusungood for creators. OTOH, IMHO much of the reader/creator $ chain seems problematic, e.g., as mostly library/e-library user, not to mention a frequent rereader of the books I own, and still-occasional used-book buyer, creators aren’t being remunerated for much of my eyeball input (ditto audio, etc.)

(8) SUING ANOTHER INTERNET BOOK INFRINGER. “Four large US publishers sue ‘shadow library’ for alleged copyright infringement” – the Guardian briefs readers about the case.

Four leading US publishers have sued an online “shadow library” that allows visitors to download textbooks and other copyrighted materials free.

Cengage, Macmillan Learning, McGraw Hill and Pearson Education filed the suit against Library Genesis, also known as LibGen, in Manhattan federal court, citing “extensive violations” of copyright law.

LibGen operates a collection of different domains that allow users to search for and download pdf versions of books. The suit, filed on Thursday, said LibGen holds more than 20,000 files published by the four suing companies.

“LibGen’s massive infringement completely undermines the incentive for creation and the rights of authors, who earn no royalties for the millions of books LibGen illegally distributes,” Matt Oppenheim, the attorney representing the publishing companies, told the Guardian.

The publishers asked for an unspecified amount of money in damages and called for LibGen domain names to be deleted or transferred to the four companies. The complaint said that LibGen’s activities cause “serious financial and creative harm” because they devalue the textbook market and deprive publishers of income from textbook purchases, which may lead companies to stop publishing “deserving” titles that have low sales….

(9) IS STRIKE AGAINST VIDEO GAME COMPANIES NEXT? “SAG-AFTRA President Fran Drescher Urges Members To Approve Strike Authorization Against Video Game Companies” at Deadline.

SAG-AFTRA President Fran Drescher, saying that “right now is the time to show our solidarity,” is urging her members to authorize a strike against the video game industry. The guild, which has been on strike against the film and TV industries since July 14, could go on strike against the gaming companies any time after September 25, when voting on the strike authorization ends. The guild’s first and only strike against the gaming companies lasted 183 days in 2016-17.

In a new video, Drescher notes that voting for a strike authorization doesn’t necessarily mean that there will be a strike. But rather, it authorizes the board to “to call a strike if needed.”

“It’s been nearly a year since SAG-AFTRA began negotiating the Interactive Media Agreement with video game companies, “she says in the video. “Despite many multi-day bargaining sessions, the companies are refusing to meet our members’ needs in vital areas.”…

(10) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

Born September 18, 1884 — Gertrude Barrows Bennett. She’s been called a pioneering author of genre fiction. She wrote a number of fantasies between in the late teens and early twenties, and has been called “the woman who invented dark fantasy”. Her short story, “The Curious Experience of Thomas Dunbar” which was published under G.M. Barrows in Argosy is considered first time that an American female writer published SF story using her real name. I’m pleased to say that both iBooks and Kindle are heavily stocked with her works. (Died 1948.)
Born September 18, 1917 — June Foray. Voice performer with such roles as Cindy Lou Who, Natasha Fatale and Rocky the Flying Squirrel. She also provided the voice of Lucifer the Cat from Disney’s Cinderella. She also did a lot of witches such as Looney Tunes’ Witch Hazel which you can hear over here courtesy of WB Kids. She was instrumental in the creation of the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature twenty years ago. OGH has a most touching remembrance here. (Died 2017.)
Born September 18, 1946 — Struan Rodger, 77. He was the Bishop in Stardust, and shows up in the A Discovery of Witches as John Dee. (Loved the novels, skipped the series as I always do.) He voiced the Three-Eyed Raven in The Game of Thrones’ “The Lion and The Rose” and “The Children”. More interestingly he’s got multiple roles in Doctor Who. First he’s The Voice of The Face of Boe in the Tenth Doctor stories, “New Earth” and “Gridlock”, next he’s Clayton in the Twelfth Doctor story, “The Women Who Lived” and finally he’s a voice again, that of Kasaavin in “Skyfall, Part One”, a Thirteenth Doctor story.
Born September 18, 1948 — Lynn Abbey, 75. She’s best known for co-creating and co-editing with Robert Lynn Asprin (to whom she was married for awhile) the Thieves’ World series of shared-setting anthologies. (All twelve volumes!) Her Sanctuary novel set in the Thieves’ World universe is quite excellent. I’ve not kept up with her later work, so y’all will need to tell me how it is.
Born September 18, 1951 — Dee Dee Ramone. Yes, the Ramones bassist. He penned Chelsea Horror Hotel, a novel in which he and his wife move into New York City’s Hotel Chelsea where the story goes that they are staying in the same room where Sid Vicious allegedly killed his girlfriend, Nancy Spungen. Many predictable ghosts visit them. (Died 2002.)
Born September 18, 1953 — Michael R. Nelson, 70. Conrunner from the BaltiWash area who got into fandom in 1989. He chaired Disclave 41, Capclave 2002 and co-chaired the DC17 Worldcon bid. He is a member of the Washington Science Fiction Association.
Born September 18, 1984 — Caitlin Kittredge, 39. Wiki say she’s best known for her Nocturne City series of adult novels, and for The Iron Codex, a series of YA novels, but I think her best work is by far the Black London series. She’s also writing the current Witchblade series at Image Comics.

(11) COMICS SECTION.

Close to Home features a super-proud dad.
The Argyle Sweater imagines climate change affecting Westeros.
Dog Eat Doug is another Game of Thrones gag – and don’t you wonder what kind of seed they’re using?
A Tom Gauld doubleheader.

https://twitter.com/tomgauld/status/1701537595858059723

My cartoon for this week’s @GuardianBooks / @GdnSaturday pic.twitter.com/iHKQaUp8mc
— Tom Gauld (@tomgauld) September 16, 2023

(12) JEOPARDY! Andrew Porter was tuned into tonight’s Jeopardy! where a couple contestants were stumped by the show’s final item.

Final Jeopardy: Authors

Answer: He dedicated books to each of his 4 wives, including Hadley Richardson and Martha Gelhorn.

Wrong questions: Who is [C.S. crossed out] Tolkien? Who is Mark Twain?

Correct question: Who is Hemingway?

(13) THE OPPOSITE OF DÉJÀ VU IS NOT DEJAH THORIS. But ScienceAlert will be happy to tell you what it is in “The Opposite of Déjà Vu Exists, And It’s Even More Uncanny”.

…The opposite of déjà vu is “jamais vu”, when something you know to be familiar feels unreal or novel in some way. In our recent research, which has just won an Ig Nobel award for literature, we investigated the mechanism behind the phenomenon.

Jamais vu may involve looking at a familiar face and finding it suddenly unusual or unknown. Musicians have it momentarily – losing their way in a very familiar passage of music. You may have had it going to a familiar place and becoming disorientated or seeing it with “new eyes”.

It’s an experience which is even rarer than déjà vu and perhaps even more unusual and unsettling. When you ask people to describe it in questionnaires about experiences in daily life they give accounts like: “While writing in my exams, I write a word correctly like ‘appetite’ but I keep looking at the word over and over again because I have second thoughts that it might be wrong.”…

(14) SHOULD THESE HOMINID FOSSILS HAVE BEEN TAKEN FOR A RIDE? According to BGR, “Archaeologists are losing it over Virgin Galactic’s latest spaceflight”.

Last week, Virgin Galactic completed yet another flight, sending three passengers and an instructor to the edge of space. But it wasn’t the living passengers onboard the VSS Unity that had a lot of people in an uproar. Instead, reports note that archaeologists worldwide are upset that one of the passengers carried ancient human fossils into space aboard the flight….

The taking of these ancient human fossils into space was part of an elaborate publicity stunt to draw attention to “science, exploration, human origins, and South Africa,” Berger’s request noted. Despite the possible exposure it could bring, archaeologists say that the move put the remains in danger and could have led to the loss of one of the key identifying references for A. sediba, as the shoulder bone taken into space is actually the first A. sediba fossil to be discovered, and thus a reference that helps define the species.

Of course, this story would probably be a lot different if the flight hadn’t been successful, not only because of the loss of life, but because of the loss of history possible if the flight had not gone so smoothly. Luckily, that isn’t the case….

(15) PERMISSION DENIED. “Space Drugs Factory Denied Reentry to Earth” reports Gizmodo.

After manufacturing crystals of an HIV drug in space, the first orbital factory is stuck in orbit after being denied reentry back to Earth due to safety concerns.

The U.S. Air Force denied a request from Varda Space Industries to land its in-space manufacturing capsule at a Utah training area, while the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) did not grant the company permission to reenter Earth’s atmosphere, leaving its spacecraft hanging as the company scrambles to find a solution, TechCrunch first reported. A spokesperson from the FAA told TechCrunch in an emailed statement that the company’s request was not granted at this time “due to the overall safety, risk and impact analysis.”

…Varda Space launched its spacecraft on board a Falcon 9 rocket on June 12. The 264-pound (120-kilogram) capsule is designed to manufacture products in a microgravity environment and transport them back to Earth. On June 30, its first drug-manufacturing experiment succeeded in growing crystals of the drug ritonavir, which is used for the treatment of HIV, in orbit. The microgravity environment provides some benefits that could make for better production in space, overall reducing gravity-induced defects. Protein crystals made in space form larger and more perfect crystals than those created on Earth, according to NASA…

(16) IT’S A GAS. “Jupiter’s Moon Callisto Has a Whole Lot of Oxygen Scientists Struggle to Explain” – CNET has the story.

…It isn’t clear what’s happening at Callisto to produce so much oxygen, but Carberry Mogan hopes to get a better understanding of processes active in the moon’s surface that may yield an explanation or clues.

“That’s probably Callisto’s most enigmatic feature is its surface,” said Carberry Mogan, who’s a postdoctoral researcher in planetary science at the University of California at Berkeley. “It’s supposed to be an icy body, but when you look at it, it’s mostly this dark surface, anywhere from millimeters to kilometers deep.”

It’s still up for debate whether Callisto’s surface is more rock or ice. The dark material on its surface could also be ice-rich, providing a plentiful source for the mysterious amount of oxygen in the atmosphere.

For help with the mystery, Carberry Mogan is looking to upcoming robotic missions like ESA’s Juice and NASA’s Europa Clipper, which may swing close enough to Callisto to gather new data that could shed light on the puzzle….

(17) NUMBER NINE, NUMBER NINE. [Item by SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie.] The Science & Futurism with Isaac Arthur YouTube channel marked its ninth year this weekend. Its first ever YouTube video was on ‘Megastructures in Space’ that came out on September 17, 2014. To mark this anniversary at the weekend the month’s “Sci-Fi Sunday” with an episode “The Fermi Paradox: Fallen Empires”. In it he contemplated what the ruins of ancient Galactic Empires and the remains of their mega-structures of ancient, interstellar civilizations floating around the Galaxy might look like….

The cosmos seem silent and empty of any great interstellar empires, but perhaps they once existed, and if so, what titanic ruins might they have left behind?

(18) IF THE ROARING TWENTIES WERE SUPER. Today’s ShortyVerse — lots of nice close-ups! Interestingly, a mix of DC and Marvel characters. And an ad for Hulk Chocolate Protein Bars! “Epic Superhero Moments Throughout History”.

Let’s imagine what current movies/series would be like in 1920

[Thanks to SF Concatenation’s Jonathan Cowie, Mike Kennedy, Andrew Porter, Mary Soon Lee, Daniel Dern, Kathy Sullivan, John King Tarpinian, Chris Barkley, and Cat Eldridge for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Brian Z.]

Pixel Scroll 9/5/23 Scrolling Away In Pixelville, Looking For My Lost Emails Of Posts

Posted on September 5, 2023 by Mike Glyer

(1) IAFA 45 GUESTS. The 45th International Association for the Fantastic in the Arts will meet March 13-16, 2024 at the Orlando Airport Marriott Lakeside in Florida. Guests of Honor are Mary Turzillo and C. E. Murphy, and Guest Scholars are Woppa Diallo and Mame Bougouma Diene. The theme is “Whimsy”.

Whimsy, as a genre of fantastic and speculative fiction, celebrates the playfulness, imagination, and the sheer joy of storytelling. It embraces the fantastical, the absurd, and the unconventional, creating worlds where the ordinary collides with the extraordinary. Whimsical narratives often blur the boundaries between reality and fantasy, challenging conventional storytelling norms and inviting readers into a realm of limitless possibilities. This call for papers invites scholars and writers to explore the various facets of whimsy within the genre of fantastic and speculative fiction.

(2) FANAC.ORG’S UPCOMING ZOOM EVENTS. All interest fans are invited to attend the next Fan History Project New Zoom History Series. The coming year’s programs will again cover a wide range of fannish areas from Boston to Australia, from women you should know but probably don’t, to how Amateur Press Associations have been a backbone of fandom and they’ll talk with some of the best fan artists ever. The next session is:

Boston in the 60s, with Tony Lewis, Leslie Turek and Mike Ward, moderated by Mark Olson
September 23, 2023 at 4PM EDT (New York), 1PM Pacific (PDT), 9PM London (BST) and 6AM Sept 24 in Melbourne

Boston in the 60s was a generative hotbed of fannish activities, with long lasting consequences. The first modern Boskone was held in 1965 by the Boston Science Fiction Society, as part of its bidding strategy for Boston in ’67. NESFA began in 1967, and the first Boston Worldcon was held in 1971. MIT provided a ready source of new fans, and they made themselves heard in fanzines, indexes, clubs and conventions (and invented the micro-filk). What was Boston fandom like in the 60s? How was it influenced by MIT? Who were the driving forces and BNFs? What were the impacts of the failed 67 bid? What made Boston unique?

Please write to Edie Stern, [email protected], FANAC Webmaster to sign-up for the “Boston in the 60s” program.

Schedule for Future sessions

September 23, 2023 – 4PM EDT, 1PM PDT, 9PM London – Boston in the 60s, with Tony Lewis, Leslie Turek and Mike Ward, moderated by Mark Olson
October 15, 2023 – Evolution of Art(ists) – Grant Canfield, Tim Kirk and Dan Steffan
December 9, 2023 – 2PM EST, 11AM PST and 7PM London GMT – APAs Everywhere – Fred Lerner, Christina Lake, Amy Thompson and Tom Whitmore
February 17, 2024 – 7PM EST, 11 AM Feb 18 Melbourne AEDT – Wrong Turns on the Wallaby Track Part 2, with Leigh Edmonds and Perry Middlemiss
March 16, 2024 – 3PM EDT, 2PM CDT, 7PM London (GMT) – The Women Fen Don’t See – Claire Brialey, Kate Heffner, and Leah Zeldes Smith

To be included on Fanac.org’s Fannish Viewers List and be notified of all their programs, write to [email protected] with ZOOM in subject line.

Eighteen past Zoom History Sessions have covered many aspects of science fiction fan history. All are available on their YouTube Channel here along with nearly 150 other programs.

(3) SMALL WONDERS. Issue 3 of Small Wonders, the new magazine for science fiction and fantasy flash fiction and poetry, is now available on virtual newsstands here. Co-editors Cislyn Smith and Stephen Granade bring a mix of flash fiction and poetry from authors and poets who are familiar to SFF readers as well as those publishing their first-ever piece there.

The Issue 3 Table of Contents and release dates on the Small Wonders website:

Cover art: “Magic Turtle”, by Patricia Bingham
“Festival” (flash fiction), by Christine Hanolsy (4 Sep)
“Seducing the Supervillain” (poem), by H. V. Patterson (6 Sep)
“So You Want to Eat an Omnalik Starfish” (flash fiction), by Brian Hugenbruch (8 Sep)
“Once In As Many Lifetimes” (flash fiction), by Luc Diamant (11 Sep)
“Shears” (poem), by Devan Barlow (13 Sep)
“A Gardener Teaches His Son to Enrich the Soil and Plan for the Future” (flash fiction), by Jennifer Hudak (15 Sep)
“How My Sister Talked Me Into Necromancy During Quarantine” (flash fiction), by Rachael K. Jones (18 Sep)
“Let Us Dream” (poem), by Myna Chang (20 Sep)
“To Persist, However Changed” (flash fiction), by Aimee Ogden (22 Sep)

Subscriptions are available at the magazine’s store and on Patreon.

(4) STARFIELD. NPR takes listeners “Inside the making of Bethesda’s Starfield — one of the biggest stories ever”. (The game site is here.)

It’s a Wednesday night, and I’ve found my way to Titan, Saturn’s largest moon. Its surface is harsh and uninviting. If I were to remove my spacesuit, I’d die. But inside an airlocked space station, a small colony of human settlers call this place home.

Bill, a cheerful tour guide, greets me at the kitschy museum, full of artifacts from Earth. He explains that in 2130, Titan was the first place humans colonized after they left the blue planet. Down a flight of stairs, there’s an industrial-looking set of rooms filled with rusty shipping containers. This, we soon learn, is where some of Titan’s inhabitants live.

“Space is extremely limited,” Bill remarks. “So you’ll notice some overflow here.”

A woman nearby sees this area differently, suggesting things might be a bit more complicated than Bill has let on.

“The crates are what we call the living quarters of the poor people,” she says. “Like me.”

Welcome to Starfield, a new video game decades in the making. The studio behind it says it has 3 million words of dialogue and includes more than 1,000 environments players can explore across multiple galaxies.

It’s no exaggeration to say this might be one of the biggest stories ever told — in any medium. It also has real life consequences for the developers who are banking on the game’s success being as grand as their vision.

… Design director Emil Pagliarulo, who oversaw much of the game’s lore and quest design, understands that with a video game like Starfield, fun comes first.

“We’re making a video game,” he says. “We’re not making Anna Karenina.”

So Pagliarulo and the team made it their mission to create an “escapist fantasy” where everything fun that could conceivably happen in space is possible: smuggling cargo; getting in your spaceship and defending the Federation; being a space pirate….

(5) TURTLEDOVE FAMILY UPDATE. Harry Turtledove explains his new appearance while telling readers the medical problems his wife, Laura Frankos, is dealing with. Thread starts here.

1 of ?/ Well, I look like this again. Why? Why has to do with why I haven't been around so much the past few months.

Back in June, Laura had a colonoscopy. They found 2 polyps. They took one out. They other was cancerous, and they had to leave it in. pic.twitter.com/ZCPcHQcpqT
— Harry Turtledove (@HNTurtledove) September 5, 2023

(6) BEYOND THESE PRISON WALLS. [Item by Steven French.] It’s perhaps not such a surprise but fantasy novels can help inmates cope with prison life: “How I turned prisoners’ misery into reading pleasure: the brilliant story of Bang Up Books” in the Guardian.

…Dan Barwell spent nine months in … HMP Wandsworth for drug offences, and his cell was a regular stop for the book trolley run by the prison chaplain Liz. “I read 164 books in prison, which is more than I had in my whole life before that. I got really into fantasy novels, the Wheel of Time series were over 1,000 pages each, which ate up a lot of hours,” he told me. “When I was reading I was no longer inside.”

I recently visited the open prison where our books are sorted and shipped, and spoke to some of the men working on the scheme. They understandably get first dibs on new titles as a perk of the job, and thus have hotly contested positions. One of our recruits showed me a glossy hardback of a computer game bible that he’d recently obtained, and what excited him most was that it was a brand-new copy, with all the smell, texture and feel of pages that were hot off the press. So much in prison is old, worn and tired, so there is a real joy to holding something that has never been opened before….

(7) APPEAL TO A HIGHER COURT. [Item by John King Tarpinian.] In 1931, 14-year-old Forrest J. Ackerman wrote a letter to Edgar Rice Burroughs, author of Tarzan and the John Carter of Mars series, informing him of an argument he had with his teacher regarding Edgar’s books.

(8) MICHAEL D. TOMAN OBITUARY. By Alan Brennert [reprinted with permission.] My friend Michael D. Toman—science fiction writer, reference librarian, and the kindest, most generous man I have ever known—passed away sometime last week in his sleep, of natural causes, only a month shy of his 74th birthday. His body was discovered by his longtime friend William F Wu on September 2.

I met Michael at the Clarion Science Fiction Writers Workshop in 1973; it was a definitive moment in his life, as it was for many of us. He had a voracious, eclectic appetite to read and to learn: he could discuss Proust and Dostoyevsky as easily as he could the nuances of Toho Godzilla movies (he wrote a wonderful unpublished poem called “Seven Ways of Looking at Godzilla”) and, of course, sf and fantasy, which he loved. We bonded instantly and became close friends and confidants for the next fifty years.

He was a fine writer, especially adept at literary pastiche, and his stories appeared in Science Fiction Emphasis #1 edited by David Gerrold, Cold Shocks edited by Tim Sullivan, Pulphouse: The Hardback Magazine edited by Kristine Kathryn Rusch, Fantasy Tales, Fantasy Macabre, and the French anthology Univers 13. His story “Quarto” was purchased by Harlan Ellison for The Last Dangerous Visions, and in the 2000s Harlan gave him permission to submit part of it to a writing competition judged by John Updike. Updike awarded Michael’s story first prize and Michael was thrilled to receive it in person from an author whose work he had long admired. The story has been dropped from the forthcoming TLDV, but I hope to find a publisher for it; it’s a hell of a good story.

But what is largely unknown about Michael is the degree of support he championed other writers, usually behind the scenes. Michael brought Harlan Ellison’s story “The Man Who Rowed Christopher Columbus Ashore” to the editors of The Best American Short Stories. It was Ellison’s first appearance in this distinguished series, and it would likely not have happened but for Michael.

When I was working on the 1980s Twilight Zone, Michael recommended two stories to me—Bill Wu’s “Wong’s Lost and Found Emporium” and Greg Bear’s “Dead Run”—that we promptly adapted into fine episodes. He championed my own work, especially my novel Moloka’i, emailing hundreds of “suggestions to purchase” to libraries across the country, helping to sell out the small hardcover print run. He bought classified ads in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction to promote the work of our mutual friend Mel Gilden and also championed the work of his friend Ron Kurchee. As a librarian he bought titles by Michael Bishop, Theodore Sturgeon, R.A. Lafferty, and many more, hoping to bring them new readers. He loved books and loved sharing them with others.

Michael is survived by his sister Christine, and by scores of friends who treasured his sense of humor and his kindness. Goodbye, Michael. Paulette and I will always love you, and always miss you. You made this world a better place.

(9) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.

[Compiled by Cat Eldridge.]

Born September 5, 1914 — Stuart Freeborn. If you’ve seen Yoda, and of course you have, this is the man who designed it, partly based on his own face. Besides being the makeup supervisor and creature design on the original Star Wars trilogy, he did makeup on The Omen, Dr. Strangelove, 2001: A Space Odyssey and all four of the Christopher Reeve-fronted Superman films. (Died 2013.)
Born September 5, 1936 — Rhae and Alyce Andrece. They played twin androids in I, Mudd, a classic Trek episode I’d ever there was one. (And really their only significant role.) Both appeared as policewomen in “Nora Clavicle and the Ladies’ Crime Club” on Batman. That’s their only genre other appearance. They appeared together in the same seven shows. (They died 2009 and 2005.)
Born September 5, 1939 — Donna Anderson, 84. She was Mary Holmes in On The Beach, based on Neville Shute’s novel. She also appeared in, and I kid you not, Sinderella and the Golden Bra and Werewolves on Wheels. The first is a Sixties er, the second is a Seventies exploitation film. She last shows up in a genre role series in The Incredible Hulk.
Born September 5, 1939 — George Lazenby, 84. He is best remembered for being James Bond in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. His turn as Bond was the shortest among the actors in the film franchise and he is the only Bond actor not to appear beyond a single film. (He was also the youngest actor cast as Bond, at age 29, and the only born outside of the British Isles.) Genre wise, he also played Jor-El on Superboy and was also a Bond like character named JB in the Return of the Man from U.N.C.L.E. film. He voiced the Royal Flush King in a recurring role in the Batman Beyond series.

Born September 5, 1940 — Raquel Welch. Fantastic Voyage was her first genre film, and her second was One Million Years B.C. (well, it wasn’t exactly a documentary) where she starred in a leather bikini, both released in 1966. She was charming in The Three Musketeers and The Four Musketeers. She has one-offs in Bewitched, Sabrina the Teenage Witch, The Muppet Show, Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman, Happily Ever After: Fairy Tales for Every Child and Mork & Mindy. (Died 2023.)
Born September 5, 1946 — Freddie Mercury. Now you know who he was and you’re saying that you don’t remember any genre roles by him. Well there weren’t alas. Oh, Queen had one magnificent role in the 1980 Flash Gordon film starring Sam J. Jones, a film that has a seventy percent rating among audience reviewers at Rotten Tomatoes. But I digress as only cats can do. (Prrrr.) Queen provided the musical score featuring orchestral sections by Howard Blake. Most of Blake’s score was not used. Freddie also composed the music for the first Highlander film. And Freddie was a very serious SJW. He cared for at least ten cats throughout his life, including Delilah, Dorothy, Goliath, Jerry, Lily, Miko, Oscar, Romeo, Tiffany and Tom. He was adamantly against the inbreeding of cats and all of them except for Lily and Tiffany, both given to him as gifts, were adopted from the Blue Cross. (Died 1991.)
Born September 5, 1959 — Carolyne Larrington, 64. Norse history and culture academic who’s the author of The Land of the Green Man: A Journey Through the Supernatural Landscapes of the British Isles and Winter is Coming: The Medieval World of Game of Thrones. She also wrote “Norse gods make a comeback thanks to Neil Gaiman – here’s why their appeal endures” for The Conversation.

(10) MISSION PROBABLY POSSIBLE. Cass Morris continues the detailed account of her adventures at Disney’s Star Wars-themed Starship Halcyon at Scribendi: “Day One on the Halcyon, Part 2”.

… 4:55pm: Lt Croy slid up into my DMs! I tried to play it as coy as possible (such as the pre-set dialogue options will allow). I actually gave a scoundrel answer to one of his questions, because I didn’t want to pledge loyalty to him or give away my affiliation with the Resistance.

5:30pm: Captain Keevan followed up with a message about making a deal with Gaya to capture and split some coaxium on its way to the First Order. At this point I realized I was going to have a fine line to dance, since I very much wanted to help the Captain and Raithe and Gaya.

5:40ish: Completed a task for Lenka, overwriting some systems on the ship to help hide information from Croy. We needed to cover up some tweaks to the personnel files, because as it turns out, mechanic/engineer Sammie wasn’t actually crew with the Chandrila Star Line! He was a new Resistance recruit that Lenka brought on-board….

(11) REBEL APPREHENDED. “Mark Hamill’s First Star Wars Meeting With George Lucas Ended In The Back Of A Cop Car” and Slashfilm has the story.

…Can you imagine? Plus, the movie wasn’t out yet, so it’s not like he could just say, “But do you know who I am? I’m Luke Skywalker!” Not that Mark Hamill is a guy who would do that, but still. It obviously worked out, but that’s quite a way to start….

Funny they should frame it that way because a year before the film came out Mark Hamill was at the 1976 Worldcon, hanging around the Star Wars exhibit, where he told LA’s Bill Warren, “I’m the star of a major motion picture only nobody knows it!” I’ve never forgotten that.

(12) LAST WORD. “’Healthy or downright weird?’: how I helped publish my husband Christopher Fowler’s posthumous book” by Pete Chapman at the Guardian. “My author spouse never let me read anything he wrote before it was finished. But after his death from cancer, I found myself choosing funeral flowers at the same time as covers for his memoir, Word Monkey.”

It is strange to be married to an author. At least, it was to me. I inhabited a corporate world, whereas my husband Chris – professionally known as Christopher Fowler – wrote more than 50 novels, from thrillers and crime fiction to fantasy and horror. I was impressed when we started dating and I found out he wrote the immortal line for my favourite film, Alien: “In space no one can hear you scream.” It was not something with which he particularly liked to be associated and he did not trumpet it. He wanted people to remember what he considered to be his real work: his books.

The cancer diagnosis came as a shock. It also came the week before lockdown. It was a very strange period, and one I’m not going to talk about – Chris does that very beautifully in his book Word Monkey. I could never do a better job of it than him. What I can do is talk about what happened afterwards….

(13) I REALLY DON’T KNOW CLOUDS AT ALL. “Neptune’s Clouds Have Vanished, and Scientists Think They Know Why” says the New York Times.

Each planet of the solar system has its own look. Earth has aquamarine oceans. Jupiter has panchromatic tempests. Saturn has glimmering rings. And Neptune has ghostly clouds — at least, it used to. For the first time in three decades, the electric-blue orb is almost completely cloud-free, and astronomers are spooked.

Neptune’s cloud cover has been known to ebb and flow. But since October 2019, only one patch of wispy white has been present, drifting around the planet’s south pole.

“It was the first time anybody had ever seen this,” said Imke de Pater, an astronomer at the University of California, Berkeley. “There’s just nothing there. What’s going on?”

To crack the case of the vanishing clouds, scientists spooled through 30 years of near-infrared images of Neptune made with ground-based observatories and the Hubble Space Telescope. In a study published in June in the journal Icarus, Dr. de Pater and her colleagues named the prime suspect in this cloud cleansing: the sun….

(14) EXSQUEEZE ME. [Item by Steven French.] Well, who doesn’t enjoy a burp after a good meal …?! “Up to half black holes that rip apart stars and devour them ‘burp back up’ stellar remains years later” says Live Science.

… Cendes and the team don’t know what’s causing black holes to “switch on” after many years, but whatever it is definitely does not come from inside the black holes.

Black holes are marked by an event horizon, the point at which gravity is so strong that not even light can escape.”Black holes are very extreme gravitational environments even before you pass that event horizon, and that’s what’s really driving this,” Cendes said. “We don’t fully understand if the material observed in radio waves is coming from the accretion disk or if it is being stored somewhere closer to the black hole. Black holes are definitely messy eaters, though.”…

(15) VIDEO OF THE DAY. Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget hatches on Netflix on December 15.

For Ginger and the flock, all is at stake when the dangers of the human world come home to roost; they’ll stop at nothing even if it means putting their own hard-won freedom at risk to save chicken-kind. This time, they’re breaking in!

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

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